Keywords are the foundation of any winning Amazon listing. They decide if people see your product in search and how buyers find, click, and make a purchase. Good keyword research will also guarantee that your listing ranks higher.
In this guide, we will walk you through the entire process of Amazon keyword research, from coming up with ideas to determine metrics and organizing keywords, all the way to using them effectively in your listing. And by the end of this guide, you’ll have a step-by-step plan to ensure your listings are at their best to maximize visibility and conversions.
Table of Contents
Understanding Amazon SEO
Amazon SEO is the process of optimizing your product listings to appear higher in Amazon’s search results. While Google SEO targets web pages, Amazon SEO is based on product-listing optimization and optimizing the way the Amazon A9 algorithm scores them.
There are a variety of factors that the A9 algorithm takes into account when ranking, but keywords matter. The proper use of keywords will make sure that your product pops up when potential buyers are searching for related terms.
Amazon’s algorithm prioritizes relevance and performance:
Relevance: To what extent your listing fits the search query. Keywords in the title, bullet points, backend search terms, and description boost relevancy.
Performance: The effectiveness of your product when it comes to turning clicks into sales. Listings that generate higher sales, have better reviews, and offer competitive pricing will rank higher.
Types of Keywords for Amazon
Short-tail keywords: Broad, high-volume terms (e.g., “coffee mug”) that drive more traffic but are also more competitive.
Long-tail Keywords: Specific, low-volume phrases (e.g., “ceramic coffee mug with lid”) that draw in buyers who are ready to buy and often have less competition.
Good keyword research with a solid listing optimization helps your product gain visibility, clicks, and ultimately more sales.
Why Keyword Research is Critical?
Keyword research is the first and most crucial stage of Amazon listing optimization. Without the proper keywords, your product is going to have an extremely difficult time showing up in related search listings. Keyword research is by far the most important part of getting your listing in front of the right customers at the right time.
- Amazon depends on keywords to decide if your product is what a shopper is searching for.
- Not all keywords drive relevant traffic. Keyword research will assist you in understanding the actual phrases buyers are using.
- When shoppers see precisely what they were searching for, they’re more likely to make a purchase. Relevant keywords align with the user intent, which can help to improve CTR and conversions.
- Good saboteur keyword research means you can create more targeted PPC campaigns, which will benefit your ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale) and ROIs.
- When you know the keywords your competition ranks for, you can find opportunities they are overlooking. It helps you to position your product better and win more sales in your category.
Step-by-Step Keyword Research Process
Amazon keyword research is a process that begins with understanding customer behavior and extends to ongoing optimization.
Brainstorming Keyword Ideas
The beginning of the keyword research process involves collecting as many keyword ideas as you can. Start by putting yourself in the place of a customer.
What terms would they type if they were searching for your product on Amazon?
Get from Amazon auto-suggestions. Type your main keyword and pay attention to the expressions Amazon suggests. These are real customer searches and too darn good. Then, look at what your competitors are doing, particularly the listings that rank on page one. Notice the words they use in their titles and bullet points.
Customer reviews are also a treasure trove, since it show the everyday language purchasers use to describe their needs and experiences. Lastly, turn to Amazon keyword research tools such as Helium 10, Jungle Scout, and MerchantWords so you can broaden your keyword list with more specific and high-volume phrases.
Analyzing Keyword Metrics
Once you have collected the keyword ideas, it’s time to analyze how strong they are. Not all keywords will be valuable. Some might generate a lot of traffic but may not relate to your product, or, at the other end of the spectrum, be too specific / have low search volume.
Consider the search volume, relevance, and level of competition for each keyword. High search volume keywords provide more visibility, but only if they honestly relate to your product. Medium volume keywords, high buyer intent, also tend to convert well.
You also need to look at the competition to understand how hard it is going to be for you to rank for a keyword.
Conducting Competitor Keyword Research
Competitor analysis is one of the strongest aspects of keyword research. You can find keywords you might have missed and see what phrases are already working well in your category by examining top competitors within your niche.
Use tools such as Helium 10 Cerebro or AMZScout to find those keywords your competitors are ranking for. Look at how they structure their titles, bullet points, and descriptions.
Competitor keyword research will also be able to help you discover content gaps, or keywords your competition ignores but your consumers are still looking for. These gaps can allow you to quickly discover opportunities and scoop up more targeted traffic.
Organizing and Categorizing Keywords
After you’ve created your list of keywords, it’s time to structure it in a neat and functional way. Your keywords will fall into three different categories: Primary keywords, Secondary keywords, and Backend Keywords. Primary keywords are the keywords that you want to rank for and should be included in your title if possible.
Supplemental to your primary keywords, secondary keywords help support your primary keywords and can be used in bullets and the description. Backend keywords are keywords that you can add to the listing by entering them into the hidden search term fields.
Creating a clean spreadsheet for these categories helps you avoid keyword repetition.
Implementing Keywords in Your Listing
Once you’ve completed organizing your keyword list, it’s time to put those keywords on your Amazon listing. Begin with your title, which should comprise the most important primary keywords. The title must be readable and appealing to buyers.
Secondary keywords will naturally appear within your bullet points as you list the product features and benefits. In the product description, you can write a narrative or fill up with supporting keywords to draw customers’ attention for why they should purchase your product.
Any high-impact keywords that didn’t make it in organically/naturally should be added as backend search terms. The idea is to incorporate your keyword in a natural way. You can’t overdo it, or you’ll hurt both your ranking and readability.
Monitoring and Adjusting Keywords
Keyword research doesn’t stop after you’ve published your listing. Amazon search data is always changing. Competitors update their listings, and customer behavior changes. You will also need to track performance regularly with the Amazon Seller Central analytics or using keyword tracking tools.
See what keywords are driving traffic, and which are lagging behind. Review your listing, add in trending or seasonal keywords, and get rid of any keywords that don’t align with what buyers are now looking for. Ongoing optimization will help your listing stay competitive and keep visibility and ranking stable.
Tools & Resources for Amazon Keyword Research
Below are the tools and resources you can use to do Amazon keyword research.
Helium 10
Helium 10 is an all-in-one Amazon seller suite and its two keyword tools Magnet and Cerebro, are the heavy lifters for serious keyword research. Use Magnet to create and analyze keyword ideas around a seed term, and use Cerebro to reverse-engineer what competing ASINs are already ranking for.
Together, they provide you with both a supply-side view and a demand-side view: what buyers search for, and what actually causes ranking and sales.
Magnet
The Magnet tool is used for keyword discovery and analysis. Enter a seed keyword (like “coffee grinder”) and Magnet will return several thousand keywords that are a good fit, along with search volumes and performance metrics.
Step-by-Step Magnet Workflow
- Enter a seed keyword.
- Build a longer list using Find Suggestions, then go over to Analyze Keywords to copy and paste in really long lists (up to 200) and sort out the best.
- Filter out the lowest search amount (e.g., 300–400+) and low title density ≤ 3 to discover keywords your competitors don’t have in their titles.
- Order by Magnet IQ to emphasize the optimal balance of volume versus competition. Export the shortlist to your spreadsheet.
Cerebro
Cerebro is a reverse-ASIN lookup tool. You give it a competitor’s ASIN (or several) and get back the keywords that ASIN ranks for both organically and sponsored with volume, competition context. This demonstrates real keywords that are driving visibility for proven sellers.
Step-by-Step Cerebro Workflow
- Find 3–10 top competitors (ASINs). Diversity is the key here: best sellers, listings that are well-optimized, and a couple of slight weaker ones.
- Reverse ASIN search in Cerebro with those ASINs (you can reverse multiple at once). Export the raw keyword list.
- Filter for minimum search volume (say 200- 400+), title density (start low), and whether the keyword is in Sponsored results (to find PPC keywords).
- Now let’s compare Cerebro’s results against your Magnet shortlist. Just use key overlaps. A keyword that is strong in both tools is a high-confidence target.
- Pull high-converting keywords for PPC from Cerebro and test them in your own Amazon Pay Per Click campaigns.
Jungle Scout
Jungle Scout is an Amazon seller’s tool that has product research, keyword research, and competitor analysis in one platform. For keyword research, you have the main tool, Keyword Scout, which allows sellers to uncover high-performing keywords and learn from their competition and buyer demand.
Jungle Scout provides data-driven metrics from real Amazon sales and historical trends, which makes it very reliable.
You can enter a seed keyword or competitor ASIN in Keyword Scout to discover relevant keywords. It gives them search volume, estimated sales, and keyword difficulty to help sellers find both high-traffic terms and long-tail keywords that convert.
Step-by-Step Jungle Scout (Keyword Scout) Workflow
- Plug your primary product keyword (e.g., “coffee grinder”) into Keyword Scout. Export the entire list of keywords (and stats) that were suggested.
- Select 3-10 top competitors and put their Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs) into Keyword Scout to find real keywords they are getting traffic for.
- Organize Keywords by opportunity score, volume, and CPC. Maintain a blend of high-volume, medium-competition keywords and target long tail phrases for niche relevance.
- Find which best-performing keywords that can be used in manual PPC campaigns. Track performance and add successful terms as new keywords in your title, bullet points, description, or backend search fields at a later date.
- Track daily ranking changes with Jungle Scout’s Keyword tracking tool to help make informed decisions and plan your next steps.
MerchantWords
MerchantWords is a well-known and widely used Amazon keyword research tool. It scrapes search term data directly from Amazon global marketplaces. It can be especially valuable for keeping a pulse on actual customer search behavior, discovering long-tail keywords and expanding your listing’s keyword coverage.
It’s a bit more international than others that are mainly US-focused and is therefore perfect for people who want to sell on international Amazon, or those tackling more than one selling region.
Step-by-Step MerchantWords Workflow
- Simply enter your primary product keyword and get a massive list of new suggestions. Export all KWs with vols.
- Take out non-relevant or generic keywords that you are not able to exactly match with your product. Focus on high-intent, purchase-ready keywords.
- Order keywords by length and volume in order to optimize phrases that are less competitive but more exact.
- For international sellers, monitor the performance of keywords in each region and optimize listings accordingly.
- Include both high-volume and long-tail keywords in your listing title, bullet points, description, and backend search terms.
Browser Extensions for Keyword Research
Browser extensions speed up the research process by displaying keyword metrics right on Amazon’s search page. Extensions such as Helium 10 Chrome Extension, Jungle Scout Extension, AMZ Suggestion Expander, etc., will allow you to quickly find keyword ideas.
All of this stuff, like keyword search volume, sponsored ad placements, competitor listing quality, and product demand, is something you can check without opening separate tools. Extensions also extends Amazon’s autosuggest bar to show more keyword variations that Amazon buyers actually type.
This is why browser extensions are great for fast on-page keyword research and competitive analysis.
Amazon PPC Tools for Keyword Discovery
Amazon PPC is more than advertising. It’s one of the best keyword research resources. Enabling automatic campaigns allow you to collect keyword data directly from Amazon. On Amazon, you can see which search terms led to impressions, clicks and conversions.
Create manual campaigns that use broad match targeting to uncover even more related keyword variations. Utilize tools such as Helium 10 Adtomic or PPC Entourage for analyzing PPC search term reports to find high-performing keywords for organic ranking.
Amazon PPC data is 100% reliable. It’s based on how buyer make choices and therefore one of the most dependable means for discovering keywords.
FAQs: Amazon Keyword Research Guide
What is keyword research for Amazon listing optimization?
You can identify the exact search terms a customer uses on Amazon with keyword research. The end result is that now your listing show up on search results when customers type any of these keywords.
What are the best tools for Amazon keyword research?
The best tools are Helium 10 (Magnet & Cerebro), Jungle Scout (Keyword Scout), and MerchantWords. They will also help you find high volume keywords, analyze your competitors, and give you the long-tail terms that can drive conversions.
How do I determine which keywords to focus on?
Select keywords related to relevance, volume of searches, and level of competition. Put high-volume, primary keywords in the title, mid-range volume in the bullet points, and long-tail keywords in the backend. Always avoid keyword stuffing.
Conclusion: Amazon Keyword Research Guide
Keyword research is required for effective Amazon listing optimizations. If you don’t know what your customer are looking for, the very best product cannot perform optimally in sales conversions.
With the right tools like Helium 10, Jungle Scout, and MerchantWords, you can discover strong keywords, competition analysis, and long tail opportunities that are creating significant traffic and sales.
An effective keyword strategy needs constant overseeing, changing, and refining based on market trends, PPC performance, and customer attitude. By doing accurate keyword research, you create a listing that pleases both Amazon’s algorithm and real people searching for products.
Understanding how to do keyword research allows you to increase your organic rankings, decrease advertising costs, and establish a more profitable amazon business.
