How Amazon Backend Keywords Can Boost Product Discoverability

Vidyullatha Matcha
Amazon Selling Strategies
4 min readSep 9, 2021
amazon backend keywords

Amazon backend keywords form an important part of any seller’s keyword strategy. They are the keywords that only sellers are privy to which is why they are the hidden keywords. They are pivotal to boosting the discoverability level of a product.

You can include any keyword that is relevant to the product and its features into your list of backend keywords. Variations in spellings, common spelling mistakes, synonyms, etc, all qualify to be backend keywords.

Optimizing your product listings on Amazon with backend keywords will contribute towards better ranking with the A9 algorithm.

Check out this video to learn about Amazon product listing optimization:

Here are some ways in which backend keyword optimization can boost product discoverability on Amazon.

Reduce Redundancy

Your Amazon product description copy has to be clear and concise for customers to read. So you must include all the relevant information and keywords without making it seem too text-heavy. But the problem is that there’s always so much more that you will want to include. For this purpose, you are provided with a field to enter the backend search terms, and it allows for up to 250 bytes.

This makes sure that your product still ranks for those important keywords without the risk of redundancy and overcrowding of words in your descriptions. This ultimately works towards making your product more easily discoverable.

Backend Search Terms — Rules and Regulations

Amazon is very strict about the policies and regulations it has in place for sellers. There are rules for backend search terms as well. They include not using names of brands, ASINs, and expletives or other search terms that Amazon considers prohibited. It is also important that all the terms are relevant to your product because if they’re not, you’ll find it hard to rank your products.

You have to keep these in mind and abide by them while optimizing your listings with backend keywords. This is because the result will be an increase in sales and improved rankings on the Amazon SERP.

Competition

Competition on the Amazon Marketplace is high and this hinders the generation of profits as well as making it difficult to distinguish your brand and products from the other competitors. For this purpose, you need to take advantage of every opportunity that you can to make yourself stand out. Now you must be wondering — what other avenues are left to explore? Wouldn’t other sellers have utilized everything to the fullest?

An interesting fact is that a lot of sellers tend to overlook or undermine the importance of backend keywords. You can be resourceful and take advantage of this fact by firstly gaining a good understanding of the Amazon A9 algorithm. You can then optimize your listings effectively with backend keywords. This will make your products more easily discoverable over your competitors who are all selling the same product.

Constant Monitoring

It’s important to know that you need to keep checking and monitoring all aspects of your Amazon selling operations. Whether it is amazon advertising, inventory management, listing optimization, or your keyword strategy, successful selling on Amazon entails consistent monitoring. Sellers can make use of expert tools like SellerApp that help manage all these functions. If you want to optimize your backend keywords regularly, you need SellerApp’s Index Checker to identify if your backend search terms are indexed or not.

You might come across new keywords now and then and you can’t fit everything in your main descriptions. So you can include all of these in your backend search terms. This process ensures that your product listing has the full potential to boost your ranking which in turn means higher levels of discoverability. It also means that more traffic will be driven to your product listings.

Amazon Reports

Amazon provides Search Term Reports to sellers. These provide valuable insights for sellers into the exact keywords that shoppers use that direct them to your product listings. It helps in identifying how they’re searching and the keywords that they use most frequently that lead them to discover your products.

With these reports, you will be able to find other high-performing keywords you can include in the backend keywords. This will make your products an exact match for those keywords and you can utilize them to boost your discoverability to remarkable new levels.

Conclusion

As explained above, backend keyword optimization is very important to winning top-ranking positions for all of your listings. It is the most sure-shot way of ensuring that you have a good level of discoverability for all your products. Keep in mind that you first need to ensure that all of the primary keywords used in titles and product descriptions are indexed. All of this ultimately leads to increased profits and sales while also outpacing your competition. Thus, the importance of backend keywords is very evident so ensure that you engage in them effectively.

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