SEO for Amazon Sellers: Optimizing Amazon A9

If you’re looking to start selling on Amazon or you’re already an authorized Amazon seller, now is the time when you should be optimizing your seller page and products postings. By the end of 2019, Amazon Prime had over 112 million users from the United States. With so many users, it is important for vendors to have their items appear first or close to the top of searches. 70% of Amazon shoppers do not go past the first page and 35% of users click the first product listed on the search page, so it’s essential to appear high up in the search results to get your product sold.

Just like Google and Bing, Amazon has its own algorithm to determine what products get listed first. This algorithm is known as A9. This algorithm is to help customers find the products they want and optimize user experience for less scrolling and more purchasing.

It is important to optimize everywhere possible so A9 works in your favor. A9 has two core factors that affect the search ranking of a product: Relevance and Performance.

Just like any other SEO algorithm, relevance relates to keywords. And just like any good SEO strategy, you want to plan your keywords out. What are your primary keywords, the most important, broad terms relevant to your product; your secondary keywords, more specific long-tail keywords to use in the product description; and lastly, your backend keywords, linked to your seller account that provides more information about your listings but are not visible to the public.

There are many tools that help you choose keywords for your product, including Google Ads Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and Ubersuggest. Once you have your keywords, you want to incorporate the primary keywords into the product title, as this is the most important element of your Amazon SEO strategy. The title should be detailed and clearly describe your brand, product, size, and color. Having a 200 character limit for your title can be difficult, but do not let that stop you from making your title as descriptive as possible.

A poor title would be: Large Insulated Water Bottle. An optimized Amazon product title has a format similar to Brand-Product-Size-Color-Material-Quantity, such as Iron Flask Sports Water Bottle - 14oz, 18oz, 22oz, 32oz, 40oz, or 64oz, 3 Lids (Straw Lid), Vacuum Insulated Stainless Steel, Hot Cold, Modern Double Walled, Simple Thermo Mug, Hydro Metal Canteen. Yes, this is a real product listed on Amazon with thousands of reviews; and yes this is an exaggerated example, but you get the idea. Make sure the brand and product come first, so users see the most important information.

The next ranking factor after the title is your seller name and backend keywords. Backend keywords are “hidden” words that are not visible on the product page, but are connected to your seller account. They are similar to meta keyword tags and they are used to tell Amazon what exactly you are selling. You can also use keyword tools to help you generate your backend keywords. You do not want to exceed the 250 byte limit of backend keywords, but you want to include synonyms and spelling variations of words. Do not include misspelled words, temporary words such as ‘new’ or ‘on sale’, or subjective words, which include ‘best’ or ‘amazing’. These will not significantly help your search rankings.

Brand and product descriptions are also important elements for relevancy. Write product descriptions with bullet points, and include scannable features and benefits. These bullet points should also contain primary and secondary keywords, just as you would write a product page on your ecommerce website. While you don’t have a lot of control over the overall design of your Amazon product page, you have full control of the information that you provide. Just don’t exceed more than 2000 characters in your description, this is the point where you will lose users interest if they are not already sold on the product.

To optimize performance, you should compare the price of your product to similar ones, you do not want to have a product that is way more expensive than the competition, you will lose out on many potential sales. Your conversion rate is an essential factor in how your product is rated in Amazon search because Amazon is going to promote products that are most likely going to make them money, have been most purchased, and most highly reviewed. To improve conversion rates on your product pages:

Optimize image quality. The quality of the images should be 1000x1000 pixels to increase listing quality.

Improve order processing speeds. Fast shipping is something Amazon takes pride in. Sellers with a higher Perfect Order Percentage (POP) will rank higher.

Keep your in-stock rate up to date. Not having your product in stock makes it impossible to fill the needs of users. Constant lack of stock can lead to negative reviews, which can really impact how your product is ranked.eve

Diligently monitor your product reviews. Amazon is very aware of fake reviews on products, so it is important to get honest and unbiased reviews to help your product rank close to the top. Reviews help other users feel comfortable spending money on products they are unsure of.

While you don’t need to be an SEO expert to have your product rank well on Amazon, it does require a lot of research and maintenance to optimize your Amazon search performance. Properly filling out your product and seller page will have a huge impact on your ranking, as well as monitoring your reviews (closely looking out for negative ones that you’d need to respond to) and be remaining diligent with order fulfillment and shipping. Just like any good ecommerce SEO strategy, you can’t cheat the search engine – they look for the best companies and products to present in the search results.