Selling products on Amazon and Amazon SEO

Amazon is one of the most popular and most widely used ecommerce platforms by sellers and buyers globally. Initially started as an online marketplace for books, Amazon now has ventured out into various other industries, such as entertainment and cloud computing. Amazon is a competitive ecommerce platform as numerous sellers use it to sell similar products worldwide. Since Amazon has evolved over the years, it has provided its users with many useful features, such as the Seller Central. Due to this reason, many sellers choose Amazon over other ecommerce platforms. Amazon has been a favorite with sellers, professionals, and beginners both, and buyers globally.

SELLING ON AMAZON

Just like any other ecommerce platform, Amazon too requires sellers to sign up for an account. Currently, Amazon offers the following accounts:

1. Individual
This account is good for those sellers who are just starting and sell less than 40 units in a month. This is a very basic plan and does not provide you with any advanced selling tools or advertisement options. The seller is expected to pay $0.99 for every item sold, in addition to selling fees.

2. Professional
If you sell more than 40 units in a month and want some advanced features, then this is the account for you. Most professional sellers opt for this account. The seller is expected to pay $39.99 per month, in addition to the selling fees. If you plan on products that are o Amazon’s restricted list, then you must sign up for the professional account.

Amazon charges a referral fee, on both accounts, for every item sold. This usually varies between 8% and 15%. Furthermore, for shipping your orders, if you opt for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), there would be different charges for each shipment unit.

BEST PRODUCTS TO SELL ON AMAZON

Certain products come under the category of restricted items and can only be sold with a professional account, only if certain requirements are met. Apart from this restriction, you can sell almost anything on Amazon. A few of the most famous product categories are:

1. Home and garden
2. Apparel
3. Kids and toys
4. Electronics
5. Pets

AMAZON SEO

Since Amazon is such a big ecommerce platform, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays an integral role for sellers. SEO is not just relevant for search engines; ecommerce platforms, too, have their algorithm that they follow to yield better search results. With better SEO practices, your products will stand out in the search results and will prompt the buyers to purchase from your store. The search result on Amazon yields numerous pages, which the buyers do not have the time to go through them all. Buyers usually try to search for the perfect product within the first 5 result pages or even less than that. With SEO techniques, your products will get a higher rank in the search result pages of Amazon, helping you to boost your sales.

Amazon’s search results page allows the buyer to add filters to the search results to get a better match with their search query. Since there are countless sellers on Amazon, Amazon lets the sellers advertise their products in the form of sponsored products. These sponsored product posts are seen on the top of a search result page, and even on other product pages.

The filters available for the search results are designed similarly to the product listings page. Thus, when organizing your product listings through Seller Central you must specify all the product details so that your products get shown after the buyer applies the filters.

Since Amazon is an ecommerce platform, the sales rank is an inverse ranking system. This means that the products with the lowest sales rank come last and the product with higher sales rank get higher search visibility.

HOW DOES AMAZON’S SEO WORK?

Amazon relies on the A9 Algorithm to display search results for a buyer. How Amazon ranks the search results is not clearly known, but it does rely on the following criteria but is not limited to:

1. Sales volume
2. Relevance to the keywords entered by the buyer
3. Customer shopping behavior and pattern
4. Stock supply
5. Price

Furthermore, Amazon SEO does not just work for the betterment of the sellers, instead, it also helps the buyer to get relevant search results. At the end of the day, customer satisfaction is also important for Amazon. To explain this further, some factors have been split into two categories:

1. Desirability
These factors help to create a better experience for the buyer. These are factors that encourage the buyer to take some action. Usually, these factors are:

—Better quality product images
—Product title
—Pricing
—Positive reviews and ratings
—Precise product description and specifications
—Conveying the message of how your product is different from the other sellers

2. Discoverability
These factors focus more on how the product is viewed as a whole- more like a bigger picture. These factors include:

—Fulfillment method
—Pricing
—Stock quantity
—Shipping cost
—Keywords

IMPROVING YOUR AMAZON SEO

From the factors mentioned above, by now you should have a general idea about how you can improve your Amazon SEO results. To sum it all up, all points have been discussed below:

1. Product Title
This is the first thing that a buyer reads. Therefore, you should include all essential details in it, such as the brand name, product, material, color, etc. Amazon gives a word limit of 100 words for this.

2. Keywords
These keywords are the words that are entered by the buyer when they are searching for products. Thus, it would be a good idea to update your keywords list timely and also monitor the results you get from any modifications.

3. Pricing
Amazon is a platform where numerous sellers are selling the same products, giving the buyers a long list of sellers to choose from. Therefore, you must price your products at a nominal price. Something much cheaper than the normal rate is also considered to be too alarming by the buyers.

4. Product images
Having a few pictures that are clear and of good quality helps the buyer to decide better. Since the buyer relies heavily on the pictures of the product posted, these pictures should be sufficient for the buyers in every aspect. Moreover, the pictures must not be edited too much as the buyer expects to get the same product upon delivery. Minor adjustments are acceptable.

5. Product description and features
A detailed product description helps the buyer to decide better. All details must be listed in bullet form as that is much simpler and easier to go through as compared to long paragraphs.

6. Product stock
You must always ensure that your product is always in stock in your inventory or Amazon’s inventory if you use Amazon FBA.

7. Reviews and ratings
Getting mostly positive reviews and ratings from your customers will allow your products to get a higher rank in the search results. It also helps to gain the trust of potential buyers who might be exploring your products.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Managing Amazon SEO can be a bit overwhelming for sellers who are new to this concept. If you feel you are struggling with getting a higher ROI (Return On Investment), you should consider hiring professional marketers for your Amazon store. One such reliable team of professionals is DigAptics, who can help you to get a higher ROI for your store. Having higher sales volume is the dream of every seller on Amazon. With the right SEO consultant techniques, your business will flourish and you will get more customers. Discuss your Amazon SEO requirements today with an expert from DigAptics.