How to Increase Product Discoverability with Amazon Hidden Keywords

 Hidden keywords make it easier for Amazon buyers to locate your items. Here's what you need to know to harness the power of backend keywords.

Amazon is the most well-known name in online goods sales. But with 1.9 million selling partners, the competition is severe.

To claim your market share, you must appear in the searches that individuals conduct.

And it all begins with keywords.

Just like you would when optimizing a webpage for Google, you must add the appropriate terms and phrases on your product page to guarantee that you appear in relevant searches.

Your titles, features, and descriptions must all be optimized, yet this is insufficient.

Another aspect Amazon considers when giving answers to searches that many third-party merchants are unaware of is hidden keywords.

If you have no idea what they are or how they function, or if you want to learn how to use them to your advantage, you've come to the correct spot.

In this article, we'll go over Amazon's hidden keywords in depth and show you all you need to know to use them for your Amazon store.

What Are Amazon's Suppressed Keywords?

Hidden keywords, also known as backend keywords, are any terms about your product that aren't in the title or description.

They are, for example, the phrases returned by Amazon when a sponsored product ad appears for an item, the ad is clicked on, and the product is purchased, or the queries made by a consumer into an Amazon Search.

They are any terms about your goods that are not included in the title or description. These phrases might be generic or synonymous for your product.

They should also be included in the 250 characters per field (up to five fields) that you provide to Amazon in order to improve discoverability in their search results pages.

So, what about search terms? Not quite. I realize this isn't very obvious, so let's attempt to clarify.

(To add to the confusion, the fields in the Amazon UI where you enter these concealed keywords are also labeled "Search Terms.")

Furthermore, the report you get from Amazon to report on these search terms for advertising purposes is referred to as a "Search Term Report."

We'd name it a "Search Query Report" in Google paid search, which sounds more logical, but Amazon evidently disagrees.

Calling hidden keywords "keywords" is often problematic, particularly when selecting keywords for sponsored product campaigns.

While I despise the name with every search bone in my body, Amazon refers to them as hidden keywords, which helps to distinguish them.

How to Consider Hidden Keywords?

Here's the best method I can think of to assist you figure out how to think about these words, how to best utilize them, and where to get future terms:

Do you recall the party game Taboo? You divided into groups and drew a card with a word or object on it.

Before time ran out, your aim was to get your partner or team to guess the word without speaking it or numerous other restricted-related phrases.

If you stated something banned, the other side would "buzz" you and your turn would be over.

For example, if you can't speak football, touchdown, end zone, pigskin, or NFL, what phrases would you use to convince your squad to say "football"? These are your secret keywords.

Let's have a look at a product.

If the item were a Michael Kors shoe, the title would include the brand name, kind of shoe, size, and any features such as color or pattern.

If you can't fit it all in the title, it should be in the product description, along with other features like material kind or comfort.

The information in the title and description are not appropriate for concealed keywords. Instead, utilize phrases that would assist someone locate your product if they hadn't already looked for what you've clearly supplied on the website.

In this instance, you might try: slip-on evening closed toe under $100.

Amazon Help provides the following examples:

Even those samples would fall short of filling the first search phrase box of 250 characters. Filling each search word field without resorting to severe cramming might be challenging, especially if you're manually inputting.

Selecting Hidden Keywords

Choosing hidden keywords is where I notice the biggest overlap between search engine and Amazon search. What tools can you use on one to help with the other?

Many blogs advocate Google Keyword Planner, Keywordtool.io, Ubersuggest, or Shopping Campaigns search query reports.

I have no objections to such proposals if they are used to generate ideas or as a starting point.

Because the way people search on Amazon and how Amazon presents results differs from Google, using data from Amazon or your own listings wherever feasible is the best method to populate and sustain this area.

This implies that a Search Terms Report, a client-supplied list, product data, qualities, or features will be most effective in terms of compliance and upkeep.

You cannot use false or misleading information, promotions (such as buy one get one free), subjective statements, or profanity in your search term lists or text advertising.

You divide phrases with a single space and nothing else, which makes the searcher in me grimace (I want to add that comma or semicolon so much).

This also means that when you evaluate a number of hidden keywords for a product, it seems like a jumbled mess, even if you follow best practices and employ a logical arrangement with your best keywords first.

Also, owing to Google's "+variants" exercise, you no longer have the reflex to enter frequent misspellings, title cases, and pluralization.

The same is true for hidden keywords, making them even more difficult to add, particularly when you reach search term box four and run out of ideas.

However, one significant distinction that I often overlook as a search professional is that these concealed keywords do not have the same relevance, scores, or rankings as they have on Google.

That is why you should alter them on a frequent basis to stay up with new Amazon searches and impressions.

This increases the likelihood of your product pages appearing on a search results page.

This is especially true if Amazon regards any of the terms you supplied as irrelevant or not being used. Replace them and resubmit if this is the case.

Including Unknown Keywords

Now that you've chosen your hidden keywords, it's time to include them into your product. Here's how you accomplish it via the Amazon Seller Central UI on a per-product basis.

1. Sign in to Seller Center and navigate to the Inventory tab.
2. Look for the "edit" button on the right and click it.
3. The "offer" tab will appear; click on "keywords" to see the hidden keywords area.

This might be time-consuming, but if you have a team of content writers or interns to help you, go ahead and do it. If not, you should prepare a fresh pot of coffee because this might take some time.

You might not appreciate the re-assessment and modification time, especially if your catalog has more than a few hundred goods.

You might want to look at your feed capabilities, whether you utilize a feed tool provider or generate your product feeds in-house and submit them to Amazon.

Depending on the sophistication degree, dynamic generating possibilities can scale this process for merchants with vast catalogs.

The result would mirror my prior gobbledygook statement more closely than if they were entered manually by a human, but scale again.

How to Determine Whether Your Hidden Keywords Have Been Added

Unfortunately, random spot checks are the only way to determine whether your concealed keywords have been included. Regrettably, this is a manual procedure.

Copy the whole string from the search terms box (at least 24 hours after submission) and search for it on Amazon.

It is working if the product listing that is meant to be related with those search keywords shows. If not, try a different set of phrases from a different search term box and repeat.

But what if the product listing is still missing? It's possible that not all of the terms you gave were utilized (due to an editing or duplicate error), or that you need to go through all five boxes.

In other circumstances, just one of the five boxes is selected, indexed, and used. As you can see, it's not a fantastic mechanism for tracking and adjusting.

Interesting fact: This procedure and indexation may seem familiar if you remember Yahoo SSP feeds (also known as sponsored inclusion). In 2008, sending material via a feed to enhance Yahoo organic search results meant potentially more frequent and quicker information than a crawl.

Last Words on Hidden Keywords

By this time, you should have a good knowledge of Amazon's Hidden Keywords and how to use them on the backend to drive more traffic to your product pages.

Finding the ideal balance for your requirements is time-consuming but well worth the effort.

Just remember to stick with it. Continue testing to see which keywords are effective and which are not.

Replace underperformers with fresh terms until you discover the optimal combination. Then do it all over again.

Amazon is a fantastic resource for internet merchants. And leveraging backend keywords is a terrific approach to ensure you get the traffic you need - and get the sales you need.