If you’ve joined Amazon as a seller, then you know just how big an impact it can have on your success. Whether you’re selling clothing or cosmetics, electronics or something very niche, Amazon can help you build your following. However, it’s also the world’s largest online marketplace, meaning that it’s very competitive. You need to harness every tool available to help ensure that you can stand out and attract your audience, and that includes Amazon SEO.

How Does Amazon SEO Differ?

SEO has been a part of Internet optimization since the first search engine debuted. It’s remained a critical concern for anyone hoping to boost their website’s visibility within search engine results pages (SERPs) since then, too. It’s also important on Amazon to ensure that your products stand out, and that you’re able to attract your target audience. How does Amazon SEO differ from SEO on your website, blog, or in AdWords ads?

Actually, while many of the concepts are the same (both rely on keywords, for instance), there are some important differences. One of the most crucial to understand is Amazon’s algorithm. It differs dramatically from Google’s, primarily because it is concerned only with boosting the likelihood of a searcher making a purchase. Therefore, the A9 algorithm focuses on product performance, and product relevance to the customer’s search.

Performance can be a bit of a sticky question – it refers to product sales, overall reviews and customer scoring. If your product is new, you can expect less traction here. The more sales history a product has, the higher a product will rise in the ranks.

Relevance is easier to understand, as it relies primarily on keywords, but also factors in other things like product category, and user-set preferences, like Prime, brand, price and the rest. The closer your product matches a search’s parameters, the more relevant your product will be considered, and the higher up the list of results it will be placed.

Finding Keywords

As mentioned, Amazon SEO still relies on keywords, and they will play a central role in ensuring that your products show as high in the search results as possible. If you don’t know the words and phrases that your customers are using to find your products, you have some work to do. Amazon offers a free keyword search tool called Sonar that you can use, but remember that Sonar only parses data from Amazon. It might be worth using Google’s keyword tool as well to track keyword usage off of Amazon’s site.

It’s not just important to know the right keywords. You need to use them in the correct places within your product listing to ensure a good ranking and the best relevance. The product title is the most important, and your most relevant keywords should be placed there. Your bullet points are also vital. You also need to pay attention to the Seller Central backend search terms. Finally, the product description should contain important keywords, but it’s more vital that it provide valuable information and use persuasive copy to convince your customer to buy.

So, your keywords should be used in this order – product title à bullet points à Seller Central backend à product description.

With all that being said, you’ll need to remember that Amazon SEO differs from that of all other marketplaces. You’ll need to create a custom keyword strategy for eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Jet.com and any other marketplace that you use in order to capitalize on the way that those platforms’ own algorithms work.

With the right keywords, the right knowledge, and a little bit of copywriting savvy, you can create compelling descriptions that inform, but also capitalize on Amazon SEO.