Most customers don't visit the Amazon website to browse—they're looking for a specific product. If you want to reach those customers, you need to make sure your Amazon Product Listings are using the correct backend keywords.
Using the right keywords in your product listings means that when customers do a search using those keywords, they'll be able to find your product. Targeting the keywords that customers actually use when they're looking for what you have to offer will help you get your listings on their search result pages.
Understanding Amazon Backend Keywords
Keywords are, of course, terms that are relevant to your product, and you probably already know how to use them in your product title and description, which are visible to customers when they read your listing. However, there's another way to improve your rankings, with backend keywords.
These are hidden search terms that you can add to your product listing. They don't show up to the customer, but they work to help improve your listings' SEO. Amazon gives you the chance to add some extra keywords that would be hard to incorporate easily into your description.
Using Amazon Backend Keywords
It's easy to add backend keywords to your listings. We'll explain how to add them and what you should consider when choosing your backend keywords.
Where to Enter Backend Keywords
You can find the place to add these extra keywords in your Seller Center. From the main page of your Seller Center, go to your Inventory section, and then choose the “Offer” tab. Click on “Keywords” and from there, open the hidden keyword section. This will be where you can enter the backend keywords you want to add to your listing.
Amazon limits these keywords to 250 bytes, which is approximately 250 characters, although some specific characters may be 2 bytes. You'll only be able to save your entry if it doesn't exceed this limit, so pay attention to your character count.
How to Choose Backend Keywords
Do your research
Since you have to keep to a strict character limit, focus on the keywords that are most important. Do some keyword research to find out what customers are actually searching for. The best way to do this is with tools like Sonar and others to find Amazon-specific keywords that people are using in their searches. While general keywords are important in your listings, Amazon-specific ones are essential because people search differently on Amazon than they do on Google or other general search engines.
Use spelling and language variations
Common misspellings are often used as backend keywords. You can also include translations of important keywords in other widely-spoken languages (such as Spanish in the US and French in Canada), synonyms, and abbreviations that you can't incorporate into your product descriptions.
Skip punctuation and filler words
Since the space for backend keywords is limited, you should only use the keywords themselves, separated by a space. There's no need to create a comma-separated list, and the commas just take up character space. You can also get rid of any other punctuation. Additionally, don't use filler words like “the” or “and” in your list. These again just take up space, and they're ignored by search engines. Look for a list of “stop words” if you'd like to know exactly which words are safe to eliminate.
Avoid duplicates of your standard keywords
The Amazon search engine indexes the text on your product listings, so all the keywords you've already used there will be considered when returning results for a customer's search. Don't waste the limited hidden keyword space available to you on terms you've already incorporated into your listing. Use this space for additional terms that are not already in your product title and description.
Monitor performance and update as necessary
The ideal keywords for a listing can change over time, so don't just set it and forget it. Review the performance of your keywords regularly and make adjustments as necessary, both in your product description and title as well as your backend keywords. Also take a look at your reviews to see if there any common descriptors that you could add.
There are many benefits to using backend keywords. They allow you to target searches that you can't easily add to your product descriptions and focus on the way that customers are searching on Amazon.