How to edit & optimize your Amazon canonical URL in Seller Central
Amazon gets a lot of direct traffic. But the next big traffic source comes from search engines – about 14% of visitors come from Google. Canonical URLs help those search engines find your Amazon products and direct your customers to you.
That’s why it’s important to consider your canonical URL when creating and optimizing your product listings.
In this post we’ll cover what exactly a canonical URL is, how it can boost your listings, and how to optimize one that drives more external traffic.
What is a canonical URL?
A canonical URL on Amazon consists of five words separated by hyphens and followed by the ASIN. This URL helps search engines find your products by relevant keywords.
Amazon automatically creates a canonical URL from the first 5 words of your product title. This is why it’s essential to consider which keywords you’re using at the front of the title when you first create your product listing.
Below you can see that the canonical for Naoki green tea is: www.amazon.com/Naoki-Matcha-Superior-Ceremonial-Blend/dp/B01L2GW7SI
Notice that these 5 words match the first 5 words of the title?
So if someone searches for Naoki ceremonial blend matcha on Google for example, it’s more likely that this Amazon listing will appear in the results because it matches the shopper’s query.
Knowing this structure and creating specific URLs optimized for your product can give you a big advantage.
How do you find your product’s canonical URL?
Usually, the canonical URL appears when you find the product through a search.
If you’re looking for your product’s canonical URL from Seller Central, you’ll only be able to see the link with its ASIN.
To find your canonical URL, right-click on the live product page and click inspect (element) on a Mac or Windows (or hit f12 to open developer tools).
This will bring up the list of all the elements on the page. Hit command+f (Mac) or ctrl+f (Windows) and type in “canonical” to bring up the URL. You’ll see the first 5 words after “amazon.com” which make up your canonical.
Why are Amazon canonical URLs important?
Having relevant keywords related to your product often helps it rank.
If much of the external traffic (any traffic that comes from outside of Amazon) to Amazon comes from search engines, having a good canonical URL can help direct your customers to your Amazon page.
Bringing in external traffic also helps your ranking and performance because Amazon sees this organic traffic as real interest.
How to optimize a canonical URL
As mentioned above, canonical URLs contain 5 keywords.
The best way to optimize yours on Amazon is to think of your top 5 most relevant keywords.
Amazon generates canonicals for search engines to locate your product. By adjusting this URL, you can get indexed, which increases your product’s visibility and ranking. And since a quarter of Amazon’s total traffic comes from different search engines, you need to consider how well you rank there.
Canonical URLs use hyphens and colons right after the first five words present at the start of your title, so you need to define the first five keywords carefully. Hyphens and colons are used interchangeably, and you can control their placements.
How to edit your canonical URL from Amazon’s Seller Central
1. Select “help” from the top right of your Seller Central page:
2. Next, click on “My issue is not listed”
3. Describe your issue, by simply filling out “Please edit the URL(s) for the following ASIN(s)”. To make it as simple as possible for them to follow, we label the old (current URL) and the new one like so:
4. Press continue, select the appropriate options, and send an email. It’s also a good idea to customize the subject line to keep better track of your requests.
And that’s it. Usually the Amazon associate replies pretty quickly and approves the URL. If not, like with all things on Amazon, try again and you’ll most likely succeed.
