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 There’s no way around it,  keyword research is the foundation of every good Amazon marketing business.

I will admit that when I got started, keyword research was always something I struggled with. I never seemed to be able to find keywords that were good enough. That’s obviously changed over the years but it took me a long time to get it right and when you’re starting out it can be the hardest part.

So, for all of you who don’t know where to start with keyword research, here are some tips that I’ve been using to find great keywords easily.

Basic Amazon Keyword Research
To get started, you need to do some basic research. You probably have a very rough idea of what people are searching for and what products/niches are popular – the simple keywords that every good marketer recognises early on. But, that initial list is the same as brainstorming for a novel. Sure, you have a rough outline, but you still need to sit down and write the thing.

When doing Amazon keyword research, I like to get started using the Google Keyword Tool – it’s free, easy to use and has a decent amount of data to draw from. Like most free keyword tools it’s not 100% accurate (no tool is) but at least you know this data comes directly from Google so it’s likely to be as close as you can get to the true picture of a niche and it’s keywords.

Visiting the Google keyword tool and entering a basic term or phrase into the search tool. You can actually enter multiple terms, but for now, just one will do. I’ll use “camping” as an example. The top level of search results will be terms that include your main keyword, and will include things like:

• Tents for camping
•  Camping stove
•  Camping gadgets

These terms are all directly related to the main keyword you entered and give you more options to build your keyword list and go deeper into the niche. Look for the Local Monthly Search Volume to get an idea of how many searches this term gets each month in your target area.

Global searches represent searches throughout the entire world and Local represents the searches in your chosen country – you want to focus on Local to start with as this is where you’re most likely to get ranked in Google.

You also want to make sure that you have “Exact Match” selected under Match Types – this gives you a much clearer idea of the actual search volume for that specific keyword.

In the Google Keyword Tool, the competition column will show you a result of either Low, Medium or High. Don’t confuse this with actual website competition. The competition Google is displaying here is for PPC campaigns using Google Adwords, you actually want to find keywords here that have medium and high competition because this means they have a lot of advertisers and where there are advertisers there is money, and where there is money, there are areas where you can cash in by selling Amazon products.

In my opinion, finding profitable keywords is important because you need the keywords you choose to have a good level of buyers, otherwise you’re wasting your time promoting products via Amazon!

Furthermore, you should use the Google keyword tool more thoroughly. This time, scroll down a bit and see what “additional keywords to consider” Google has selected. These are related terms to your original main keyword and might include phrases like:

• Camp gear
• Camp supplies
• Camp tents

Basically, terms that tend to show up on other websites and in Google in general, along with the phrase you searched for originally will appear in this list. These are not necessarily terms you will use, but you can get a lot of ideas this way and this is one of the best ways to find new sub-niches.
But in terms of Amazon keyword research, your goal should be to create a list of any terms you think someone would search for when they are looking to buy a product. Later, we’ll narrow down to specific keywords that help you as an Amazon affiliate marketer.

Forums and In-depth Research
Another great way to find keywords is to go to industry specific pages, like forums, and search for terms that relate to questions or problems that people have in this niche. Forums are good because they represent a hub of data where users will search for solutions to particular problems – weight loss in particular has a huge number of forums available to use for research and other big niches such as health.

Another way to create lists of more specific industry terms is to analyse competitor pages. For example, let’s say you know of a website you want to be like… Well, all you need to do is find out which keywords they are using to boost their own pages. You can use the Google keyword tool for this,  just enter their website URL in the search box and Google will tell you the terms you could target.

Tools like Traffic Travis  allow you to input URLs and get keyword reports on how a site is optimized for the search engines and this can be a real help to get you started as well.

Will add more about exciting Amazon tips like this in the near future ….

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