What is Keyword Targeting on Amazon?

Keyword targeting is essential if you’re an Amazon seller.

Many online behaviors haven’t changed in years. 93% of online sessions still begin with a keyword query on a search engine. This is especially true when shopping online, and most buyers start their product searches on Amazon.

Amazon uses keywords for organic product searches and sponsored products and brands. By targeting the best keywords, you can increase sales and defeat the competition.

But what is Amazon keyword targeting? And how do you use this strategy? Let’s review the steps to create the most robust keyword-targeting campaign.

What Is Keyword Targeting?

Keyword targeting is optimizing your website, blog, products, and ads for keywords. The goal is for your website or listing to appear higher in search engine results.

Marketers conduct keyword research to find the best-performing search terms to create a winning keyword targeting strategy. We’ll discuss this more later in the article.

Why Keyword Targeting Is Important

Amazon keyword targeting is vital to increasing brand awareness and driving revenue. But what makes keyword targeting essential for Amazon?

Dominate search engines. You’re competing with two million Amazon sellers. By optimizing your products for keywords, you’ll appear higher on Amazon searches. When your products and ads are at the top of search engines, your visibility is enhanced, and you gain more customers.
Better targeting customers. Keyword targeting is an effective way to find and engage your buyers. Keywords can identify your buyers’ wants and needs, and you can communicate these solutions in your product and ad copy. The right keyword research can pinpoint user intent, which we will cover later.

Understanding Keyword Targeting on Amazon

Keyword optimization helps you appear higher on Amazon searches and can also target user intent. But how do you use keyword targeting on Amazon?

Product targeting: Product targeting uses keywords and categories to increase visibility on your listings. You can list your products in categories such as “winter shoes” and use keywords such as “women’s winter boots.” On the contrary, you can also list categories, keywords, and brands that don’t fit your products (more on that later).
Sponsored brands: Sponsored brands are a type of branded advertising in which Amazon promotes your company and showcases numerous products. Amazon uses meaning-based keywords to promote certain brands. For example, if you sell winter wardrobes, Amazon will display your sponsored brand ad for all winter-related clothing search queries.

Steps to Select the Best Keywords

Before starting a keyword targeting strategy, you must optimize your ads and listings for the best keywords. But how do you find high-ranking keywords?

Learn the Different Types of Keywords

There are numerous keyword categories, and optimizing search terms in each is best. The most common keyword categories are:

Longtail. Keyword phrases that are at least three words long. These have a lower search volume but are the most commonly searched by buyers.
Generic. Shorter and broader keywords.
Seasonal. Keywords that represent sales periods or holidays.
Branded. Keywords that include your company’s name.

Keyword match type is also important. These include:

Exact match. Your listings and ads are only displayed if a buyer searches the exact keyword you chose.
Phrase match. Your product listings and ads appear when a buyer searches for the exact phrase, but not in the correct order.
Broad match. Your product listings and ads are displayed if a buyer searches any word in your chosen keyword phrase.

Search for Keywords

The next step is to find keywords that match these categories. Start by searching for queries on keyword search tools. There are free and paid tools, many of which are geared to Amazon.

Ideally, you’ll want to find keywords with the highest search traffic and lowest competition, but sellers should ultimately use buyer intent when selecting the best search terms.

While there’s no required number of keywords to use for each listing or ad, try to have 25 different search terms. Search for different aspects of your products, such as materials, characteristics, and benefits.

Don’t forget branded searches and include your branded keywords in every product.

Add Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are search terms you’re excluding from your front-end campaign. Regarding the keyword match types, your products and ads can appear on a broad match search. The other results may not relate to your brand or products and could hinder your reputation.

Adding negative keywords to your campaign ensures that your listings and ads appear only on relevant searches. Concerning advertising, these keywords can also help you control your budget.

Let’s say you sell beauty products, but you don’t sell fragrance. You may exclude keywords, categories, and brands in the fragrance niche to ensure buyers don’t confuse your brand with perfume companies and products.

Create Your Campaign

Now that you have your keywords, you can create your keyword targeting campaign. This is easy to do on Amazon.

Here’s how to add backend keywords to a product listing:

Log into Amazon Seller Central
Go to Inventory and then Manage All Inventory
Find the listing you want to optimize and click Edit
Click Product Details
Enter your search terms in the Generic Keyword field

Here’s how to add keywords to a sponsored ad:

Log into Amazon Seller Central
Navigate to your Sponsored Ad Campaigns
Click Targeting
Add keywords in the appropriate field

What About Automatic Targeting?

Amazon offers an automatic targeting option for ads. With automatic targeting, Amazon will match your ad with keywords that similar brands and products have used.

Should you use this option? This is recommended if this is your first time advertising on Amazon or you want to set up your campaign quickly. Even if you choose automatic targeting, you should still monitor your results. You can always edit your campaign and manually enter keywords.

If you have a background in advertising or marketing, and/or have experience with Amazon advertising, you may find manual targeting is the best option. This way, you have more control over your keyword and similar product/brand matches.

More Amazon Keyword Targeting Tips

There are ways to use keyword targeting to get more clicks. Here are a few extra tips:

Try setting multiple match types for the same keyword. This tactic will not result in losing impressions; in fact, it can widen your search results.
There’s no need to add plural or alternative spellings of keywords. Since Amazon ranks by user intent, the algorithm will rank your keywords for plural and alternative spelling varieties as long as they fit user intent. Examples include “speaker” versus “speakers” or “multi-colored dress” versus “multi-coloured dress.”
While long tail keywords are at least three words long, try to rank for the shorter ones. Most buyers will enter three-word queries for product searches.
If you want to rank for niche product searches, add a negative keyword for product searches outside this category. For example, you can enter a broad match for “women’s fitness leggings” but enter a negative keyword for “women’s fashion leggings” if you only attract female consumers who want to buy activewear.

Do You Need Help With Keyword Targeting?

So many buyers hop on Amazon and enter a search query when they want or need a product. That’s why keyword targeting is an essential tactic for Amazon sellers. To target keywords on Amazon, learn the different types of search terms and research the keywords that perform best.

Did you try search term optimization and didn’t get good results? We can unlock your hidden opportunities on Amazon.

When you work with AMZ Advisers, we set you up with a custom team that provides creatives and copy for your ads and listings. We track your KPIs to ensure you’re ranking and selling. Click here to schedule a consultation.

Author

Stephanie Jensen has been writing ecommerce content for seven years, and her copy has helped numerous stores rank on Amazon. Follow her on LinkedIn for more insight into freelance writing and creating high-quality content.

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