Amazon Product Title Optimization: The Ultimate Guide

Optimizing your Amazon product listing for conversions can be a daunting task. One of the first and most important places to start is with the product title. In this guide, we’ll go over everything you need know about Amazon product title optimization.

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Why is the Title Important?

The product title on Amazon, along with the main image, reviews, and price, is one of the few things that a customer will see on the Amazon search engine results page (SERP).  

Your title acts as a headline and offers information about your product. Including valuable keywords and benefits will help you attract the right customer.

Below is a screenshot of a search results page (SERP) for “keto chocolate”. Besides the images, the product titles are really the only copy that give the customer clues about whether or not the product will fit their search intent.

Because there are so many products on Amazon, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of options. This is why optimizing your title is so important. Many big brands don’t take the time to optimize their listings so this is the perfect opportunity for you to attract a customer to your product.

What are the Amazon Product Title Guidelines?

There are four main requirements that Amazon tells us to follow for a product title: 

• It must not exceed the Amazon product title character limit of 200 characters, including spaces (and depending on product category)
• It must not contain symbols or fancy characters like:  ~ ! * $ ? _ ~ { } # < > | * ; ^ ¬ ¦ ™ ¢ ∞ 
• Avoid using promotional phrases such as “free shipping”, “limited time offer”, “shop now” 
• Must contain product-identifying information  

It’s best practice to follow these guidelines because it’s possible that by making one little mistake, your product could be suppressed from the search results. 

Another place to see a basic overview of what Amazon expects is in their Quick Start Style Guide.

Best Practices for Amazon Product Title Optimization

There is no perfect formula, but if you keep the following in mind, you’ll be off to a good start. A product title must: 

• Be easy to read
• Be written in title case (all important words beginning with a capital, and conjunctions and articles like “and”, “or”, “but” etc. in lower case)
• Persuade your customer to click
• Answer as many customer questions as possible (features, benefits and uses)
• Use as many characters as necessary to communicate value

Now that you have a good understanding of the Amazon product title guidelines and what we believe you should include in your title, let’s take a look at the most important part of selling on Amazon: the customer. 

Start with the Customer

Your customer should be your main focus when writing an optimized title for your product on Amazon. You want to create a smooth journey for them as a buyer. In fact, a focus on the customer and their intent is one of the biggest factors in making a conversion. You can read more about customer intent and how to write for it in this article.

Once you’ve attracted them with a winning image, their next step is to scan for clues and information about your product in the title. On Amazon, you have milliseconds to make your impression and you need to make sure you optimize your listing. 

Think of the answers to these questions. Does your title: 

• Tell them exactly what your product is?  
• Answer their search query?  
• Fit their search intent? 
• Makes sense? 
• Signal value? 
• Suggest a way to use the product? 
• Provide a benefit-driven description of your product? 
• Look like a human wrote it? 

If you can provide as much relevant information to your customer in the title you have a better chance of getting them to take the next step, which is to click on your product and check it out in greater detail.  

Keywords in Amazon Product Title Optimization

“The more relevant keyword phrases you can include in your product title without compromising readability, the better your chances of selling.” 

Keywords are especially important when it comes to writing your product listing because they’re what help customers find your product.

Before you begin writing for your product, you need to dedicate some time to keyword research. Keyword research is directly related to the customer’s intent. You have to think about what words and phrases will help them find the product they’re looking for.

Amazon’s search algorithm gives more importance to the keywords in your title than your description, bullet points or any other text. This means you should try to include your most important and most relevant keywords in your product title. This should be easy as these keywords should be describing your product anyway.

Use an Amazon Seller Software

Keyword research can be daunting. It’s helpful to have a well-defined process in combination with a proven Amazon seller software (we use Helium 10) to perform keyword searches, identify trends and see which keywords and phrases your competitors are ranking for. You’ll see through your research what keywords have a higher search volume. This way you can identify which are most relevant to your product and use them in your title. 

One of our favourite Helium 10 tools is Scribbles. We use it to write and optimize all of our listings. Once you have a solid set of keywords and phrases, you paste them into Scribbles. They’re automatically colour-coded according to search volume and underlined in the copy every time they’re used. Below is an example of a title for a listing with colour-coded keywords and phrases. You can learn more about Scribbles and why we love it here.

If using a program sounds overwhelming, you can always reach out to have us optimize your product title for you.

Include Product Synonyms

If you’ve done thorough keyword research, you may find that when there are multiple terms a customer can refer to your product. Because Amazon’s algorithm weighs the keywords and phrases in the title more heavily than in the bullets or description it’s in your best interest to include more than one of those synonyms.  

Take a look at this example for headphones. A visitor to Amazon could search for multiple keyword phrases to find this product. The more synonyms or terms for the product that appear in the title, the more customers it will reach. 

The brand includes at least 3 synonyms for the product to help it appear in front of more people: 

• Earphones  
• Headphones 
• Earbuds 

If you’re using an Amazon seller software, you’ll know which phrases have the most search volume and therefore which ones to use closer to the beginning of your title.

Another thing to keep in mind is the importance of relevant keywords and phrases you use. If you include something that doesn’t fit your product, this could cause your conversion rate to go down because it doesn’t match the customer’s intent. This ultimately affects the quality of your listing and propels it into a downward spiral. We go over the idea of all parts of the listing affecting the other in this post about the Amazon Flywheel and how you can use it to grow your sales.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

It’s possible to include too many keywords. This is called keyword stuffing. Trying to cram as many keywords into a sentence or title creates a bad experience for your customer and could deter them from clicking. 

In the listing below, someone searching for “salve” could also search for “cream”, “ointment” or “conditioner”. Although this title includes many good keywords to help it appear in Amazon’s search results, the copy sounds unnatural. Instead of speaking to the customer, they are listing out the many different ways of calling the product.

Remember that it’s always important to keep your writing natural-sounding and include benefits and use cases that will spark your customer’s interest. 

For some great examples, check out this article on how to use keywords naturally.

Keywords and the Canonical URL

If you follow a proper structure and include the more important keywords at the beginning of the title there’s a possibility that Amazon will create a powerful canonical URL to drive external traffic to your listing.

What is a canonical URL on Amazon?

A canonical URL is usually created from the first 5 words of your Amazon product title. Amazon creates these titles so that external search engines can find your product. This is especially useful because even if a customer begins their search on Google, if your canonical URL fits their search, your Amazon listing will rank higher and you might just have a new customer.  

For example, if you have a customer searching for “organic natural mosquito repellent” on a search engine and your title looks something like this: [Brand Name] organic natural mosquito repellent, you will have a higher chance of appearing in the search and this canonical URL will lead them to your product on Amazon. 

Below you’ll notice an example of the canonical URL for this ceremonial grade matcha powder matches the product title.

It’s a good idea to keep this in mind when first creating your product. It’s much trickier to change the canonical URL after the fact.

Include Features, Benefits and Uses

“The title is the only text your customer will see from the search page, so it should share important information. Every word counts.” 

An optimized Amazon product title should deliver as much valuable information as possible to your customer. A customer scans through dozens of results all displayed on one page and they want to be able to find information quickly. The more information they can gather about your product from the title, the more likely they are to click.  

How do you ensure you’re providing the right information?  

Focus on what speaks to the customer. Include the features, benefits and use cases of your product. 

• A feature explains something about the product,  
• A benefit answers the question “so what?”  
• A use case offers examples of how to use the product. 

What makes your product unique and how does it add value to the customer? Is it organic, hands-free, vegan, perfect for children, compatible with Apple, removable, multipurpose? If you know your product well, then you should be able to relate its value to your customers and understand how it can help them. Chances are, they’ll already be thinking about some of these things while scanning so if they see your title includes some of the words they had in mind, they’ll be more likely to click. 

Look at this example:

The product is a bread mix. There are many features and benefits listed here. “Easy to make” will save you time, it’s delicious (mouthwatering), and is free of artificial ingredients, colours and flavours. And the use case example is great too – no machine needed!  

As a customer, I’m intrigued. There is already so much value just within the title that I want to learn more about this product and if it’s right for me. 

When you think about what value your product can provide your customer, you’re already a step ahead of your competition. Including features, benefits and use cases in your product title is crucial in standing out from other products because your customer will be scanning for the product that fits as many of their needs as possible. 

Follow a Structure for Your Product Title

When setting up products on Amazon, it’s helpful to follow a structure for product listings and Amazon title optimization. This gives your brand a consistent look, feel and message, which builds trust and familiarity. 

The structure for each category and product may be different, but we always recommend that you try to maximize the number of characters you use in your product title. Remember, people will be scanning the search results page for words that they find useful or relevant to their own search. 

Here are some more things to consider. 

Lead with the Brand Name

We recommend beginning each title with the brand name. This not only helps you establish recognition if you’re just beginning to promote your products, but it helps customers easily identify what they’re looking for.  

How to Structure Your Title

We like to follow a general structure for product titles. This is not always so straightforward with every product or category. Depending on the product, you may not have a lot of characters to work with. Perhaps your product is very straightforward and won’t need to delve into details. 

We usually modify our title structures for each product, but we like to start with a general structure that looks something like this: 

Product Title Optimization with Amazon A/B Testing

What better way to truly optimize your Amazon product title than with tried and true data?

Amazon’s Manage Your Experiments is a tool designed for A/B testing. Amazon will put 2 title options and test them against each other. Once enough evidence establishes which one is better, it will even auto-publish the title.

Take a look at the example below. You can see which version made more conersions, sales and more.

Read our guide to learn more about A/B testing on Amazon with Manage Your Experiments.

Amazon Product Title Optimization for Mobile

Even if you have up to 200 characters to use in your title, not everything will be visible. There is a cut-off point. Include the most relevant information first so that your customer can find what they’re looking for whether on mobile or desktop. You can learn more about optimizing a product listing for mobile here.

Here is an example of how the same product appears on different devices. The full product title is 189 characters long. On the desktop search results, the title is cut off at 135 characters. In the mobile search results, the title is even shorter at just 84 characters. When you lead with the highest-level keywords and phrases, your customer will be able to identify that the product fits their search – even with just 84 characters.

Remember everything that’s important and valuable to a customer in a listing: 

• Brand name 
• Keywords 
• Benefits 
• Features 
• Use cases  
• Quantity, size, colour or packaging 

Once you have practiced with a few products it will all become easier. Keep practicing and always write with your customer in mind. 

Optimize Character Count

Depending on the category of the product, titles can be up to 200 characters long. According to BlueBoard’s research, 90% of best-selling products use at least 50 characters and 42% use over 100. You should absolutely try to use as many characters as you can to showcase the features, benefits and uses of your product.  

Make it Readable

As important as keywords are, it’s also important that your customer can read your title easily. We break up our titles into digestible sections using dashes to physically separate the text making it easier for a customer to scan. 

Should you Hire a Professional?

There are so many things to consider when starting your Amazon journey. There is a steep learning curve to product optimization and it’s often difficult to get everything right. From keyword research and copywriting to product photography and creating visual assets and graphics, getting your products on Amazon requires a lot of time and expertise. 

You may want to consider hiring someone to help you optimize your products for sales. A professional will have access to all of the tools and already has experience optimizing products from all sorts of categories.  

Reach out to us if you have any questions or are interested in improving your sales.

Key Takeaways

As you can see, there is much more that goes into Amazon product title optimization than meets the eye. With some hard work and practice, you can optimize your Amazon product titles for conversions. 

Keep these key points in mind when crafting the perfect title: 

• Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and imagine what they’re looking for
• Always include relevant keywords
• The best product title balances features, benefits and uses
• A well-defined process will get you further