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Intro to Amazon Keywords

Before we get heavily into keywords, lets take a step back and look at what our goal is when we sell a product on Amazon.   For this post I’m talking about a product you can replenish and preferably one that you have a private label on or have an exclusive agreement for.  These are usually the products where you will be generating your own Product Display Page and where you will really want to maximize your sales.

We are going through a progression of ever more specific questions here.  One of the things I think we can all agree on is “When you get to the right question, the answer is usually self-evident.”   When we say “Why won’t my car start?”, we are at a very general level.  When we get to the “Why isn’t there any electricity to make the starter motor  turn over?”, we have usually gotten to the point where the answer is easy to find and solves the original problem.  Finding the right question is usually the key to success.

To Get Started – What Is Your Goal When You List a Product on Amazon?

Here is an example goal:  For each product, we want the maximum number of sales possible.

Let’s take a second and look at this goal and consider some definitions.  For me this is a goal since it basically unmeasurable and not time bounded.  Think about it.  If you end up selling 10,000 of your products a day, is that the maximum?  How would you possibly know?  If you can never know whether or not you reach your goal, then it is by definition unattainable.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t write out our goals.  It just means that we can’t stop there.

Once we have a goal,  we start thinking about steps we can take that we believe will move us closer to our goal.  Sometimes we might move to sub-goals and sometimes we move to objectives.   We can start very general, but we eventually want to end up with numbers and a time frame.  I’d like to point out that we can’t really be sure that our objectives will actually help us reach  our goal.   I’ll give you an example.  We have had a lot of people working on “We want to minimize drug abuse in the USA” for decades.  Over the years we have discovered that some logical “steps toward this goal” don’t work.  For example, scare tactics actually increase drug use and the side effects of heavy handed  attempts at suppress use using the legal system are probably as severe as the problem we are trying to solve.  My point here is that the “Steps We Need To Take To Reach Our Goal” aren’t always obvious or intuitive.

In the case driving traffic inside Amazon, I think we can feel pretty confident that the obvious steps will result in a good result.

So – What Should Should Our Next Step Be?   Sub-goal 1.

In this case I think it is best to move to a sub- goal.  This is another unattainable target.

Sub-Goal 1: Get at many buying customers in front of our product as possible

It seems logical that if we have move potential buyers looking at our product then we should have more sales.  Note that this is not “get as many eyeballs as possible on our product.”  Exposing random people or people who were searching for something else and you tricked them into coming to your Display Page will generate a negative effect.

So the question is “How do we get people who want to buy our product to our Display page?”

Let me tell  you what  the answer is NOT first!  Do not use “How would I would find that  product?”   Marketers are the worst judge of how the customers think.  Marketers are totally engaged in their products and as a result they see thing quite differently.  One example may clarify.   Marketers think about “ant-aging products”   That is a category and it is jargon.   The customers want to remove wrinkles and look younger.  It is extremely rare that someone walks into a store or fires up their computer and thinks: “I’ve got to go buy an anti-aging product.”

So if we can’t do it “our way,” how do we do it.

Listen to the Numbers

We go find how customers are arriving on Product Display Pages now.   We may not understand why it happens but these numbers are MUCH MORE important than what we think “should be happening.”

When we ask Amazon “How do customer get to the Display Pages where they buy products?”, the answer is always “The vast majority arrive there using Amazon’s Internal Search Engine.”    Now we are getting somewhere.

Our next question is “How does that search engine work?” or “How do I get customers to MY Display Page?”   While the exact algorithm is secret, the basic principle is clear.  The engine uses a combination of keywords, sales, and reviews.

The best data is to look at customers who are already buying the product you want to sell.  Sometimes that isn’t available, so you will need to use data from “similar products”.  In any case, use the DATA, not your logic.

Another Sub-Goal

Sub-goal 2: Discover the best keywords that current customers are using to find the product you want to sell.

Note that you still can’t  achieve this goal.  You won’t ever know if you have the BEST keywords.

We are almost there.

We Are Close Enough to Create An Objective – An Attainable Target

Let’s turn it into a specific Objective: Take one hour and follow a checklist of steps to find the top keywords that buyers are using to arrive at the Display Page to buy your product.

Now we have a time-bounded, attainable objective that should take us closer to our goal.

A Little More on Amazon Keywords Before We Leave

Tip 1: It will help you understand keywords better if you realize that keywords are the words that people use to find things.  There are however several different place where people search and they are searching for different things.

1. Searches in Facebook – people are searching for places that interest them – usually there is little or no interest in buying things.
2. Searches in Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. – Here people are searching for information and perhaps to buy something.
3. Searches as reported by the Google Keyword Planner – the planner reports on searches, but its major focus is on what advertisers are paying for.  The keyword planner is about about the marketers buying and paying for ads.
4. Searches in Amazon – people are focused on BUYING.  They aren’t looking for information, they are looking to buy.  (The exception is marketers, we are looking for information about what people are buying and what customers are saying about what they buy.   We are a very small minority.)

There is a difference in the mindset of people carrying out the searches I just described.  You need to be careful to use the numbers generated by the people you are interested in.  When you are trying to maximize your results inside Amazon, you need to look primarily at the numbers generated by people searching in Amazon (or eBay).

Tip 2: You need to look beyond the results given to you by the search engines and tools that reports their data.  It is important to realize that the tools we use to report search engine data expand on the word to start the search  with.  They will give you a few synonyms, but their scope is very narrow.  For example, if you search for the word “Celebrities” you would get a list of the top celebrities.  You will get things like “Celebrity Cruises”, “Celebrity Gossip” and “Celebrity News.”   You need to go inside articles or in Amazon, inside product reviews to expand your point for view.  Another example is searching for “Cartoon.”  You won’t get anything about “Anime” which is a HUGE genre of cartoons.

Tip 3: There is a secondary reason to collect numbers on key words.  The primary reason is to feed the search engines words that customers are using.   The secondary reason is to talk like your customers do in your descriptions and bullet points.   The descriptions and bullet points are not used by the Amazon search engine.  I’ll give one example.  The phrase “Dog Toy” has 2.9 million searches.   the phrase “Dogs Toys” has 5.3 million searches.  Note that Amazon strips out characters like apostrophe.  I interpret these number to mean that most people consider the toy as belonging to the dog.  They see the toy as being the “Dog’s toy.”  Fewer people talk about the toy appropriate for dogs i.e. a “dog toy.”  When writing desciprtions it would appear that I should talk about the Dog’s toy and not a dog toy.

In the next post we’ll look at checklist of steps.

Until Next time, you have a Great Day!  Oh Hale Yes!

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Hale Pringle Ed. D.

Hale Pringle – Hale Yes!

Skype hale.pringle

Email:  Hale@HalePringle.com

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P.S. If you are working to move your business online and it all seems overwhelming, I can help! My team and I are currently working with best “Earn Money Quickly From Home” Program I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen them ALL!) I strongly urge you to take a look at http://HalePringle.com/ds. You can also take a look around http://HalePringle.com, especially the resources menu option. You will see that I specialize in list building, am a Certified Trainer with Ann Sieg and am an award winning blogger. I’ve also written three books on AWeber (AWeber: Quick Start) and over 20 others. You can email me or give me a Skype call. I’ll give you the benefit of my years of experience and many thousands of dollars in training and searching the rabbit hole called Internet Marketing and especially selling physical products online.