Amazon Keyword Research: Complete Guide for Seller

Every seller who wants to make money on Amazon needs to ensure that their product reaches the right customer. Needless to say, if your item is an exact match to what a shopper looks for, that’s bingo.

Whenever a buyer wants to find a product, they make a search. In fact, more than 6 in 10 e-commerce shoppers start their product searches on Amazon.

Most often, they search for the product by entering search terms in the search bar. In order to match your product with the customer’s query, you’ll need to include keywords on your product listing. The higher the relevancy, the better your product will rank in the search results. This, in turn, increases sales and conversions.

To find out which keywords work best for your product, you need to perform Amazon keyword research.

Read further to discover what are the different types of Amazon keywords, how to choose keywords for Amazon and the methods to conduct keyword research with and without using the Amazon keyword tool.

What are the Keywords on Amazon Listing?

Amazon keywords are words and word sequences that appear on the product listing to match potential buyers’ search terms.

How do Keywords Work with Amazon Customer Search?

As soon as a shopper wants to find a product, they type the search query into the Amazon search bar. After that, they can see search results that Amazon ranks in a certain order.

To rank the search results, Amazon applies its proprietary A10 search algorithm. It escalates the best-performing inventory optimized by the most relevant keywords to the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

The relevant keywords help make your ASINs visible to the shoppers. They guide Amazon’s A10 algorithm right to your listing. A10 algorithm ranks the product listings in the order of relevance to the shopper’s search query. It processes listings according to Amazon’s own ranking criteria.

Importantly, the higher the product ranking, the better are sales volumes and conversion rates. As a matter of fact, 80% of sales happen on the first page. Moreover, the chance that you’ll sell something from page 4 is close to zero.

Amazon customer search bar

Why is Amazon Keyword Research Important?

When choosing the set of Amazon keywords, you only need to select the ones that are most relevant to your product. These search terms should appear on your product title, frontend description, and listing backend.

Since the keywords are directing shoppers to your listing, you cannot add just anything as a keyword. Your keyword selection should be optimized for a number of reasons.

Firstly, irrelevant keywords create a terrible user experience. You should select your keywords having real buyer personas in mind. Imagine that a shopper looking for sunglasses finds wine glasses you sell. Definitely, they’ll not buy your product.

Secondly, you shouldn’t use too many keywords on your listing. If you do so, it will not be readable. In addition, you won’t be able to present the right information about the product to your potential customers. Doing so is important to avoid returns and negative reviews. These unwanted effects may arise due to unclear item descriptions.

Thirdly, the quantity of characters you can use on the listing frontend and backend is limited. You should, therefore, be selective and use highly-performing search terms.

What does Keyword Research do?

Keyword research is the process when a seller finds and analyzes the search terms that their customers use. It helps chose the most efficient terms.
These search terms that shoppers enter into search engines, sellers oftentimes use for search engine optimization (SEO).

What are the Keyword Types You Should Research?

Depending on the strategy, your keywords may appear in different roles. If you chose to boost organic search, you may concentrate on frontend and backend keywords. You can also focus on growing ad sales. For that purpose, you may look into researching different match types of Amazon keyword examples.

Frontend and Backend Keywords to Grow Organic Search

Keywords matching customer search terms on Amazon help buyers find a product as closely relevant to their search query as possible. For that purpose, Amazon SEO includes two types of search terms – frontend and backend keywords.

To clarify, this is similar to any customer service or website. There you have a frontend, that is a customer interface. In addition, there is a backend – software and hardware responsible for the ‘inner’ part of service operation. It is invisible to the service user.

Frontend keywords

Frontend keywords are primary search terms visible to the buyers. They appear on product listings within product titles, bullet points, product descriptions, and other product details.

Backend keywords

Backend keywords are search terms that shoppers can’t see. However, they help increase product visibility. Adding backend keywords to your listing gives the possibility to include the search terms you were not able to squeeze into the visible page of your listing.

Backend keywords example.

Keyword Match Types to Increase Ad Sales

In the PPC campaigns, you configure in your Seller Central account, there are three keyword match types. They are exact, phrase, broad, and broad modified match.

Exact match

An exact match, as the name says, should exactly (or very closely) correspond to the shopper’s search query. Your ad will appear if the shopper enters the exact phrase.

Exact match keywords example.

Phrase match

You should include phrase match as a sequence of keyword terms. Your ad appears when a shopper enters the search query containing words before or after the keyword term.

Phrase match keywords example.

Broad match

A broad match contains all the keyword terms or close variations. An ad appears whenever a buyer searches for that phrase, similar phrases, singular forms, plural forms, synonyms, misspellings, etc.

Broad match keywords example.

Broad match modified

Broad match modified should contain words that must be present in the search term. It’s not necessary that they show up in the order of the shopper’s query. This type goes with Sponsored Brands ads.

Broad match modified keywords example.

Negative keywords

Negative keywords are terms that prevent your ad from appearing in search results. This means that if you don’t want your ads to show up to an irrelevant audience or in an unwanted query, you should use negative keywords. Negative keyword matches are negative exact and negative phrase types.

Long-tail and short-tail keywords

Short-tail keywords include one-, two-, or three-word terms. Meanwhile, long-tail keywords include more than four words. Long-tail phrases are more likely to convert at a low cost.

How to Conduct Amazon Keyword Research?

There are two types of approaches to keyword research. You can do it manually or automatically. For the purposes of performing an automatic search, you can use an Amazon keyword tool.

Actually, an automatic keyword research tool has a number of advantages. First of all, you can easily determine the correct Amazon keywords tips for your products. Secondly, it helps you ongoingly analyze your items’ listings and track keyword rankings. Thirdly, you can get keyword performance insights. On basis of this information, you can optimize your SEO and marketing strategies.

Meanwhile, you can use manual keyword research methods as an additional keyword source.

Automatic Keyword Research

When performing automatic keyword research, your target is to detect all highly ranked keywords relevant to your product. With that in mind, you can either build or improve your SEO strategy.

With an automatic keyword research tool you can:

#1. Determine the relevant keyword set

SellerSonar’s keywords tracker will help you discover your keyword landscape. You can try to guess the search terms customers use. However, it’s better to know for sure. Our Amazon keyword rank checker will provide you with the data-driven results.

SellerSonar’s keywords tracker

#2. Reveal competitors’ search terms

SellerSonar’s keyword rank checker will help you uncover the best-performing competitors’ keywords for Amazon listings. It will also make you aware of their marketing practices.

#3. Track search volume trends

Buyers’ behavior patterns tend to change. Our tool tracks historical keyword performance. On top of that, it helps you stay updated on your shoppers’ latest trends.

#4. Monitor your metrics history

With our tool, you’re able to monitor your product’s historical data. You can compare them with your competitors’ changes in price, BSR, product review numbers, keywords rankings, etc.

#5. Tailor your ad keywords

SellerSonar’s keyword tool helps you select the right set of keywords for your marketing campaigns. It’ll assist you squeeze out more traffic from Amazon’s search engine.

Manual Keyword Research

The most effective manual keyword research methods are as follows.

#1. Automatic Amazon PPC Campaigns

When you run Amazon PPC campaigns in your Seller Central, you can choose between Manual Campaigns (you select the keywords yourself) and Automatic Campaigns (Amazon handles them automatically). In an automatic mode, you can extract a keyword report under Reports > Advertising. This way, you’ll get your top-converting keywords.

#2. Reverse ASIN Lookup

Reverse ASIN Search is the method allowing you to discover the most efficient competitors’ keywords. If you are enrolled in a Brand Registry, you can apply Amazon Brand Analytics as a reverse ASIN lookup tool.

#3. Amazon Autocomplete

Amazon autocomplete reveals the most frequently searched terms. Start typing a search query for your product in Amazon’s search bar. After that, you’ll see the typical search term sequences. Analyze them and filter out those that are the most relevant to your product.

#4. “Frequently Bought Together”

Look into the popular items that complement your product. By targeting complements you can extract new keywords to reach the new audiences.

#5. Google Ranking

There are sellers that have your own website, where they sell in addition to Amazon. In that case, they can utilize Search Console to detect if it ranks for high-volume search queries. Such queries can be targeted as keywords on Amazon.

#6. Amazon Keyword Search Tools

You can use your Amazon Seller Central data for your research as well. There is a lot of information you can extract out of your PPC campaign metrics and more.

Amazon monitoring software is an efficient way to stay on top of your sales. SellerSonar offers instant Amazon alerts to protect your sales. With us, you are aware of all listing changes, Buybox hijackers, new/deleted reviews, keyword rank history, and product suppressions.

Try SellerSonar now. Register for our 90-day trial and boost your incredible journey of running your business on the platform.