If you are selling your products on Amazon, you need to devote just as much time to getting customers as you do fulfilling their orders—half the battle involves getting shoppers to find your product and the other is persuading them to complete the purchase.
Knowing the best practices for Amazon listing optimization is a huge asset to making even more sales. At Ampd, we are dedicated to helping e-commerce businesses maximize their profits, and so, we wanted to share some proven tips to make your Amazon listings successful.
What is Amazon Listing Optimization?
Amazon product listing optimization refers to the process of creating or updating your product pages to increase their search visibility, click-through rate, and conversion rate with the goal of generating more sales.
Some of the key approaches to product optimization include:
- Thorough keyword research and on-page optimization
- Compelling product title, description, and images
- Top-notch customer reviews and ratings
Below, we are going to cover each of these approaches in more detail.
How to Optimize Your Amazon Listing
Product Title and Keywords
In order to appear in the Amazon search results, your product listing must include the searched word. Therefore, when creating your Amazon listing, make sure to include all the relevant keywords somewhere on your product page.
The first step is conducting your keyword research and make a list of the relevant search terms. Next, you will need to place these terms in strategic locations within your product page.
- Product title. Until recently, the best practice for product listing optimization was to include your 5 top keywords within the product title. However, this is no longer necessary. While you still need to make sure to include important keywords in the title, it is more important to focus on creating a descriptive but readable title. Amazon allows product titles to be up to 250 characters in length, but it is a good idea to stick to under 200 characters.
- Backend keywords. On Amazon, you can add up to 249 bytes of other keywords in the “search terms” field on the backend. Make sure not to exceed 249 bytes, as Amazon won’t index these keywords in that case.
- Bullet points and product description. You can insert more keywords in your bullet points and product description, but make sure to keep the text informative and easy to read.
- More details. Include additional product information, such as material type, on your product page. Customers can access this information via the product filter, so make sure to fill out this information as thoroughly as possible.
- Other keyword types. Some types of products allow defining additional keyword types, such as men/women. Make use of them!
Product Images
Amazon will allow you to insert up to nine images, including the main one. Make sure your photos and images are high-quality and sized precisely to be 1,000 pixels wide and 500 pixels high. In addition, make sure that your photos clearly demonstrate the scale and size of the product, as you don’t want to mislead customer expectations.
The main image should display the core product only, have white background, and fill 85% of the image frame. A good main image will display a product that is well-lit, is easily recognizable, and looks attractive.
And with additional images, you have more flexible design options. Use this opportunity to highlight the specific features and product details. For example, you can use images of different product angles, benefits and uses, lifestyle applications, details, and packaging.
Bullet Points or Key Product Features
Amazon allocates 1,000 characters for the description of key product features. Use this opportunity to persuade potential buyers that your product is what they need by explaining its uses and benefits. This might mean providing lifestyle uses or real-world examples, or explaining how your product will solve their problems.
The specific length of Amazon bullet points can vary from category to category. Unless otherwise limited by Amazon, around 200 characters should be enough to incorporate key phrases and define features within the bullet points. If you follow the 200-word guideline, this would mean that you will have five bullet points that will be indexed by Amazon.
Product Description
Use product description to prove why your product is better than other similar products. In this section, you have 2,000 characters to demonstrate to shoppers what your product is and what it does.
Some best practices for writing product descriptions include:
- Use keywords throughout the text.
- Elaborate on any features described in the previous section.
- Use short sentences and emboldening to improve readability and highlight important information.
- Include additional details about the product and company.
- Be honest and don’t mislead the buyers or create unrealistic expectations.
Product Reviews
Amazon shoppers largely rely on product reviews to make informed purchasing decisions, and Amazon knows it. That is why it has a strict policy against fake review services, where people are incentivized or paid for fake positive reviews.
Product reviews serve as a social proof that your product is, indeed, top-notch. However, getting product reviews isn’t easy, especially in the beginning, when no shopper wants to be the first one to leave a comment.
To combat the challenge, you can get ahead of your competition by running promotions or campaigns to get more product reviews or using pre-written templates that are proven to result in higher buyer engagement.
Product Rating
Providing high-quality products that correspond to the description and meet or exceed expectations is the optimal way to receive 4- or 5-star reviews.
If you do end up receiving negative or neutral feedback, make sure to check whether it is within Amazon’s guidelines—if it isn’t, you can ask Amazon to remove it.
Competitive Pricing
Another important element of Amazon listing optimization is to make sure it is competitively priced. Today, competition is more intense than ever, and more and more sellers sell the same products. To win over customers among competition, attractive pricing is key.
Here are some pricing strategies that are proven to work great:
- Many Amazon sellers fail to take advantage of coupons, so offering coupons will help your product stand out from the competition. Many customers tend to psychologically dismiss the cheapest product in the search results, so we recommend pricing your listing a little higher, and then using a coupon to bring the price back down.
- Sales pricing. You may wish to show a sale price on your product, but it isn’t that easy. Amazon may choose to display the sale price on your items with a “strike through” of the manufacturer’s suggested price, next to your cheaper price. However, Amazon doesn’t always show the original price. This strategy may only work if your item has a high sales rank, is a best seller, or the sales price makes the item truly a bargain.
- Take advantage of free shipping. Amazon Prime membership offers free shipping on most of the items. However, if a customer isn’t a Prime member, the free shipping threshold comes into play. For example, in the US, someone would have to spend at least $25 on products to receive the free shipping perk. One effective pricing strategy is to increase the prices on items that are just below the free shipping amount to instantly make the purchase more attractive.
Product Promotion
Once you ace your Amazon listing optimization and pricing strategy, it is time to promote your product listing — both inside and outside of Amazon. Here is how you can do this:
- Run Amazon Ads. Sponsored Product Ads can help to increase your listing visibility, even if it still struggles to rank organically. This can be especially beneficial for new product listings, which don’t have enough reviews and good rankings. With Amazon ads, you will pay per click, so you can be confident that your budget isn’t wasted.
- Utilize Google Ads. While Amazon Ads are effective at promoting your products within the marketplace, Google Ads can be extremely useful at bringing traffic from the outside. The more sales channels you use, the more potential customers will view your listings. Another hidden benefit of using Google Ads for Amazon is that you technically pick up your customers outside of Amazon, which means you can collect their email addresses even before they visit the platform. And the best part is that you can automate your Google Ads with Ampd’s ad automation tool to take all the legwork out and free up some extra time.
- Share product listings on social media. To get more visibility for your products, you can share your listings on various social media platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram. The key here is to aim to deliver valuable content and information to the customers, rather than bluntly advertising the product. Think blog articles, contests or giveaways, or promo codes.
Promote your Amazon Product Listings with Ampd
Selling on Amazon is no easy task—you need to keep in mind Amazon listing optimization, obtain excellent ratings and reviews, figure out the correct pricing, and, of course, promote your listings.
Google Ads are a proven way for obtaining more traffic and increasing the product rank and sales of your Amazon products. To optimize the process and achieve maximum results, you can use the turnkey ad automation toolkit from Ampd. Get Ampd today.
