6 Tips to Improve Amazon SEO for a Product Page During the Holidays

The 2021 holiday shopping season is here! With the influx of customers coming to Amazon to shop during the Q4 period, sellers and brands must have a strong Amazon SEO strategy to ensure that their product detail pages are optimized for customer searchability and conversions.

According to Feedvisor proprietary research, nearly half (44%) of consumers do not go past the second page of search results on Amazon. So, if your Amazon product listings are not ranking on the first two pages for your product’s most relevant keywords, then you’ll be missing out on those profitable holiday sales.

Follow the holiday tips below and learn how to improve SEO on Amazon, how to get your product to the top of Amazon searches, and how to increase organic sales on Amazon during the 2021 holiday season.

1. Understand Amazon SEO and why it’s important during the holidays

SEO stands for search engine optimization, which increases the quality and quantity of traffic from the organic or natural search results on search engines. However, Amazon’s search engine operates differently than other search engines.

As Amazon is a product-based search engine designed for making purchases, it has an advantage because it does not need to consider “how-to” informational searches from users. Instead, it focuses on matching consumers with the most relevant products based on the search terms they enter.

Amazon’s algorithm is known as A9 (also known in 2021 as Amazon A10). The A9 search algorithm is built on two core tenets: performance and relevance. A product with a strong sales performance history will rank higher in Amazon’s search results, as will a product that effectively uses the proper keywords to match customers’ search queries.

The more sales you generate, the more Amazon benefits. Therefore, Amazon’s algorithm will prioritize those products with robust sales. For relevance, ask yourself how relevant your product is to what the consumer is searching for. When optimizing your product listings on Amazon, keep these two factors in mind to increase your chances of achieving higher organic search rankings.

Now that you have a better understanding of how Amazon search engine optimization works, you can follow these remaining Amazon SEO tips for creating and enhancing your listings to increase your products’ visibility and sales this holiday season.

2. Learn how to optimize keywords on Amazon for the holidays

Amazon’s search engine algorithm is constantly being refined and evolved. However, it is known that the keywords in your product listings significantly influence your product’s ranking.

You can use keywords to match customer search queries to your products on Amazon. Long-tail search terms (three or more words) are more effective in specifying what a user wants.

When a short-tail or broad search term is used, Amazon is forced to display the most relevant items associated with the term. For instance, type in the word “candle,” and Amazon will display various products related to the term candle. However, type in “apple cinnamon scented candle,” and Amazon will show a particular set of products.

The more relevant and detailed the search term, the more relevant search results Amazon will display to the shopper. Therefore, you must research which keywords rank the highest for the products you sell. If you do not do this, you risk choosing keywords for Amazon that few customers use, limiting how many people actually see your product.

As an alternate strategy, you might also consider using the next-to-highest ranking keywords for your products, which have less competition. In these scenarios, optimizing a listing for “women’s jeans” and expecting it to land at the top of Amazon’s SERP is unlikely. Instead, you might end up ranking higher using a long-tail keyword such as “women’s high-waisted skinny jeans.”

There are many third-party Amazon keyword tools for conducting research. While you can — and should — research the most popular short and long-tail keywords in your product categories, do not overlook these three valuable keyword resources:

Product reviews
Your competitors’ product listings
The top sellers within the specific, more niche subcategories in which your products fall

The following four tips provide specific recommendations on optimizing the various sections of each product listing for the holiday season.

3. Optimize your Amazon product title for holiday shopping trends

According to Amazon, “the product title is one of the main fields used by Amazon and search engines to measure the relevancy of a detail page as part of a customer search.” That means that titles created for a specific category perform better in product searches.

Therefore, the most relevant keywords for your product should go in your title.

For Amazon SEO purposes, the title should clearly identify what is being sold and balance being both brief and keyword-rich. Specify the product’s color, size, and other attributes, which may be top keywords, and indicate the quantity included, if applicable.

The words included in the title will determine where the product appears in search results, so make sure that your title is both concise and relevant to your target audience. Amazon also offers thorough Category Style Guides, as each product category requires a unique title structure.

4. Optimize bullet points by highlighting key product features

In your product features, you can include up to five bullet points to highlight the core features and benefits of the product. This is also a section that you should use to incorporate your most important keywords.

The bullet points show up in an “About the product” section and provide a quick snapshot overview of the item. Save this space for the most essential information and include how your product may be better than a competitor’s option. Think about customer pain points and address how your product solves these issues.

According to Amazon, “It is better to keep bullet points clear and concise…Keep your bullet points under 1,000 characters in total for all five bullets, not per bullet. Being less than 1,000 characters improve their readability.”

5. Use the Amazon product description to push the purchase for the upcoming holidays

As the product description is located further down on the listing page, if a customer scrolls down to read it, they likely have a good intent to purchase.

Use the product description space to provide more detailed product information to help answer any potential customer questions while also demonstrating any value-added benefits or features of the product. It’s also the ideal place to present your brand story and mission, gain consumer trust, and establish credibility.

Descriptions should be limited to 2,000 characters, so keep your description informative and concise. To help your product rank well, be sure to include keywords throughout that align with the search terms your target audience is using.

6. Optimize the backend trending holiday search terms on Amazon

Backend search terms, or meta tags, are keywords that are added into the listing’s backend and do not appear on the actual customer-facing product listing. These terms are valuable as they can help your Amazon products appear in more customer searches without having to “keyword stuff” or fit in more high-ranking long-tail keyword phrases elsewhere.

Amazon limits the length of backend search terms to less than 250 bytes. It helps to create a list of your product’s top keywords, add them into the other listing fields, what you have leftover to go into the backend.

When optimizing your search terms, you want to include:

Synonyms
Spelling variations, but not misspellings
Abbreviations and alternate names
All lowercase characters
Separate words with spaces

When optimizing your search terms, you don’t want to include:

Backend keywords that exceed the 250 bytes limit
Product identifiers such as ASINs, your brand name, or other brand names
Temporary statements such as “new” or “on sale now”
Subjective claims such as “best” or “amazing”
Abusive or offensive terms
Repeat any keywords

It’s important to remember that all keywords you include in the backend must maintain high relevance to the product. If any included search terms do not pertain to the product, it will only hinder its discoverability.

About the Author

Dawn Jenks is a copywriter for Feedvisor, where she develops SEO e-commerce product descriptions and is a contributing blog writer. She was previously a travel public relations executive, and enjoys running, hiking, cooking, and reading.

Final Thoughts

Competition amongst Amazon sellers and brands during the holidays is fierce. So follow these SEO tips to ensure your products are visible to holiday shoppers on Amazon.

To learn additional strategies to improve discoverability and shopper engagement on Amazon, check out Feedvisor’s Amazon SEO Playbook.

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6 Tips to Improve Amazon Product Detail Page SEO For the Holidays

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