In the midst of millions of other Amazon sellers – how do you make sure your product stands out and attracts your buyers? Optimization is key. But, optimization is not a one-time gig. In the ever-changing Amazon Marketplace – especially this year in the pandemic – what worked yesterday may not be working in your favor today, and making too many changes at once can be detrimental as you won’t be able to determine which change delivered the results you were seeking.
Whether your strategy is to sell big-ticket items, go after the ‘low-hanging fruit’ products, or even engage in retail arbitrage, here are a few tips you can incorporate into your product detail pages to boost conversions.
If your listing was considered real estate – your title would be the prime location. You know the home with the curb appeal that has buyers in a bidding frenzy? Treat your title space as the real estate agent would handle this prime listing. Use your space to pique buyer curiosity – giving enough information to ‘hook’ the buyer in to read the rest of the listing – and sneak in one or two of your high volume search phrases.
While everyone has their ‘secret sauce’ way of writing a title, the key is to balance keywords that have both high search volume and relevance – without being guilty of ‘keyword stuffing.’ While you want to get traffic to your page, you want to make the title easy to read for humans – not simply bot-friendly. A simple formula for this is: Brand + Model + Product Type + Feature + Benefit. Amazon’s Product Title Requirements can help you in crafting the perfect title. And… don’t forget to think about your mobile shoppers and consider how your title will appear on a smaller device.
A few stylist guidelines:
When thinking about optimization, many people overlook the importance of imagery – and this is a huge mistake! From the time we are kids beginning to read we are trained to look at the pictures to see what we can learn about a story. Why should your Amazon listing be any different?
Amazon allows up to 7 photos – and some smaller videos. Use this space to showcase your product packaging, the actual size, color, or shape of an item – and show the item in use through lifestyle imagery. This space allows you to give your customer more detail that was not allowed by space restrictions in the title and bullet points. Never underestimate the power of a well-placed photo! In fact, detailing the actual size of items can cut back on negative feedback claiming the item was too small or too large. Additionally, name the photo one of your keywords for some back end ranking power.
Photo Pointers:
Remember the old adage about walking in someone else’s shoes? While crafting your listing content is the perfect time to use it! Think about questions you would have about the product if you were a customer and help them to visualize themselves reaping the benefits of using it. Position your product as a solution to a problem while detailing the benefits and features the product has to offer.
While the length of bullet points varies for each category, this space is time for you to be creative while peppering in key phrases you wish to rank for. Whether you choose a clever attention-grabbing opener before delivering more product info, focus on benefit and feature specs, or simply answering your current customers FAQ’s is up to you, but varying the length of each bullet may also help you weave a more clever story and hold the attention of the shopper. Keep in mind that more shoppers are turning to their mobile devices to make purchases and information may be displayed differently on each device so keeping it short and to the point will go a long way for mobile shoppers. To learn more about optimizing bullet points, read this article on Seller Central.
Though it is true that many shoppers don’t make it this far down the listing before either adding to their cart or moving on to another product, the description field is still valuable space for you to tell your brand story, elaborate on features, benefits, and details that were not able to fit in the bullets or title, and explain why your product is better than the competition. If you’ve made claims elsewhere in the listing, now you have the space to support them. Has your company won any awards? Do you donate a portion of the proceeds to charity? Talk about these things in the description section as another way to connect with your customer – and use some keywords you haven’t had a chance to in the rest of the listing.
Another mistake Amazon sellers tend to make is to totally skip out on the description in favor of A+ Content. While this content certainly has its benefits, it is not for everyone for a few reasons. First, you have to be enrolled in Brand Registry, and secondly, this content is not indexed by Amazon – meaning that for SEO purposes – it does nothing for your listing.
There are a number of approaches to keyword research as well, but for optimization purposes, consider the features and benefits of the product you are selling. What words or phrases would a customer use to search for it. If you are selling baby products, maybe try searching for infant, toddler, or child instead of simply ‘baby’ to see if you can uncover a phrase with higher volume. These high volume search terms should be used throughout your listing where they sound natural. Don’t be guilty of keyword stuffing.
However, keywords go deeper than just your initial search. You also need to consider back end search terms – the ones you want to be indexed for but don’t necessarily need customers to see them. For our baby example again, maybe infant, toddler, and child didn’t generate a lot of volumes, but could still be helpful in people finding your product. You would use these on the back end to enhance discoverability. But, be careful! Amazon indexes only the first 249 characters on the backend, so be sure to use only the most important words here. Don’t repeat keywords found in the listing content, and don’t stress over entering the plural form of a popular word as Amazon’s Algorithm handles this for you.
No matter where you focus your optimization efforts, there are always improvements that can be made. Test variables – see what improves conversion, but always keep a backup of what was there before in care the desired outcome is not achieved.
Izabela Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of RankBell, a brand accelerator that helps Amazon businesses grow to 7 & 8 figures through driving organic keyword ranking and optimization. Izabela is on a mission to help third party sellers make an impact with their brands, build sustainable wealth, stop stressing about financial security, and start living the life they’ve always dreamed of.
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Izabela Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of RankBell, a brand accelerator that helps Amazon businesses grow to 7 & 8 figures through driving organic keyword ranking and optimization. Izabela is on a mission to help third party sellers make an impact with their brands, build sustainable wealth, stop stressing about financial security, and start living the life they’ve always dreamed of.
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