Amazon SEO Guide 2021 – Improve Your Product Visibility

Amazon is one of the biggest marketplaces in the US. As one of the core platforms to buy and sell products, it has become the catalyst for the success of various eCommerce businesses. With an increasing number of consumers and sellers on the platform, e-commerce businesses cannot help but start to implement every technique and optimization process to have a chance at increasing visibility and driving conversion to their product listing page on the platform.

What is Amazon SEO?

In general, when we talk about SEO, we only think about Google thus underestimating the algorithm of the Amazon Search Engine.

Amazon SEO is the process of optimizing and improving various elements of the Product Detail page on Amazon and improving the Amazon SEO Ranking. Optimizing Amazon Detail Page can help increase the visibility of products and drive traffic.

The core of the Amazon search engine is A9 or Amazon Search Algorithm which had helped Amazon to retain its position as number 1 for product discovery and purchasing. Amazon is a product-based search engine so taking proactive measures based on the product is the best way to drive conversion.

What are the organic product listings available on Amazon?

Organic product listings are unpaid ads that appear on the Amazon SERP. The search results are determined by Amazon based on several factors like product ads being relevant to the shopper’s search query, product content, reviews, sales of the product, etc. Within the organic listings, some products can earn several badges from Amazon to entice digital shoppers and increase their visibility, clicks, and sales. The graph below shows the composition of organic ads for shoe products on the first page of the Amazon SERP.

According to Amazon’s own data, 70% of Amazon customers never click past the first page of the search result. This makes it that much more vital for brands and retailers to have their products show up on the first page of the Amazon SERP. The more optimized your listings, the better your rankings, which leads to increased visibility that leads to more sales.

Amazon is all about providing the best product experience for the customers. And as a seller on the platform, it is imperative to provide the best product shopping experience to digital shoppers. We have listed some of the key elements of a product listing to optimize the product shopping experience on Amazon.

Key Elements of a Product Listing to Optimize for Amazon SEO

Product Title

As one of the most important ranking factors of the Amazon SEO Algorithm, Product Title is probably the first thing your customers will read on the product detail page. The Product Title must be straightforward and must convey the most important information about your product.

Optimized Product or Listing title will have the greatest impact on product experience and shopper behavior.

Here are a few things to remember to include in Amazon Listing.

Analyzing the data on shoe products, we found that having shopper attributes like size, material, color, etc. has quite an impact on ad visibility. As shown on the graph below, the ads on the first page of the Amazon SERP have a very high percentage of ads with a brand, variant (color, material, size), and demography (age, gender) in the title of the products.

Suggestions: Amazon Product Performance will entirely depend on how to use these elements with other Amazon SEO ranking factors.

If you look carefully above, all four listings have different types of product titles in terms of characters, key features, and more. However, Listing no. 4 has Best Seller in their listing as their product title is one of the optimized among the others.

What does that imply? During Product title optimization, using relevant keywords is available preferably at the beginning of the title. If we analyze the Amazon SEO algorithm carefully, the title having relevant keywords that appear earlier has a high chance of better product performance.

Looking into our data on shoe products on Amazon, we found that organic ads on the first page of the Amazon SERP have a high match between the searched query and the product title. As shown on the graph below there is a high match on over 80% of the product titles. This means that the A9 algorithm highly prioritizes the relevancy of the searched keyword.

Product Description

The best way for sellers to make a sale pitch to customers is with a Product description. A readable or convincing description can help you persuade your customers. And with relevant keywords, it can help increase your chance of better listing on the Amazon platform.

Here are some of Amazon SEO tips that you can use as a seller.

• Simple and Readable Content – Do not write complex or boring text to confuse the consumers. Write concise product descriptions that are easy to read. If possible, make a small paragraph for the Product description.
• Convincing Content – The product description, as well as bullet points, are important elements to convince and persuade the consumers. Write about the benefits of your products and using them.
• No Duplication – What is worse than a long and boring description is duplicate content. Expand the description focusing on details, and other focal points of the product.

Bullet Points on Product Listing Page

One of the major ranking factors on Amazon is Bullet Points. Bullet points are descriptive text about specific aspects of any Amazon Product. As per Amazon guidelines, the sellers can add up to 5 bullet points on their Product detail page.

Why are bullet points important?

Bullet points are used specifically to attract your audience and lead them in buying your product using your keywords features. One of the facts about Amazon Shopper behavior is that most of them prefer reading bullet points over boring product descriptions. Which may turn out to contribute to a greater conversion rate.

Bullet points are usually indexed alongside Product title and description so using relevant keywords in Amazon Product bullet points can increase product visibility.

Things to remember about Bullet points

1. Show Product best attributes and make them different from Product title or Product Description
2. Write 1 Benefits/Advantages per Bullet point
3. Amazon Product Detail Page has a limit of 200 characters. Try to write each bullet points with important information.

High-Quality Images

High-quality images are a very valuable element and the best way to convince your customers using visual information. Product with high-quality images tends to have a higher product performance and conversion rate.

• Images should be at least 1000 pixels or larger.
• Ensure each product image is displayed in the best visual condition.
• Avoid using any blurry images or low-resolution images.
• Avoid Using different colored backgrounds. Using white background eliminates any distractions and adds professionalism to the product listing.
• Use Images from various angles. The customers need a visual tour of any product and convincing them using multiple angles is fruitful.

Product Price

One of the most important aspects of the Amazon product listing page is the product price. Ultimately what the buyers are looking for is a suitable and appropriate product price. The amazon algorithm provides the digital shopper with the most relevant ads. The graph below shows the importance of targeting shoppers at all stages of the shopper journey. It shows that when a shopper searches for the “best” of something, the price range of the products are on the higher end, and in searches with keywords like “cheap” or “sale” the price range of products are typically on the lower end.

Amazon Pricing strategy is what makes or breaks your online presence and trustability of any brands or sellers. Optimizing product prices can be quite challenging for various sellers on Amazon.

In simple terms, the product price must be competitive and profitable. Try to determine the lowest price you can offer to the consumers based on the margin. Calculative Price can convince the consumers and increase your conversion rate. It is suggested that the sellers must invest some time in optimizing their price strategy to give a better ranking for their product detail page.

Amazon Product Reviews

Around 91% of shoppers regularly read online reviews from Amazon to Facebook to Yelp and various other online channels. And 84% of them trust these reviews thus creating transparency to the shopping behavior and experience and their willingness to buy any products on any online channels.

In truth Product reviews may not be the sole deciding factor for Amazon Ranking, however, each product on “Best Sellers” and “Amazon’s Choice” gets impact indirectly from Product Reviews Summary and ratings in the Product Detail Page.

Looking into our data on shoe products, we found that ads that have a higher number of reviews have a better chance of ranking higher than those that don’t. As shown on the graph below, there is a higher percentage of ads with less than 1K reviews as we move down the rankings.

Another great way to make your ads stand out on Amazon is by earning one of the many Amazon badges. These badges not only help your ads stand out but also help customers be more informed of the ad. Ads with badges inform the customer of the popularity of the product, highlights discounts and promotions, and increase the credibility of the product which in turn helps boost the clicks ad conversions.

Analyzing the Amazon Search Engine results for shoe products on Amazon, we found that badges like Amazon Choice and Editorial Recommendations were exclusively on ads that were in the top 10 positions. The data also showed that almost 80% of the top 10 ranked ads had the Prime badge on them.

Below, we take a look at the various badges awarded by Amazon, what they mean, what are their advantages to sellers on the platform, and ways you can earn them.

Best Seller Badge

This badge is given to the best-selling product in its category or subcategory. It is represented by an orange ribbon on the top left corner of the product ad. This is a very sought-after badge but also one of the hardest badges to get. It tells the customer that this product has the highest sales signifying its popularity.

The best seller badge can change every hour based on the performance of the products in that given hour. It is highly dependent on the sales volume of the product.

Having this badge will take make your ad stand out which can increase the visibility of your ad. And customers are likely to check out the best-selling products boosting your chance of a conversion.

Having optimized product content is the key to increasing your chances of earning this badge. Meaning you need to have good reviews and ratings, competitive prices, optimized titles, descriptions, images, fast shipping, etc.).

Amazon’s Choice Badge

This badge is given to the products that best match the search keyword. It is an extremely sought-after badge, but it is difficult to attain since the criteria of being chosen are well kept by Amazon. Just matching the keyword does not automatically give you the badge. The product ad should have optimized titles, descriptions, images, good reviews, high ratings, competitive price, quick shipping, etc.

This badge is another way Amazon is prioritizing the customer by ensuring the customer gets the most relevant product in front of them to increase the probability of sale.

Amazon’s search algorithm looks at the search query and tries to match the shopper’s intent with the product. So, this badge is given to the product listing that has all the aforementioned features while best matching the intent of the search keywords/shopper.

To get the Amazon’s Choice badge a product needs:

• To perfectly match the search query
• Good reviews and high ratings
• Prime shipping
• Excellent seller metrics and conversion metrics to signify the popularity and credibility of the product

Editorial Recommendation

This is not exactly a badge but getting listed under the editorial recommendations signifies credibility. These recommendations appear as a snippet of one to three products on the Amazon search engine result page. It is attached to a full review of the products that are usually written by third-party experts, influencers, or content creators.

These review contents and recommendations of the products are a part of Amazon’s Onsite affiliates program which brings product-related content from third parties to help customers research and discover products.

Some of the criteria to qualify for an editorial recommendation are:

• Higher than 4 rating
• More than 100 reviews
• At least 30,000 in sales
• Needs to be among the top 20% of Amazon’s best sellers for a particular category or subcategory

Prime

Amazon Prime badges stand out to Prime members as they know the benefits. Prime gives various benefits to both sellers and customers.

Prime for the customer includes:

1. Free 2-day or less delivery (same day in certain areas)
2. free 2-hour delivery on grocery orders from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods
3. Unlimited streaming of movies and tv shows and audio streaming services
4. Prime-exclusive deals

Prime for the seller includes:

1. Prime products usually have a higher ranking than those that are not under prime.
2. Customers are more likely to select prime products as it automatically has fast delivery
3. And shoppers that are prime members usually gravitate towards products that are prime eligible

Event Badges

These badges make are promotional badges but are shown close to large events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You can craft your deals for these events on your Amazon Advertising interface. You have to make sure to submit these deals at least a week before the events as it may not show up if it is submitted too close to the event day.

Limited Time Deals

Similar to the event deals, limited-time deals are deals that are run for a short amount of time (as suggested by the name itself). Limited time deal is shown under the product listing on the search result page on a red box. This lets the shopper know that this deal is going to run out soon, so it increases urgency and pushes shoppers to view or click on the product to not miss out on a deal.

Other Badges

One of the newer badges that amazon awards some product ads is the Climate Pledge Friendly badge.

This badge signifies that the product is following various environmental certifications (given by external certifications, governmental agencies, and independent labs). This lets the customers know that the product is more focused on being sustainable and environmentally friendly.

Since these badges are limited to only a select few products on the search result page, they make those that have them stand out over the rest of the products. Thus, helping a seller increase their product visibility and boost their chances of conversion/sales.

In Conclusion

As Amazon is a product-based search engine, optimizing your product detail page elements is crucial for Amazon Product Rankings. Keyword Analysis and Product Experience Management are very important for Amazon Search Engine Ranking.

If the product shopping experience is optimized for multiple stages of the shopper’s journey, then you have a good chance of winning more sales. You can make it easier on yourself as a seller on Amazon by using GrowByData’s product feeds tool for optimized and enhanced product listing submissions, and our product intelligence tool to increase the visibility of your ads with in-depth data, insights, and reports on ad performance on Amazon.