Amazon backend keywords: tips & tricks to make your articles easier to find

Less than 250 bytes for an optimal search experience

The first and most important rule when assigning Amazon backend keywords may seem a bit confusing at first glance: Terms for the search field must necessarily be less than 250 bytes in length. This wasn’t always the case: Some time ago, companies could fill up to 5,000 bytes with keywords. In the meantime, however, Amazon has drastically reduced the number of characters to ensure that retailers do not include too many irrelevant terms.

We can only speculate on why Amazon specifies a length in bytes and not in characters. However, it is much more important for Amazon Sellers to know that this is not always automatically the same. In many cases, the specification actually means nothing other than that you have a maximum length of 249 characters (letters from A-Z or a-z and numbers from 0-9) at your disposal. However, there are also characters that occupy 2 bytes, for example German umlauts. Dealers within the DACH region should therefore keep this special feature in mind. Japanese and Chinese characters are sometimes 3-4 bytes in size and also reduce the actual character length.

Important to know: Under no circumstances should you exceed the maximum length and, if in doubt, it is better to leave out a relevant term relating to your product. Overlengths cause all backend keywords to be ignored by the algorithm. This can have a huge impact on the visibility of your products.

More guidelines for Amazon backend keywords

Synonyms: Ideally, you should use synonyms for your terms, if available, as potential customers might also type them into the search box.

Alternative spellings: The selection of search results requires the most accurate match possible between search query and backend keywords. Therefore, it makes sense that you specify different spelling variants that are possible for your product. However, you should not specifically optimize for spelling mistakes.

Abbreviations: If there are common abbreviations for the name of your items, you should include them in your keyword list as well.

Lower case: The algorithm does not make a difference between upper and lower case, so the lower case of the keywords is sufficient.

Separation by spaces: Different terms are separated by spaces. You can dispense with punctuation marks such as “;”, “:”, “-“. Neither spaces nor punctuation characters count in the given byte limit.

Singular or plural: You are free to choose singular or plural for your keywords. Using both forms of the numerus is not necessary.

No filler words or articles: According to Amazon, you can avoid filler words and articles such as “a”, “one”, “and”, “at”, “for”, “of”, “the”, “with”. You should take this to heart to avoid wasting bytes unnecessarily.

Invalid entries for keywords

In addition to a number of recommended actions, Amazon explicitly prohibits some practices when dealing with search terms. Amazon reserves the right to hide ASINs of merchants that violate these requirements. In case of doubt, companies also face the threat of having their accounts blocked.

The following content is prohibited:

• Brand names (also your own brand name)
• ASINs
• Obscene, insulting or offensive language
• Terms that indicate limited validity (e. g., “new,” “on sale now,” “for a limited time only”)
• Subjective terms and superlatives (e.g. “best”, “cheapest” “most beautiful”)

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Useful helpers for optimization

Before you can add new keywords to your backend, the question naturally arises as to where relevant terms can be found. First of all, you should trust your gut feeling. After all, you know your products and target group better than anyone else. To get the most out of your keyword optimization, we still have a few useful helpers for you.

Amazon Search (Autosuggest)

A first optimization tool that is available to any merchant at any time and free of charge is Amazon Search itself. As soon as you enter a term, your input is automatically supplemented by suggestions. This feature is called autosuggest and is often used in intelligent search functions. The suggestions are based on terms that are frequently entered by visitors in the search box. Therefore, it is worth including phrases from autosuggest in your keyword list.

Amazon Brand Analytics

You probably want to know how often potential backend keywords are actually searched. Unfortunately, it is not possible to make a statement about this with the Amazon search alone.

With Amazon Brand Analytics, merchants who have registered their brand with Amazon have a research tool at their disposal that already provides you with initial indications of search frequency. The big drawback is that you cannot expect exact search volumes here either. Instead, topic-related terms are assigned a so-called search frequency rank. If a keyword ranks first, it is searched for most often. This will at least help you determine which terms you should prioritize.

Tip: We have already explained how to register your brand with Amazon in our guide to branding on marketplaces.

Keyword tools (e.g. Ahrefs, Sistrix, SEMrush)

There are quite a few keyword tools for classic Google SEO. Among the best-known representatives are Ahrefs and Sistrix. Both providers have recognized the potential of Amazon SEO and offer the ability to search for backend keywords for Seller Central. Both Ahrefs and Sistrix even have free versions for this in their program – albeit with less functionality. We recommend researching with Ahrefs, because even in the free variant you get information on search volume for a few hits here, while Sistrix, similar to Amazon Brand Analytics, only performs a listing based on search relevance.

Here are the links to both tools:

Ahrefs Amazon Keyword Tool

Sistrix Amazon Keyword Tool

Conclusion

Backend keywords are an important part of Amazon SEO. Amazon even shares its keyword specifications publicly. Amazon sellers would certainly like to see this kind of transparency more often. Although the maintenance of Amazon keywords for individual items is not witchcraft, those who have a wide range of products should use external systems for optimization. When searching for suitable terms, you should first follow your instinct – for everything beyond the first impulse, we have presented a few useful research tools in the article.