Supercharge Visibility and Conversion With Amazon Listing Optimisation
Bringing your brand to Amazon can be a fantastic way to connect your products with a huge customer base and start moving more stock. However, even if you’ve got the highest-quality, best-value product in your niche, you’re still going to need a way to make it stand out in a marketplace this vast and competitive.
Amazon listing optimisation is a crucial pillar for growing your brand on the platform, helping you maximise conversions with shoppers who see your product and ensure your listings are aligned with Amazon’s algorithm.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through every step of the Amazon listing optimisation process, and teach you to build listings that both Amazon and your customers will love.
What is Amazon Listing Optimisation?
Amazon listing optimisation is the process of developing every product listing variable in your control to boost its organic visibility on the Amazon platform, and maximise its chances of making a sale when someone lands on your product page.
There are three main methods involved in getting an Amazon listing fully optimised, including Amazon SEO copywriting, backend keywords, image optimisation, and A+ content creation. When these are applied together, they can help your entire catalogue stand out from the competition, and improve your organic click-through rate and conversions for a relatively low up-front investment.
The Amazon A10 Algorithm Explained
“Content is King when it comes to your Amazon strategy. I often suggest that brands imagine they’re describing their product to a blindfolded person, as essentially this is what the A10 algorithm is. You want to get into the nitty gritty of what your product looks like, what it does, what its key USPs are, how it’s better than the competition. This will help train the algorithm to serve up your product in SERP.”
- Danielle Thompson, Head of Content
A10 is the search engine algorithm that determines how products are ranked for all searches on Amazon.
Parts of this algorithm work in a similar way to general search algorithms like Google or Bing, with the key difference that the A10 algorithm is designed specifically for matching customers with the products they’re most likely to buy. This ensures that Sellers and Vendors can keep paying their selling fees, and keep the Amazon flywheel going.
When you’re planning to optimise Amazon listings, a big part of this is going to be understanding what drives the A10 algorithm, and aligning your listings to these factors as closely as possible.
Some of the key variables the A10 algorithm uses to rank product listings include:
Keyword relevance: The keywords used in elements of your listing copy, such as the title, bullet points, and product description, will tell Amazon’s crawlers (search engine bots) what the product is and who it’s made for. When this copy indicates that the product is a good match for a certain search query, it will benefit from a higher position in that query’s search results.
Conversion rate: Because Amazon’s search engine is for products only, conversion rate is another key ranking factor in the A10 algorithm. This is particularly true for conversions earned through organic search, as opposed to those resulting from Amazon advertising clicks.
Sales velocity: Amazon rewards brands for having products that sell, as this indicates a positive customer experience that will keep bringing people back to the platform. When your products achieve a high sales velocity relative to other ASINs in the same category, it will rise through the rankings for relevant keywords.
6 Ways Amazon SEO is Different From Google SEO
If you’re moving from a more DTC focus to prioritising Amazon for your ecommerce growth, you may already have some experience optimising pages for Google SEO. Before you start to map out your strategy for Amazon listing optimisation, it’s important to understand the differences between the two search algorithms and ensure you’re avoiding common mistakes.
Here are six of the most important ways that Amazon and Google SEO differ.
Search Intent: Amazon’s search algorithm will always focus on transactional intent, while Google’s algorithm can cater to a wider range of intents, such as informational and navigational.
Ranking Factors: Due to its focus on matching shoppers with products, Amazon’s A10 algorithm puts a lot of emphasis on conversion rate and sales performance, alongside more Google-adjacent factors like the keywords used in the product copy.
Keyword Strategy: Amazon requires greater emphasis on keywords that reflect how Amazon shoppers find products. This means you’ll need to use more exact-match terms in your listings’ titles and bullet points.
Linking: While Google SEO depends heavily on links from external sources (backlinks), this won’t have any influence on the way Amazon listings are ranked.
Reviews impact: Amazon product reviews are a major deciding factor in how listings are ranked for any given search. While Google reviews can help a page’s ranking, there’s much more emphasis on the quality and authority of the page’s content.
Images and A+ Content: Though the quality of visual content on an Amazon listing doesn’t have a direct impact on rankings, they’re still a major predictor for your organic conversion rate on Amazon, which is a major ranking factor.
Feeling confused about the Amazon algorithm? Our Amazon listing optimisation service helps align every part of your listing to Amazon SEO best practices, ensuring your listings get picked up by the algorithm and shown to the people they’re meant for.
The 6 Elements of Amazon Product Listing Optimisation
If you want your listings to rank and convert on Amazon, you’ll need to account for six main variables that will impact your products’ organic visibility, and their likelihood of making a conversion when someone lands on your product page.
We’ll get into how you can optimise an Amazon listing to drive growth in the next section. For now, here’s a top-line summary of the six key parts of getting your listings right.
Product Title
Heavily weighted by the A10 algorithm, your product title should naturally include your primary (high volume) phrase ordered keywords, and include important information about the product and brand’s key features. This will contribute to higher rankings and an increased click-through rate, helping bring you a step closer to making a sale.
Bullet Points
In the bullet points section, you’ll have an opportunity to include more keywords that will be picked up by Amazon’s crawlers, and talk about the key features and benefits that make the product appealing to your audience.
Product Images
Using all available image slots with high-resolution pictures will send a positive ranking signal to Amazon’s algorithm. Aside from this, using quality product photography and infographic images that highlight the product’s USPs are essential for conversions, giving Amazon shoppers a better idea of what they’re buying when they can’t see your product in person.
A+ Content
Amazon’s official line is that A+ content won’t affect a product’s ranking directly. However, we’ve found that the alt text attached to A+ content images, and the copy in text-based A+ content fields, does correlate with increased rankings. In any case, building and publishing high-quality A+ content across your catalogue will have a positive impact on your listings’ conversion rate, which in turn improves their organic rankings.
Backend Keywords
The backend keywords field lets you tell Amazon which keywords you want your product listing to rank for. While they won’t be visible on your listings, Amazon’s algorithm will still take them into account in the same way as the keywords used in your title and bullet points, which makes them a great place to include commonly-misspelled search terms with high volume.
Product Description
The product description is the third text field that brand owners can control on an Amazon listing. Though it’s not visible if your listing has A+ content (which it really should!) this text will still be crawled by Amazon’s algorithm, and should be used to include any missed keywords and additional information about your product.
How to Carry Out Amazon Listing Optimisation in 7 Steps
Now that you’ve got an understanding of how Amazon ranks products, it’s time to look at the practical steps you can take to optimise Amazon listings for organic visibility and conversion.
Here’s a detailed look at the seven steps you need to follow to optimise your Amazon listings:
Step 1: Keyword Research
Before you start your Amazon SEO, you’ll need to figure out what kind of search terms Amazon shoppers are using to find products like yours. This will allow you to prioritise keywords to include in your title, bullet points, backend keywords, and product description.
Though general SEO tools can give you an idea of the sentiment around different products, it’s important to find an Amazon-specific tool that will give you data specifically tied to Amazon searches.
Some of the best Amazon keyword research tools on the current market include:
- Helium 10
- Jungle Scout
- Merchantwords
- AMZScout
- Data Dive
Though every tool will have a different interface and features, keyword research for Amazon listing optimisation generally works in the same way.
First, you enter a “seed” keyword into your keyword research tool. This should be something very broad and general to help the tool generate a varied list of ideas. If you’re a pet food brand, for example, your seed keyword might be something as simple as “dog food”.
Once you’ve entered your seed keyword, your tool will come back with a list of keyword suggestions related to this search term, showing you data such as each keyword’s search volume (the average number of times the keyword is searched for per month), its average PPC bid, and other metrics.
With this, you’ll be able to highlight more specific keywords, for example “organic dog food”, “dog food with chicken”, or “bulk dog food”. With the keyword volume figures and other data points, you’ll be able to prioritise keywords to use in your listing based on their popularity and competitiveness.
Step 2: Optimise Your Product Title
Once you’ve selected relevant, high-volume keywords for your listing, you can move on to optimising your Amazon product title.
Before you try to improve a title’s chances of ranking and getting a click, it’s important to familiarise yourself with some universal requirements that all Amazon titles have to abide by:
- The majority of product titles cannot exceed 200 characters including spaces (there are some exceptions to this depending on the product category, so make sure to check the relevant Amazon style guide).
- Special characters and punctuation are not permitted, unless they’re a part of the brand name.
- Titles cannot contain the same word more than twice, with the exception of articles, prepositions, or conjunctions.
Aside from these general rules, Amazon will also penalise or de-list product titles with phrases that are overly promotional or make claims that aren’t substantiated by Amazon, such as “best quality”, “free shipping”, or “best seller”.
Even claims about your product that might be true, like “100% recycled materials”, can get your listing in trouble if you don’t go out of your way to verify these claims with Amazon. Whenever you’re planning to compose new product titles, make sure to research policies and “banned terms” that may affect the way you write the copy.
Following your brand name, you should try to front-load your product title with the primary keyword you identified during your keyword research. This will let Amazon’s algorithm know that your product is relevant to the search query, and stand out to users who are searching with this exact term.
With your primary keyword ticked off, use the remaining characters to summarise the strongest USPs of the product. At this point, it’s often worth searching for your primary keyword in an incognito tab, noting how your competitors are titling their listings, and thinking of ways to differentiate your brand from dominant trends.
Including secondary keywords in your product titles can send additional positive signals to Amazon’s algorithm and increase your product’s ranking. However, it’s important to avoid keyword stuffing and keep your copy natural.
Titles that succinctly highlight a product’s USPs, and use a natural, yet compelling writing style that encourages organic clicks, will always be more effective than spammy-looking titles that have crammed in every keyword possible.
Step 3: Optimise Your Bullet Points
When it comes to keyword optimisation for Amazon SEO, your bullet points are the second most important field next to your product title. This field provides a great opportunity to make your listing even more appealing to Amazon’s algorithm, and frame your product USPs in a simple, digestible format.
Like your product titles, Amazon bullet points have certain rules you’ll need to adhere to to prevent your listing being penalised:
- Amazon recommends that each bullet point should have a maximum of 200-250 characters, including spaces.
- The A10 algorithm will only crawl the first 1000 characters of the sum of all the bullets, and any keywords after this won’t affect the ranking.
- Special characters, outside of basic punctuation, are not permitted.
- Emojis are not permitted.
- Bullets must not contain any product claims that haven’t been verified with Amazon and could be misleading, e.g. “eco-friendly”, “100% cotton”, “anti-microbial”.
- Bullets must not contain guarantees about returns, refunds, or warranties that might conflict with Amazon’s returns policies, even if these guarantees are available through your brand’s DTC channels.
- You must not write anything that could direct Amazon shoppers off the platform, for example mentioning your DTC website, social media, or customer support email.
When writing your bullets, we recommend selecting the five most important USPs, then describing them in a succinct and compelling way where each product feature is tied to a tangible benefit. Using a capitalised 1-5 word headline for a given feature, then following this up with an explanation, is a good strategy for keeping your copy scannable and easy to digest, for example:
“CREAMINESS AND CRUNCH: Our very first creation, ManiLife Original Roast uses only the finest ingredients and blending techniques for the perfect balance of creaminess and crunch.”
When it comes to algorithmic SEO, writing Amazon listing bullets should follow the same rule as your titles: include your keywords while putting the user experience first with natural, engaging copy.
Note that unlike Google’s ranking algorithm, Amazon SEO isn’t affected by keyword density. This means if you’ve already covered one of your target keywords in the title, there’s no benefit in repeating this in the bullet points or other text fields. Instead, we recommend using the bullet points field for your secondary keywords: search terms that are relevant to your product, but have lower volume than your primary keyword.
Step 4: Enter Your Backend Keywords
Backend keywords, officially called “search terms” in the listing edit view, is a field where you can tell the Amazon algorithm exactly what keywords you think your product should rank for. Like tags on YouTube, or hashtags on LinkedIn, these keywords aren’t a core part of the content you’re sharing with site users, and are instead a way of categorising your listing and helping Amazon’s bots understand it.
Because backend keywords won’t be visible to Amazon users, they’re a great opportunity to optimise your listing for keywords that you weren’t able to include naturally in the title or bullet points.
Amazon’s rules for backend keywords are:
- Don’t exceed the 500 character limit.
- Don’t use special characters, competitor brand names, or competitor ASINs.
- Don’t use subjective descriptors like “best”, “cheapest”, or “discount”.
- Don’t use any terms that would be disallowed in the visible copy fields. This generally means claims that need to be verified with Amazon, for example “anti-microbial”, “100% recycled”, or “organic”.
Backend keywords are often misunderstood by even experienced Sellers and Vendors. It’s important to grasp how Amazon crawls this field and uses backend keywords in its ranking algorithm to ensure you don’t end up wasting this field.
Some key things to bear in mind include:
- Amazon’s algorithm will treat each word in the field as a separate search term. This means there’s no advantage in including phrases with overlapping keywords, even if that phrase has a high keyword volume.
- Commas aren’t necessary for separating your backend keywords, and will only serve to waste valuable characters.
- Because keyword density doesn’t factor into organic rankings, there’s no reason to repeat keywords in the backend field that you’ve already included in the visible parts of the listing.
While listings will be penalised for including competitor brand names, brand names that include common words used in the dictionary can still be targeted by separating each word. For example, if you have a competitor called CypressCreek which gets searched for a lot, you can still include the words “cypress” and “creek” in your backend keywords. More abstract brand names however, for example Globex, will get flagged.
When filling in your backend keywords, we recommend bringing up your initial keyword research and sorting your keywords in descending order by volume, then systematically adding the most popular terms that weren’t quite relevant enough to make it into the visual copy. This will ensure you’re using the available characters in the field as efficiently as possible to boost your organic visibility.
Step 5: Optimise Your Product Description
Your Amazon product description is located further down the page from your title and bullet points, and gives you an opportunity to talk about your product in a more detailed, brand-centric voice, rather than the fast-selling copy style the Amazon platform encourages.
This section isn’t weighted as heavily as the other listing text fields in terms of SEO. However, you can still improve your listing’s rankings by including keywords that overlap with terms included in the title and bullet points. For example, if the first two fields of your copy contain the phrase “compact gaming laptop”, you may want to optimise your product description for the keyword “4k screen gaming laptop”.
Again, listings with A+ content won’t show their product description, but the text will still be crawled by Amazon’s algorithm and have an impact on how your products appear in search results.
Step 6: Upload High-Quality Amazon Listing Images
Your titles, bullet points, and product descriptions will signal the Amazon algorithm to get your products seen by Amazon users. Optimising your listing images will secure clicks and improve your conversion rate, therefore feeding back into your organic rankings.
Though image optimisation won’t have a direct impact on how the algorithm analyses and ranks your content, it will certainly help bridge that classic ecommerce communication gap by giving customers a better idea of what they’re buying.
Some key Amazon image requirements you’ll need to bear in mind include:
- The main (first) image must show the product on a plain white background, with the product covering at least 85% of the image.
- Images must not exceed 10,000px on the longest side (we recommend using images that are 3,000 x 3,000px to ensure they’re zoomable for all users).
- Listing images must not include any Amazon trademarks, logos, or anything confusingly similar to Amazon trademarks. This includes Amazon badges like “Amazon’s Choice” or “Best Seller”.
- Images of the product must not be blurry, pixelated, or have jagged edges.
Over our years working with brands to help their growth on Amazon, we’ve found that prioritising infographic-style images using text overlay to highlight product features are the best way to showcase your brand identity and maximise organic conversions.
Many Amazon shoppers will look through listing images before they even consider the copy in the title, bullet points, and A+ content. With this in mind, it’s important to use this part of your listing to further emphasise the product’s USPs, and help the customer visualise how your product will meet their needs.
Here are some additional category-specific image ideas that can help you connect with your audience:
Electronics and Gadgets
- Product cross-sections that label the inner workings of the product, e.g. “high-grade copper wiring for rapid charging”.
- “Exploded” view diagrams where the different parts of your product are visually separated and labelled to emphasise build quality.
- Use-case infographics that show how your product is useful in different environments.
Fashion and Apparel
- “Fit guide” image showing the product on different body types with overlaid sizing tips.
- Lifestyle shots that show models in aspirational settings.
- “Versatility” grids that show different ways the item can be styled.
Home & Kitchen Products
- “Before and after” images that show the immediate benefits of using your product.
- Capacity/size visualisations that show the scale of common household items in comparison to your product.
- “What’s included” infographics labelling the different parts or accessories that come with your product.
Step 7: Build A+ Content
With the core parts of your Amazon listing covered, the final step in your Amazon listing optimisation is creating A+ content.
A+ content allows you to create detailed and visually-enhanced content that sits underneath the main part of your listing, and makes for a great opportunity to elaborate on your product’s best features and secondary USPs, while giving customers a better idea of your brand identity.
Like listing images, A+ content doesn’t directly influence your rankings in Amazon SERP pages, but can have a profound impact on conversion rates and developing long-term relationships with your audience.
A+ content is an element of the Amazon listing that allows for more creative freedom compared to the other variables. Because of this, optimising your products’ A+ content is a whole discipline in itself that requires purpose-built assets and a keen understanding of the A+ content builder tool.
We’ve written a complete guide to Amazon A+ content which you can read here.
In the meantime, here are some general best practices we use to optimise our clients’ A+ content and maximise conversion:
- Prioritise the top-rated features and benefits of your product higher up in the content to secure more sales from Amazon users who may not scroll through the whole page.
- Answer commonly-asked questions about your product to help reduce purchase barriers and give your audience a clear idea of what exactly they’re buying.
- Create purpose-built assets that match the stated image dimensions for each module exactly to ensure a high-quality, cohesive aesthetic.
- Break up your text to keep it concise and skimmable, whether that’s text within your own graphics or on the text fields accompanying a given module.
- Always use the comparison chart module to showcase your broader range and promote cross-selling or upselling.
- Analyse changes in your products’ performance after publishing your content, and follow up your observations with tweaks or A/B testing to determine what resonates most with your audience.
- If relevant, include helpful information on how to use and care for your product.
Amazon Listing Optimisation FAQs
Even when you have the best product in your niche, Amazon listing optimisation is a crucial first step towards setting your brand up for success and unlocking the full potential of Amazon as a channel.
We hope this guide has given you more insight into the workings of the Amazon A10 algorithm, how Amazon interprets your listings, and your ideal next steps as you work to supercharge your listings’ visibility and conversions.
We’ll wrap up with some common questions we often hear about Amazon listing optimisation from our customers. For more support with getting your listings optimised, check out our other blog posts, or find out how our Amazon content services can get your catalogue fully-optimised with greater efficiency.
What is Amazon listing optimisation and why does it matter?
Amazon listing optimisation is the process of improving every editable part of your product listing - from titles to images - to boost its visibility on Amazon and increase conversions. Even with a great product, it won’t sell if customers can’t find it. Optimisation helps your listings rank higher in search results and encourages more shoppers to click and buy.
How is Amazon SEO different from Google SEO?
While Google SEO is all about answering queries and ranking useful content, Amazon SEO is designed to match shoppers with products they’re most likely to buy. This means things like conversion rate and sales velocity matter just as much as keyword usage. It’s also more focused on exact-match keywords, and doesn’t factor in backlinks.
What should I prioritise when creating my product listing?
Start with keyword research, then focus on writing a clear and keyword-rich title, compelling bullet points, and a well-structured product description. After that, optimise your images and backend keywords, and finally build high-quality A+ content to support conversions.
How long should my product title be?
Most titles need to stay under 200 characters, though this can vary by category so it’s always important to check Amazon’s approved style guides. Keep your title natural, include your most important keywords early on, and highlight the product’s USPs. It’s also important to avoid keyword stuffing and anything that sounds overly salesy, or making unverified claims. These are all things that could lead Amazon to penalise your listing.
Why are backend keywords important if customers can’t see them?
Backend keywords help Amazon understand which search queries your product should show up for. They’re a handy place to include relevant keywords that didn’t naturally fit into your visible copy, as long as you follow Amazon’s rules on formatting and content.
What’s the benefit of using infographic-style images?
Infographic-style images allow you to visually communicate key features and benefits at a glance. Some shoppers won’t read all your copy, so using well-designed images with text overlays can make a big difference when it comes to explaining your product and improving conversions.
