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Amazon Title Optimization – 7 Tips for Ranking Higher and Better Sales

January 10, 2024

Third-party Amazon sellers contributed over 50% of the sales to Amazon’s whopping 469.8B in revenue in 2021. If you want to cut yourself a generous piece of that profit pie, you need to take Amazon product listing optimization seriously. 

Amazon listing optimization is building your product listing in a way that attracts customers to click the buy box while incorporating important keywords to drive higher ranking and visibility in the Amazon marketplace.

The product listing optimization process starts with the product title. The title is one of the most visible aspects of your product listing, and it’s also important for Amazon SEO. 

An optimized Amazon product title primarily serves two purposes:

  1. Attract and inform Amazon shoppers of your product
  2. Indexing of your product for relevant keywords

Attraction to Product

The product title is the first verbiage that potential customers see to give them an indication of whether your product serves their needs. 

Aside from persuading Amazon shoppers to click into your full product listing, the product title is also important for Amazon advertising. 

Amazon PPC ads consist of:

  • Main product image
  • Product reviews and rating
  • Price 
  • Product title

Therefore, the quality of your product title is a major factor in the success of your Amazon PPC campaign. 

Amazon Marketplace Visibility: Indexing and Ranking

Indexing is simply whether or not a product is cataloged in Amazons algorithm to appear when certain search terms are typed into the search engine by Amazon shoppers. 

Amazons A9 algorithm uses the product title field for indexing. For example, if your product title contains the phrase “coffee mug”, your product will be indexed and can be one of the search results when a potential customer types “coffee mug” into the search engine. 

However, being indexed does not guarantee your item will show as a search result. That is where ranking comes into play. 

Ranking is the order of importance Amazon gives products indexed for keywords. The closer your product is to ranking first or at least on the first page, the more visibility and organic sales you can expect. 

Amazons A9 algorithm ranks products based on a variety of factors, factors that have not been explicitly disclosed to the public. However these are the common ones.

  • Sales velocity is widely accepted as a major factor in ranking. Sales velocity means how quickly does your product sell compared to competitors
  • Reviews - amount of 5 star customer reviews compared to competition
  • Conversions - the % of customers that actually purchase your product after they land on your product page
  • CTR - click through rate % of your product listing compared to other product listing for a keyword

Proper Amazon product title optimization creates a snowball effect that propels your product listing up the rankings as your product is seen and purchased by more Amazon shoppers. 

1. Integrate Relevant Keywords

Determining and including the main keyword phrase for your product is critical for Amazon SEO. If you found your product through product research, you have likely already established what your main keyword phrase is. 

If you haven’t, start your Amazon title optimization process with keyword research. 

Which Keywords to Use

Using a product and keyword research tool like Viral Launch can help you find your main keyword and ultra relevant supporting keywords. They organize data to show you explicitly which keywords are being most searched out by customers. 

Therefore, you control whether Amazon indexes your product to receive maximum visibility through the keywords you use in your title. 

For example, say you want to sell a bamboo shoe rack. You can use Viral Launch to see the performance of the intended main keyword “bamboo shoe rack” against other keywords in terms of search volume. 

Although “wooden shoe rack” has slightly more search volume, it’s better to stick with “bamboo shoe rack” as the main keyword because it’s more descriptive of the product and still has adequate search volume. 

Keyword Placement

“Bamboo shoe rack” should be at the beginning or very near to the beginning of your title for Amazon SEO purposes. Amazon gives greater weight in ranking to the beginning of the title. 

Aside from the main keyword, you can also incorporate other high relevance, high search volume keywords found during keyword research into the product title. 

In the above example of a bamboo shoe rack, including “wooden shoe rack” later in the title would be beneficial in extending product visibility in the Amazon marketplace. 

2. Clear and Descriptive Language

A title that looks clean while providing potential customers with most of the key information needed to make a purchase decision is essential to attract and sell any product type. 

Amazon titles that appear chaotic with keyword stuffing can leave interested shoppers confused about the product being sold. 

Concise language portrays brand professionalism and allows customers to be confident they are clicking into and buying the product they are looking for. 

Mobile Optimization

Amazon recommends keeping titles less than 80 characters. A major reason for this is that the mobile view of an Amazon product title only shows up to this amount of characters. 

According to Statista, mobile Ecommerce sales account for the majority 72.9% of all retail Ecommerce sales globally. 

Therefore, in a mobile world, mobile optimization should be a central consideration across all your Amazon product listing optimization efforts. 

3. Consider User Intent

For every product, there is a main market of people who purchase that product. When drafting a product title, consider your target market and ask yourself questions like:

How are they likely to phrase this product when typing into the search engine?

Example: Fidget spinners were a popular toy a few years back. Mothers are likely to buy toys for their children. A mother learning of the product by seeing other children playing with it likely would not know the actual term, “fidget spinner”. Instead, they would be likely to type something like “hand spinner” into the search engine to find the product. 

fidget spinner amazon

What specific features of this product would interest them?

Example: Backpacker type travelers look for a special gear that allows them to travel light. A travel gear company selling towels would benefit from including keywords like “compact” and “quick dry” (if their towels were those things) into the title. Those are the features backpackers are likely to search out explicitly. 

travel towel amazon

What problem are they facing that would lead them to want this product?

Example: A major concern for seniors is slipping and falling while in the shower or bath. Their reason for searching out a shower mat would be to protect themselves from this. Including benefit keywords like “non-slip” or “anti-fall” into the product title for a shower mat increases visibility because they are likely to be included in the customer search term. 

shower mat amazon

Knowing the customer and creating your title to capitalize on the ways they are likely to search for your product is crucial in maximizing your product's visibility to the audience most likely to purchase it. 

4. Follow Amazon’s Recommended Best Practices (Usually)

Amazon provides title tips it strongly recommends sellers follow when drafting their product title, including: 

  • DON’T USE ALL CAPS
  • Use numerals: “1” instead of “one”
  • Abbreviate measurements, like “kg”, “cm”, etc.
  • Include punctuation like hyphens (-), commas(,), forward slashes (/), ampersands (&), and periods (.) for better organization
  • Capitalize the first letter of each word except for articles, prepositions, and conjunctions

Following these tips enhances the readability of your title, improves organization, and helps to make most efficient use of the limited space provided. 

Don't Use the Common Title Structure?

When searching for Amazon products, you will notice a common title structure similar to the below. 

amazon product title format
taco holder amazon

Amazon has a system in place to pull your brand name automatically and place it at the front of the product title. 

To avoid this, enter “generic” into the brand name field. 

Why would you want to omit your brand name at the beginning?

As mentioned, for indexing, Amazons A9 algorithm gives greater weight to the words closest to the beginning of the title. 

If you are a new or small brand, you can maximize your ranking potential for your main keyword by omitting your brand name. 

Therefore, it serves some sellers better to avoid this recommendation from Amazon. 

Child Variations - Multiple Sizes or Colors

Many products are sold with various color and size variations. In these cases, product variations should not be included in the main title, but should instead be included in the title for the child ASIN. 

That way, Amazon shoppers can be confident they are viewing the variation they want and will receive if they click the buy box. 

5. Things to Avoid

While you technically can use them, Amazon recommends you avoid subjective commentaries such as “hot seller”. These can take away from the authenticity of your product title. 

Amazon limits you to just 200 characters to convince Amazon shoppers with, so it's also best avoid any “fluff” in your title. 

If it’s not a highly relevant keyword with high search volume, product feature, brand name, or extremely important for a high level description of your product, leave it out. 

Search Suppression

When product listings don’t meet Amazon rules and standards, Amazon can suppress the product listing so that customers cannot find it in search. 

Amazon provides four rules sellers should follow in order to avoid search suppression for breaking title guidelines. 

Amazon product listing titles must:

  • Contain product-identifying information, such as “cell phone case” or “skateboard”
  • Follow the recommended length of your product category characters
  • Not contain promotional phrases like “free shipping” or “100% quality guaranteed”
  • Not use any characters for decoration, such as ~ ! * $ ? _ ~ { } # < > | * ; ^ ¬ ¦

Search suppression will destroy any chance at Amazon FBA success, so if you take nothing else away from this article, at least follow Amazon’s rules. 

6. Leverage Data to Make Informed Decisions

Top tier companies leverage data to make calculated decisions that propel them to the top. Even as a small Amazon seller, incorporating data analysis into your decisions can be a major benefit for Amazon product listing optimization. 

Amazon sellers can make data informed decisions regarding their product's title by utilizing Amazon experiments

This is a feature available only to you if you are an Amazon seller that is in the Amazon Brand Registry. 

Aside from being in the Amazon Brand Registry, Amazon only allows you to run experiments with ASINs that are high-traffic, usually a few dozen orders each week. 

If you meet these criteria, you can run A/B testing on your Amazon listing as part of your overall Amazon product listing optimization strategy. 

This is especially useful for testing different title variations to determine which can attract and sell most effectively. 

7. Market Research and Regular Adjustment

Aside from testing, engaging in market research and regularly adjusting your Amazon listing is an indispensable step in the highly competitive, always fluctuating Ecommerce landscape. 

Trends emerge and subside frequently, but you can employ the help of a keyword research tool like Viral Launch to keep track of your Amazon keywords performance and make changes when applicable. 

Keyword Performance and Trending Search Terms 

Using Viral Launch, search your product’s main keyword on Amazon and then open the Market Intelligence plugin extension. Once opened, you can select “Est. Search Volume” to view your main keywords performance against the market. 

passport holder amazon

The search volume, volume trend, and sales data give excellent insight on keyword performance. 

Your main keyword is likely going to always remain static. However, you can incorporate trending keywords in your product title to take advantage of a trend. 

Even if none of the keywords are valuable enough to go into your product title, they can be incorporated elsewhere like your Amazon product description to influence Amazons algorithm. 

Stealing from Best Selling Competitors

Another useful feature of a keyword research tool like Viral Launch is that they often come with a reverse ASIN lookup tool. This feature allows you to take the ASIN of your best-selling competitors in the market and see which keywords they are indexed for and where they rank organically. 

In Viral Launch, you can do this by:

  1. Typing your product’s main keyword into the Amazon search engine
  2. Finding the first organic listing on the page 
  3. Opening the product listing and copying the ASIN
  4. Navigating to Competitor Intelligence in Viral Launch
  5. Selecting “Track New Competitor” and pasting the competitors ASIN into the field
viral launch keyword

This data shows you keywords that the best sellers are using to achieve their high sales numbers and ranking, so you can include those important keywords too.

If your best-selling competitors with the same product type include a keyword in their title that you don’t have, you can do an A/B test to see if including that keyword increases your sales too. 

Conclusion

Amazon product title optimization is just the first step to ensuring your Amazon product pages are set up to maximize visibility and effectively generate sales. 

Our article on overall Amazon listing optimization reviews other success contributing factors like optimizing your Amazon product description and the benefits of enhanced brand content (Amazon A content). 

While you could employ the help of an Amazon listing optimization service, we believe it’s substantially better to complete your product pages yourself. 

By taking the time to develop this valuable skill, you obtain a deeper understanding of your market within Ecommerce and your business. 

Also, an Amazon listing optimization service does not have the market insight you bring to listing optimization, nor the same level of dedication you have as a business owner to perfecting the listing for your own store. 

Regardless of how it gets done, Amazon listing optimization is crucial to the success of your Amazon store, and optimizing your product title is one of the most important steps. 

When the A9 Algorithm loves your listing, it will rank you. Once you're ranked, you're really taking advantage of Amazon's traffic, 200 million prime users.

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  1. Hello,

    Thank you for the article! 🙏

    I have a question:

    The product has 2 variations. Can you please advice, is it better to create 2 different titles for 2 different product variations so more keywords can be added in there or just use one identical title with the same keywords for both product variations?

    Didn’t find an answer on this matter. Thank you for any advice!

    E.K.

    1. Hi Edvinas! Thanks for your comment. The number of products you list would be reflected by the level of competition and search volume. If you think you have a winner and can sell two versions, then by all means, list two, but if there’s not the demand, then you would be better off adding your top keywords to one listing and pushing that product. Others may have different opinions, so it’s important that you research before you list and optimize each listing 100%. I hope this answer helps and wish you luck.

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