Amazon has an incredibly complex A9 algorithm used to rank products for customer search terms. The algorithm is generally regarded as a “black box” and can make or break your success on Amazon. One thing we do know is great copy is an essential factor to the algorithm. By knowing the functional differences between Google’s algorithm and Amazon’s algorithm, understanding your product and audience, utilizing third party tools for keyword research, identifying keyword placement prioritization and knowing what Amazon’s copy recommendations are, you are on your way to writing great copy for your Amazon listings.
Google vs Amazon Algorithms
An entire novel could be written about the differences between the Google and Amazon algorithms so let’s keep it simple here. Google’s is designed show the most RELEVANT results, while Amazon’s is designed to show what will CONVERT to a sale. This is important for brands to keep in mind because keyword stuffing doesn’t really work (certainly not long term). If you add the keyword “tennis shoe” to a shampoo product, it may show up somewhere in search results for a little bit, but will ultimately lose ranking because that listing will have likely never converted when customers search “tennis shoe.”
Product and Audience
Understanding your product’s specifications and target audience can make writing relevant copy much easier. Have you ever heard the term, “explain it so a 2-year-old can understand?” That’s exactly how writing copy for your Amazon listings should be. Keep it specific enough where your audience is informed about your product but won’t be left in the dark if you use too specific of jargon. As always, keep the tone “on-brand”. Same goes when writing copy towards the correct audience. If you are writing copy for an industrial tools brand vs a baby toy brand, your tone, content, and intentions are going to be different for these two audiences.
Third Party Tools for Keyword Research
There is so much data available to you as an Amazon seller, but how do you crunch down all of the big data? Utilizing third-party tools like Jungle Scout or Helium 10 can save you hours of manual labor crunching the numbers. With these tools, you see data such as estimated search volume of keywords, estimated total revenue of the search term, average revenue, pricing, reviews, and most importantly, identify which keywords are driving sales for your competitors. Use this data to determine which keywords are most relevant to your product, drive traffic and are not too competitive to rank for organically (at least in the beginning), to put into your copy. See our blog to learn more about Helium 10’s keyword research tool ‘Cerebro’.
Keyword Placement Priority
Amazon has a priority of where to place your most relevant keywords once they have been identified. The A9 algorithm indexes keywords according to where they are located, here is the order of importance:
- Title
- Bullet Points
- Product Description/A+ Content/Enhanced Brand Content
- Backends of listings (search terms, subject matter, etc.)
Amazon Copy Recommendations (and Pitted Labs Best Practices)
As per the wording, these are Amazon’s recommendations. As with many areas on Amazon, there are gray areas between what Amazon recommends, what Amazon actually enforces, and what works best. Here are Amazon’s recommendations when writing titles and bullet points and what we at Pitted Labs follow as best practices.
Amazon Title Recommendations:
- Titles must follow the recommended length of your product category characters, including spaces (Precise and fewer than 80 characters).
- Titles must not contain promotional phrases, such as “free shipping”, “100% quality guaranteed”.
- Titles must not contain characters for decoration, such as ~ ! * $ ? _ ~ { } # < > | * ; ^ ¬ ¦
- Titles must contain product-identifying information, such as “hiking boots” or “umbrella”.
Pro Tip: Amazon creates a canonical URL for every new ASIN based on the copy you upload the first time. This URL is extremely important for SEO and you can force what goes into it by only adding 5 words to your listing the very first time you upload it to Amazon. Once it has been uploaded and the canonical URL is created, you can adjust the copy as you see fit.
Amazon Bullet Point Recommendations:
- Keep bullet points clear and concise with less than 1,000 characters for all of your bullet points combined.
- Naturally contain keywords, but first priority is to communicate clearly and help customers make a buying decision.
Pitted Labs Best Practices:
- Titles – Keep titles precise and around 150 characters, including any variation information such as size, scent, color, etc. at the end of the title. Include the brand name at the beginning of the title and keep natural flow of verbiage through entire title with previously identified target keywords.
- Bullet Points – Using all 5 bullet points, call out what differentiates your product from competitors and tell them why they should buy your product vs all of the others out there. Fill this copy with the remaining keywords that you did not use in the title. The more detail and precise, the better. We recommend keeping every bullet point under 270 characters. We want a customer to be able to look at the bullet points for a brief moment and be able to learn something they didn’t already know about the product to keep them reading the rest of the bullet points and decide to make the purchase.
Writing copy for your Amazon listings is a simple step that goes a long way. By understanding algorithm functionality differences, the product and target audience of the products, how to harvest and identify the correct keywords to add to your listings, the keyword placement priority, and knowing Amazon’s copy recommendations for titles and bullet points, you are set to write the perfect content that will get you set in the right direction. Last but not least, don’t forget to be creative.
