Listing Builder Video: How to Measure Your Listing's Amazon SEO Score

How to Measure Your Amazon Listing’s SEO Score: A Comprehensive Guide

Optimizing your Amazon listing is crucial for driving traffic and converting visitors into buyers. To ensure your listing ranks well and attracts the right customers, it’s essential to understand and improve your Amazon SEO (search engine optimization) score. In this article, we’ll break down how to measure your listing’s SEO score using Helium 10’s tools, why it’s important, and how optimizing your keywords can directly impact your profits.

Why Is Your Amazon SEO Score Important?

Your Amazon SEO score helps determine how well your listing is optimized for search engines, specifically Amazon’s algorithm. An optimized listing is more likely to rank higher in search results, increasing visibility and sales potential. However, optimization isn't just about including keywords randomly — it’s about strategic placement to maximize relevance.

Amazon’s algorithm values keyword placement differently depending on where the keyword appears in the listing. For example:

• Titles carry more weight than descriptions.
• Exact keyword phrases are more effective than scattered individual keywords.

Understanding these nuances helps you create a listing that not only ranks well but also resonates with potential buyers.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Measure Your Listing's SEO Score

1. Start with Listing Analysis

To measure your SEO score, first, navigate to the Listing Analysis section along the lefthand side when editing a listing in Listing Builder. Click on the Keyword Performance Rank tab. This tool will give you a detailed breakdown of your listing’s SEO score based on your keyword usage.

2. Add Competitors for Comparison

Once in the Keyword Performance Rank section, click on the Add Competitors button. Here, you can add the ASINs of your competitors to benchmark your listing against theirs. Helium 10 may offer suggestions based on your product, but it’s always a good idea to manually add your top competitors.

After entering a few competitor ASINs, the tool calculates your Keyword Performance Score (KPS) based on how your keywords compare to theirs.

3. Understand the Keyword Performance Score Breakdown

After entering your competitors’ ASINs, your listing will receive a Keyword Performance Score. This score takes into account several factors:

• Keyword usage: How effectively you’re using your keywords.
• Search volume: The popularity of your chosen keywords.
• Competitor performance: How your keyword strategy compares to similar products.

For instance, if your listing has a score of 45,615, the tool will break down the different ways your keywords impact that score.

4. Keyword Match Types: Exact, Phrase, and Broad

Amazon SEO relies heavily on how you use keywords. Listing Builder scores your listing based on several match types:

• Exact Match: The exact keyword phrase appears in your listing (e.g., "spider web shelf").
• Plural or Singular Match: Variations of keywords (e.g., "spider web shelves" instead of "spider web shelf") also earn points, though not as many as exact matches.
• Phrase Match: Parts of a keyword phrase are placed together in the listing (e.g., "gothic coffin spider web shelf" might appear as "gothic coffin" in one part of the title and "spider web shelf" in another).
• Field Broad Match: Keywords are spread across different fields (title, bullet points, description) but aren’t grouped together. For example, you might have “gothic” in the title, “coffin” in the bullet points, and “shelf” in the description.
• Listing Broad Match: A keyword phrase is scattered throughout the entire listing across multiple fields.

Each match type impacts your SEO score differently, with Exact Matches contributing the most to your overall score.

5. How to Improve Your Score

To boost your SEO score, start by addressing any missing exact matches. For example, if the keyword "coffin decor" doesn’t appear in your listing in exact form, you can add it to your bullet points. Watch how your score changes in real-time. 

While it’s tempting to insert keywords randomly to increase your score, avoid keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing—placing keywords without regard to flow or readability—creates a poor user experience and can hurt conversions.

6. Optimize for Relevance, Not Just High Scores

The goal is not to get the highest score by adding keywords everywhere but to strategically place them for relevance and readability. Your listing should strike a balance between keyword optimization and clear, persuasive content.

Here’s an example of the thought process:

• Use exact match for your most important keywords in the title and bullet points.
• Aim for phrase matches to naturally integrate key phrases into your listing copy.
• Use broad matches for less critical keywords, ensuring they’re spread throughout the listing.

Why Keyword Placement Matters

Amazon’s algorithm prioritizes keyword placement based on relevance:

• Title: Keywords in the title are more heavily weighted than those in bullet points or descriptions.
• Bullet Points: These are important for both SEO and informing potential customers about key product features.
• Description: While not as important as the title or bullet points for SEO, the description still plays a role in helping your product rank.

By understanding how Amazon's algorithm weighs these fields, you can strategically place your keywords for maximum impact.

Final Thoughts: Using Your SEO to Make More Money

Improving your Amazon SEO is directly linked to better visibility in search results, which can drive more traffic to your product. More traffic means more opportunities for sales. However, focusing solely on increasing your score isn’t the goal — it’s about finding the right balance between optimization and user experience.