Amazon Listing Optimization and Pay-per-click Advertising Similarities

Every Amazon marketer and digital marketer in general can tell you that there’s two main factors for selling on Amazon and showing up in Amazon’s search engine results page.

The first is organic listing Optimization, often referred to as SEO, or Search Engine Optimization and the second is PPC advertising, also known as pay-per-click campaigns.

But just what do these two things mean and how do they work individually, and together, to generate sales?

Some may think that selling on Amazon is as simple as adding products to Seller Central and having inventory. However, it’s not quite that simple. Buyers go to Amazon to search for products they are interested in purchasing by using keywords that describe the item they are looking for.

For example let’s say someone goes to Amazon because they want to purchase a new writing journal. They may use several different search phrases, both long and short, including things like:

·  Short tail keyword examples: “journal”, “notebook”, “diary”, etc.

·  Medium keyword examples: “writing journal”, “writing notebook”, “journals bulk”, etc.

·  Long tail keyword examples: “journal with lock”, “journal for women”, “journals to draw in”, etc

Now let’s say you’re selling a pink floral journal that comes with a lock and key. Most of the keywords listed in the example above would be relevant to the journal you’re selling so when you’re writing a product title, product content and keywords you want to optimize for all variations of these examples.

But what does it mean to optimize a listing for keywords? In short, you want to write content that uses these words and phrases in a natural manner. You may write a product title that says something along the lines of:

“Writing Journal with Pink Floral Cover | Comes with Lock and Key | Perfect for Women”

This title utilizes many of the words that you would want your product to show up for when customers perform a search. You’re basically telling Amazon’s algorithm that the item you’re selling is related to what customers are searching for.

The better optimized your product listing page is, the more likely it is to show up at the top of the search results for customers to find and in turn, buy. This type of sale would be referred to as an organic sale since as a seller you did not put any advertising dollars into getting the listing to show up. Organic sales are the best sales as they have the highest profit margins.

On the other end of the Amazon search result spectrum are pay-per-click ads, also known as a PPC ad. Amazon now offers sellers the option of several different types of PPC ads, however they all operate using the same underlying principle.

When you create a manual PPC campaign, you tell Amazon what keywords you want to bid on and how much you’re willing to pay each time someone sees and clicks on your advertisement. Hence “pay-per-click” in the name.

These PPC advertisements are shown in a variety of places in both the Amazon search results as well as other places on Amazon like product pages.

Example of a sponsored ad on the results page:

Example of a sponsored ad on the product listing pages:

While the marketing strategy is different from SEO optimization, the end result is the same — you want to target customers searching for keywords that are related to the product you’re selling. Using the pink floral journal example used above, if you’re creating a PPC ad for this product, you’ll want to bid on keywords like:

•  “Floral journal”
•   “Pink journal”
•   “Writing journal for women”
•   “Writing journal with lock”

If you bid on the keyword “floral journal” and someone goes to Amazon to search “floral journal”, they may see your ad. If they click onto your ad, you’ll be charged an amount similar to the bid you made.

Now Amazon also offers the option to create what’s referred to as an “Automatic Campaign”. You select what products you want advertised and enter a bid amount of how much you’re willing to pay for each click then Amazon uses their algorithm to bid on real customer search terms that they think are related to your product.

There’s a huge benefit to using automatic campaigns as the campaign reports often provide insights into keywords and phrases that you didn’t even know you should be targeting. Let’s say you create an automatic campaign for your hypothetical pink floral journal. Once your campaign starts generating sales, you can export a report that gives the full list of converting keywords.

Maybe your hypothetical campaign report shows that customers are searching for, then buying your product using the term “journal with pink rose cover”. Now that you know about this new keyword, you can create a new manual campaign utilizing these newly discovered keywords.

SO HOW DO SEO AND PPC WORK TOGETHER?

What many Amazon sellers don’t realize is that organic listing optimizations and pay-per-click advertising campaigns can play a very interconnected role where they both benefit each other greatly and help generate even more sales.

But how? If a customer is searching for a specific phrase like “journal with lock”, it makes no difference to them if they buy through a paid ad or through an organic listing — and most customers will never know the difference.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO YOU AS A SELLER?

You want to make sure you target the same group of keywords on both your product listing page, as well as in pay-per-click campaigns. The Amazon marketplace has become an incredibly competitive platform and if you’re not optimizing for the right things and not bidding on the right keywords, it could mean that you’re missing out on a huge chunk of sales that are instead going to your competitors.

All sellers on Amazon should be targeting the same group of keywords both organically and via advertising, whether they are a newer, smaller seller or a larger, more experienced seller. Targeting the same groups of keywords in both areas guarantees that you’ll get the most customer exposure.

The bad news is that Amazon Seller Central is not known for its thorough reporting and there’s no easy way to view or export a report of organic keyword rankings for your product listings.

So how do you know what’s working and what you’re ranking for? If you use Indition SellerTools you’ll know that we offer several tools that make this reporting easier than ever.

Our ContentOptimization toolbox has a tracked keyword tool that allows you to input the product listing keywords you’d like to monitor which then creates a report showing how well your keyword is performing over time.

The tracked keyword tools also allow for exporting of these reports into a spreadsheet for easy analysis or to import into other data sets.

We also have similar reporting with our Advertising Optimization toolbox. Our ad campaign tools allow for the monitoring and management of Amazon PPC keywords, bids and sales and also allows for exportation of campaign performance reports.

The best news yet? With the latest updates that we have been releasing on Indition SellerTools, you can now export and import keyword lists from both the Content Optimization side of things as well as the Advertising Optimization side of things. This means that it’s now easier than ever to manage and optimize both your organic campaigns as well as your advertising campaigns so ensure you’re targeting the same keywords from both sides.