How to find the best merchant keywords to sell on Amazon like a pro?

Before showing you how to get your product listing well-optimized for the right merchant keywords and long-tail search terms like a pro, let me start with a little piece of learning. I mean that you should have at least a basic understanding of the A9 search ranking algorithm – first and foremost. So, Amazon's A9 is a specific product-oriented search algorithm that serves to rank product listings with the items on sale by their appropriate categories and for the most relevant merchant keywords. And considering that it's constantly changing, there is a dire need to stay always updated on the most recent changes. Ideally – to keep everything in your product listing well-optimized according to the main guidelines and requirements valid for the moment.

Product-Oriented Amazon SEO and Merchant Keywords

So, let's face it – Amazon SEO taken at scale, as well as its product-oriented research to find the right merchant keywords are completely different processes than the ones, for example, used by the major search engines like Google itself. I mean that something that worked well for you in the original online search isn't necessarily meant to serve you in the same way. While Google is just doing its best in order to meet the user's search request in the most accurate way, Amazon's search ranking algorithm is designed to list the products by the most relevant and frequently used merchant keywords at the top of its SERPs. Ideally, to show the most demanded items on Amazon sale, which are meeting the search request in full and therefore are most likely to be purchased by the live shoppers looking for the items they need over there.

Core Ranking Factors by Amazon’s A9 Search Algorithm

As a result, your product-oriented research to find the most fitting and profitable merchant keywords is expected to be revolving mainly around just two categories, which pull together the primary ranking factors of core importance. Here they are:

• Factors of Performance – when looking at the major performance factors, Amazon's A9 algorithm just wants to "understand" how well every given item has already performed with the live shoppers through the recent period. Most commonly, the overall commercial success and item popularity among the buyers can be evaluated using the rate of Conversion and the relative net sales themselves.
• Factors of Relevance – this category ranking factors are intended to help Amazon determine how well a given product is marching the user's search query for the relevant merchant keywords and long-tail search expressions. It means that your product ranking position in Amazon's list of the SERPs will be in-part figured looking precisely at the right merchant keywords used by the sellers to optimize every section of their product pages. So, here is when a product-oriented keyword research comes into play! As you want to gain better prominence in the relevant search on that really crowded and highly competitive online marketplace, right?

All You Need to Know About Winning Merchant Keywords

The thing is that Amazon shoppers are commonly not willing and ready to keep browsing through too many pages of the SERPs to finally find what they are looking for. In fact, they just want to find the best match as soon as possible – and it means that your product listing should be always seen on the first page of the relevant search results. Otherwise, you will simply have no actual sales deals, and no matter how competitive you are, for example, in terms of product pricing, quality, its shipment options, or your customer support service. Seriously, all that will make no sense, unless you have your product page well-optimized and rich with the right merchant keywords that the lion's share of potential clients are most likely to be searching for. That's why the only way to becoming a really successful Amazon seller is to make your products be quickly found by the live shoppers, or at least having your items on sale displayed in the list of the SERPs among the leading offers of your closest competitors for the similar product or within the same category. 

How to Find Top-Performing Keywords the Right Way

And below I will show you just some cold facts about ranking on Amazon and in what way you're recommended to handle your own keyword research. Ideally, to find a sufficient number of really profitable merchant keywords and the rest of must-winning search terms you're intended to get your product listing optimized for. 

So, here is what makes a profitable product-oriented keyword research on Amazon:

• Before anything else, for the initial insight on your potentially winning merchant keywords, I recommend checking out your Google AdWords – just to see which of them are currently popular without being too competitive at the same time. That way, you will have a nice starting point for Amazon keyword research and probably get some extra ideas in your area of business – relying not only on a single ecommerce platform, but getting everything pulled together directly from the whole online search within Google's index.
• Where you're putting your main target merchant keywords does matter! Given that Amazon shoppers are generally paying a more precise attention to the Product Title and Product Images in particular, the A9 ranking algorithm gives them a definitely stronger priority. That's why namely those areas should be the main spots of your keyword research and product listing optimization of the core importance.
• According to generally accepted estimate, something around 70% of Amazon's request queries are long-tail product terms and search expressions made up with at least two relevant merchant keywords. 

• Long-tail search combinations frequently used by the live shoppers on Amazon are usually converted at a much higher rate, particularly if weighed against the rest of the simplest queries made up with just singular merchant keywords. 
• Remember to fill the ending part of your product listing with the rest of your main target merchant keywords (a.k.a Amazon backend search terms). Being actually invisible and never seen by the live users, this section is intended to be embedded with the rest of your remaining long-tail search combinations which failed to find their proper placement elsewhere throughout your product page (you have got up to 1,000 characters left for that purpose). Just make sure you've got everything in place with your backend search terms – Amazon will still pick up on them for your own advantage as a successful seller.
• Every successful businessman selling on Amazon know it well – better SEO for the right merchant keywords means better Click-Through-Rate (CTR). Put simply, the better you're matching the most frequent customer requests with your main search terms, and the more relevant products you're optimizing for – the higher your CTR metrics is going to be. That way, your product listing will have a certainly higher chance of being clicked, and probably better conversion as well as income-generating potential.

Bottom Line

Considering all major ideas and general suggestions listed before, here is a brief summary which covers the main steps of identifying the best performing merchant keywords. Ultimately – to make your product listing on Amazon precisely targeted to your main site (or a given product category your sales are targeted at), in line with pumping you more search traffic. 

So, here is how you can benefit from a rather low keyword competition, combined with a sufficiently high level of commerciality:

• Start with identifying Seed Keywords (use Google's AdWords to get a big picture of your relevant merchant keywords and their current level of competition/search volumes for you to have a solid kickstart with a product-oriented keyword research).
• Proceed with Generating Keyword Ideas (prepare the main list of your target merchant keywords – and simply refine it into a much shorter checklist that has only the best of must-winning search terms and the rest of potentially profitable expressions frequently used by the live shoppers on Amazon).
• End up with analyzing Keyword Metrics (I recommend using one of the following online tools specifically tailored for Amazon sellers for running a competitive research and locating top profitable merchant keywords for handling your product page SEO. All of these software tools and online platforms have got a use-proven performance, so feel free at least to have a try with Sonar (free Amazon keyword tool, also available as a really handy Google Extension), Scope (pro online platform with a number of different browser extensions available, has a free trial access and a full-fat version that will cost you something around 60 bucks monthly), Semalt Full-Stack Package for Amazon Sellers (just visit their official site – everything is nearly self-explanatory over there, if you're tired of that too hard everyday survival on Amazon and want to finally make your product listings really sell for you – you MUST check this out).