Optimizing Amazon Backend Search Terms To Promote More Sales Volume
For the past few years, Amazon has provided us all numerous opportunities. From stay-at-home moms, to big household brands — we all have a fair shot at success on the platform. And even though new sellers join Amazon everyday, the opportunity for growth and prosperity continues to be as real as ever.
However, as more competitors join the marketplace, sellers must place their best cards on the table if they want to win. Understanding Amazon’s A9 algorithm will significantly help you optimize your product listings. Part of Amazon SEO is providing the right details in the backend search terms, subject matter, target audience, intended use, and other attributes.
Lucky for you, you’ll have a major head start on new and experienced sellers if you understand the best practices for leveraging these 5 aspects.
1. Backend Search Terms
First and foremost, your backend search terms. Now, keep in mind that last August Amazon modified backend keywords to only 250 bytes in total for both US and European marketplaces, 500 bytes for Japan marketplace, and only 200 bytes for India marketplace. We covered these changes as they happened and you can read more if you missed it here HERE.
Something I can’t emphasize enough is keyword relevancy. Sellers should only use relevant keywords in this section and avoid copying and pasting a whole bunch of keywords without any real strategy. Once you’ve done your keyword research, only select relevant keywords with high search volume and conversion rate.
Stay tuned for a developing ZonGuru tool designed to help with this process immensely…
Pro Tip: To determine keywords that converted for your products, download the “Search Term Report” from your advertising tab to find keywords that converted to sales. Note that you need to be running Amazon ads to be able to download the report.
Once you’ve compiled your list of keywords, you can use an online character count tool to calculate the total characters. (e.g. Using whey protein, your search terms could be whey protein 5lb, whey protein 90 servings, whey protein zero carbs, and other relevant keywords).
Pro Tip: To test if your keywords are still being indexed you can perform a search in Amazon using a combination of keywords from your backend search terms, and observe whether your product shows up or not. Or a better way is to use this online index checker tool by MarketHustl.
2. Subject Matter
Let’s delve into the second section which is “Subject Matter”. If you hover your mouse to the about icon next to “Subject Matter”, it will say “Please refer to the BTG”. So, what is this BTG and what does it mean? First of all, BTG is the abbreviation for Browse Tree Guide which shows the nodes and classification for products on Amazon. Below is an example of what the BTG looks like and you can find it HERE.
This is less confusing than it may seem; Amazon basically just wants to know the following:
- What is your product about? And,
- What image does your product depict?
Again, using whey protein powder as an example. Your subject matter would be muscle building, muscle recovery, outdoor activities, weight lifting or something similar.
3. Target Audience
To define who your target audience and market are, you need to ask yourself these questions:
- For whom is the product intended?
- Who uses your product?
For consistency, let’s use whey protein powder as an example. The target audience would be bodybuilders, athletes, fitness enthusiasts or any other audiences along those lines.
4. Other Attributes
This section is asking for extra information about the product. Basically, Amazon wants to know the following:
- What are the additional attributes of the product?
- What generic properties does your product have?
Again, using whey protein powder as an example, the other attributes would be delicious flavor, easily mixed, smells good or any other relevant information about the product.
5. Intended Use
Last but not least is the intended use. Amazon wants to know what activities, events, locations, or conditions is the product intended to be used? This section is asking what the product is meant to be used for.
Using whey protein powder, the intended use would be lifting weights, bodybuilding, CrossFit, gym or any other activities or events the product is meant for.
There you go, all 5 sections you could or should optimize for better Amazon SEO to rank better and increase conversion rate. And now you know what to write in these sections instead of leaving them blank. Best of all, you have practical action steps you can execute today!
Finally, reach out in the comment box below should you have any questions.
Originally published at blog.zonguru.com.
