How to Optimize Your Amazon Product Listing

A world of opportunities awaits sellers who join the Amazon platform.

Over a million new sellers join the Amazon marketplace year on year and every seller is striving hard to rank his products over the others.

That brings us to the most important part of driving sales on Amazon – optimizing your product listings.

Listing optimization has everything to do with first understanding what Amazon A9 is as it is the deciding factor for ranking products and then crafting your listings accordingly.

A9 is used by Amazon to decide what products to display to customers based on their search queries.

A9 takes a lot of factors into consideration while displaying products – conversion rates, sales, ratings, relevancy, etc. Primarily, it is important for your listings to have the right content in all parts of it starting with the title all the way down to the bullet points and backend search terms.

If your listing is optimized well, it can easily convert clicks into sales.

How to optimize your Amazon product listing:

1. Keyword research for rich content in your listings

A listing has six important parts – title, description, features explained in bullet points, images, and reviews and ratings.

In-depth keyword research is very important so that you can narrow down your list of important keywords and optimize your title with the use of the most relevant ones.

The title is the most important part of your listing and is crucial to ranking and conversions.

You need to find keywords that best describe your product.

They also need to match the terms that customers are actually using to find your product so that you have a better CTR which in turn leads to higher sales.

Your keyword research should also focus on finding long-tail keywords as they have lesser competition, better chances of conversions, and thereby better ranking. 

The Amazon search bar is a useful source for keyword research with its auto-complete feature.

As you type into it, you can use the auto-complete suggestions as keyword targets because these are terms that customers are actually using while searching for products.

You may have a long list of keywords but make sure you’re not redundant with their usage in your listings. Enter important keywords into your backend search term field as well so that they also get indexed and improve your ranking on Amazon. 

2. Listing content needs to be up-to-date and relevant 

Whether it is your product images or your keywords, everything in your listing needs to be the latest.

It is always recommended to use high-quality, professional images but it is equally important to make sure they represent the latest version of your product.

Suppose you have rebranded your product or made any change or addition to it, your product images should clearly show it so that customers have a clear picture of what they’re buying.

This kind of optimization improves your visibility. 

With respect to being up-to-date, A+ content is a must. Optimizing your listings with A+ content allows you to provide additional beneficial information to customers.

If you’re on the Amazon Brand Registry, you can leverage this feature as it optimizes for mobile as well and improves your brand value and conversions.

You can include product images and comparison charts so that customers can visualize and understand your product better.

It is an element that can definitely give you an edge over your competitors.

3. Proactively handle your reviews and Q&A section

Reviews serve as social proof and hence are of paramount importance to the process of optimizing your listings.

Your products need to be of superior quality so that they encourage customers to leave reviews.

So what can you do to handle your reviews like a pro?

Firstly, you need to acquire reviews, and not every customer is willing to leave on.

You can reach out to them via a personalized email and ask them to rate and review your product.

You also need to respond to your customers’ reviews, especially the negative ones by resolving their issues and understanding why they’re unhappy with your product.

Responding in a timely manner and offering them a solution can persuade the customer to remove the negative review.

This ensures that your listing doesn’t contain anything that would dissuade a potential customer from buying your product. 

The Customers Question and Answer section is another crucial part of your listing where customers can ask specific questions about your product and its usage.

You need to respond quickly and keep your answers precise and brief as this improves your brand image and CTR as well as increases conversions.

4. Leverage videos and Amazon storefront 

Optimizing your listings with images is a great way to capture shoppers’ attention and adding videos to the mix is a plus point.

Many sellers have not yet fully explored this option so leveraging product videos will definitely help you stay ahead of the competition.

You can use videos to demonstrate the functionality of the product and how it can be used.

The purpose of images and videos is to give online shoppers an experience as close as possible to making a purchase physically from a store.

If you can optimize your listings to give them the actual feel of what your product is like, they will definitely go ahead and make the purchase. 

An Amazon store is another underutilized optimization tool. Amazon gives sellers the option to build a branded store page that can showcase all of their products collectively.

This helps to amplify the value and presence of your brand, build brand loyalty, and thereby sales.

The increase in sales will ultimately lead to a better ranking and that is how creating an Amazon store is an indirect but important step in your listing optimization strategy. 

5. Use a listing optimization tool

As discussed above, there are several elements that come into play when optimizing your listings and it may seem like a difficult task.

One of the best ways to optimize your product listings is with the use of a listing optimization tool.

These tools will analyze your listings and see how well they have been optimized for Amazon SEO and give you information about what areas need improvement.

 The SellerApp listing optimization tool gives you insights into key areas of your listing with a listing quality score that analyses your desirability and discoverability.

The tool also monitors your off-page keyword strength and measures its SEO effectiveness.

You can also check your competitors’ listings to see what’s working for them and improve yours along those lines.

Most importantly SellerApp furnishes you with detailed LQI reports so that you can analyze the data and make changes accordingly that will boost your ranking.

All in all, a listing optimization tool is the most sure-shot way of creating and optimizing product listings that are guaranteed to give a powerful boost to your sales.

Amazon Listing Optimization – Do’s and Don’ts 

1. Your title is the first and foremost thing that customers see so you need to pay attention to detail when you optimize it.

Use your top 3 primary target keywords that are long-tail and have a high search volume.

They need to be optimized for mobile which means out of a total of 80 characters that are displayed on mobile, your most important keywords should be placed in the beginning and must include your brand name.

Avoid using symbols and refrain from using words that sound promotional such as “discount”, “sale”, etc. 

2. The images in your listing gallery should consist of 1 main image that is 1000 pixels taken against a white background and should consist of only the product without any props.

The other images should show the product details like its material, how it looks from different angles, different parts of the product, etc.

You can have lifestyle images and ones that show the certifications.

Avoid using low-quality images as they don’t work well with the zoom function on Amazon.

The pictures should not in any way be offensive and must comply with Amazon’s policies. 

3. When it comes to bullet points, they need to be such that they bring out the uniqueness of your product.

It’s best to keep them short and to the point and not exceed 120 characters even though there’s provision for more.

These points should bring out the benefits of your product and tell the customers why they should buy it.

Provide information in such a way that you answer all the questions that shoppers might have.

Capitalize the first letter of each word in every bullet point.

Avoid keyword stuffing in both bullet points as well as titles. 

4. Competitor analysis also has its part to play while optimizing listings and sellers often forget to study their competitors’ listings thoroughly.

Analyze your competitors’ listings and find out what keywords they are ranking for using a Reverse ASIN tool. This can reveal gaps in your own keyword strategy which you can fill up with ideas from their listings. 

5. Finally, your whole listing optimization process needs to be in line with Amazon’s guidelines and policies.

Keep yourself abreast with Amazon’s latest policies because if you’re in violation of any of them, your listings could get flagged or suspended.

Final Thoughts

Your Amazon seller journey consists of multiple factors. Listing optimization is one of the first few things you need to get right and you can easily achieve this by following the points mentioned above. Understanding Amazon SEO is crucial to this process and analyzing other listings that are well optimized and generating sales. Lastly, see what you can do differently, and keep up with the latest trends.