#106: How To Write An Awesome Amazon Listing In 2021

Episode: 106

Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Amy Wees, a Search Engine Optimization Expert, Copywriter and CEO of Amazing at Home E-Commerce Consulting.

Subtitle: “Listing Optimization Is The Foundation Of Everything Else That You Do.”

Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes__trashed/episode-106-how-to-write-an-awesome-amazon-listing-in-2021-w-amy-weese/

In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Amy Wees, a Search Engine Optimization Expert, Copywriter and CEO of Amazing at Home E-Commerce Consulting.

Amy is an Expert Planner with 18 years military planning experience and an entrepreneur with 3 brands in the marketplace. In this episode, she shares how to write an Amazon listing that will help rank high in search.

If you are a new listener to Lunch With Norm… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!

In this episode, we discuss:

• 5:24 : Amy’s Background
• 8:16 : Listing Changes on Amazon
• 13:09 : Canonical URL in Ranking
• 15:09 : What is Canonical URL?
• 17:38 : Using Flat File in Listings
• 19:24 : How to Write Effective Bullet Points on Listings
• 28:13 : High Converting Keywords with Low Search Volume
• 33:28 : Make Sure That You’re Optimizing
• 40:49 : A Plus Content Tips
• 48:38 : Keywords To Use For Potential Buyers That Use Different Relevant Ways To Target The Same Product
• 53:47 : Using Competitors’ Brand Names in Keywords
• 57:34 : Amy’s Keyword Research Tools and Process
• 1:03:05: Wheel of Kelsey

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Explore these Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• https://amazingathome.com/
• https://sellerroundtable.com/
• https://amazingathome.com/blog
• https://twitter.com/amzathomeprREACH
• Helium 10
• Seller App
• https://sellerseo.com/ – Listing Lightning
• Greenshot
• Pinterest
• Uber Suggests
• Answer the Public
• Keyword Planner
• https://amazingathome.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/groups/amazingathome
• https://www.facebook.com/acnwgirl
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-wees-amazing-at-home/

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Norman  0:01  

Hey everyone. It’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, The Rise of the Micro Brands.

Norman  0:20  

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. Today we’re gonna have Amy Wees on, the CEO of Amazing at Home and we’re gonna be talking about some of the new updates with the Amazon listings. How’s that? By the way, Amy was just telling us about the storms in Texas, which I’m sure everybody knows about. But she lives in San Antonio and it’s just crazy what she was telling me. But anyway, if anybody else is in Texas right now, let us know in chat how you’re doing and just how it is down there right now. So okay, Kelsey, where are you?

Kelsey 1:00  

Hello. Hello. Hello. Happy Monday. How are you?

Norman  1:04  

Happy Monday to you, sir. Oh, before you ask people to smash things and ring things. We do have a Clubhouse thing going on at 1:30 today. So it’s The Rise of the Micro Brands and yeah, we’re gonna try to do it every Monday at 1:30. So I just wanted to squeeze that in plus Kelsey, I just wanted to give a shout out to Manny, Gievs, Marina, Simon, Faye, how are you today? Glad that you could join us Mark. Glad you could join us today and now over to you Squire.

Kelsey 1:40  

Oh, right. So as Norm said, we have a Clubhouse today. This happens every week. It’s Monday at 1:30pm. I’ll throw the link in. Welcome Radd and Miro. Welcome to the show. If you’re new to the show, you can join us on our Facebook group Lunch with Norm Amazon FBA & eCommerce Collective. That’s where all the good stuff is. That’s where you can connect with me and Norm. The guest on the show, you can join the community, ask questions, make some friends during these cold winter days. But yeah, and if you’re looking for highlights or the full episodes, you can go over to the YouTube channel. It’s Norman Farrar. That’s where everything is. You can go back and watch the first episode, which I recommend as always. But yeah, I think that’s it. We do have a price today. Which is pretty exciting. It’s a good one. So stick around to that.

Norman  2:38  

Yeah, and Steven is up at four in the morning in Australia. Thanks for joining. Hey welcome, Christina. 

Kelsey 2:48  

Okay, so let’s get this thing on the road.

Norman  2:50  

Perfect. So if you do have any questions, or if you have any, you just.

Kelsey 2:57  

I thought you’re gonna do your line, but.

Norman  3:01  

Go away. Go away. Alright, so if you have any questions, just throw them over into the comments section. I like doing that to Kelsey by the way. But anyway, sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show. Welcome, Amy.

Amy 3:17

Hi. How is everybody doing?

Norman  3:19  

Well, the question is how are you?

Amy 3:23  

Well, I’m good now that the sun is shining, the power is on, the water is working and the internet is here and alive.

Norman  3:38  

We’re used to this. I’m watching people walk a mile out on the lake. It’s frozen. Now it’s freezing outside, try smoking a cigar at minus 23 whether.

Amy 3:50  

You know I’m from Wisconsin originally. 

Norman  3:52  

Oh, that’s right. Yeah.

Amy 3:54  

I’m very, very familiar with freezing cold. I remember I missed the bus when I was in middle school. I missed the bus one morning and it was 30 below zero and I had to walk to school and I had dry hair and by the time I got to school, my eyelids were like frozen shut from all of like the the wind and the moisture in the air and my hair was like icicles and I was so bundled up but it didn’t, so I never missed the bus again. Not after that I could drive in high school. But yeah, I learned my lesson.

Norman  4:32  

I remember a kid in grade six way back and used to have the bicycle poles that everybody used to put their bikes on right and this is out of Dumb and Dumber.

Amy 4:42  

He put his tongue on that.

Norman  4:45  

He did, and it froze and oh my gosh. I won’t get into the gory details. But not all of his tongue came back.

Amy 4:54  

In elementary school, that was the dare. We had this chain fence and people would dare each other to put their tongue on that fence and we had so many kids stuck to that, it’s terrible. Luckily, I was never dumb enough to do that.

Norman  5:12  

So before we get into too many other gory things. For people who don’t know Amy Wees, can you give us a little bit of your background and what you do?

Amy 5:24  

Sure, well I’m an inventor. I’m an Amazon seller. I’ve been selling on Amazon since 2007. I started a private label brand in 2017 and I have a military background. So I spent 18 years in the Air Force and I just left that job in 2018 to be a full time entrepreneur and I also am the founder of Amazing at Home, and we help brands launch unique and differentiated products online. We help them expand into retail, all that kind of fun stuff and yeah, it’s so exciting to be a part of so many cool brands across Amazon and beyond and I see a lot of really great folks here in the comments that are in our amazing community, and awesome to see them here as well.

Norman  6:26  

Well, we know that you have a giveaway. So why don’t we talk about that right now so we can get the hashtag going and get people registered.

Amy 6:36  

Yes. So my giveaway is I have a listing optimization masterclass and it literally is it’s not just writing a listing, like it’s everything. It is how to do your photos, it is how to build A plus content. If you want to learn how to do that. It is literally you could start your own agency when you’re done with my class. So it’s very, very thorough. It’s the same process that I use. I’ve written hundreds of listings, page one listings across Amazon and that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. But this is my process. This is the process that I teach. So lots of people have taken this course and have gotten incredible results and I’m giving it away to one lucky person for free today. 

Norman  7:25  

All right. Well, that’s great and what is the hashtag gonna be Kelsey?

Kelsey 7:30  

I’m thinking #Amazing Amy. 

Norman  7:37 

Oh, okay. Very good. #Amazing Amy. All right. So if you want to join and try to get that hashtag, or get that prize, just wrote the podcast today. Just #Amazing Amy. All right and hello Yurman. Andrew, you’re back. Oh, you’re in Belgium today. Oh my God. He’s just all over the world. Ethiopia the last time I think. Okay, all right and I see people are registering. So let’s get down to it. We’ve talked a little bit about everything that’s kind of going on right now. But let’s talk about listings and what’s changing? What’s Amazon doing to change the listings?

Amy 8:16  

Is this so hard to keep up lately?  Like, first there was when did you guys see that when there was like 10 bullet points for a little while?

Norman  8:27  

Yes.

Amy 8:29  

Then there’s still 10 bullet points on some listings, but then it went away on most of them.

Norman  8:35  

So that was because of the search terms. Yeah, if you deleted your search terms, you got the extra bullet points on some listings.

Amy 8:44  

Yeah, it was so weird and then that was the other thing that happened is in the back end of the listing, we had an the more in the keywords tab, we had search terms, target audience, subject matter, platinum keywords, right, and a bunch of that stuff disappeared and all of a sudden, all we had was search terms and we were like, a lot of us were using those hacks. We found out that target audience and subject matter are both indexed. So we were using that, I was teaching for years and all of a sudden it was gone and now I’ve noticed on some of the listings, it’s come back, or it’s been moved to the more details tab. 

Norman  9:28  

I love Amazon. The consistency of it.

Amy 9:34  

Look at Marina’s hilarious. But so the bottom line is the most important thing and then the other thing that is changing is canonical URLs. So your canonical URL is the URL that’s created when you write your title on Amazon and so that is what is used by search engines to index you, right? So since Amazon is such a big domain, right? It needs a canonical URL, the search engines like Google use the canonical URL in your listing to see what you are, right? You’re a flower vase, whatever you are, right? Well, a lot of people didn’t know how to format their titles properly and so they would put too many dashes in their title and so if they were a flower vase, it would say something like, flower corn glass umbrella like just whatever it would be, like random words from their title and so this was affecting how much they were showing up in the search off of Amazon, which 60% of Amazon’s external traffic comes from search. So we needed to get our canonical URLs right. But now, this is I just updated, I just did my class on policy and all of that, and looked at the recent policies for Amazon and in the recent policy on canonical URLs and that has also changed. So even though the search engines still use your canonical URL to index you, there’s less ranking as far as where you’re showing up in search being put into your canonical URL. So that means that again, it comes down to the fundamentals of listing optimization, which is your title, and those five bullet points, they need to be optimized. If you focus your attention there, you’re going to do well, no matter what, right? Because I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me and go, Okay, well, what about my A plus content Amy? Like, how can I make sure that I’m indexing for keywords there and how can I make sure I’m doing all of that right and the bottom line is, if you just do your title, and your bullet points correctly from the beginning, and you optimize those well, you’re going to set yourself up for success and then as well as using your backend keywords, and filling in some of those back end fields, those additional back end fields. So those back end fields may change depending on the category that you’re in. But you’ll notice that there are a lot of fields that index and how you can find that out is just start looking through Amazon and you’ll notice that some listings, they’ll have like below the description, below their EBC, they’ll have like instructions for use, they’ll have all these different things and then you can go into the back end of your listing and look for those same fields and fill them out and see what shows up on the front end. But the bottom line is, you got to get your title and your bullet points right. If you do that you got 90% of listing optimization taken care of. Right?

Norman  12:47  

I want to go back to the canonical. So we used to get the first five keywords. I mean, it was a thing. So yep, before the dash and so excuse me, I usually mute myself. But, so you’re saying that’s not important anymore?

Amy 13:09  

Well, it’s not that it’s not important. It’s still used by this search engine for indexing you, right? For saying that you are the flower vase, right? But it is not as important for your ranking, because the search engine goes a step further beyond the canonical URL, and they look at your title and stuff like that. Now they don’t get all the way into your bullet points. But your title, if your title is has the right keywords in it intact, you want to keep those keywords intact, if you can with and what I mean by intact is, if you’re the flower vase, terrible example, like I don’t even think of like a better a better example like blue water bottle. If you are a blue water bottle with straw, you want to keep a blue water bottle with straw intact, you don’t want to put like blue tall hexagonal design water bottle with a cover and like the key word that people are looking for is blue water bottle with straw. So you want to keep that intact, and then your less rigged keywords, that’s where you’ll put it like with cover and you don’t have to necessarily keep those intact because they’ll still index together. But your most important keywords, you want to try to keep those together because the search engine looks for that keyword intact and that does affect your ranking in showing up for external search. But as far as I dug into this, like what Google is saying about canonical URLs and how they’re using them, and it’s really changed since about 2015. Every year there’s been updates and the most recent updates say like it when it’s a big domain like Amazon, Yes we’re using it for the index you basically to say, yes, you’re the water bottle. But we’re not using it for ranking in search, if that makes sense.

Norman  15:09  

Okay, and somebody, I think Muhammad just said, What is the canonical? So if you take a look at your typical Amazon listing, you’ll see amazon.com/dp/ your ASIN and slash a whole bunch of other stuff. It is just a, I guess, a user friendly way of presenting the URL. So it’d be amazon.com/dp/handmade natural soap. Yeah and people look at that, like if you want to send that over to people, it just looks nicer. But it was also ranking better on Google, because it had the main keyword in it. So that’s how we would use it and you could easily change it by just putting keywords at the very beginning, usually five key words, either with a semicolon or a hyphen, and it would work. It would just change the URL, you could see it and you could use it when you’re passing it along. Did I miss out on anything there Amy?

Amy 16:16  

No, that’s a perfect explanation and the thing is, you should still make sure that your canonical URL is good and you can open a case and change it. I think you can click like, f12, and view page source and you can Ctrl F and look for canonical and it’ll pull up your canonical and then you can open a case with Amazon and say, I would like to change it to this, but keep it short, and keep it intact for that main keyword that you’re looking for. Right? It’s good, you still want to use your canonical URL for that, because it’s used by the search engine for the purpose of indexing you on Amazon as part of that note, right? But in terms of worrying about whether or not your canonical is wrong, then you’re not going to rank for the keywords in your title, that’s just not true and I’ve been testing that as far as like looking and seeing what someone’s canonical is and searching it and their competitors that don’t have the exact same canonical are still showing up as high in search, as long as those keywords are intact in their title.

Norman  17:20  

Okay, before we get into the actual listing optimization, just a question. So going in and changing a listing manually, or changing a listing by flat file, what would you suggest?

Amy 17:38  

Well, I love a flat file, only because it bypasses having to deal with sellers. Often when you click the Edit button on your listing, and you’re trying to especially change your title, Oh my gosh, right. They will not change your title and not. But if you use a flat file, it’s much, much easier to change everything at once and the update is almost instant.

Norman  18:05  

Yeah and the other thing that I like about it is if you have variables, it’s very specific. So you can’t mess up your listing in the back end, or going over and editing it, putting something or some value. That doesn’t make sense and then saving it and you wondering why there’s a problem with your listing. Flat files, although it’s a little challenging if you’ve never done them before. But if you go through each field and you take a look at the definitions, and just follow it, then it’s probably the better way. I’ve always said if you’re doing any type of editing, always use a flat file. You got to know what you’re doing. Because you could wipe out most of your listing. If you don’t like partial updates, right? Or something like that. But just wanted to let everybody know that with your listing, we’re talking about it right now. That’s one way to do it. That’s much better, at least from my end to than doing it manually. Oh my gosh, you know what, this is only my seventh or a cup of coffee today. I have to get to about the 10th and then I’m good, Amy. All right. So let’s go through the title, then let’s talk. Or if you want to go to the images, we could do that.

Amy 19:24  

I was just laughing at what Gizmo put in there. The fight between human optimized versus keyword optimized titles is a thick reptile mammal battle. I love it. Yes. Well, I just have to say that I think there needs to be a good balance. There needs to be a good balance of human optimized and keyword optimized and the way that we do it in the master class, is we write as humans first. We define our differentiation. We write as humans, we go through, we actually have a 10th wait for each bullet point and are different, we call out our differentiation in the title. But then after we are human, and we make that human connection, then everywhere we mentioned something like, okay, blue water bottle, this blue water bottle is going to change your life. We write everything up and make it sound really good and we focus our bullet points on the sales cycle. So we take people through the sales cycle with our photos and our bullet points and so that is the way that we copyright that really, really converts in a great way. Because people in the sales cycle, the first thing that they’re asking is, okay, what is it? Is this thing for me? They want to know, is it for me? Is this and that’s whether they visit your website, or whatever they want to know, is this for me? So you need to answer that question in both your title and that’s essentially the answer that question is your unique sales proposition. Whatever it is that you’re selling, that meets their need, you need to be calling that out in your title in some way and in your first bullet point and so that’s why we always define that first and then we write the rest of our bullet points, and the rest of our bullet points take you through the sale cycle. So after they go, Oh, yeah, I do actually need a water bottle that’s like that, that doesn’t meet my need. Okay, great. What do I get? The next thing that they’re always asking is, well, what do I get in the sales cycle? What’s included? They want to know what’s in the box, right? What do I get with it? How big is it, how whatever. So we always do our second bullet point is always what’s included. So you get a cover, you get a straw, it’s double walled, so it keeps it cold all day. It’s 16 ounces of water, you always stay hydrated so you’re calling out the things that you get, right? Because that’s what’s in the customer’s mind and if you’re doing that also in your photos, so after your main photo, if your next photo after that is calling out your unique sales proposition, why should they buy your product and not your competitors. They’re like, Oh, I want to see more photos. The next photo, if your next photo is what’s included, you’re answering their questions as they’re thinking through and so we always write the listing first, and then we design the photos based on the bullet points, and the bullet points are based on the sales cycle that they go through. So after they find out what’s included, then they start to have doubts, because they go Okay, I get it and I like it, but will it break? Can I trust it? Is it for me? So then our next bullet point and a lot of people put this as bullet point number five, but I think that’s a mistake, nobody reads bullet point number five. Remove a risk now, tell them that it’s a high quality product, and that you stand behind that quality, and that you’re delivering that quality to them. If you have a lifetime warranty, you better include that and have a photo of it. Like I can’t tell you how many people are like 100% money back guaranteed and they have no photo, nothing that shows that, that shows that quality and that they stand behind the quality of their product, right and then our next bullet point is always multiple uses. Because okay, I like it, it’s quality, it’s for me, but maybe I don’t really need it right now. Well, you’re going to remind them all the different ways that they can use this product. So you’re gonna say, Oh well, this is really great for the gym and using it on your bike and it’s really not great for all those things. But you get it right, you’re telling them all the different ways that they can use it and they’re just like, Oh wow, yeah, maybe I should get two of them and then you have a photo showing all the different ways that it can be used, right and then our last bullet point is always, well, we change this around. This is our seasonal bullet point. So we either use it as a gift bullet point, and then we always have a photo that represents that gift and we’ll switch out that photo for different Christmas stuff like that, right? Like, I would love to have a picture of Norm wearing my product at Christmas so that I can, the bearded guy, very, very effective for sales.

Norman  24:11  

With a bow in my head.

Amy 24:15  

But yeah, so those are five bullet points. But as far as that goes you guys, write as a human first, use that template that I just gave you to write your five bullet points and then make sure you have a photo to represent each bullet point and it’s going to take the customer through their sales cycle and it converts like crazy, it just does really, really well. But right at first, then add in your keywords. Because everywhere that I mentioned this amazing water bottle, this water bottle, this water bottle, this water bottle while I’m writing, not worrying about keywords, where if you start with a list of keywords, and you’re like okay, how can I describe this product and you see it still has my five below sticker on it. But how can I describe this product, but using the word, the keyword water bottle with top and you’re trying to fit every single keyword in there and you’re not writing to the human. So if you write to the human first and then every time you mention a water bottle, you go back through and you add in your keywords, now you have an optimized listing that also reaches the human. It’s very effective.

Norman  25:25  

Very good. So I am going to just stop for a second and as I say in Clubhouse, reset the room. Anyway, I just wanted to let everybody know, anybody that’s new, anybody who tuned in halfway, that Amy is giving away a really great giveaway today and that’s on the full listing optimize course that she has, and everything. If you think that this is great stuff that you’re hearing right now, just make sure that you type in in the #Amazing Amy, you’ll be entered right away. We’ll be doing that at the end of the podcast and I see a ton of new people here that are joining. So welcome to the community. If you have any questions, throw them in there. I’m doing all Kelsey’s job for him right now. But Kelsey, anything else?

Kelsey 26:17  

I was going to add if you want an extra entry, you can tag two people in the comment section and I will throw in your name twice. Oh, you’ll get a bonus entry too if you share with someone. If you post #Amazing Amy, and then you comment on two people’s names. So you just press the at button and then take two people, you’ll get an extra entry.

Norman  26:47  

Okay, perfect. All right. There you go. So Amy, I got more of a comment than anything you were just talking about on the titles. One of the things that Shane Oglow came up with over at prREACH, when he was doing keyword research, there was a lot of people that were coming in saying, Oh, you gotta we were optimizing for this, we’re optimizing for this keyword and he came back to them, and he would say, wrong keyword, but it’s got the best search volume, wrong keyword and so at the end of the day, it’s not how much search volume you have, it’s how many sales. So we were using, and we’ve gone over to seller.tools, where they have and I don’t have an affiliation or anything with seller.tools. But what we’ve done is we’ve worked with their keyword tool, and it tells you right beside it, Oh, you have 20,000 search volume for this keyword, you might only get 15 sales. You got another one that’s 1000 that might end up getting 200 sales. So even though your competition is targeting those high volume keywords, let them. For us, we’re telling people to target the keywords that are going to convert and get your orders. What are your thoughts on that? 

Amy 28:13  

I love that question so much. One of our first classes after your unique selling point is your main keyword and this is basically the keyword that you’re trying to optimize for and that’s exactly what we teach too like, just because water bottle has probably 5 million searches, doesn’t mean that that’s your main keyword and so the way that I always try to put this out there for people is like, what keyword do you want to be page one four, and this should be a medium to long tail keyword. Like it shouldn’t be like, it might have the seed I call it a seed keyword right of the water bottle inside of it. But what is that medium to long tail keyword that you want to be on page one, four, and you should actually go to page one for that keyword and see what is the competition? What’s the buyer intent behind that keyword? Right? If a customer is searching for a blue water bottle, what are they looking for? This isn’t actually a bottle, it’s a cup. It’s a cup with a straw so a water bottle wouldn’t be my main keyword, I need to look where I’m going to be able to and I always say this, like if we had to pay for PPC to get to the top of page one. I organically like to be on page one if I can be from the very start. If I can optimize for page one and there’s an opportunity and it’s a highly relevant medium to long tail keyword, I will use that all day long. But if I can’t, let’s say I’m in a more competitive niche, right? If I can’t, and I had to run PPC for that. But if I ran that PPC and I would convert all day long, then that would be okay with me. Right? So I completely agree with you Norm that you have to know what your keyword is and it’s not always the highest search volume. Sometimes it’s the best opportunity and the highest relevance for the customer that’s looking for your product.

Norman  30:33  

Very good. I just saw something come up. I got a horrible eyesight, something about 100% I’m confused. Do you want to bring up that question or ask?

Kelsey 30:47  

I’m not sure.

Amy 30:50  

There’s a fight between this master class and that master class.

Norman  30:59  

I am so confused. But you know what, I want to really make sure that everybody’s aware of this. Everybody has different ways of doing things. 100%. Amy’s got a way of doing it. I might have a way of doing it. It might be 10 other people. But at the end of the day, I know Amy gets results. Oh, Hi Connie. Connie is getting me some more coffee.

Amy 31:26  

I need a Connie. Connie, I need coffee too.

Norman  31:31  

Hey, come here. Amy wants to say hi to you. 

Amy 31:37

Hi Connie. 

Connie 31:38

Hello. 

Norman 31:40

With my coffee. There we go. So anyway, there’s many different ways that we can present writing your titles. What’s the best way? You’re going to hear different guests that come on here. Amy’s done this with hundreds if not 1000s of products. So take it, run with it and guess what? If you find at the end of the day, when you’re monitoring it, for some reason it’s not working, it might not be because of what Amy’s saying Amazon might have tweaked something. So this is where you get those updates and like the canonical today. Now that’s something that’s a little bit different. Like the search terms in those 10 bullets, what’s the reason for that? But don’t freak out, like Oh, I’ve got 10 different people pick one, that sounds really good for you and just try it out and then like, you’ll go over to Helium 10, they’ll be telling you something, and then you’ll be listening to a course and they’ll tell you something. But at the end of the day, if you’re listening to the podcast, Hey, Amy’s talking about this. We had Diane the other day, last month, and she was talking about a different way. All incredible ways of ranking, just different styles. So that’s just my rant on confusion. So hopefully you don’t get too confused about this. But everything that you’re seeing right now 100% agree with and I do have a question. Let’s go back to the flat file. With the algorithm, what are the fields that you see ranking right now by the algorithm? What should we keep our attention to?

Amy 33:28  

The fields that are ranking? Okay, so it depends on the category, because everybody has different fields. So that’s the problem I noticed is that some categories have them. So even in my private label brands, some of my like, I noticed I have a cat toy that I just launched and in that category, all of them were back. So like everything was back in there. But then I have some other stuff in the home goods category and it’s not there. But the bullets were there and I was like what is the deal with this? It’s all over the place. So anyway, I just stick with what I know and so the thing that I have noticed though, is that whether or not, if those subject matter, target audience, if those fields have been moved to your More Details tab, or even like instructions for use, I think is one of them. If those fields have been moved to another tab, or they’re there at all, they do index, but their ranking is not as high as like your bullet points in your title. Now search terms do rank just as high as your bullet points in your title. We know that but the rest of them are like it’s kind of like your description. It’s kind of like the other keywords that you could use. It’s kind of like the words that are in your reviews and your Q and A’s. Like those all rank, they don’t rank as high as something that’s in your title unless suddenly people are searching for I’ve seen this happen before, like, where somebody will leave a review for you and it mentions like, I use this product as a soap dish and it’s not a soap dish or whatever, and a bunch of other people are like, I love it, it’s a soap dish for me too and then suddenly, your listing starts showing up as that product in a soap dish and people start buying it for that, and then you’re ranking a lot for that. So you still have those external ranking factors like search, find, buy that are really going to rank that keyword, whether or not it’s in your description, or your backend search terms, or wherever it is based on people actually finding your listing and buying for that, right? But in general, it’s better to use those fields as a kind of supplementary. So I’ve used and I think Manny mentioned, like, if you only target one keyword then you’re going to miss out on all these opportunities. That’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying, make sure that you’re optimizing. You don’t want to try and sell, if I’m selling this water bottle, right? Of course, I don’t only want to sell it as a water bottle. But I also want to try and sell it as a cup, a water bottle, and a tea cup, and a coffee cup and a mug. I don’t want to try and get all those words in there. Because ultimately, a search engine, the way any search engine works for optimization, is it sees what listing is the most relevant for a search term. This is how I get so many Amazon’s choice badges right after I write a listing, it’s because I’m the most relevant for that keyword and I use a tool that was written by my podcast partner and Andy, he’s an SEO genius. He’s taught me so much about SEO. But he has this tool where you put in your main keyword, and it crawls all of the pages on Amazon, but not just on Amazon, outside of Amazon and it tells you what keyword phrases to use in what order of importance in order to be the most relevant for that keyword and so that’s like my trick, that’s like my little cheater tool, because the rest of the tools that I’ve used, and I’ve used a lot of them, I have Helium 10, I’ve got Zombiu, I’ve got all these other tools. The rest of the listing optimization tools that I’ve used, you put in your keywords, and it spits out what it thinks you should use. The difference in Andy’s tool is you put in one main keyword, and it tells you how to become the most relevant for that keyword in the exact order I need to put them in.

Norman  37:50  

So I am going to talk to you and Andy about this app. Now, I’m curious, is the app available for everybody or is it just a proprietary app that you guys are using?

Amy 38:01  

No, it’s one of the tools in the Seller SEOs suite of tools. 

Norman  38:07  

Andy’s an amazing guy too, by the way, and what you said about SEO? Absolutely brilliant, brilliant guy. All right. So now let’s move over to well, I have a question about something that’s very minor. Well, I guess I just answered my own question, because you can’t do it anymore.  

Amy 38:38  

So you’re breaking up Norm, can you ask the question again?

Norman  38:42  

Sure. So if you answer, when you have your listing, and somebody asks you a question, should you answer with some form of keyword phrase? I know it’s not going to give you a lot of relevancy, but or a lot of weight, but from what I understand the algorithm still picks up that keyword in the question or the answer.

Amy 39:07  

Yes, I would. I always try to think in terms of keywords whether I’m writing an answer, when I’m writing a description, when I’m doing anything like that, like across the internet, I always try it and think in terms of keywords. So I think it definitely helps and it also boosts your relevancy there as well, like, however many times you’re using that keyword phrase or related keyword phrases.

Norman  39:34  

One thing that you were mentioning, I was talking to Steven Pope about this a little while ago. So you launch and maybe you’re talking about your purple water bottle or water cup or whatever you’re going to be using. What he said and I like how he did it. He said, Let’s get ranked for this product first. Let’s wait until we’re relevant, and we’re zoned in and then we could go broader and that’s when you start to bring in some other keywords, but you’re already ranking solid for this and then he starts to add in and he says to mix in some other just other keywords or he does a bundle of some sort, but the focus is purple water bottle on the listing or something with with straw. So I like that where now you could bring in a cup or whatever and you could put it in possibly into the back end, but he has to establish first and let’s go over now to the A plus, what are your thoughts on a plus and product description?

Amy 40:49  

Well, I think if you don’t have A plus content yet, you need to have an HTML formatted product description. That product description comes up first on mobile and so we want to make sure that the listing looks nice, like you don’t want it to just be this big blob of text because customers are like, what? I can’t even read that especially on your mobile phone. So tip number one, make sure that you’re using an HTML formatting tool, right? So there’s a lot of free tools, Seller App has one, there’s one amazondescriptioneditor.com is another one. But use that and in Amazon’s policy, it says that HTML is not allowed and then it says something like, except for paragraph breaks and stuff like that. So that’s why you want to use an Amazon product description editor tool, because it uses very basic HTML and it’s not like, Oh, we want blue words with bold, and that is not gonna work. So the bottom line is, at least make sure it’s HTML formatted and then any text inside of whether you’re using EDC, or you’re using a product description, it does index, it can index, it takes longer to index. I’ve heard so many times and I really want to put this to rest. The first I’ve heard so many times, that’s only the first 1000 characters in your listing index. That is not true. I have tested this extensively across hundreds of listings. But what is true is when you first launch, the way that you’re listing indexes is through page visits. Because the search engine visits your listing and at first it goes, Okay, it reads the title and it’s like, okay, it’s a water bottle, got it. Good. But then after it starts getting more visits, then you’ll notice that you start to index for more and more and more keywords that are further down in your listing. So when you first launch, and you try and reverse search your listing for a certain keyword, that’s like in bullet point number five, you’re not going to get it there, right? You’re not going to index for that yet. So there’s this thing that went out for a long time and I don’t remember who was all behind it. But there was this thing where people were saying, don’t do anything past 1000 characters, it won’t index. That’s not true at all, you have 2000 characters in your description, you have 500 characters, and each bullet point on your category. Some categories only allow I think, like 80 characters like jewelry or something like that, and then you have 200 characters in your title that you can use. They will all index, what I like to do is keep my bullet points around 300 characters for that purpose, Norm, like you were saying, if I want to add in more keywords later, because if you rewrite your title and everything, you will force a full re indexed by the search engine and then you’re going to lose all your ranking for blue water bottle that you got when you try to add in cup. But if you leave some space to kind of play around and you know where your keywords are, you can go into your bullet points or into your description and add in some of those additional keywords without forcing a full reindex of your listing and then you can start working on that because remember you guys, when you’re running PPC, your PPC goes off of the relevancy of that keyword that you’re bidding on to your listing, that’s number one factor in your placement for your PPC and then it looks at relevancy. It looks at your match type, broad, phrase, exact, and then it looks at your bid against all the other people who are bidding. So that’s why listing optimization is the foundation of everything else that you do. So as far as EBC goes, as far as A plus content, etc. Whatever we’re calling it nowadays. That’s another thing that’s changed recently, right? As far as that goes, I love EBC. I think that it looks really great. It makes your listing look more professional and love it. You can recommend other products in your line. I mean, who wouldn’t use it for that. You can lead more people to your storefront. It’s really, really awesome. So I would definitely highly recommend using A plus content slash EBC, whatever we’re calling it now. But the text is that if you use the text blocks, we use a text on the photo that’s not going to index, right? But the text inside of the text blocks does, because it’s just like a web page, right? It’s just like you filling out a field in Seller Central, and it going on the front end of your listing. So those kinds of things do index and although my focus is always I try to fit as much as I can, I don’t stuff, I don’t keyword stuff. But my goal is two to three keyword phrases in each bullet point and the title and that formula has worked very, very well and then in the whole description, I try to fit two to three and then in EBC, if I’m doing EBC, I try to fit two to three, just phrases period and then search terms, I don’t repeat keywords in my search terms. I use misspellings, Spanish words, that’s really great and also just other words that are leftover from my list. I love reverse searching my competitors, and then doing a duplicate word removal and pulling those words that I haven’t used in my listing yet and using those in the search terms as well. 

Norman  46:27  

One of the things that we’ll do with some of our products. The last bullet is in Spanish.

Amy 46:34  

Ooh, I like that. Or you could use the instructions for use filed. Yeah, you could use the instructions for the use field as well, or like some of the features. Some of the other bullets, like the materials and stuff like that, you could use that as your Spanish bullets. Because those show up above your bullets in your listing?

Norman  46:58  

Yeah, no, that’s definitely one. I’ve never done that. But yeah, that’s definitely something you could do. Okay, so we have a couple of questions, Kels?

Kelsey 47:10  

Yeah and I think you’re breaking up a little bit.

Norman  47:13  

I don’t know what it is. I might. Yeah, my side, the Internet looks good. It’s five bars.

Kelsey 47:21  

It’s a little funny. I’m enjoying it. Okay, so let’s see, we had a couple questions here. Just give me a second. We had a bunch that came in. Okay. Does writing search terms HTML useful in optimization? If yes, how much?

Amy 47:48  

Does writing search terms HTML useful? 

Norman  47:54  

I think it’s about the product description html, you just went over that.

Kelsey 48:00  

Okay. Let me see, oh, people are wondering what the name of the tool was.

Amy 48:07  

It’s called Seller SEO. So Seller SEO is the name of the tool and then inside is the name of the big tool, like the website, so you can go to sellerseo.com and then the tool inside of it is called Listing Lightning.

Kelsey 48:24  

Okay, and let me see. Potential buyers type different relevant ways to target the same product. How would your approach be in that case? Which keyword would you pick search volume?

Amy 48:38  

What I do is I look for where I want to be and that’s what I always tell folks like, Where do I want to be? Yes, they do use different relevant ways to pick to target the same product and you can optimize your listing for both of those. So if I want to optimize this for a water bottle and cup with straw, I can do that. But just be wary that I see a lot of sellers that don’t focus on relevancy and they’re like, Okay, but Amy, what about the people that are looking for a water bottle like Won’t I miss out on them if I don’t optimize for water bottle and I optimize for cup with straw? You’re most relevant for a cup of straw and you’re not going to be as relevant as you could be if you start putting your focus on other keywords that are not as relevant. So that’s the thing is search engine optimization is more about your poll of all of your keywords like if you ever write a blog post or anything like that that’s ever ranked on Google. It looks for relevant keywords that it stacks up next to other content, right and goes okay, well this other piece of content here is super relevant for it right and it has these many phrases in it and everything like that. It’s just the same thing with your listing. So if you really want to be relevant, you have to focus on the customer that’s buying that. So there’s nothing wrong with like, for me calling this a cup or a glass with a straw and a cover, right, but calling it a water bottle and probably, I might put it in there one time, but it’s not my most relevant keyword. So I’m not going to be worried about that. But I’ve seen too many sellers that tried to sell everything to everyone and that’s just not how buying works. I want a cup with a straw and a cover. That’s what I’m looking for and so if I spend, I’m looking for this, and I see a water bottle, I might click on it, I call those curious clicks, and you’re gonna pay for those curious clicks, right? I might click on it, but I’m gonna go right back and go, Oh, that’s cool. That’s a cool water bottle, and then go, Oh, but I’m here. Yeah, it was a fun little shopping experience. But I’m here for my cup with a straw, sort of go back, and you just pay for that click, that curious click and it’s not going to lead to a sale, because in most time, most cases, people are looking for something specific.

Kelsey 51:08  

Okay, great. This is from Victor. If you get indexed for a keyword that’s only in one of the extra fields, subject matter, examples of subject matter, and then that field goes away. What happens to your indexing for that keyword? I assume you lose it too?

Amy 51:26  

I think that you keep it. That’s a really good question and I think that you still keep it because as far as I know, the search engine has a memory. But it does crawl listings occasionally, right? It crawls your pages occasionally and updates. So over time, you might lose it. So if it wasn’t an important keyword in your search terms, right, and you lost that field, I would work it in my listing somewhere, right? But if it was just like an extra keyword that you never really indexed for anyway, I wouldn’t put too much effort behind it when that happened and a bunch of people lost all those fields. That’s exactly what I told him, I was like, Okay, well try to look for other fields that are in your More Details tab and try to fit in those keywords there. But other than that and then you can try to fit them in throughout your listing. But if they’re less relevant I do think that over time, you would lose them as the search engine crawls the listing again, but yeah, you can rank for keywords from PPC that aren’t even in your listing. 

Norman  52:41  

One of the things you can do too Victor is just go to, like Helium 10 and check the indexing and once it drops, you’ll know or when you’re doing your keyword monitoring, you’ll just see it just drop right off. But yeah, Amy, if it’s an important keyword either search terms, title, bullets, something like that.

Kelsey 53:07  

Okay, let me see, we had one from Jeffrey. Has Amazon’s policy changed about putting made in the USA in the title? I’m seeing more listings with that in the title now.

Amy 53:21  

Not as far as I know, their title policy doesn’t say anything about not using that. The thing that you have to avoid in the title is using free, best, bonus, those kinds of words.

Norman  53:37  

100%.

Kelsey 53:40  

Okay, let me see Marina, can I use competitors’ brand names and my back end search keywords?

Amy 53:47  

Well, you shouldn’t. There are a few words that you can get away with, for example, if it’s a plain word, so Trader Joe’s. Trader is a plain word from the English dictionary. So you can get away with that, right? So there are sometimes words that you can use, just remember that you can always advertise against your competitors. For a while, there was like a little hack that people were using in like the subject matter and target audience fields where they were putting competitor brand names in those because of that, or even in some of the other fields in more details, but I have no idea about that. So I don’t usually use competitor brand names unless it’s like, like I said, if it’s a plain word that anybody would use, you shouldn’t trademark those anyway, and you learn your lesson.

Norman  54:47  

Yeah, and for me, I don’t do that. Like it’s a really great debate that goes on, but I’ll just use it in my ad campaigns and kind of stick away from that. I used to but I just say, Hey look, if that’s gonna get my wrist slapped, I’m not gonna do it and by the way, everything that we’re talking about what words can be used, what can’t be used? What should be used, what Amazon’s looking for? Download the style guide and that should help you out a lot with some of the answers and it tells you right there what they’re looking for.

Kelsey 55:25  

Okay, we just have a couple more this is from Brett. What’s your take on compatible with and putting brand names and bullets?

Amy 55:34  

So compatible with, Amazon actually has policies about that. So you can use brand names as long as it is part of their policy on your press. So if you’re selling a phone case, like obviously, you need to be able to say compatible with iPhone five, iPhone six, whatever iPhone five, where did that come from? Oh my gosh. Oh, I hope you’re not selling phone cases for iPhone fives. But yeah and when it comes to being I just wrote a listing for a really cool piece of technology. That’s like a unique product and that is like a retro game console accessory and we had to kind of rewrite the listing because they weren’t using a main keyword that was going to target most of their audience and because it was such a unique product, they were describing it in a way that nobody’s searching for it. So we rewrote the listing. But yeah, that is compatible with in that case, we needed to use words like Nintendo. So as long as you look up their policy, and you are indeed selling something that’s compatible with something, it’s allowed as long as it is preceded by those words like compatible with. You can’t just use Apple in the listing on its owner or the bots will flag you.

Kelsey 56:57  

Okay, great. So Marina, I don’t think this is a question. But that is what I thought about using brand names. When I search my brand name, all competitors organically pop up. So I was wondering if it changed. 

Amy 57:08  

So what they’re doing Marina is they’re advertising against your brand name, and then they index for your brand name. Yeah, so that’s how they’re organically popping up when someone is searching your brand name and that’s something that you can do right back to them.

Kelsey 57:24  

Okay, and last one, this might be a bit too big of a question to kind of dive into. But how do you do your keyword research using which tools and what’s the process?

Amy 57:34  

Well, I would love to dig into that. But it is like quite a long process. But the thing that I would like to tell you Usman is that you should not only use Amazon keyword tools. Like I said earlier, 60% of Amazon’s external search, 51% of Amazon’s traffic is direct meaning people are going directly to Amazon searching for something and of the external traffic, a lot of it’s like something like 20% referral traffic. So that’s like a referral link coming from another website like social media, that kind of thing. But 60% comes from search. So why would you optimize your listing only for Amazon related keywords. So that’s why I always do my keyword research not only on Amazon tools, which I love, I love using Amazon tools. But the way that I start my keyword research, the way that I start, and this is all covered in our class as far as the main finding your main keyword and then becoming most relevant for that keyword. But the way that I do it is I search like the customer. So anytime I’m writing a listing for someone, I look at the product. I’m like, Okay, if I knew nothing more about the product, but that I wanted it, how would I search for it, and I use Amazon search bar, because so many people do not write their listings to Amazon suggested searches and that’s how the customer searches. So I look for the product myself and see what Amazon is suggesting, what’s in those top 10 drop downs and then I’ll search different ways, right? So bottle for water, water bottle, those kind of things and see what the suggested searches are, what the medium to long tail keywords are, with keywords are with the four key words are I look at all of those and then I put them in a document. We always use Greenshot as like a screenshotting tool and so I’ll put that in Greenshot, I’ll take a screenshot of it, put it in a doc and then I throw all those keywords into my keyword tools and I not only do that with Amazon’s suggested search, but I also do it on Pinterest. I do it on Google and I’m looking for how people search for this not only on Amazon but off of Amazon. Then I throw those keywords into a tool and I rank them based on how relevant they are to my product and this is how I can write an organic page one listing from the start without having to use any additional ranking strategies. Because if you’re writing the two Amazon suggested search keywords, you’re going to be the most relevant for that keyword and so a lot of people, they will just and I do this too, I reverse search competitors. I’ll reverse search competitors and see what they’re doing, what they’re ranking for both organically and paid, right and I’ll get ideas from that. But at the end of the day, I want to be most relevant for that suggested search term. Because that is where the money is. Man, if I can get on page one for that suggested medium to long tail keyword, it’s awesome, right? So I put those keywords into my tools and then I use those, look what the search volume is not only on Amazon, but off of Amazon, I use tools, like Uber Suggests, Answer the Public and then I also read blogs that are related to similar products and I look at what language is used and how those products are referred to and that way, even if I’m Amazon the suggested searches or on Amazon keyword tools, everyone’s doing that one keyword, I can capture all the traffic that searching based on these blogs that they’re reading, these popular blogs that they’re reading, they’re searching for certain terms that a lot of people who only write their listings to Amazon are not even using and so I’m getting all this traffic, I’m showing up in all these searches that my competitors are not. So that’s kind of how I look at keyword searching and keyword tools, my biggest tip for you is don’t just use Amazon and use suggested searches because put those in your keyword tools because that is really going to help you understand what you should be writing your listing towards.

Norman  1:02:05  

Now, one of the little things you can do too when you’re looking at what Amy was talking about with the suggested searches. Let’s say you’re looking for odorless bully sticks. Just put your cursor at the beginning and hit the spacebar and you’ll see a bunch of long tails that’ll fill up. It’ll give you some other suggestions outside of what the top suggestions are. Also, we use what is it? keywordtool.io. That’s a pretty good tool and it’s a little bit tougher to find right now. It used to be so easy, but Keyword Planner just ran out of Google. So those are more that’s a freebie that you can use. But okay, so let’s see, see I’m telling you I got really terrible eyesight. I gotta go like this to see the time. Alright, so it looks like we’re about at the end of the podcast. It’s time for Wheel of Kelsey.

Kelsey 1:03:05  

It’s my favorite time. Okay, so just give me a second to pull it up..

Norman  1:03:19  

Okay.

Kelsey 1:03:22  

A lot of names today. You’re very popular Amy. Okay. So, here we go. 321.

Norman  1:03:32  

Wheel of Kelsey. Who gets it? Faye. All right Faye.

Amy 1:03:44  

She really did. I mean, she tagged a lot of people in there and like she was keeping it up the whole time. Good job Faye.

Norman  1:03:53  

Alright, so all we need to do is get that information. So send your information over to Kelsey and then we’ll get it over to Amy.

Amy 1:04:03  

Sounds great. Thanks everybody for listening and for entering today. That was so much fun.

Norman  1:04:10  

Yeah, that was a blast and it’s always a blast having you on. Unfortunately, you can’t make it on to the Clubhouse call at 1:30. But we’ll have you in the Clubhouse next Monday, maybe.

Norman  1:04:23  

Is there anything else? How do people get a hold of you Amy?

Amy 1:04:28  

Well you guys can check out we have a Facebook group Amazing at Home and so we always give lots of tips there. But you guys can always go to amazingathome.com as well and you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, around the place and I hang out with Norm a lot.

Norman  1:04:47  

I wish events were back. Right back at you.

Amy 1:04:53  

It’s mutual.

Norman  1:04:55  

Mutual stalking.

Amy 1:04:59  

Yes.

Norman  1:05:00  

Okay. All right. So I think that’s the end of the podcast. Amy, Thank you. We’ll see you again soon and that’s it. Kelsey, join me.

Kelsey 1:05:12  

Okay, great episode.

Norman  1:05:14  

That was a lot of interaction there, and by the way, Usman, we’re gonna do something that will be specific to different types of keyword research on and off Amazon. So that is a full subject by itself. So we’ll get back to that. Other than that, what’s new Kels?

Kelsey 1:05:33  

Okay, so obviously, we have our Clubhouse today. So if you’re new, you can go over to our Facebook group. We have an event tab and there you can find the link. But I also placed the link in all of the different platforms. I think I hit Facebook, YouTube, the link for the Clubhouse is there. If you just want to click on that at 1:30 and yeah, let me see. Do you want to go over next week or tomorrow?

Norman  1:06:01  

Well, I want to go on Wednesdays. Yeah. We have an incredible guest coming on and he’s going to be talking not only about his exit, but he’s got a unique vision of entrepreneurship and anyways, if you’ve heard of Boxy Charm, Joe Martin, CEO of Box Charm is going to be on. He just sold this company for $500 million. So he’s going to be talking about how he built the brand, about the reason why he went to a subscription based model and his exit. So join us on Wednesday for that. It’s gonna be really great. Thursday, we got a special episode. What’s that? With Tim? Oh, you were just agreeing. Okay. So we got Tim Jordan coming on and we’re gonna be talking about mentorship and then on Friday, it’s Kevin King that’s coming on, right? 

Kelsey 1:06:56

That’s right. 

Norman 1:06:57

Buddy Kevin King. Maybe we’ll have a virtual cigar together. Alright, so we got a really great week and again, join us Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Eastern or Eastern. I was gonna say Central Time, Eastern Standard Time and what did I say? Kelsey? Go on. I gotta close the podcast. There we go. All right. Now I can try to do this again. So join us Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, Eastern Standard Time. Thank you everybody for joining us today. It was a pleasure. I love seeing all this engagement and the community growing. So join us next episode on Wednesday. Thanks, guys.