Amazon SEO: A Comprehensive Seller Guide

How can sellers stand out amid Amazon’s fierce competition? This guide shows you how to build your own Amazon SEO strategy.

In digital marketing, we often discuss what your website needs and how to make it user- and crawler-friendly.

But how much do you know about Amazon SEO?

In e-commerce, Amazon is a powerhouse and a reliable market that most people already recognize.

Everyone wants their products on Amazon because that’s where their audience shops.

And those shoppers buy a lot on the platform.

Amazon generates about $4,722 every second, or roughly $17 million per hour. The retail giant’s net sales last year reached $469.8 billion, up 22% from 2020.

That’s why sellers want a slice of the pie, and why ranking on Amazon’s results pages is so challenging.

But just like with your own site, you can use Amazon SEO to boost your products.

First, you need to understand the algorithm, what shoppers search to find what they need, and how you can outrank competitors.

How the Amazon A9 Algorithm Works

Before we dive into Amazon SEO and optimizing product listings, it helps to understand how Amazon’s A9 search algorithm works.

It’s similar to Google’s but not identical.

One major difference:

Amazon queries are purely commercial, unlike Google’s navigation or informational searches. Note: Google builds its algorithm with its own knowledge graph—more accurate but harder to optimize. Follow this blog for more Google SEO insights.

Simply put:

You search. A9 knows you want to buy whatever you searched.

It matches your query to a set of relevant products and displays them across several pages.

But how does Amazon even choose those specific products?

Again, think of it like Google’s algorithm, but tailored for e-commerce.

Amazon considers factors such as:

Positive customer reviews (better products sell more, earning Amazon more money).
Historical sales.
Relevant keywords included in the product listing.
A suitable price (not too high, not too low, relative to competitors).

While the algorithm always looks for relevance to the query, historical data matters too, as noted above.

Results that satisfied customers in the past are likely to satisfy customers in the future.

New Amazon sellers face a dilemma: if Amazon favors products with strong sales history, but you have no sales or A9 data yet, how can you climb the rankings?

The answer is executing Amazon search engine optimization—starting with keyword research—so shoppers who matter to you can find you.

Doing Amazon Keyword Research

Just like Google, Amazon SEO strategies must be built on keyword research.

If you don’t rank for the right keywords, your products will appear irrelevant and won’t show to users.

One good way every Amazon seller should know for keyword research is using the Amazon search box.

As you type, it autocompletes your query—essentially doing keyword research for you.

Suppose you’re an online music store and want to start listing: record players.

See what people already search to understand how to optimize your listings.

Obviously, “vinyl record player” is a strong seed term with high competition.

In this case, it’s not the only search you should run.

Keep searching every turntable variation you can think of to see what emerges.

Amazon SEO: A Comprehensive Seller Guide