Amazon: A Detailed SEO Guide for Sellers with Sales FAQs

Are you looking for an Amazon SEO guide or paid ways to boost your Amazon business?

But, why? Why are you interested in boosting your Amazon business?

Here’s why:

Incepted as the largest bookstore, Amazon became a $1.7 trillion company in 25 years. (Yes, the history of Amazon dates back to the founding year 1995). The CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos started an online bookstore with a capital investment from his parents.

What we now see in the name of Amazon is the e-commerce giant that is the market leader as well. The net worth of Amazon is only behind Apple Inc., making it the second-largest company in the world. 

Oh, and it doesn’t only deal with books anymore. And that’s what is attracting people from every niche to operate and sell on Amazon.

On a side note, do you know where the name Amazon came from? 

That’s a rather interesting question, with a more interesting story behind it. Let’s take a look at that:

While choosing the name for his internet business, Jeff went through the first alphabet section of the dictionary (you do know that’s *A*. Right?). The word Amazon caught his attention. He wanted to see his internet business to keep flowing, just like the Amazon river. 

The upcoming years materialized his vision.

Now that we are done with the introduction of this retail giant let’s get back to business. 

This guide on Amazon is aimed to provide a detailed outline of how selling on Amazon works. We have divided the guide into two sections:

In the first section, we will see all the Amazon SEO practices. The second section deals with the answers to all the frequently asked questions about Amazon that bother sellers.

Here’s a sneak peek into precisely what you’d see in this guide:

So without further delay, let’s dive right in:

SECTION 1: Guidelines and Components of Amazon SEO

When you operate on Amazon as a seller, what’s the first thing you’d need?

Well, you could answer many things – like a business in place, a product to sell, or a market to sell that product to. 

But isn’t something missing from the list – a rather important item?

Yes, that would be an Amazon business account.

Having a business account on Amazon needs registration on the website. It has its own set of requirements, which are the topic for another discussion. 

However, for today’s guide, we plan to cover all the concepts that can boost your sales on Amazon. 

Here comes the first one on our list:

1. Amazon Search Engine Optimization (Amazon SEO)

Amazon A9 algorithm is the reason behind taking a wise Amazon search engine optimization strategy by the sellers. 

So, what is this A9 algorithm anyway? 

Suppose you are keen on the search engine optimization trends in the technological world. In that case, you must be aware of how Google uses different strategies to rank content on its search engine result pages.

Similarly, A9 is the Amazon ranking algorithm used to optimize the sellers’ content on the website. There’s a critical difference between the two of them, however. Google doesn’t consider sales conversion as a factor for ranking pages. Call that fortunate or unfortunate, but Amazon does.

For content that is optimized for Amazon, it is a must to have a good sales ranking on Amazon. 

For the newbies getting into Amazon SEO right now, it must be getting a bit confusing. So, let us simplify it further for you:

Since Amazon is an online retailer, completing sales goals is the most crucial point. Therefore, the – otherwise catchy – product descriptions that do not sell are useless for the Amazon sales platform. 

What is a product listing, though?

A product page that defines a product that sells on Amazon is called an Amazon product listing. It shows all the information a seller enters to display on the page. A complete product listing has the following standardized elements:

• Title of the product
• Product image 
• Product description
• Bullet points.

We will look into each element’s optimization later. For the time being, we need to see the Amazon product listing guidelines.

2. Amazon listing guidelines

Before going into the details of the product listing guidelines, we will see the restricted products that Amazon doesn’t allow to sell. 

Restricted products

• Amazon doesn’t allow selling any illegal or unsafe products on the website.
• Anything that challenges the religious sentiments or spreads hatred is not allowed for listing.
• Sexually explicit products or products that promote nudity come under Amazon’s restricted products’ list.
• Amazon has the right to seize payments or call off any product listing that violates any product guidelines.

Now let’s see what guidelines a seller must comply with while listing a product. 

Dos for sellers

A seller must provide a:

• Product name.
• A product category.
• The period of the subscription (how many deliveries does a seller intend to make during that period).
• All the stock details depending on the type of product, for example, SKU/UPC/JAN or EAN numbers of the product.
• What devices support the product.
• Which login types does the product allow.
• A relevant product image without any other kind of logo or misleading text involved.
• Link to the seller’s web address.
• Link to the privacy policy of the website.

Here are the guidelines for subscription-based products:

Guidelines for Subscription-based products

Amazon has different rules for subscription-based products. Let’s take a look at the most important ones here:

• If auto-renew is on, the subscription will be automatically renewed without notification.
• Suppose the auto-renew is not turned off at least 24 hours before the renewal time. In that case, the subscription will renew automatically, and Amazon will charge for it.
• The seller must provide the time and cost of the subscription.
• After the transaction completion, a seller can reset the renewal settings by going to the customers’ accounts.

That’s all for the *Dos*. The list of *Don’ts* is equally long and crucial. 

Let’s see what Amazon business forbids you from:

Don’ts of a new product listing

• Low-quality product information that doesn’t match the seller’s sales channel product description is not allowed.
• False product identification information is prohibited.
• A product page can only have one product; more than one product listings on a single page are not permitted.
• Product listings containing anything against the ‘restricted product guidelines’ are not allowed.
• Sellers cannot include the following things in the title, description, image, or bullet points of a product listing:
  • Phone numbers
  • Obscene/ vulgar content
  • links to other websites
  • Promotional content or watermarks
  • Testimonials from customers
  • Call for customers to make positive customer reviews
  • Schedules of time-sensitive promotions.
• All product images must comply with the image rules that we will discuss later.
• No bad HTML data in any element of the product listings are allowed.

These were the instructions for what Amazon doesn’t want you to do. Following these “Don’ts” is as important for the sellers as is following the “Dos”. 

Now, let’s get back to our original discussion of amazon listing optimization. In the following section, we’d see a detailed SEO guide and the SEO best practices for all the listing elements. 

So, let the information drill began: 

The Product Listing Elements optimization

A listing where every element is given your kind consideration and commendable efforts as per Amazon SEO rules win the race of higher conversion value. 

What else do you want from an Amazon listing?

And, if that actually happens to be your ultimate goal for creating a stellar product listing that sells well, we have got you covered. 

Let’s see what you can do to make your Amazon listing stand out and what to avoid to increase your conversion rate.

1. Amazon Listing Product Title SEO Guidelines & Best Practices

The title would probably be amongst the first few factors catching a visitor’s attention. Try messing with it in a way that doesn’t bring it to the list of Amazon favorites and see how the rest of all your efforts go down the drain. Pay a little attention to the best practices, Dos, and Don’t and see your conversion rates flying sky high.

Here’s a glimpse of the factors that you need to look out for if you want your Amazon product listing to stand out:

Don’ts for your Amazon listing save you big time.

The product title SHOULD NOT include:

• More than 200 characters (and that would count spaces, too)
• Decorative symbols and special characters (even if that means currency symbols. In case of needing a mention of currency, you need to spell them correctly – no shortcuts too).
• All caps letters
• Promotional content such as a schedule of sale or discount.
• Price and quantity
• The symbol *&* instead of the word, *and*, unless that’s a part of your product name.
•  Numbers in words. (The only acceptable way to use numbers in your title is the use of numerals [i.e., 1, not ONE])
• Links back to your website or any other digital platform.

As stated earlier, 200 characters with spaces are the benchmark for an Amazon product listing title. That should be kind of clear now. Right?

That’d better be right and on your fingertips, unless you have changed your mind to sell on Amazon. 

(But, we bet you haven’t as of now since you are still reading the guide.)

The next question is, what should these characters say, do, tell, or show?

Well, that’s the most important question, now that we have already seen what we DO NOT need to include in our titles. So, let’s take a thorough look at the Dos of an Amazon product listing title:

Dos of your Amazon listing SEO rank you high and convert them well.

• There’s no way you should forget using your brand name in the title. 
• Make your title as descriptive as possible, in terms of the product features – such as:
  • color 
  • brand 
  • model 
  • Size
  • quantity, etc.

Mention these factors in a way that clearly gives a complete idea of the product to the reader (However, by no means are we suggesting to cross the limit of 200 characters).

And that’s still not all. 

There’s more to the Amazon SEO for the product listing titles than this. Let’s see what that is:

The most important Amazon SEO Factor in your title – Keyword

Your Amazon product listing title should consist of relevant keywords that target the shopper’s search intent, phrases that describe the product, and defining features of the product such as size, dimensions, etc.

There’s an interesting fact about the title keywords you would love to hear: 

Even if they have substantial search volumes on Amazon, they may fail to sell your product.

What is the reason? 

Because you optimized your title for the wrong keywords. 

Let’s see an example here: 

You are a shoe seller. You are crafting a product listing of ‘6-inch high pencil heels with a strap’. With your keyword research through tools, you encounter the keyword ‘black high heel pumps’ to have a huge search volume. Thinking about the color variants, you find that your product has a black variant as well. You incorporate the keyword ‘black high heel pumps’ into your title. 

And there you have it – a wasted effort!

What! Why?

What have you missed here? 

You have surpassed the search intent of your market for ‘strapped high heels.’

This may seem a small problem with how you choose your keywords, but it can potentially cost you a high bounce rate.

Irrelevant traffic that doesn’t convert to sales is useless.

For every product category, there is a fixed formula by Amazon to create titles. Keeping in mind all the points above, you can craft a title with your product category formula.

However, the point to remember here is that title is not the only element that decides the fate of your product. It works in unison with other listing factors. 

So, let’s take a look at those factors too.

2. Amazon Listing Product Image Optimization

Amazon has set rules for the optimization of the product image as well. The rules are set in the best interest of the visitors, so abiding by them is in the best interest of sellers as well. Here are the most important guidelines from an SEO viewpoint to consider while finalizing your image/s:

• The product pictures cannot have any text or logos in them. 
• The specific white color background is essential for product images.
• Amazon allows seven images in almost all the product categories. Unfortunately for other sellers, most of them do not use this opportunity. That could, however, be fortunate for you.
• The more product images you upload, the better the buyer understands the product features.
• The image that you upload should have only 15% of the background. So, make sure to take close-up shots. 
• The aspect ratio should be 1:1 so that square images are uploaded on the product page.
• Editing the pics without considering the aspect ratio and scalability can be lethal for your product.
• Although logos and texts are not allowed in the product images, you can use infographics to target your buyer’s search intent in the images.
• However, dense infographics are also a big NO because they can become difficult to read (often leaving the readers frustrated).
• Using the A+ content manager, you can add images and comparison charts to your product descriptions. This can lead to higher conversion rates.
• Finally, optimizing the product images to fit the mobile screen dimensions is a crucial part of the Amazon image optimization process. Make sure to grab the attention of those highly-interested potentials to enjoy a climbing conversion rate.

Let’s take a look at the Amazon SEO best practices for the product descriptions that could be carved to convert:

3. Amazon Listing Product Description Optimization

While the title of your Amazon listing calls you to be precise yet comprehensive, descriptions are as detailed as they could be.

Product descriptions allow you to use 2000 characters to provide every relevant detail of the product. This is the real part where you brand your product to highlight benefits, not just the features. To use this space effectively, make sure to list product features such as size and dimensions. Use the benefit-driven approach by not defining any quality as it is but incorporating it to benefit the buyer by buying the product.

For instance, for a colorful bracket shelf that is small in size, you could highlight how it complements and enhances your corner’s aesthetics without dominating the theme with it’s small size. 

You can provide every detail of the warranty and precautionary measures in this section. However, if you are given a 2000 words long space, you don’t have to use up every single word just for the sake of making use of that space. Avoid the fluff that is unpleasant or repulsive. When your product doesn’t require it or your words are too good to be that long, LESS WOULD ALWAYS BE MORE.

The recommended practice is to use some highly relevant keywords placed naturally across your description. Remember the golden rule, keywords stuffing always hurts and penalizes. Avoid that!

Make sure to abide by the product listing guidelines by Amazon in this section as well.

4. Amazon listing Bullet Points Optimization

Bullet points are an essential part of your Amazon product description and require a good SEO strategy to convert more for you. Each bullet point should focus on a different feature of the product, and strict emphasis on product listing guidelines is a must here.

• The character limit for bullet points is 500 characters. 
• The seller needs to craft five bullet points, each of them defining a feature of the product. 
• Each bullet point should consist of 100 characters without any punctuation text. The shorter length makes them scannable, thus better converting.
• Capitalize the starting word for each bullet point. 
• Do not end it with any punctuation.
• Avoid keywords stuffing but do make every possible effort to incorporate them in your bullets, naturally.

That’s about it on the Amazon SEO for the product listing elements. With this, we move on to our next section that answers many of the frequently asked questions about Amazon sales in particular.

Section 2: Frequently Asked Questions about Amazon SEO & Sales

There is no mystery in the world that doesn’t begin its demystification journey without a question. Therefore, we have decided to demystify Amazon SEO and sales secrets with the questions you frequently have in your mind.

 

Time to ask and get all the answer:

FAQs About Amazon Product Search

How To Search On Amazon?

• To search for products on Amazon, go to your Amazon profile. 
• Put the cursor in the search bar. 
• Select a product category and type whatever you’re looking for. 

You can filter the search results as well using the filtration settings on the search bar.

How To Show More Search Results On Amazon?

While you are doing your competitor research, finding more products on the search results could speed up your research. 

The good news is, the process is simple as heck. 

After selecting a product category, all you need to do is put *[]* in the Amazon search bar. It leads to showing you 400 search results instead of only 100. 

How To Exclude Words From Amazon Search?

If you want to exclude a word from an Amazon search, add a *-* after the term you wish to exclude. Remember to put a space before the minus sign and no space after the minus sign.

How To Search By Price On Amazon?

After selecting a product category in the search bar, select the price filter on your Amazon profile. It gives you a specific price range of the product you have selected. You choose a minimum and a maximum price for the product you’re searching for. 

How To Follow A Seller On Amazon?

If you want to follow a seller on Amazon, you just need to search them with their name and then click the follow button on their product page.

FAQs on Amazon Traffic & Rankings

How To Drive Traffic To Your Amazon Product?

Besides all the SEO efforts you put into optimizing your product listings on Amazon, you can drive traffic on your listings through rigorous competitive analysis. 

How do you do it? 

By going through reviews on your competitor’s product pages and pinpointing the complaints faced by them.

The other way is to work on the reviews and Q&A of your customers continuously. Address the problems faced by your customers and your competitors’ clientele.

How To Rank Higher On Amazon?

There are multiple factors to take care of for ranking high on Amazon. Take care of the customer reviews, Q&A section, and the complete SEO of your product listing, including title, description, image, and bullet point optimization. Other than these factors, your order processing speed, exit rate, and order defect rate management are different ranking factors.

How to find amazon book rankings?

The best selling ranks (BSR) assigned to a product tell its ranking on Amazon. You can find the BSR on the bottom-most part of the product page, showing the book rank on Kindle. It is among the last items on the product description points.

How To Check Sales Rank On Amazon?

• To check your sales ranks on Amazon, go to your seller page on the Amazon profile. 
• Go to your active listings. 
• After selecting a product listing, select ‘Edit Details’ from the Actions dropdown. 

You will see a product summary on the right side on top of that page. The bottom of the box shows your sales rank on Amazon.

How Does Amazon Rank Books?

Amazon ranks books based on their sales volume. The lowest sales rank indicates the highest number of copies sold in a day. The Amazon book ranking can be checked in the bottom part of the product description of the product page.

How To Find Your Amazon Review Ranking?

On the public view of your Amazon profile, there is an About box on the left-hand side of the page. That drops down to Reviewer ranking. The number under that phrase is your Amazon reviewer ranking. 

 How To Get Your Product On The First Page Of Amazon?

A product listing that comes on the first page of Amazon has met many criteria. 

• It has a high sales volume
• It has positive customer reviews
• The product listing is there for quite a while.
• The listing is optimized correctly on the level of each element.

FAQs on Amazon SEO & Keywords

How To Make Your Amazon Listing Stand Out?

Keywords are at the core of making an outstanding Amazon product listing. Keywords used strategically in the title, description, image description, and bullet points make a listing stand out. The point to keep in mind here is that optimizing your product listing for an irrelevant keyword will result in a higher bounce rate.

How Many Keywords Does Amazon Allow?

Amazon allows 250 characters in the backend keywords. Things to avoid while using backend keywords are punctuations, commas, and repetitions.

How To Find Competitors Keywords On Amazon?

To find the competitor keywords on Amazon, first, you have to find the competitors. See the best selling products in your product category. Use tools to see which keywords your competitors are ranking for. Optimize your listings more rigorously for the same keywords.

How To Optimise Keywords For Amazon SEO?

Backend keywords on Amazon have a limit of 250 characters. However, be careful not to repeat the keywords and waste the opportunity to rank high for multiple useful keywords. 

Avoid using punctuation to make full use of the character limit. Use your brand name in the backend keywords to optimize keywords for SEO in Amazon.

How Does Amazon’s Choice Work?

Amazon’s choice selects products on multiple factors. An Amazon Choice product among millions of products is the one which usually has:

• competitive price
• high order completion speed
• low return rate and 
• positive customer reviews. 

Amazon measures all these factors by digging through customer data.

FAQs about Amazon Product Sourcing, Selling & Listings

How To Source Products For Amazon?

There are many ways to source products for Amazon. For instance:

• You can pick manufacturers to sell directly on Amazon.
• Dropship suppliers also work on sourcing products on Amazon.
• B2B marketplaces also partner with Amazon. 
• Wholesale channels are also an excellent way to do business on Amazon.

What Do You Need To Sell On Amazon?

Trending products are the best option to sell on any retail platform. This applies to Amazon as well. 

You can research the popular product categories on Amazon by using tools and selling in the niche.

What Happens When You Close A Listing On Amazon?

When a listing is closed on Amazon, the seller can no longer make sales of the product. The sales history remains intact, and the seller can relist the product whenever he wishes.

How To Sell Amazon Products On Your Website?

Amazon’s affiliate program is the way to sell Amazon products on your website. You review Amazon products on your website and provide a buying link from Amazon on your website. If the buyer purchases an Amazon product through your website, you earn a flat 6% (or as unanimously decided among yourself) commission on the sale.

How To Remove Recommendations?

• Go to your Amazon account.
• Open the recommendations menu.
• Select the ‘Manage all’ option.
• Select a recommendation title.
• Finish off by removing the recommendation you don’t want to see.

How Are Dimensions Listed On Amazon?

Dimensions are listed on the standard way of writing dimensions. It is length x width x height. However, a customer viewing a product doesn’t know what part of the item depicts which measure, so it usually becomes a guessing game. The product dimensions are mentioned in the ‘Technical Details’ section on the listing page. 

The measurements mentioned on a product are not for the packaging but only for the product itself.

How To Sell Other People’s Products On Amazon?

Retail arbitrage is a term that is defined as purchasing something for a seller and selling it at a profit online. In Amazon’s world, this same model of buying from one vendor and selling on Amazon is called Fulfilment By Amazon, popularly known as Amazon FBA.

How To Add Pictures To The Amazon Product Description?

• Suppose your brand is registered on Amazon seller central, open that account, and go in the advertising menu. 
• Select the A+ content manager from the dropdown. 
• Add the details on all the entry forms and then select *add module* to get different options for adding images, comparison charts, and logos. 
• Choose pictures and upload them to display on your product description.

How To Sell Brand Name Products On Amazon?

Retail arbitrage, known as Amazon FBA, is the way to sell brand name products on Amazon. It involves purchasing products from a brick and mortar store and selling it on Amazon FBA registered accounts. 

But that’s only one way of selling products with brand names on Amazon.

Other methods to sell such products on Amazon include selling private label products. Buying products from wholesale channels and selling them on Amazon with the permission of the wholesaler.

How To Transfer Ownership Of Amazon Seller Account?

You cannot transfer the ownership of an Amazon seller account. A new seller will need a new seller account with his tax documents. If you want someone else to manage your seller account, you can add users to the account, though.

How To Change Amazon Listing Title?

You can only change a product listing title if it is your brand. You need to send a request to the Amazon seller central for changing the title for other product listings. Even then, it is not definite that you get a changed product listing title.

How To Rate A Seller On Amazon?

Rating a seller is pretty standard. You go to the feedback section of your Amazon account. Open your previous orders, select a seller, and select the *leave seller feedback* option. 

Give your feedback and then save it. 

Congratulations on doing a valuable task for all the other potential buyers of that product.

How To Pick An Amazon Seller Name?

Choose a unique name that is also not hard to remember. Consider your seller nickname to be your brand identity on Amazon, so you need to be careful while selecting it. A name that standouts will garner more sales. 

Things that should be avoided while choosing a seller name are:

• negative words, 
• time-specific phrases or 
• something that twists an already existing seller name. 

How To Find A Storefront On Amazon?

You can find your storefront URL by clicking your brand name. That redirects you to the storefront URL of your product. An important point here is that a listing that hasn’t gone live cannot receive this URL. 

How To Improve Amazon Sales?

Amazon sales depend on several factors. You need to work on all the aspects of Amazon SEO. Other than that, keeping a market-competitive price helps you sell better. Furthermore, gauging your customers continuously and keeping a close check on the competitor’s strategies will sell better on Amazon. Interestingly, better sales lead to better sales ranking that again leads to better sales. 

And the cycle never ends.

Miscellaneous Amazon SEO & Sales FAQs.

What Is A Good CTR On Amazon?

Any CTR above 0.5% is considered acceptable on Amazon. A CTR under 0.5% is considered bad, though. To improve CTR on Amazon, dedicated ad campaigns are beneficial.

How To Clear Recommendations On Amazon?

Clearing recommendations is also standard practice on Amazon. Open the Amazon account. Go to the recommendations section. Open the view and manage all recommendations. Select a recommendation to remove. Click the remove button, and you’re done.

What Does SKU Mean On Amazon?

SKU stands for stock keeping unit. It is the product identification code that helps Amazon manage the inventory. Amazon tracks it through the bar codes. 

And that makes the end of our FAQs on Amazon SEO and sales process. Let’s quickly revisit the critical questions we have covered so far, along with the information on the SEO process:

Wrap Up

In today’s guide, we have shed some light on the process of Amazon SEO and tried learning the following:

Section 1:

• Amazon Search Engine Optimization and the introduction to the A9 algorithm.
• Amazon product listing guideline
  • Title optimization guide
  • Image optimization guide
  • Description optimization guide and
  • Bullets optimization guide

Section 2:

• Important FAQs about Amazon SEO and Sales
  • Search
  • Traffic and rankings
  •  Keywords
  • Sourcing, selling, and listing
  • Miscellaneous

Selling on Amazon the right way has a science behind it. You can definitely acquire the sales skills with Amazon SEO, but do you know if the information you get your hands on is authentic? What if you are following the wrong route?

Go through this guide to get authentic information to boost your business on Amazon. Should you need anything beyond this information, feel free to contact our Amazon Sales Experts. They have a history of growing companies from scratch on Amazon and other digital marketing platforms.

So, what’s the most pricking question bugging you about Amazon SEO right now? 

Also Read:

7 Ways To Boost Your Amazon Sales

Amazon SWOT Analysis: A Case Study To Find Your Competitive Edge