13 Tips for Choosing Valuable Amazon Backend Keywords

4. Utilize Your Amazon Search Term Report to find Backend Keywords

Keyword research is an important part of developing a good set of backend keywords. Interestingly enough, you can leverage Amazon to do this.

You can download an Amazon Search Term Report to find great backend keywords to use when trying to optimize your product listing.

 This report is accessible by navigating to the homepage in Seller Central, then hovering over the reports tab. When the drop-down appears, click “Advertising Reports.”

This link goes to the “All Campaigns” section of the reporting tab. The best practice is to create a report with a period of 7-10 days. 

After your timeline has been selected, click “Create Report,” and then download the report.

Take note of high-performing keywords and include them in the development of your own backend keywords.

This will take you straight to the All Campaigns section of the advertising reports. 

Set a reporting period of 7-10 days and click the Create report button. 

To complete the process, click on the download option.

5. Remove Fillers & Punctuation

While it may seem natural, using punctuation when developing your backend keywords is actually a waste of time. Avoid writing Amazon backend keywords like a sentence, and instead, focus on inputting the words that will help your brand grow online.

Avoid using words like “a,” “an,” “and,” “by,” “for,” “of,” “the,” “with,” and others. At the end of the day, adding punctuation will not take up your valuable character limit, but it won’t add any value to your listing.

Check out this article from Amazon on best practices when it comes to creating keywords.

6. Include Synonyms & Word Variations

For any reader who lives in Canada (just giving this example, given we are here in Toronto), you know that the winter is dry and cold. Your hands are feeling the pain, so you go online to buy yourself some hand lotion. Or was it hand cream?

The point is, both will get you what you want, and you may even see the same product when you type in “hand cream” and “hand lotion” as two separate search results.

This is no accident. It is best to include spelling variations, synonyms, and word variations in your backend keyword list.

7. Use Keywords Sparingly

This ties back to point 3, but Amazon does not require you to use keywords more than once in your frontend or backend.

Let’s use the example of Coppertone sunscreen. 

If you are selling it, you may select “copper” and “tone” as two independent keywords, and “Coppertone” as another, separate keyword.

Don’t do this. Your goal should be to optimize your backend keywords, not to encumber them.

8. Monitor performance

The cardinal sin of selling on Amazon is adopting the mindset of “set and forget.” Much like achieving success in life, selling on Amazon requires constant improvement, evaluation, and a commitment to doing better time and time again.

To truly optimize your Amazon SEO and Amazon PPC, you must monitor the performance of your keywords by examining any observed improvement in conversion that results from using these keywords in your Amazon product listing, either on the frontend or the backend.

9. Include Abbreviations and Alternative Names

Try to make your listings as understandable and relatable as possible. If you are listing a product with a common acronym, like “Game of Thrones Collectibles,” be sure to use “GoT” as a backend keyword.

Why? While you may think “Game of Thrones” when looking for a product, your customers may jump to the GoT abbreviation.

Your goal is to use these keywords to reach as wide an audience as possible, and being inclusive with your use of abbreviations and acronyms will ensure that your product is more likely to appear in Amazon’s search results.

10. Do Not Worry About Capitalization

When you text, do you capitalize everything automatically because it’s what you learned in school? Like most people, capitalizing words is second nature – effectively automatic.

When it comes to backend keywords, forget what you learned in school and focus on saving time. Backend keywords do not need to be capitalized, and to save time, avoid capitalization when creating them.

11. Always follow Amazon’s SEO Compliance guidelines

A great piece of advice is to do what Amazon says. When it comes to backend keywords, always follow Amazon’s published guidelines.

There are two important guidelines to adhere to when creating backend keywords.

1. Use Relevant Keywords 

Only use keywords that are relevant to your product. If you use generic popular keywords that don’t relate to your product, this will negatively affect your Amazon SEO, and who wants that?

2. Use a Logical Order

Think like your customer, and ensure that your keywords are structured in the way that your customer may type.

12. Platinum keywords

When it comes to setting up your backend keywords, you will notice a section at the bottom of the configuration page called “Platinum Keywords.” You may think to yourself, “ah, I should put my most important keywords in there.”

Unless you have been contacted by Amazon directly, and you’ve been designated as a “Platinum Merchant,” then you can avoid this section altogether.

13. Disregard Plurals

Amazon’s A9 + A10 algorithm is brilliant. It is so smart that it knows how to identify plurals of products.

This means that you don’t need to waste one of your critical 250 characters on a letter that makes one of them a plural. If you really want to truly optimize your product listing, then don’t include any plurals in your backend search terms. Save yourself time, and avoid using plurals altogether.

Conclusion

Effectively selling products on Amazon is complex. A great Amazon seller will have to juggle marketing efforts, logistics, case management, and more – meaning that a great seller will have their hands full.

If you don’t feel like you have the time to focus on creating a great set of Amazon backend keywords, consider looking at a trusted Marketplace Consulting Agency. 

Hiring the right agency can offer you effective account management that will help you optimize your Amazon product listings, freeing up time for you to focus on the more important elements of your Amazon business.