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I’ve had some difficulty getting enough exposure on Amazon in both the organic and paid ads and yesterday spoke with an Amazon rep from the advertising side of things. She explained that my product titles are holding back the rankings.

As a fictitious example, we are selling ‘wedding gifts’. I have tried to target customers who don’t know what to buy and are searching for ideas, which are also appearing as search suggestions in the drop down search bar. So my titles start with phrases like ‘wedding gift ideas’. I also include more specific descriptions later on in the title and obviously in the description and bullet points.

The rep explained that this approach was counterproductive. She explained that the actual product description should be in the first 50 characters of the title. Whilst I accept that a more specific search is likely to result in a conversion, the search numbers suggest that there are many more people who are simply in need of ideas. She explained further that the algorithm was far less likely to show products that it couldn’t readily categorise in those first 50 characters.

She said that this would influence both the organic rankings and the ads.

Does anyone have a better understanding of this? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.


  • Hi Superstar,

    I want to establish that I am no Amazon expert but I have been learning many similar topics...I think this would be counter productive for a couple reasons:

    1. I imagine more people search for Ideas on google (other search engine) before they come to Amazon..People generally come to Amazon to buy..that being said, I did a search for wedding gift ideas, and it does eventually appear in the search box.
    2. Who do you want? Yes it is possible to snatch more sales by having those keywords but you will be targeting and positioning yourself for people who don't know what they want and will be browsing, which will have a lower conversion and click through rate than if you were just going for people who are specifically searching for your product and ready to buy.
    3. Nobody really knows....and I have been warned about conflicting advice from seller central...acknowledge what is said but with a grain of salt.

    My best advice would be to use a couple of different keyword search tools, compile a list and throw them all into amztracker and see what comes up as ranking for yourself as well as some competitors...I would cross-reference this with a tool like merchant words that gets you search volumes for search terms/keywords... this will tell you whether or not it is a good idea... maybe you will find that search volume is low for "....ideas" and it was a waste of time...find the keywords that have the most search volume, check the rankings on amztracker and combine the knowledge of both to optimize your listing...

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