hey what's up guys today we are going to
talk about amazon merch seo we're
talking search engine optimization how
to optimize our listings to gain
visibility with the ultimate goal of
increasing sales of course we know that
sales don't take place if people the
potential customers don't know your
product exists
and the best way to get a sale in my
book is through organic rank we want
somebody to see us in search results
typically near the top because that gets
the most impressions
and we want to get clicked without
having to pay amazon
for that placement meaning we're not
going to talk about advertising in this
video we're going to talk about doing
what we can to gain
a good organic placement in search
results on amazon so let's get started
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all right so we are talking seo search
engine optimization we are going to look
at it through the lens of selling
t-shirts on amazon because seo applies
to more than just amazon but on this
youtube channel a lot of us are amazon
sellers and we do sell a lot of
print-on-demand products on the platform
so let's refine the scope a bit but i
also just want to share you know
customer journeys don't just start on
amazon they may start on somewhere like
google right i don't know about you guys
but when i open up my default web
browser i have google a tab open to
google as one of the tabs okay so you go
to google you start searching what do
you see you see autocomplete well this
can have some important valuable
information to us
looking to rank our products
on
relevant keywords right because when it
does autocomplete just note this for you
know the future
it shows us
related um queries that other people
search for
to what we seeded it with when i say
seeded it with i just mean like whatever
you type in initially okay so that can
be good for finding things like long
tail keywords we type funny christmas
shirt and what do we see for family okay
so boom there's a demand for family
funny christmas shirts for couples
perfect for 2021 okay people want a 20
21 spin on it you know what i mean like
there's a lot of opportunity here
and when i actually do the search what
do we see well at the top we see a lot
first of all it's pretty busy
um at the top there we see ads okay so
people paying for placement and google
rewards them as such with the highest
placement
on the page which is going to get the
most visibility and as a result you'd
probably expect them to get the most
clicks of course we understand the
customer journey
click or search
find buy right search click whether it's
an ad or not a lot of them don't even
know it's an ad even though it says it
and um you know hopefully purchase right
so you see ads at the top there then my
eyes kind of go to the right and i see
the sidebar and it's kind of interesting
that they put a sidebar there because it
to me just looks like another way of
jamming in more
related products except i don't see it
tagged with ad anywhere on the sidebar
so those could be organic placements
although
i don't really know specifically how to
rank there in google but again we're
talking more about amazon i just want to
kind of you know zoom out just a little
bit i always think it's good to take
like a full picture view uh next you see
images for funny christmas shirt those
are not ads so that's just actually
pulling from google images
so guys if you do um actually like run a
website or anything like that where you
can control things like the file name
and the image alt text
you know those aren't like surefire ways
of ranking high but they certainly do
help the algorithm understand what your
image is about
ai is getting good at reading images in
general now too so
uh and then underneath there
we see a link to tipsyelves.com which if
you asked me
uh if you're gonna pay me a thousand
bucks to guess correctly what was going
to be the number one organic result i
would not have guessed tipsyelves.com
however they are ranking quite well and
underneath there we see a link to amazon
okay so
as far as us as t-shirt sellers on
amazon google is not necessarily doing
us much favors um
not that amazon doesn't rank well it's
the second organic rank
per like normal links but as you can see
there's about four things ranking above
it so we are probably capturing a lot of
sales from people who actually go
directly to amazon and then do their
search
uh that being said when we clicked the
amazon link
and i actually wanted to see what
listings google was pointing to
when they put the little image preview
for the funny christmas t-shirts on
amazon it wouldn't take me directly to
the listings it would just keep taking
me directly to this page okay
uh but basically what it's done is it
searched amazon for funny christmas
t-shirts which actually they added the
word tea that's kind of interesting so i
searched google for funny christmas
shirt
and it takes me to amazon funny
christmas tea shirts so interesting to
note that here on amazon guys what do we
see sponsored ads at the very top
uh i believe that's a sponsored brand ad
or headline search ad i still think of
them as that but in order to show up at
the very very very top of search results
you need to be brand registered with
amazon you used i used to be able to run
those ads without being brand registered
but they uh took my rights away to do
that unfortunately with an older amazon
advertising account
then underneath there we have some
sponsored listings actually in this case
only one
from the ann arbor t-shirt co and they
sell a ton of shirts on amazon uh beyond
that though what do we have we have
three organic placement
shirts and i'll hide myself really
quickly so you can see the third one
uh that are all ranked really well on
the keywords funny christmas shirt well
what are they doing that we can learn
from or like what are they doing that
we're not doing right because we all
want to rank really high on these
extremely valuable keywords don't we we
can see the bsrs there 1400
uh 1229
and the one in the middle says my
christmas spirit is whiskey and it looks
like it's fulfilled by merch by amazon
which probably explains why it's got a
bsr of about 26 000
and is getting kind of destroyed by the
shirts on the left and right side which
i'm willing to guess probably are doing
some sort of like fba fulfillment or
very quick turnaround and still arriving
potentially before christmas whereas we
know the merch by amazon shirts right
now
are not
so
here i'll turn myself back on in the
video um here we go so i wanted to just
really quickly touch on again the
difference between google and amazon
uh so what i wanted to highlight here we
know we searched for funny christmas
shirt right
and the highlighter actually kind of
broke
here i'll hide myself one more time but
you see in the red lines i was trying as
soon as i went full screen it stopped
the alignment got all messed up but i
was just trying to highlight in the
title where we said where the title says
funny christmas shirt okay and it turns
out that two of the three actually say
like funny christmas funny christmas and
christmas shirts
and when you go into the back end of
amazon only one of these is a merch by
amazon shirt but basically like you can
set attributes to where even if you
don't say the word shirt in the title
amazon still understands what the
product is okay so it's not like you
have to put the word shirt in
necessarily if you set the right flags
in the back end too for them to
understand it's a shirt when you sell
through merch by amazon they do this for
us on the back end we're not even able
to see it so they do understand it's a
shirt now does that mean we should or
shouldn't put the word shirt in well
i'll answer that in a second okay
but what i really wanted to illustrate
though is that generally speaking the
number one best practice tip that you
can take away from watching this video
is and i'm gonna give you some
actionable advice in a second but
it is that you want to try to include
phrase matches
or you can go for just an exact match
but i think you can do a little bit
better than that on amazon but at least
phrase matches with what customers are
searching that you really want to rank
on so in this case we're looking at it
through the lens of i want to rank on
funny christmas shirt
okay well if i want to rank on funny
christmas shirt the best thing i can do
especially with the new listing that has
no sales
is to include funny christmas shirt in
the title
now on amazon on etsy pretty much
anywhere i would highly recommend
front loading your title with that most
valuable phrase okay and i'm not saying
put t-shirt christmas funny right
because t-shirt christmas funny isn't
what they're searching they're searching
for funny christmas t-shirt i know
that's obvious but the point of me
saying that is that you don't want to
just stuff random keywords in a random
order you want to assist the algorithm
in saying okay they searched for this
and that listing has that right there
front loaded in the title i know etsy
outright states that if you front load
the title
with your most valuable keywords that's
going to carry the most significance uh
on amazon i don't know that they
outright state that anywhere um they're
probably a little bit more secretive
about their their algorithm and whatnot
but i mean pretty much everybody would
agree i think
so the number one thing
is kind of unrelated to well it's i mean
it is a part of seo
and that is sales sales are the biggest
deciding factor of what is going to rank
in the top organic spot
on amazon on etsy pretty much anywhere
um red but red bubbles might be the one
platform where that's not the case
because i think that if you just tag
spam enough they'll give you a good
placement which i'm really not a fan of
i don't know how they haven't fixed that
yet if you know anybody at redbubble
call them and tell them to fix that uh
but definitely on amazon guys sales is
going to get you the best placement why
is that
because sales are customers voting with
their dollars of what should rank at the
top right uh the the most
the best uh indicator
of relevance is somebody spending their
hard-earned cash
on a transaction on a product from
amazon's catalog every time they search
something and they click that listing
and they buy it that's signifying to
amazon's algorithm that hey this product
was relevant not only relevant because
they clicked it which increased the
click-through rate but that they
purchased it which increased the
conversion rate guys keep in mind it's
the internet i guess this is where being
a web developer helps guys but like you
can track using javascript impressions
okay and amazon's doing it all the
websites are doing it for sure the big
ecommerce websites so they know when
somebody searches for a funny christmas
shirt and they see you know five six
seven eight shirts and they click one of
them while the other seven of them just
had their click-through rate
negatively impacted because they know
that there was an impression there where
they were seen but they weren't clicked
and the one that did get clicked just
had a positive impact on their
click-through rate now from there
whether or not they convert is gonna
which means did they actually um add to
cart which is another you know
measurable action and then did they go
from the cart to check out and actually
pay another measurable action amazon's
going to
weight all of these into their decision
making process for organic seo and this
stuff changes over time guys i've known
in the past that like there were times
where they tweaked the amazon search
algorithm and people that it added to
cart and didn't check out were ranking
really well so
you know people abused that obviously um
fba sellers were like hey just have
people add to cart and don't even have
to buy it and then all of a sudden my
item's shooting up the organic rank
uh so merch by amazon we're all here to
talk specifically about what to do with
your merch by amazon uh product listing
seo
well here is the actionable advice that
you came for
and i'm gonna use this shirt as an
example santa claus it says i do it for
the hose he's got his thumbs up i think
it's pretty funny i like the design by
the way the distressed i like that it's
like the red against the the heather
gray i don't know why i just like the
heather gray shirts i think they look
good
anyways as a title for this shirt i may
do one of two things i may say funny
christmas shirt comma i do it for the
hose that way i'm saying hey amazon
algorithm you know i can't stuff my
title with a million things because you
limit how many characters i can put in
so i'm gonna go for two high-value
phrases funny christmas shirt which is
super competitive by the way and it's
you know gonna be tough to rank on page
one on those keywords given how
competitive they are but let's go for it
funny christmas shirt comma
i do it for the hose so it's like
highest level highest value keywords
and then
sub niche within that right so the
highest value is funny christmas shirt
like if i had my wish list that would be
i want to rank number one there
or even just christmas shirt right
doesn't even have you can knock the word
funny off i want to rank number one on
christmas shirt and then funny christmas
shirt and then i do it for the hose if i
can just rank on all three of those that
would be great
right and then there could even be more
longer tail sets of keywords that you
rank on from there but in terms of like
value the value pyramid at the top funny
christmas pyramid or funny christmas
shirt not pyramid funny christmas shirt
all right so i put that first front
loaded
now of course
amazon merch did that change where they
say don't put the product type in the
title so you know they're not going to
reject you unless something changed
today they're not going to reject you
for putting shirt in your title
so it's up to you whether or not you
want to do that
you could also flip it and just say i do
it for the hose comma funny christmas
and then understand that after funny
christmas
they're going to automatically append
the product type so it'll say shirt
sweatshirt hoodie etc all right
for the bullets these also get indexed
they don't carry as much weight as the
title
but for your bullets you can include
keywords that you would like to get
indexed on
generally speaking what i say is that
unless you're selling in a super fringe
niche that doesn't even exist on amazon
any like yet
uh unless you're doing that
and you basically have zero competition
i to me i don't think it's that likely
that you're gonna rank near the top of
page one because you included some
additional keywords in your bullets
you know what i mean like the saturation
the competitiveness
it's it's making it tough right like if
somebody else puts something that you
have in your bullets in their title and
you both have zero sales i'm guessing
that they'll outrank you while it's not
a sure thing because the algorithm is
unpredictable and it can kind of shuffle
things around and it's constantly
changing um you can typically bet on
that okay that being said some bullets
that i might use for this example is
this funny christmas shirt says quote i
do it for the hose that way it's like
i'm reinforcing in the title and in the
bullets the i do it for the hose part
which represents the sub-niche of
christmas shirt that we're in the next
bullet i might say something like it
makes a great xmas gift for friends
family brothers and sisters sisters now
i put xmas because we already put
christmas multiple times do i need to
put christmas again it's not going to
help so why not get indexed on the word
xmas because some customers search for
xmas instead of typing out the full word
right you see i'm saying like we don't
need to spend forever on bullets because
ultimately
it's it's just one thing right it's just
one thing of many that we can do um that
being said also one thing to note is you
don't want to get rejections because you
went crazy with your bullet points every
additional word you put on your listing
in the bullets in the description etc
is increasing the likelihood of you
getting rejected for some crazy fringe
word that we all thought was fine and
then you realize it wasn't fine right
because
amazon merch like they don't have a
perfectly defined uh content policy and
sometimes there's like false
positives on a rejected word so just
throwing that out there too i don't like
to get too crazy with my bullets i like
to keep it safe because i don't want to
get a rejection for nothing all right
for slightly more than nothing it's not
nothing
but i you know typically in one of my
bullets i'll say like oh it makes a
great gift for whoever
okay
and by the way meets me saying that does
that mean that when someone goes to
amazon and types in
xmas gift for friends that my shirt's
gonna rank number one because i put it
in my bullets you know of course not
of course not
unless they hit the reset button on
amazon's database and you know
nobody has any sales on record anymore
well then maybe because the algorithm
says oh well this listing contains that
phrase except it's in the bullets so if
someone has it in the title they'd
probably outrank me just my guess
description guys
to my knowledge still does not get
indexed for amazon merch products i just
ran a test over the last week to try to
confirm this before putting this video
out because i don't want to say
something that's not true so i just ran
a test i just rechecked it before i
recorded this
by putting something that was unique
only in the description of one of my
amazon merch product listings okay and
no results when i searched for it on
amazon's front end therefore i think
that pretty much confirms to me at least
to the best of my knowledge that the
description's not getting indexed
therefore um
do you really need to put anything there
i mean you don't have to leave it blank
right generally speaking what i'll do is
i'll grab my title i'll grab my bullet
one bullet two i just kind of paste them
one after the next after the next it may
not make a lot of sense but guys who
reads the description anyways uh you
know what i mean maybe on an fba product
where you can like actually format it
with html and make it look nice yeah
definitely i would write a description
then or you know even better go with
enhanced brand content that is what you
should do in amazon fba um
that comes with being brand registered
which you pretty much have to do these
days but that being said for merch you
know keep it simple do not generate any
words that will get a rejection just for
a description for sure do not do that
that would be crazy to me so keep it
safe that's my one takeaway for the
description guys
um also before i leave i just wanted to
mention
if you don't know like what keywords to
target
check out amz suggestion expander or
just go to google and use the
autocomplete when you're searching uh
amazon has an autocomplete by default
too amz suggestion expander though free
chrome extension it will expand i mean
it does what it sounds like it expands
the suggestions when you're looking at
amazon's search autocomplete and it
takes like two seconds to add to chrome
so i will put a link to it in the
description so that you guys can how
does it only have 58 reviews
and 100 000 users that is incredibly low
58 reviews 100 000 plus users man nobody
reviews chrome extensions anyways i love
this extension i i don't know if i've
ever reviewed it maybe i own one at this
point
uh and it does basically um this for you
and i just realized that it didn't no i
guess that is amz suggestion expander
yeah normally amazon's autocomplete is
just one column and this expanded it to
four different columns sometimes they do
keywords before keywords after they have
an other column etc
all right guys thank you for watching
this video as i sign off just wanted to
remind you if you find information like
this useful uh i am more than happy to
be your coach for your merch by amazon
journey i am very accessible on a day in
and day out basis my average response
time to any questions probably like if
i'm not asleep it's probably under an
hour so if you want to check that out i
have a full program walking you through
how i went from tier 10 to tier 200 000
you can find a link in the description
guys thank you for watching this video
though please like and subscribe
appreciate you appreciate your time have
a great rest of your day
you