In the competitive world of Amazon selling, optimizing your product listings and ad campaigns for search terms is crucial for success. 

Targeting the right search terms influences the visibility or your product listings in Amazon search results, click-through-rates (CTR) to your product landing pages, the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns, and also your conversion rate. 

In this guide, we’ll break down the differences between keywords and search terms, discuss the importance of search term optimization in 2025, and provide you with a practical guide on analyzing and optimizing your Amazon search terms.

What are Amazon Search Terms?

Amazon search terms are the words or phrases that Amazon users type into the Amazon search bar when looking for products. 

On Amazon, the beginning of the buyer journey will often start with the Amazon search bar. For the Amazon A9 algorithm to pick up on your product listing, you will need to have the right keywords so the A9 algorithm can match the search term with the listing. Your listing keywords give the A9 algorithm signals that your listing is related to the current customer search term on the search bar.

Optimizing for commercially relevant search terms is thus important, because optimizing your ads and product listings will determine whether your products appear in the search results or not.

What is the difference between Search Terms, Search Queries and Keywords?

Many Amazon Sellers use the terms “search term”, “search query” and “keyword” interchangeably. While “search term” and “search query” are essentially the same thing, “keywords” are very different from “search terms”.

• Definition of Search Term / Search Query: These are the actual words shoppers input into the Amazon search bar.
  
• Definition of Keyword: Keywords are the terms or phrases that sellers add to the backend of their Amazon product listing or use in their Amazon PPC campaigns to target potential customers. They represent the words that sellers believe will lead to conversions.
  
• Search Term vs Keyword: While a search term always refers to the exact word(s) a user has searched for, for PPC campaigns, a keyword can also include partial matches, synonyms, or even similar words. Think of a keyword more as a “target word cloud”. For Amazon Ads the keyword type can be further broken down into “exact match”, “phrase match” and “broad match” keywords. As these denominations indicate, the constraints of the target keyword “word cloud” are more narrowly defined when “exact match” keywords are used and most broadly defined when a keyword is added to a campaign as a “broad match” keyword. More about this topic in our blog post on Amazon keyword match types.
  
• Example: For example, if a seller selects “running shoes” as a phrase match keyword, the search terms might include queries such as “best running shoes for women,” “cheap running shoes,” or “Brand name running shoes.” As this example shows, understanding the distinction between search terms and keywords is crucial for optimizing your Amazon PPC campaigns effectively.

What is the Difference Between Search Terms and Backend Keywords?

Backend keywords are manually added by Amazon Sellers the backend of a listing. They are not customer-facing and not included in the Amazon product listing copy. You will fill in the backend search term field within 249 bytes limit restrictions, excluding spaces or punctuation such as a comma.

So while backend keywords are technically a different thing than the search terms users input in the Amazon search bar, ideally the backend keywords should reflect on the search terms that you target with your listings. That is because backend keywords are also one of the data points picked up by the A9 algorithm that it uses to match your listings with customer searches. You will fill in the backend search term field within 249 bytes limit restrictions, excluding spaces or punctuation such as a comma.

Since there is a 249-bytes limit (normally 1 byte is a character) it is important to not repeat words inside the search term field. Also, you have to make sure that the characters you are using are also not in the title and bullet.

Another thing to note is that the text inside the search term field does not have to be in a sentence structure and there’s also no need for punctuation. Therefore, you do not need to use filler words such as “for” or use any periods or commas to separate words.

You can use your 50-60 keywords list to develop words that you have not added in your bullets, title, and descriptions to fill out the search term field.

How to Review Search Terms of Amazon Advertising Campaigns?

At this point you are probably wondering how to review the search terms of your existing Amazon PPC campaigns. The answer is: by reviewing your search term report (Related post: How to download the Amazon search term report).

What is the Amazon Search Term Report?

The search term report of a campaign provides you with a list of all the different search terms that have triggered your Amazon ads. When analyzing campaign performance, the search term report provides the most granular and undiluted level of reporting. Whereas a single keyword can, depending on match types, include many different search terms, each search term really is a representation of the exact search query an Amazon shopper has used. 

Which Metrics and KPIs to Monitor in the Amazon Search Term Report?

The search report provides important metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversion rates, click-through rates (CTR), and cost-per-click (CPC) or sales. 

Naturally metrics such as sales, conversion rate, or cost-per-conversion are most critical. Search terms that drive bottom-line performance are obviously most critical. Secondary metrics that are a good indicator of performance are CTR and also CPC. A high CTR indicates that your product listings are relevant for a given search query and a low CPC makes it more likely that your ads can hit desired ACoS goals as advertising costs are not too high (What is ACoS?).

In practice however you may face these two common issues:

• Converting search terms are “brand” searches: This shows that shoppers who are already looking for your brand name also end up buying your products. This behavior is to be expected because these users have probably already done their research, knew your brand before, or are repeat buyers. So while this is great, there is not much you can do from a search term optimization point of view.
  
• There are not many impressions or clicks for many individual search terms: Keep in mind that statistical significance is very important when it comes to PPC. Concluding that a search term with 50 impressions and zero clicks is “not performing” does, statistically speaking, not make sense. The underlying data sample is too small to arrive at this conclusion.
  
  Same goes for search terms that had quite a few clicks already but have not yet brought in any conversions. This is one of the main advantages of working with an Amazon PPC agency: At SellerMetrics, we manage a significant total ad spend spanning many different ad accounts and can aggregate learnings across all these accounts for the benefit of our clients. Learn more about our Amazon Advertising Services to see how we could help you grow faster and run your ads highly profitable.

How to Optimize your Amazon PPC Campaigns using your Search Term Report?

You can use the search term report to identify:

• Keywords you should exclude from your ad campaign by adding them as negative keywords. This will typically be search terms with many clicks AND not sales, search terms that are just contextually irrelevant, or search terms with very high CPCs.
  
• Keywords that you should prioritize in your campaign by either specifically targeting as exact match keywords, or by increasing bids for these keywords. Basically this applies to search terms that are driving either sales or at least quality traffic (high CTR at low CPC). You want to make sure that you maximize your search exposure for these search terms.

How to Identify New, High Potential Search Terms?

No matter whether you are starting out new on Amazon, or are an experienced Seller, identifying and targeting new profitable search terms is an absolute key priority and an essential part of ongoing optimization (more about our Amazon listing optimization services and our Amazon SEO services). Here are three ways you can use to identify relevant search terms for your listings.

1. Product Driven Search Term Research

If you are selling a product that you have not personally used, this step of the procedure is crucial of identifying relevant search terms.

The goal is to find the following:

• What is it used for?
• Pain points this product will fix or alleviate?
• What would the customer type when searching for the product? (i.e., figure out what the seed keywords are for the product)

Product Research

To start, I would normally begin my research on the Amazon marketplace. Unless the product is not on Amazon (seldom happens), Amazon would be where I’d start my research.

In the above Amazon listing, you will learn more about the product by reading the bullet points and the product description. Also, keep a note of what you can potentially improve on the existing listing. I would recommend reading 2-3 product listings on Amazon about a similar product. In figure 1, you can see the words that are highlighted in red in the title of the 2 listings. These are “Yoga Wheel” and “Dharma Yoga Roller.”

Identify a Seed Keyword / Search Term

By just this title alone, I got two good seed keywords I can use to:

1. Further my research off Amazon, or
2. Use these seed keywords to get better seed keywords.

As a rule of thumb, if the keyword is in the beginning of the title, in this case “Yoga Wheel,” it is a good seed keyword to use.

Upon searching for “Yoga Wheel” on Amazon, it is confirmed that a lot of listing has this term at the beginning of the title. This tells me that the “Yoga Wheel” is a good seed keyword to use. I can also search on Google or Youtube to learn more about what the “Yoga Wheel” does. This knowledge would set my job up easier once I start copywriting for the product.

2. Reverse ASIN Research

Now armed with the seed keyword, in our example, “Yoga Wheel,” we will select one top competitor Amazon Listing that is organically ranked in the top 5 for the keyword “Yoga Wheel.”

Going back to the “Yoga Wheel” search results, we will pick the listing with the badge “Amazon Choice.” Click on the listing and save the link of the listing somewhere, save only up to the ASIN only. In this case, the link is (https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Dharma-Wheel-Petes-Choice/dp/B06W9K1W4F). You will use this for later to conduct Reverse ASIN research (Amazon reverse keyword search).

What is Reverse ASIN? It is actually a known keywords gathering process in the Amazon community. There are free tools out there that can take an ASIN and show historical keywords that customers have used to search for the product. It is a great way to gather keywords and intel on your competition.

The free tool that I have found with the best reverse ASIN result is Sonar.

Add the ASIN “B06W9K1W4F” and you’ll get the following result.

Feel free to download the result into a CSV format which will be used for further analysis in the next couple of sections.

3. Using Brand Analytics for Search Term Research

In 2019 Amazon, released a new reporting function called Brand Analytics that allows Amazon seller’s market intelligence data directly from Amazon. Much like reverse ASIN, you enter a seed ASIN and get a result of the popular Amazon search term.

Unfortunately, this reporting is only available for sellers that have registered for the brand registry. Which means you would have to trademark your brand. So this part might not be applicable for all sellers

Although the search results are not as numerous as other 3rd party tools such as Sonar, you can rely on the accuracy in terms of relevance and relative search volume.

There are two was to use the brand analytics report:

1. Enter a seed keyword and get a list of relevant keywords
2. Enter a seed ASIN and get a result of the popular Amazon search term.

Using both ways you can gather a larger list of keywords along with the 3rd party tool like Sonar.

Understanding Search Term Relevance

For anyone that has experience in search term research, they can skip this part. Before we move further into actually creating the listing, I feel I need to explain search query relevance.

After consolidating all the search terms in the previous steps, you will now refine the list down to around 50-60 target search terms, only if it is over that range. Some products will have less than the 50-60 search term range. You will probably not be using all 50-60 search terms in your product listing. You want to leverage this process so you can use the same list of keywords to launch your PPC campaign (How many keywords per Amazon ad campaign?).

The goal here is to eliminate search terms that are relatively less relevant to each other.  This step is more subjective than the others. It will come down to part common sense and the research you did in the product research section (step 1).

Determining % Relevancy

The mindset is that you want to get 50-60 search terms that are at least 60% relevant to the product. In other words, your product would be at least a 60% match to the customer searches. This is just a general relative guideline for Amazon listing optimization. The 60% relevancy might be flexible if your search term list before refining is less than 50 search term, than your 60% relevancy threshold might be a lot less.

So how do you know a search term is of a certain % relevant? The below example will serve as your start. For example, we have a “Yoga Wheel” that is 10 inches in diameter in size. The following are the keywords and the relevancy:

Now that you have the guidelines on refining the search term list, you will refine the list by removing search terms that are not closely related to the product.  You can use the MS Excel/Google Sheet filter function to remove any search terms that do not fit your relevance criteria.

Tips on Filtering Relevant Search Terms

Here are some points on filtering to help you remove none related search terms more efficiently:

• If you have a large list of search terms, remove the search terms that have more than 4 words.
• Look for terms in the search term list that are NOT related to the product. For example, if you are selling a 10 inch Yoga Wheel, any terms that are not 10 inches, such as 12 inches or 11 inches, can be used in the filter. Filter the search terms that contain these terms, and remove these search terms.
• Continue from the last point. It can be vice versa, where you are looking for search terms that must have a certain word. Our example can be “Yoga.” I am looking to remove search terms that do not contain the term “Yoga.” Since “Yoga” is the actual niche of the product, you have to make this word mandatory.

**Please note if there are doubts on any of these search terms, verify them by searching these search terms out Amazon or Google, see if the search result given is the same as the product in question.

Narrow to 6-8 Keywords

With a list of search terms from the previous step, you will define a list of to 6 to 8 keywords. These 6 to 8 keywords will be used in the listing copy. This ensures that a customer search in the Amazon A9 search algorithm can be matched/indexed to your product. Targeting the right keywords and having them in the front end (part the listing customer sees) are good fundamentals in Amazon SEO.

So how do you pick the keywords? You will pick the keywords that have the highest search volume which also have strong relevancy.

Previously, we hit on the relevancy concept and have a list of 50-60 highly relevant search terms to show for it, so how do we find the search volume? Unfortunately, Amazon does not make search volumes available. There are paid software tools out there that, in my opinion, give a good estimate of Amazon search volume such as Helium10. In this guide, I want to be budget-friendly and only suggest free methods. Hence my suggestion for getting search volume data for free is by using Google Ads (Learn how to run Google ads to Amazon).

You probably are asking why are you getting search results data from Google since we are selling on Amazon? Well other than the fact that Adwords keyword planner function is free, we don’t care about the exact search volume since it is not data that Amazon provides anyway. What is important is to know the volume of the relative keywords so you can prioritize and choose your 6-8 keywords.

Using Google Keyword Planner

You’ll need to sign up for a Google Ads account. Once inside the Ads accounts, go to the reporting tool called the Keyword Planner. This should be under Tools & Settings 🡪 Keyword Planner. However one thing to note: You will only be able to get accurate search volume data out of your Google Ads account if your account has been active and if you have already spent on Google Ads. Virgin Google ad accounts with no spend history will only provide very wide search volume ranges that are highly inaccurate and not at all useful in practice.

On the keywords planner page, click “Get Search Volume and Forecast,” enter your list of 50-KW and click “Get Started.”

Click on “Historical Metrics” and then sort “Avg. Monthly Searches” by descending order.

Although you can not see the exact monthly searches, you can still see the search ranges. The most important intelligence you can gather from this process is to see the keywords volume relative to each other.

From the list, you will pick those 6-8 keywords that are A) relevant, and B) have significant search volumes, based on the results on the keyword planner.

I will probably use the below 6-8 keywords in my listings for the combination of search volume and relevance:

• yoga wheel
• dharma yoga wheel
• yoga roller wheel
• cork yoga wheel
• yoga wheel for back pain
• massage yoga wheel

Conclusion: Search Term Research and Analysis is Complex but Worth it

Search term analysis and optimization seems like a lot of work. Well, it is! But when it is done right this one task can give you the best ROI out of all the front end work you can do when you start on Amazon. Keep grinding and best of luck!

The post Amazon Search Term Optimization Guide (2026) appeared first on SellerMetrics.

In practice, many new Seller also face budget constraints. And let’s be honest, getting started on Amazon in 2026 is not an east feat. Amazon is a mature marketplace and virtually every niche is dominated by well established players that have accumulated tons of customer reviews and weaponize their deep-pockets to aggressively invest in Amazon ads.

According to Statista, 73% of Amazon sellers in the United States take advantage of FBA. This goes to show how beneficial using this service can be. Let’s check out some of the advantages of using FBA and we’ll have some comparison between the different fulfillment options in Amazon.

Start an Amazon FBA Business on a Limited Budget (2025 Reality)

Launching with limited cash isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about sequencing costs. Back in 2024 Amazon introduced (or expanded) fees that change your break-even point: the inbound placement service fee for sending inventory to FBA, a low-inventory-level fee when you chronically run lean on stock, and a returns processing fee for high-return items. If you plan your launch without these, your margin projections will be off by dollars per unit. 

The lean path for budget conscious Sellers: validate demand with FBM (or a micro-batch) to conserve cash, then scale into FBA—taking advantage of New Seller credits and FBA New Selection perks to offset early fees.

Amazon Fulfillment Types

At the moment, there are three types of fulfillment options for Amazon sellers. These are:

1. Fulfillment by Amazon – FBA
2. Fulfillment by Merchant – FBM
3. Seller Fulfilled Prime – SFP

By definition, FBA is a fulfillment service where sellers are allowed to store their products in Amazon’s Fulfillment Centers. Upon sale, Amazon will then pick, pack, ship, and handle customer service on behalf of the seller (more about this in our article on Amazon FBA vs FBM).

On the other hand, FBM is the opposite. It’s a fulfillment type where merchants opt to handle shipping, packing, and inventory instead of being handled by Amazon.

Finally, SFP is a fulfillment program available to Amazon Prime sellers, which allows them to ship from their own warehouses and control their own fulfillment. By displaying the Prime badge, sellers are committing to fulfill orders with two-day delivery at no additional charge for Prime customers.

For more terms, check out our post on Amazon Acronyms and Abbreviations.

How to Start an Amazon FBA Business?

There are 6 main key steps to getting started with Amazon FBA. We’ll discuss them in detail as we go along.

Step 1: Amazon Seller Registration

To register your Selling on Amazon account for FBA, go to www.amazon.com/fba and click on Get started, then select Add FBA to your account. If you do not have a Selling on Amazon account, click on Register for FBA today.

As simple as that, you’re done with step 1.

Step 2: Product Listing Creation

A product listing refers to the product page for the items that you sell on Amazon. This includes the title, the images, product descriptions, and, of course, the price.

There are two main functions an Amazon product listing performs:

• It allows your products to be found in Amazon searches, and
• It gives you the opportunity to convince potential buyers to purchase your products. In other words, to sell your product.

To achieve these functions, it is important that you optimize your Amazon product listing. In addition, writing a good Amazon product description is also vital.

Now you have the product listing, it’s time to have your actual products prepared.

Step 3: Product Preparation

Amazon states that your FBA products need to be “eCommerce ready.” That way, they can be securely transported throughout the fulfillment cycle. Check out the Prep Guidelines below so you can properly prepare your merchandise.

For additional packaging and prep requirements, check out Amazon Seller Central’s post.

This part can be quite tedious as each of your items needs to be prepped and packaged. If you have the budget, you can take advantage of FBA Prep Services. The charge is between $0.50 to $1.10 for standard-size items. For oversized items, the charge is between $1.0 and $2.30.

Before we go to the next step, we have to discuss product labeling, which is an important part of product preparation.

Amazon requires products being sold to have product labels as their receiving systems and catalogs are barcode-driven. Product labels will associate the product with the seller account and these labels can be printed from Seller Central. To learn more about Amazon barcodes, check this post on Explanation of Different Amazon FBA Barcodes.

Printing your labels is something you don’t want to cost-cut since you would really want quality labels. Here’s a checklist when it comes to printing quality labels:

• Use a thermal transfer or laser printer (inkjet printers are more susceptible to smearing and fading).
• Make sure you’re printing with a resolution of 300 DPI or greater.
• Use proper label paper. Litho, semi-gloss, and high gloss paper are recommended.
• Test for scannability.

Amazon also offers to label your products via FBA Label Service for $0.30 per item.

Step 4: Assigning Inventory to FBA

After the product prep, you can now assign your inventory to FBA.

1. Log in to your Seller Central account. Then go to Inventory > Manage Inventory.
2. On the Manage Inventory page, select the products you are adding as FBA listing by checking the tick box next to them on the left side. Then click on the Actions menu and select Change to Fulfilled by Amazon.
3. On the next page, either click on the Convert & Send Inventory button or the Convert button. Use the latter if you’re not quite ready yet for your shipment.

To start your shipment if you selected Convert, you can select Send/Replenish Inventory from the Actions menu on the Manage Inventory page.

After the steps above, you will be prompted to the shipment creation workflow to create a shipping plan.

Step 5: Shipping Products to Amazon

The shipping plan via the shipment creation workflow specifies the products you want to send to Amazon, the quantity of each product, the preferred shipping method and carrier details, and whether you want to prep and label your inventory yourself or if you want Amazon to do it for you.

How to Create a Shipping Plan

1. From the Send/Replenish Inventory page, click on Create a new shipping plan. To add products to an open shipping plan, you can instead click on Add to an existing shipping plan.
2. Confirm your ship-from address. This is the location where your shipment will be picked up which can be your home address, business address, or your supplier’s warehouse address. To change the ship-from address, click Ship from another address.
3. Confirm the packing type of the products you are shipping to Amazon, whether they are Individual products or Case-packed products. The latter are multiples of the same products with each case containing the same quantity in the same condition. Note that an ASIN (Amazon Standard Information Number) with multiple parts must be shipped in a single package.
4. Select Continue to shipping plan.
5. The Set quantity page consists of three tabs:

All Products – This shows all the products you have included in your shipping plan.
Information required – This shows the products in your shipping plan which requires additional information.
Removal required – This shows products that are not allowed to be sent to Amazon fulfillment centers due to certain FBA restrictions.

To set the quantity, go to the All Products tab, then type the number of each item under Units.

For products not on the list that you want to be included in your shipment, click Add products on the top right section, put in the product name, ASIN, or MSKU, then click Search my inventory. Click on Add Product for each item you wanted to be added. Note that only previously converted products are searchable.

To remove the products, simply click X in the Remove column.

Step 6: Tracking Your Shipment

Tracking your shipment can be done on the Shipping Queue page, which provides details on all the shipments you are working on and those you have sent to Amazon.

The Shipment Summary page, on the other hand, shows details of a specific shipment sent to Amazon.

To open the Shipping Queue page, click on the Inventory drop-down menu in Seller Central, then select Manage FBA Shipments. There are two tabs on this page:

Shipments tab – Shows the status of all the shipments you have created and are creating to send to Amazon fulfillment centers.
Shipping plans tab – Shows all the shipping plans, the plan IDs, and the status of each shipping plan.

Shipment Summary

The Shipment Summary page can have up to six tabs, which are:

• Shipment events tab – This lets you track your shipments from creation to completion. You can see the sequence of the shipment’s statuses, along with information about the shipment’s location.
• Tracking shipments tab – Here you can enter your carrier’s tracking information to check the tracking details for small-parcel shipments. For Less than Truckload (LTL) or Full Truckload (FTL), you need to contact your carrier.
• Shipment contents tab – Shows the number of units for which Amazon has confirmed receipt.
• Problems tab – This tab shows up if there are any problems with your shipment. It will tell you of the actions that you need to perform to fix the problems.
• Reconcile tab – Shows information on how to reconcile units in your shipment if there are any discrepancies between what you have sent and what is received, usually with the unit count.
• Pallets tab – Shows information about the pallets you have sent to Amazon fulfillment centers.

Once your carrier has picked up your shipment, or if you’ve dropped it off at your preferred shipping center, mark your shipment as Shipped on the Shipping Summary page.

For shipments with a Delivered status, allow 24 hours before contacting your carrier to confirm the delivery location and the receipt of signature.

A Checked-in status means that the shipment has arrived at the fulfillment center. The status will be updated to Receiving once the fulfillment center starts scanning the barcodes and receiving the inventory.

It normally takes 3-6 days from when your shipment is delivered to be received at the fulfillment center.

Different Budget Scenarios & What You Can Realistically Achieve

~$500–$1,000 — Proof-of-Concept (FBM-first)

• Model: online/retail arbitrage or a tiny wholesale/private label micro-batch.
• Use FBM to avoid inbound placement and FBA storage at the start; reinvest only from sales.
• Goal (30–60 days): 10–30 sales, ≥20% contribution margin after shipping and returns, proof that the listing converts.

~$1,500–$3,000 — Controlled FBA Pilot

• Model: small private-label batch (100–300 units).
• Costs: inventory + basic branding + initial FBA fees; choose the shipment-split option that minimizes your totallanded cost (freight + placement).
• Goal (60–90 days): rank on 3–5 long-tail terms, maintain healthy days-of-supply to avoid the low-inventory fee.

~$3,000–$6,000 — Confident FBA Launch

• Model: 300–600 units, stronger packaging, Vine/light creative.
• Stack incentives: Brand Registry bonus (10% back on early branded sales/caps), Vine credit, and New Selection rebates/free storage where eligible. 

2025 Fees that Matter on a Tight Launch Budget

Amazon invokes a range if fees and breaking through clutter can seem like a daunting task – especially for new Sellers. Here are the most critical fees you need to be aware of:

• Inbound placement service fee (FBA). A per-unit charge tied to how widely Amazon distributes your inbound inventory. Fewer destinations = higher fee; more splits = lower fee but higher freight. Model both. 
• Low-inventory-level fee. Applies to standard-size SKUs with chronically low days-of-supply relative to demand. Keeping stock healthy often saves money and improves delivery speeds. 
• Returns processing fee. Only for products with return rates above category thresholds (apparel/shoes handled separately). If you sell in a high-return niche, this can tip you toward FBM. 
• Low-Price FBA. Since Aug 29, 2023, items under $10 get lower FBA fees (Small & Light ended). This is a real lever for low-ticket tests.

Final Thoughts

Understanding the steps on starting your Amazon FBA business is vital for the success of your shipping plan and of your business as a whole. We hope this guide has given you a much clearer picture of how to confidently start your Amazon FBA business.

FAQ: How to Start an Amazon FBA Business

The post How to Start an Amazon FBA Business on a Limited Budget: A Practical Guide for 2026 appeared first on SellerMetrics.

Remember, there are two roads that Amazon sellers will venture into if they are looking to grow their business: 1) Start selling on other Amazon marketplaces, and 2) Set your online store. In this article, we will talk about the former. 

In setting up an online store, Shopify is a prevalent option due to the simplicity of use, integration with payments, and the number of nicely designed responsive themes. 

This article will assume that you have a Shopify store set up already.

Why Shopify for Amazon Sellers?

Collection of Customer and Behavioral Data

One of the main cons of selling on Amazon is the lack of data. In Amazon, you cannot collect any customer-related data. So that means you won’t get certain customer information such as their email address and phone numbers. On Shopify, you will see the customer’s email address and which channel they found your product (Google/Facebook).

Shopify also allows for third-party pixels, which will enable you to track the customer journey and behavior on your website. Using these 3rd party pixels enables you to retarget your potential customers in a very customizable fashion. This will not be possible in the Amazon marketplace.

Building a Brand

If you want to market your product off Amazon, you need a custom website to convey your brand or your product message. These include any videos, photos, messaging, or customer support. None of which can be added to create a much more structured Amazon product listing page.

A more practical example is, let’s say you are promoting your line of products for your pop-up store, the most brand-friendly way to do this is to advertise your own online store URL address than displaying an Amazon.com listing.

Cashflow is Better on Shopify

Another reason to use Shopify for your Amazon store is cashflow. One big issue for Amazon sellers is that Amazon withholds payment for 14 days, and if you are a high-growth business, you will run into a cash crunch very quickly. That is why there has been a proliferation of Amazon-specific lenders catering to this space. 

On the other hand, Shopify allows for payment gateways such as Stripe and Paypal. These payment gateways settle payments in 4 days or less. In the case of Paypal, you will get the payment almost immediately. By getting cash in your bank account quicker, you can meet any inventory or operational needs that require money instead of looking for external financing.

Cheaper Transaction Fees

Shopify transaction fee is 2.9%, while the Amazon transaction fee is 15%. Enough said there.

Why Should You Integrate your Amazon and Shopify Stores?

To run your online business as lean and as efficiently as possible, you need to look for ways to automate and leverage technology as much as possible. One such example is leveraging Amazon advertising software to optimize and automate the time-consuming Amazon PPC optimization processes.

In running both Amazon and Shopify stores, you want to avoid as much as possible to be doing duo work where you don’t need to. A prime example of this would be product listing creation and fulfillment. If you were to add a new product, you don’t want to be, first, listing on your Amazon seller central, and second, manually creating the same listing on Shopify.

What are You Integrating?

Between Amazon and Shopify, Shopify already has a feature where you can automate the fulfillment between your Shopify store and Amazon FBA. That means you can automatically fulfill your Shopify order via Amazon FBA without having to go to Amazon seller central, then go to multi-channel fulfillment, and finally having to enter the customer’s address manually and click ship. This doesn’t seem like much, but imagine having to do this for 20+ orders daily; then it will quickly become a much-needed time saver!

Requirements to Integrate Shopify with Amazon for Fulfillment

1. You have a seller account with Amazon using Amazon FBA.
2. You have, at a minimum, a basic subscription tier on your Shopify Store.
3. Selling on Amazon US or Canada marketplaces only.

• Please note* →  Before integrating you need to make sure your Shopify store currency matches the location of your Amazon marketplace/FBA country. For example, if your store currency is CAD, then the integration will only fulfill from the Amazon FBA CA warehouse and only to a Canadian address. If your Amazon marketplace account is for another region, then you need to use a third-party app for fulfillment integrations.

Step by Step Integration

1. Activate Fulfillment by Amazon

You will need to first integrate your Shopify account with your Amazon account by doing the following steps:

A. Use this link to sign in to your Amazon Seller Central account.

B. On the Marketplace Web Services or MWS page (above), read the terms and conditions, click “next.”

C. Continue the process by clicking “Continue” and you will be brought back to the Shopify shipping settings page.

2. Match shipping rates and settings between Shopify and Amazon FBA

Since you are at the end of the day using Amazon FBA to make the final last-mile delivery, your service levels and rates need to match exactly that of Amazon FBA. 

Amazon FBA offers 3 tiers of shipping service, and they are:

• Standard Shipping
• Two-Day Shipping
• One-Day Shipping

Back to the Shopify settings screen, go to the “Shipping” section and then click “Manage Rates.”

Since we need to match shipping information based on your Amazon FBA settings and country, you will delete all the default shipping rate and shipping zones info that not the country where your Amazon FBA is based.

Once all the above is cleared, you will add back the shipping tiers that Amazon FBA supports (Standard Shipping, Two-Day Shipping, or One-Day Shipping), by clicking on “Add Rate” (see above). 

When adding the rates, make sure the rate name is exactly as they appear on Amazon FBA.

• Standard Shipping
• Two-Day Shipping
• One-Day Shipping

To find your price for the above tier, you can find the cost to fulfill via Amazon for your products tier here. 

An example, my product size tier is “Small standard: 10 to 16 oz.” The price I would input would be:

• Standard Shipping → $5.79
• Two-Day Shipping → $5.89
• One-Day Shipping → $12.80

Once you are done adding your 3 shipping rate names and their corresponding prices, click “save” at the bottom of the page.

3. Add a New Product on Shopify

Now you will add a new product listing on Shopify, which will also match your listing on Amazon, the primary field used to link the listing between platforms will be the “SKU” field. More on that later.

To add a new product, go to the “Product” on the left nav bar and click “Add product.”

Once on the product listing edit screen, scroll down to the “Inventory” section, and under the “Inventory managed by” select “Amazon Marketplace Web” in the dropdown. In this section, make sure to enter the SKU field, which exactly matches the corresponding Seller SKU in Amazon. 

Also, don’t forget to add and match the correct values for the weight, title, price, and other product listing information on this page.

4. Fulfill Your Shopify Order via Amazon FBA

Now for the final step, once you get an order, click on the “All Orders,” then click on an order # that is unfulfilled.

On the next screen, you will click “Request Fulfillment.”

Choose the shipping method under the drop-down menu that matches the customer selection (arrow #1), then click on the button “Fulfil Items.”

You will now see that this order number’s status has changed to “Pending Fulfillment” and its corresponding order on Amazon Seller Central.

You can also see an audit of the exact flow of fulfillment on the order page’s bottom portion. If the order has been successfully requested, there will be a line that will say “You requested fulfillment of x items from amazon_marketplace_web”.

Once Amazon FBA actually ships and fulfills this order, this integration will automatically update the fulfillment status to “Fulfilled,” and add the tracking number to the order page as well.

Conclusion

That concludes how to integrate the fulfillment process between Shopify and Amazon stores. In the ever more competitive E-Commerce space, multi-channel selling is as essential as ever. Therefore Shopify stores, with its supported apps and integration, have been very popular amongst Amazon sellers.

It can be time-consuming running a Shopify store co-currently with your Amazon FBA business, but integrations and tools such as the above make running both platforms much easier and less time-consuming. Continue and find ways to automate your platform’s operations and your E-Commerce brand will be ready to scale to new heights!

The post Shopify and Amazon FBA: A Guide to Automating Fulfillment Between Your Amazon and Shopify Stores appeared first on SellerMetrics.

Basic Definitions

• Amazon 🡪 Will be referred to the Amazon seller central dashboard
• Product In Question 🡪 Product that we are selling and creating an optimized listing for
• SKU 🡪 Stands for “Stock Keeping Unit” is a product and service identification code for a store or product, each product down to the variation (color, size, etc.) has its own unique SKU
• UPC 🡪 Universal Product Code (UPC) is a barcode symbology that is widely used in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other countries for tracking trade items in stores. It is required for all new Amazon listing creation. It suggested that you get your UPC via GS1

More Definitions

• Amazon Optimization (or simply Optimization) 🡪 Is a process of creating an Amazon listing where the front end and back end of the listings are completed with words, terms, and phrases that are related to the product
• Amazon PPC 🡪 Just like Google AdWords, it is an Amazon advertising platform where you get to set a bid on a certain phrase or word from a customer search. If you win the bid, your product listing will show up first in the search results for that particular phrase or word
• Seed Keywords 🡪 Are one or two deemed common, relevant, or high volume keywords that form the basis for creating a list of keywords that are the derivative of the seed keywords
• Keywords (KWs) 🡪 Combination of words that are related to the products, or words where it is connected to the product. Keywords are inserted and advertised in the product listing and PPC campaigns.
• Search Terms 🡪 Refers to the search term that the customer fills out on the Amazon search bar
• ASIN 🡪 The Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) is a 10-character alphanumeric unique identifier assigned by Amazon and its partners for product identification within the Amazon organization.

What is Amazon Listing Optimization?

Amazon listing optimization is the process of creating or updating an Amazon listing. It involves adding customer-facing information on the listing such as title, bullets, specs, and description. In addition, it also involves adding back-end information that is not customer-facing such as the search terms.

Why is Amazon Listing Optimization Important?

On Amazon, the beginning of the buyer journey will start on the Amazon search bar. For the Amazon A9 algorithm to pick up on your product listing, you will need to have the right keywords so the A9 algorithm can match the search term with the listing. Your listing keywords give the A9 algorithm signals that your listing is related to the current customer search term on the search bar.

Another component of Amazon listing optimization is also the human factor. You need your customer-facing information to be 1) informative and 2) to trigger an emotional response for the customer to purchase your product. So not only do you have to optimize for the A9 algorithm but also the customer. The perfect optimized Amazon listing will straddle a line between the machine and the human eye.

I need to point out just how fundamental Amazon listing optimization is. The positive effects of a well-optimized listing will filter downstream, vice versa of the negative effects of a poorly made Amazon listing. For example, a well-written Amazon listing will get more impressions 🡪 more clicks 🡪 higher conversion 🡪 lower CPC 🡪 higher ranking, and then more sales/profit.

As you can see, an optimized Amazon listing optimization can set you up for a positive flywheel effect. So yes it is that important and 100% worth spending extra time on.

Product Research

If you are selling a product that you have not personally used, this step of the procedure is crucial.

The goal is to find the following:

• What is it used for?
• Pain points this product will fix or alleviate?
• What would the customer type when searching for the product? (i.e., figure out what the seed keywords are for the product)

Start your Search

To start, I would normally begin my research on the Amazon marketplace. Unless the product is not on Amazon (seldom happens), Amazon would be where I’d start my research.

In the above Amazon listing, you will learn more about the product by reading the bullet points and the product description. Also, keep a note of what you can potentially improve on the existing listing. I would recommend reading 2-3 product listings on Amazon about a similar product. In figure 1, you can see the words that are highlighted in red in the title of the 2 listings. These are “Yoga Wheel” and “Dharma Yoga Roller.”

Seed Keyword

By just this title alone, I got two good seed keywords I can use to:

1. Further my research off Amazon, or
2. Use these seed keywords to get better seed keywords.

As a rule of thumb, if the keyword is in the beginning of the title, in this case “Yoga Wheel,” it is a good seed keyword to use.

Upon searching for “Yoga Wheel” on Amazon, it is confirmed that a lot of listing has this term at the beginning of the title. This tells me that the “Yoga Wheel” is a good seed keyword to use. I can also search on Google or Youtube to learn more about what the “Yoga Wheel” does. This knowledge would set my job up easier once I start copywriting for the product.

Keyword Research (Reverse ASIN)

Now armed with the seed keyword, in our example, “Yoga Wheel,” we will select one top competitor Amazon Listing that is organically ranked in the top 5 for the keyword “Yoga Wheel.”

Going back to the “Yoga Wheel” search results, we will pick the listing with the badge “Amazon Choice.” Click on the listing and save the link of the listing somewhere, save only up to the ASIN only. In this case, the link is (https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Dharma-Wheel-Petes-Choice/dp/B06W9K1W4F). You will use this for later.

What is Reverse ASIN? It is actually a known keywords gathering process in the Amazon community. There are free tools out there that can take an ASIN and show historical keywords that customers have used to search for the product. It is a great way to gather keywords and intel on your competition.

The free tool that I have found with the best reverse ASIN result is Sonar.

Add the ASIN “B06W9K1W4F” and you’ll get the following result.

Feel free to download the result into a CSV format which will be used for further analysis in the next couple of sections.

Using Brand Analytics for Keywords Research

In 2019 Amazon, released a new reporting function called Brand Analytics that allows Amazon seller’s market intelligence data directly from Amazon. Much like reverse ASIN, you enter a seed ASIN and get a result of the popular Amazon search term.

Unfortunately, this reporting is only available for sellers that have registered for the brand registry. Which means you would have to trademark your brand. So this part might not be applicable for all sellers

Although the search results are not as numerous as other 3rd party tools such as Sonar, you can rely on the accuracy in terms of relevance and relative search volume.

There are two was to use the brand analytics report:

1. Enter a seed keyword and get a list of relevant keywords
2. Enter a seed ASIN and get a result of the popular Amazon search term.

Using both ways you can gather a larger list of keywords along with the 3rd party tool like Sonar.

Understanding Keyword Relevance

For anyone that has experience in keyword research, they can skip this part. Before we move further into actually creating the listing, I feel I need to explain keyword relevance.

After consolidating all the keywords in the previous steps, you will now refine the list down to around 50-60 KWs, only if it is over that range. Some products will have less than the 50-60KWs range. You will probably not be using all 50-60 KWs in your product listing. You want to leverage this process so you can use the same list of KW to launch your PPC campaign.

The goal here is to eliminate keywords that are relatively less relevant to each other.  This step is more subjective than the others. It will come down to part common sense and the research you did in the product research section (step 1).

Determining % Relevancy

The mindset is that you want to get 50-60 keywords that are at least 60% relevant to the product. In other words, your product would be at least a 60% match to the customer searches. This is just a general relative guideline for Amazon listing optimization. The 60% relevancy might be flexible if your keyword list before refining is less than 50 keywords, than your 60% relevancy threshold might be a lot less.

So how do you know a keyword is of a certain % relevant? The below example will serve as your start. For example, we have a “Yoga Wheel” that is 10 inches in diameter in size. The following are the keywords and the relevancy:

Now that you have the guidelines on refining the keyword list, you will refine the list by removing keywords that are not closely related to the product.  You can use the MS Excel/Google Sheet filter function to remove any keywords that do not fit your relevance criteria.

Tips on Filtering Relevant Keywords

Here are some points on filtering to help you remove none related keywords more efficiently:

• If you have a large list of keywords, remove the keywords that have more than 4 words.
• Look for terms in the keyword list that are NOT related to the product. For example, if you are selling a 10 inch Yoga Wheel, any terms that are not 10 inches, such as 12 inches or 11 inches, can be used in the filter. Filter the keywords that contain these terms, and remove these keywords.
• Continue from the last point. It can be vice versa, where you are looking for keywords that must have a certain word. Our example can be “Yoga.” I am looking to remove keywords that do not contain the term “Yoga.” Since “Yoga” is the actual niche of the product, you have to make this word mandatory.

**Please note if there are doubts on any of these keywords, verify them by searching these keywords out Amazon or Google, see if the search result given is the same as the product in question.

Narrow to 6-8 Keywords

With a list of keywords from the previous step, you will further refine this list to 6 to 8 keywords. These 6 to 8 keywords will be used in the listing copy. This ensures that a customer search in the Amazon A9 search algorithm can be matched/indexed to your product. Targeting the right keywords and having them in the front end (part the listing customer sees) are good fundamentals in Amazon SEO.

So how do you pick the keywords? You will pick the keywords that have the highest search volume which also have strong relevancy.

Previously, we hit on the relevancy concept and have a list of 50-60 highly relevant keywords to show for it, so how do we find the search volume? Unfortunately, Amazon does not make search volumes available. There are paid software tools out there that, in my opinion, give a good estimate of Amazon search volume such as Helium10. In this guide, I want to be budget-friendly and only suggest free methods. Hence my suggestion for getting search volume data for free is by using Google Adwords.

You probably are asking why are you getting search results data from Google since we are selling on Amazon? Well other than the fact that Adwords keyword planner function is free, we don’t care about the exact search volume since it is not data that Amazon provides anyway. What is important is to know the volume of the relative keywords so you can prioritize and choose your 6-8 keywords.

Using Keyword Planner

You’ll need to sign up for a Google AdWords account. Once inside the AdWords accounts, go to the reporting tool called the Keyword Planner. This should be under Tools & Settings 🡪 Keyword Planner.

On the keywords planner page, click “Get Search Volume and Forecast,” enter your list of 50-KW and click “Get Started.”

Click on “Historical Metrics” and then sort “Avg. Monthly Searches” by descending order.

Although you can not see the exact monthly searches, you can still see the search ranges. The most important intelligence you can gather from this process is to see the keywords volume relative to each other.

From the list, you will pick those 6-8 keywords that are A) relevant, and B) have significant search volumes, based on the results on the keyword planner.

I will probably use the below 6-8 keywords in my listings for the combination of search volume and relevance:

• yoga wheel
• dharma yoga wheel
• yoga roller wheel
• cork yoga wheel
• yoga wheel for back pain
• massage yoga wheel

UPC

Universal Product Code (UPC) is a 12-digit bar code used extensively for retail packaging in the United States is required code to put on your listing. In the case of creating an Amazon listing, putting the UPC into the product ID field is a requirement.

There was a time about 2 years ago where you could get really cheap UPC codes that are reused and are actually registered with another entity. But now Amazon will actually verify your UPC to your Amazon account. So it is suggested that you purchase your UPC via GS1. If you choose to risk it or test the waters by getting cheap UPCs, you can look into getting a nationwide barcode.

Listing Title Optimization

Still working with the 6-8 keywords that you have picked in the previous step, you will curate the title of the product. This is key step of Amazon listing optimization.

Amazon title has a 200 characters limit.

There are 2 goals for the title:

1. Using the first 50 characters to explain what the product is to the customer, the customer needs to know quickly in their minds within 5 sec what the 50 characters in the title describe
2. The rest of the 150 characters you will use to talk to the Amazon search engine adding search word or words that have “-“ in-between for easy understanding. The template for a good Amazon title is as follows:

{main keyword 1} – {variation} – {words in search term the describes product 1} – {words in search term the describes product 2….} – if it is an accessory to a main product add: “for {main product} – by {Brand}

A Good Title

In our example: a good title will be as follows:

“Yoga roller wheel – 10” inches – dharma – power roller wheel yoga accessories – for stretching handstand abdomen exercise By Your Brand”

**Please note to try your best not to repeat the keywords. The words only need to appear once for the Amazon A9 to pick up. Repeat words or word density does not help with Amazon SEO.

**Please note that for products that are accessories for a registered brand (e.g. Texas Instrument/Netgear Arlo), we have to follow the below format for the first part of the title.

[Product Main Keyword] + For + [Third Party Branded Product] by [Your Brand]

E.g., Large TV Mount for Sony By [Your Brand]

The symbol ” – ” is a breaker recognized by Amazon as the separation between keywords. Therefore we add “–” between distinctive keywords.

Bullets

For the 5 bullets point, you will basically further expand on the benefits and features of the product. You can look at the competition listing for further ideas on proper Amazon listing optimization.

The bullets should be formatted this way:

“[Short bullet point on feature] – Expand on the short bullet point with keywords.” Example is below with the keyword in bold.

You will add keywords to the sentence of the bullets only when it makes sense to do so. Make sure that the sentence makes grammatical sense when incorporating the keyword.

So you are trying to write your bullet points for the browsers. Remember that people don’t want to read too much of the details. Hence you will write short bullet points that are 5 words or less. Then after the short bullet, you will further expand on that point for more detail-oriented readers.

Descriptions

The description loses its importance after you you have brand registered and created an A+ content for your listing. A+ content in your description is the fastest road to Amazon listing optimization.

For the description, it affects Amazon SEO, but to a much lesser extent than the title and the bullets. Feel free to expand your sales copy. Make sure to describe and let the readers envision how using the product will make their lives better. Include product information such as the exact items that come with the packaging and if there is any product warranty? Also, clarify any potential misunderstanding from the customer’s standpoint.

In your description, add additional keywords that you haven’t used in your 6-8 keywords. Don’t need to force and stuff the description with your keywords, but incorporate the keywords as naturally as possible. You can use simple HTML such as bold <b>, and next line <br>.

Backend Search Terms

The backend search terms are on the backend of the listing and are not customer-facing. They are also one of the data points picked up by the A9 algorithm that it uses to match the customer searches. You will fill in the backend search term field within 249 bytes limit restrictions, excluding spaces or punctuation such as a comma.

Since there is a 249-bytes limit (normally 1 byte is a character) it is important to not repeat words inside the search term field. Also, you have to make sure that the characters you are using are also not in the title and bullet.

Another thing to note is that the text inside the search term field does not have to be in a sentence structure and there’s also no need for punctuation. Therefore, you do not need to use filler words such as “for” or use any periods or commas to separate words.

You can use your 50-60 keywords list to develop words that you have not added in your bullets, title, and descriptions to fill out the search term field.

Product Images

A lot of Amazon optimizing how-to articles do not mention or dive deep enough into photography. Customer online purchases are made mostly with their eyes, and having poor product photos will negate any well written Amazon SEO.

Amazon allows you to have a total of 9 photos. These 9 photos are as follows:

Main Photos

The first impression counts! So show as much of the product as you can in the main photo. It’s a photo where the customer understands what the product is and its use with one quick scan of the photo. 

The main photos will also show up on the search result thumbnails. It is imperative that this photo is crisp and clear. Below are some guidelines:

• Use the 200×200 photo as much as possible and minimize the amount of white size on the edges.
• One-shot and on a white background canvas only.

Product Call Out/Instructional Photos

I have decided to put these two together because you can do both in one photo in some cases. The product call-out photo is to highlight the benefits/uniqueness of the product, while the instructional photo shows how the product is used.

Guidelines:

• Use symbols/badges for branding and trust, just don’t overuse it
• Can be in a wider aspect ratio than other photos because more space might be needed
• Neatly and creatively designed
• Call-outs with clear and neat fonts

Lifestyle Photos

The lifestype photo should show your product being used in its most positive atmosphere.

Guidelines:

• Show the daily uses of the product in action
• Elicit positive emotions using the product (fun, feel good, intensity). See examples below:

Scale/Sizing Photos

Illustrating the size or relative size of the product in question. See examples below:

Packing List Photos

Does each order come with multiple items in the package? Use an image to make clear what the customer is ordering to prevent any potential confusion.

Comparision Photos

A photo to illustrate how your product compares against your competitors. Lay out all the solid reasons why the consumer should purchase your product instead of a similar item.

A note about the photos

Although this guide is about using free tools, photos would be the one expense that I would not try to save. Unless you are well versed in graphics design, I would strongly recommend finding a freelancer or professional service to produce your product photos. I have written a piece on how much approximately how much photos cost here. Saving on photos could be one of those cents saved and dollars lost kind of endeavor. I know because that was the exact mistake I made when I first started.

Videos

The last photo tile in your Amazon listing is reserved for the your videos.

Video is a great way to bring your product to life and give the customer that one last push towards purchasing. The video can be uploaded here:

Of course, you can create using a video production company to produce high quality, storyboard video for your product. Or if you are on a budget, you can just create a video slide with your existing photo using tools like Canva. Having decent to good videos will help conversions.

Conclusion

Amazon optimization seems like a lot of work. Well, it is! But when it is done right this one task can give you the best ROI out of all the front end work you can do when you start on Amazon. Keep grinding and best of luck!

The post Amazon Listing Optimization: A Comprehensive Guide (Using Free Tools) appeared first on SellerMetrics.