If you are an Amazon seller— or even buyer— then you are certainly familiar with Amazon product listings. Amazon listings or product pages tell your customers all they need to know about your specific items, complete with a multitude of information such as title, price, features, and even images or videos of the products in action.
With the massive amount of products on Amazon, shoppers often don’t make it past page one of the search results. So, if your product is lower on the search results, chances are it isn’t getting nearly as much visibility or conversions as its competitors.
In this article, we go over Amazon listing optimization and how to create listings on Amazon.
Table of Contents
What Is Amazon Listing Optimization?
Listing optimization is stylizing your product listings to increase your products’ traffic and conversion. For any seller to be successful, optimizing your listings on Amazon to rank as high as possible in search engines is important. After all, the higher you rank, the more likely customers will see your products and thus increase your sales.
How to Create Listings on Amazon
Before you begin, you have to learn how to create listings in the first place. Down below is our step-by-step guide to how to approach doing so.
Step 1
Log into your seller account – If you haven’t already, you will need to create an Amazon Seller Central account.
Step 2
Click the “Add a Product” feature under the Inventory drop-down menu on your account.
Step 3
On the page, you can choose to create a listing from three methods:
- Add a product which is already on Amazon by searching for the product by name or product ID.
- Select “Create a new product listing” below the search box. This should be used if you are uploading a brand new product that is currently not sold on Amazon. This is the method we will be going over today.
- Select “Bulk upload” if you want to upload multiple products at once
Step 4
Once you clicked on “Create a new product listing”, now you can assign an Amazon category to your listing. You can find the category either by browsing or using the search feature.
Step 5
Now, you have to fill in the listing information for your product.
You will have to fill out seven tabs:
- Vital information – this includes the product title, manufacturer and brand, manufacturer part number, and etc.
- Variations – if your product comes in a variety of colors or sizes, you will indicate that here
- Offer – this includes important designation, country of publication, seller warranty description, etc.
- Images – you can upload product images here
- Description – this is where you would write the key product features and product description
- Keywords – this includes search terms and platinum keywords (if you are a Platinum Seller)
- More details – this section is the longest, and includes information such as the manufacturer’s suggested retail price and sale price
Step 6
Once you click “Save and Finish”, you’re done!
While the steps above work, the best and easiest way to create listings is through using ZonBase’s Listify tool, which helps you create product listings geared for Amazon listing optimization just with the copy and paste of a link.
How to Optimize Listings on Amazon
Now that you know how to create listings, it is time for you to optimize them. As shown above, there are many aspects to product listings, and it is necessary to stylize each section for the best listing optimization on Amazon.
1. Keywords
Keywords are one of the main factors in optimization. Misusing keywords is a common mistake sellers make on Amazon, so it is important for you to know what relevant keywords you are targeting when creating listings.
Don’t know what keywords to use? While you can research it by looking at competitors’ listings manually, there is an easier, surefire way to know the best keywords for your product’s discoverability. That method uses an Amazon seller software suite, such as ZonBase.
ZonBase’s Reverse ASIN tool allows you to spy on your rivals’ top keywords, giving you insight on the competition. Along with that, our Keywords tool helps you find relevant keywords to optimize your product listings and PPC campaigns. Researching keywords for optimization has never been easier than with ZonBase.
Keywords can be added in places such as your title and product features. You can also use backend keywords to enhance your product rankings.
2. Product Title
Amazon allows product title length to be up to 250 characters. However, while you can use that many characters, having a long product title is bad for optimization as the algorithm suppresses listings with titles over 200 characters.
In your product titles, you should give the potential customers enough important information to decide if they want to proceed with reading the listing or not. This often includes the product’s brand, model, color, size, quantity, etc. You can also include important product features or who the product is designed for (ex: babies).
Here are some more tips we recommend following for a great, optimized title:
- Don’t use all caps
- Don’t include price and quantity
- All numbers should be numerals
- Capitalize the first letter of each word
- Use “and” and not ampersands (&)
- No symbols
- No promotions, such as sales or discounts
3. Key Product Features
After writing an optimized title, you must focus on your key product features— also known as bullet points. You get 1,000 characters or five bullet points to describe your key product features. This area of the listing should be used to persuade potential customers by explaining the uses and benefits of your product.
Many companies do this by helping buyers visualize the experience of using what you’re selling, usually utilizing lifestyle uses or real-world examples. An example of this would be describing an umbrella protecting you from the rain.
While the ideal length of the bullet points varies from category to category, around 200 characters should be enough room to incorporate key phrases and defining product features while still being easy for consumers to read.
Here are some Amazon listing optimization tips for bullet points:
- Highlight the top five features you want your audience to consider
- Point out the primary feature in the beginning of the bullet, following through with a more detailed explanation
- Begin each bullet point with a capital letter
- Be specific with the product’s characteristics and features
- Use a consistent tone
4. Product Description
The product description is where you should sell your audience why your product is better than others. In this section, you should fully explain your product features and introduce any additional features or benefits. Like the bullet point section, you should include real-life uses to highlight how the product will improve your buyers’ lives.
To best do this, you should aim to use as much of the 2,000 characters as possible. It is best to use shorter sentences and to bold any key information to make it easier for potential consumers to skim and read.
In your description, you should add keywords geared towards optimization that you couldn’t include in your title or bullet point section. It is also important to avoid promotional languages—such as free shipping or sales—and company information.
While it is important to promote your product, make sure to support any claims you make. You don’t want to overexaggerate as that can create false expectations and mislead your customers.
5. Product Images
In your listing, your allowed to have nine product images including a lead image. You should make use of this and include as many high-quality images as you can—sized at least 1,000 x 500 pixels.
While all the images play a part in attracting buyers, the main image is objectively the most important. The quality of the first image often determines whether customers click on your listing in the first place. Because of this, it should be a clear, appealing image on a white background. It should also be a minimum of 1,000 x 1,000 pixels so shoppers can zoom in to see the details.
Other than that, your photos should show the product from different angles, in use, and in its packaging as well as show the size and scale of the product.
To ensure your product images are high-converting, we recommend using ZonBase’s Photo Enhancer service, where our team of experts will transform them into high-quality explainer photos.
6. Search Terms Fields
Whatever optimization keywords you can’t fit in your title and bullet points will go into the backend Search Terms field. This field allows up to 250 bytes for keywords. A byte is equal to one character for letters and numbers and two characters for symbols and special characters.
It is vital to keep your Search Terms field within 250 bytes. If you exceed that amount, all of your backend keywords will be disregarded.
In the search field, you can also include less important keywords in the Target Audience, Intended Use, and Subject Matter fields as long as they are relevant to the section.
Consistent Brand Patterns
While you want to optimize each aspect above, that is not all you have to think about in your product listing. Keeping your brand’s language and patterns consistent is important in building your brand, as it makes your brand seem more legitimate and boosts your brand recognition with clients.
Below, we have some tips to help you achieve a consistent brand image:
Create a brand style guide
A brand style and usage guide should be one of the first things established about your brand. This guide is beneficial in ensuring all of the brand’s written content—from listings, and emails, to customer service— is uniform.
Put your logo and design elements everywhere
Along with a style guide, your logo is also one of the first things you should create for your brand. This logo should be provided to all team members, along with information on any brand identity elements they should keep in mind.
These design elements include the following:
- Color Scheme
- Logos/Submarks
- Typography
- Icons
- Photos/Images
- Patterns
- Textures
Packaging
On your product listing, it is recommended to include at least one product image in its packaging. Extending your branding to your packaging is useful for building your brand identity. Whether using the same color box, stickers with your logo on them, or brand labels, customized packaging gives your buyers a good customer experience. It allows them to recognize your branding from the shipment.
Listen to your Customers
Now that you have done all of the above, you have to find out if it works. We recommend using third parties to review your marketing efforts across the platforms. This can be through questionnaires or reading customer reviews on platforms other than Amazon. You can also analyze which products, posts, and experiences have been most successful with your target audience.
Amazon Product Listing Optimization Services
We know— optimizing all these factors is a lot to think about. Luckily for you, there are Amazon listing optimization services that help you streamline the process.
The best Amazon listing optimization service we can recommend is ZonBase. ZonBase is a software that has 14 features to help you get the most out of your Amazon business. This includes a variety of optimization tools, such as ZonTracker— which tracks the top keyword rankings— and the previously mentioned Listify. However, that isn’t even the best part. Using our Listing Optimizer service, you can just hand the entire optimization process over to our team of Amazon professionals and they will use data-driven keywords to improve your visibility and maximize your conversions. Honestly, it can’t get easier than that.
Conclusion
So, if you are having trouble with Amazon listing optimization, then check us out at ZonBase and try our free trial for 7 days! You won’t regret it.
