Crafting Compelling Copy: A Quick Guide to Auditing Your Amazon Product Page Content
While often undervalued and under resourced, product page copy plays a pivotal role in driving conversions and improving amazon search engine optimization. An effective way to ensure your copy is optimized for success is through regular audits. In this blog, we'll review a foundational checklist for brands to audit their product copy and ensure they are maximizing Amazon SEO and conversion.
Guiding Principles of Product Page Copy
Any time a brand is reviewing their product page content, it’s best to keep the following three principles in mind:
Optimize for search rankings: Incorporating high search volume, relevant keywords and phrases in your product descriptions will improve organic visibility in Amazon's search results.
Focus on conversion: Clear and compelling copy can persuade potential customers to make a purchase. A product's conversion rate does not have a direct impact on Amazon's A9 algorithm, but it will indirectly improve rankings.
Never sacrifice user experience: Well-structured and informative copy helps shoppers make informed decisions, leading to higher satisfaction and potentially more positive reviews.
Amazon marketers often over-index on optimizing for keyword rankings and forget to focus on conversion and user experience. If you keep these principles in mind when writing and successfully balance the three, you will be traveling down the right path towards properly optimized product listings.
Steps to Audit Your Amazon Product Page Copy
1. Benchmark Current Product Performance
Before making any changes, assess your product page's current performance. Look at metrics such as conversion rates, click-through rates, and where your product ranks in Amazon's search results for key search terms. The goal of this analysis is two-fold:
It allows you to identify which products in your catalog may need the most attention.
It provides a measurement baseline for each product that can be analyzed in the future after optimizations are made.
2. Research Keywords
Keyword research is crucial for optimizing product pages and improving Amazon SEO.
First, brainstorm seed keywords and gather suggestions from Amazon's search bar autocomplete feature. Analyzing competitor listings can provide valuable insights into keywords that are working well within your niche. Utilizing keyword research tools like Google's Keyword Planner or one of many 3rd party Amazon-focused tools like JungleScout, Helium10, or MerchantWords can further refine your keyword selection by providing data on search volume and competitiveness.
When choosing keywords, it's important to focus on long-tail phrases that are specific to your product and have high conversion potential. Consider the intent behind users' search queries and tailor your keywords and product copy accordingly.
3. Analyze Product Reviews
Customer reviews offer valuable insights into your product's strengths and weaknesses.
Look for recurring positive comments about specific features, benefits, and experiences with the product. Knowing customers care about these areas, ensure they are utilized appropriately in the title, bullet points, and description.
Pay attention to negative feedback and specifically identify any features or use cases the consumer may be consistently confused about. By addressing these points in your product page content, brands can mitigate customer confusion while also reducing product returns and negative reviews.
Lastly, analyze the language used in reviews to identify relevant keywords and phrases that customers are using to describe the product. You may find longtail keywords that were not as prevalent in your keyword research.
4. Audit Your Content
Incorporate the above learnings by auditing each component of the Amazon PDP content using the following best practices:
Product Title
The product title is the first thing customers see and is the most impactful copy element to the A9 algorithm. The title should be easy-to-consume, descriptive, and keyword-rich. Consider the following tips:
Include your top tier search terms that you'd like that product to rank for. The most important keyword or phrase should be used close to the front of the title to maximize the impact to search.
Identify the most critical features and benefits that the consumer uses to make their purchase decision. Avoid going overboard and listing out all the features and benefits. Remember, readability and user experience is paramount.
Lastly, optimize the product title for both desktop and mobile. After you write your title, see how it looks on both screen sizes as well as in search and on the product page. Ensure the consumer is able to see the key product details in the search results on mobile - this is where the title will be most truncated and allow for the least amount of characters to be visible.
Bullet Points
We recommend focusing each bullet point on a single key feature or benefit of the product. Naturally there will be sub-features or benefits you can include as well, but remember to be clear and concise. When auditing your bullet points:
Prioritize features that require deeper explanation and differentiate your product from competitors.
Double down on your most important keywords and leverage the additional character count to incorporate secondary search term phrases.
Product Description
The product description provides a longer form opportunity to elaborate on the product and your brand. Here's how to approach it:
If there were any specific features or benefits that did not make it into the title or bullet points, ensure they are covered here.
Continue to expand keyword reach by utilizing secondary and tertiary phrases.
Utilize the additional character count to focus take more of a storytelling, descriptive approach.
5. Optimize, Monitor, and Re-Analyze!
Finally once you have made optimizations to your PDP, continuously monitor the performance of your Amazon product listings to understand how the changes impact performance. Using the benchmarks defined in step one, compare before and after to see the change in search result rankings and traffic/conversion metrics.
Do not fall into the trap of making overly frequent changes to your Amazon listings. SEO takes time and it's important to not be too reactionary. Depending on the product's maturity and the specific metric you are analyzing, you may need to analyze up to a 6-month period before and after the change. That said, looking at performance on a monthly basis is appropriate. Once you are seeing consistent results in your analysis, consider making new optimizations and continue to measure.
Conclusion
Auditing your Amazon product page copy is essential for optimizing your Amazon copy for success. By focusing on the three guiding principles and best practices laid out in this blog, you can improve your visibility, conversion rates, and the overall customer experience with your brand. Regularly auditing and refining your copy ensures that your product remains competitive in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape.
