You can have the most amazing product in the world at the best price possible, but it still won’t sell if people don’t see it. Your best chance at getting your product in front of the eyes of people who will buy it is by researching search terms and learning what the people who want your products are searching for. There are several ways to narrow down and refine the selection of keywords you use to maximize any paid advertising you do.

Tools of the Trade

These are some of the best programs you can take advantage of to ensure you’re able to research your keywords thoroughly.

  • Google Keyword Planner tells you how many searches are conducted for each word or phrase, helps analyze your online competition for that search volume, and suggests similar phrases you may want to consider including in your ad campaign. This site can also help you get started from scratch by analyzing the searches that send people to your competitor’s sites. All you need to get started is a free Adwords account!
  • Keyword Tool is another great site that, at its most basic level, is available for free. This site is great for targeting long tail keywords, which are phrases like ‘best running shoes for women’ as opposed to ‘running shoes’. This site uses Amazon’s Auto Complete to suggest similar searches and to beef up your long tail options.
  • Jungle Scout is particularly helpful to sellers, as you can take the keywords you’ve gathered from the other two options, and see how those same keywords convert into sales for others who use them.
  • Amazon ads that you have already run can also be a useful tool! From Seller Central, you can download your Search Terms Report to see which search terms converted into the most sales for you.

Negative Keywords

Sometimes, being careful about who you don’t target is just as important as who you do. Negative keywords let you exclude words from your item or ad’s search so you’re not paying for pay-per-click advertising to people who aren’t likely to buy your product. For example, if you sell adult shoes, you may want to add ‘kids’, ‘kid’, ‘childrens’, and other similar words to your negative keywords to prevent paying for clicks from people searching for shoes that you don’t sell.

Negative keywords can also be helpful in directing traffic flow from major search engines, such as Google. Someone searching for a landscaping job isn’t likely to want to buy a shovel, so you may want to negate words like ‘job’ or ‘hiring’ to prevent those accidental clicks.

Research, Research, Research

In the end, your items are limited mainly by the number of eyes that see them. Investing some time in researching keywords can help you ensure you’re not accidentally missing some just by coming up with them off the top of your head. After all, wouldn’t it be terrible to miss a bunch of sales because you didn’t think to use ‘wristwatch’ in addition to ‘watch’ in your search terms?