Guidelines on How to Write SEO-Optimized Product Descriptions for Your Amazon Store
When you’re selling on Amazon, writing an effective description for your product shouldn’t be an afterthought — it's a crucial element that can make or break a sale. Crafting a good, compelling product description is an art that blends the concepts of psychology, marketing principles, and persuasive writing.
In this article, we present five tips on how you can write an Amazon product description that not only informs but also converts browsers into buyers.
Table of contents
Tip 1. Understand Your Target Audience
We’ll outline our guidelines by illustrating with a specific example:
You are launching a luxury skincare store, and the product is organic day cream.
Writing a quality product description starts with determining who your target audience is. Before putting your fingers to the keyboard, take some time to understand who you are writing the description for. Create an ICP (ideal client profile) board to answer these two vital questions:
- Who is your ideal customer?
- What are their pain points, desires, values, and motivations?
When considering luxury organic day cream, your target audience might be health-conscious women, ages 30-50, who value high-quality skincare ingredients as well as aesthetics. Therefore, your description should emphasize the product’s premium nature, health benefits, and the luxurious experience it provides (or even gifts).
Speak directly to buyers’ needs, and show how your product is the solution they’ve been looking for.
Once you've identified your target audience, the next step is analyzing their needs. You need to have a thorough understanding of what their pains and values are. To do this, start by researching top-selling products in your niche. You can explore the following areas:
Amazon Best Sellers
Social Media & Online Forums
You can also use special tools like the AMZScout PRO Extension. This tool is designed to analyze top-performing products. It’s the ultimate online tool for spying and identifying high-demand products on Amazon. The PRO Extension allows you to view a wealth of data on a wide variety of products, including sales, prices, reviews, trending products, and more, so you have all the data you need to determine which of your competitors’ products are most profitable.
This approach provides you with valuable insights into what your audience is looking for and so you can tailor your own offerings to meet their needs.
The next four tips can be applied to our luxury organic day cream, using insights gathered from a competitive analysis
Tip 2. Spy on Your Main Competitors
Unless your product or business idea is brand new, it’s helpful to get an idea of the kinds of strategies your competitors use to achieve success. When it comes to running a successful Amazon business , keyword selection is one of the primary factors to look at. It’s useful to find out which keywords your competitors use to increase their own sales and secure solid ranking positions.
Browse Amazon for some examples of the product you want to sell and pick the most successful ones. Check out their reviews and sales. If there are many of them and they appear to be good quality, then they are the kinds of products you’ll want to follow as an example.
Once you find the top-performing products in your niche,look at the number and quality of their reviews and sales, you can track the competition with the help of AMZScout’s Reverse ASIN Lookup. This tool is designed to show you exactly where your competitors’ products rank for each keyword, and on which page of search results they appear.
How to do it:
Open the AMZScout Reverse ASIN Lookup tool.
Copy and paste your competitors’ ASIN(s) into the tool.
Collect keywords your potential competitors are using to create your own standout product description later.
You can also gauge how popular a product is by seeing the estimated monthly search volumes for each keyword the tool shows you. The AMZScout Reverse ASIN Lookup gives you an opportunity to build more effective ad campaigns by identifying and leveraging the keywords targeted by your competitors.
All in all, assessing the market by researching your main competitors is vital so you can get a clear picture of what’s happening in the market you're targeting.
If you don’t want to do this kind of research on your own, you can opt to have it done for you. For instance, Sellerhook’s Competitors’ Keyword Research is a valuable service, especially if you’re still unsure who your top competitors are, or if your basic keyword research doesn’t provide enough insights.
Remember, while it’s important to learn from your competitors, copying their product descriptions is a bad practice that could result in penalties, in addition to your listing lacking originality.
Tip 3. Apply SEO Practices
A well-optimized Amazon product description is the key to ensuring that your product is found on Amazon.
An SEO-optimised description contains well-crafted text that uses targeted keywords to improve your product’s visibility on Amazon search engines. It’s designed not just to boost rankings, but also to connect with your audience by addressing their specific needs and interests.
If you’re having trouble creating an effective product description (which is normal if you’re not a professional), you can use AI tools to help you, like ChatGPT or the AI Listing Builder from AMZScout.
AMZScout’s AI Listing Builder is a tool created specially to simplify the task of crafting engaging content while incorporating relevant keywords. By integrating the right keywords and refining your product descriptions, this tool helps to increase your chances of ranking higher among search results, which also drives more traffic and sales to your listing.
How to use AMZScout’s AI Listing Builder:
Open the AI Listing Builder.
Add keywords: You can enter the keywords you've gathered manually, or import them automatically by inputting your competitors' ASINs.
Generate text with AI: Click "AI Autofill" to create product titles, bullet points, and descriptions quickly that meet Amazon's character limits while integrating the provided keywords.
Review the text: You may need to make some minor adjustments to tailor the content to your target audience. For guidance on Amazon's best practices, check out the recommendations in the checklist located in the bottom-left corner.
In case you don’t have the time to write your own SEO description and listing, you might Consider seeking professional help. Services like Sellerhook’s Amazon SEO Listing Optimization service can enhance your listing’s visibility by ensuring it’s fully optimized according to Amazon’s algorithm.
By following these steps, your description will become increasingly effective, but still not perfect. To improve it further, check out these tips as well.
Tip 4. Focus on Benefits, Not Just Features
The concept of a product description often refers not only to the text in the section under the product, but also to the entire description, including bullet points.
The bullet points section of your Amazon listing is where you can highlight the key features and benefits of your product concisely. This format should be easy to read, and allows customers to absorb the most important information quickly.
While it is important to list the key features of your product, focusing on the benefits is what truly drives sales. Features are factual details (such as size, color, or materials), while benefits explain how those features can improve the customer’s life. A feature tells the customer what the product is. A benefit tells them why they need it — they literally connect with the customers’ emotions, making them feel that your product is exactly what they’re looking for.
Here are two examples, the second of which is a well-formatted, effective description:
Feature: “Formulated with 100% organic botanical extracts.”
Benefit: “Our luxury day cream is formulated with 100% organic botanical extracts that nourishes the skin deeply, leaving it soft, radiant, and rejuvenated. Experience everyday luxury with the highest quality, premium eco-friendly ingredients nature has to offer.”
In addition to focusing on the benefits, it’s also important to consider how your text will appear on the page and whether it’s readable. Well-formatted copy will help draw your audience's attention to what's really important.
Bullet points typically use a list format, in which key information can be highlighted in bold.
Example:
Natural Ingredients: Crafted with organic botanicals to gently hydrate and rejuvenate your skin without harmful chemicals.
Anti-Aging Formula: Rich in antioxidants and vitamins to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, giving you a youthful glow.
Luxurious Experience: The silky smooth texture absorbs quickly, leaving your skin feeling pampered and refreshed all day long.
A well-formatted and thoughtful description not only improves readability, but also increases the chances of conversion by making your key points easily accessible.
Tip 5. Set up A+ Content
Amazon A+ Content is a powerful marketing tool that enables sellers to present their products in a more detailed and visually engaging way. By incorporating videos, enhanced images, shoppable comparison charts, and improved text, A+ Content helps bring your brand's story to life on your product’s detail pages.
A+ Content goes beyond standard product descriptions by incorporating high-quality images, comparison charts, videos, and rich content that highlight a product's value and features more effectively. This enhanced content not only improves the product page but also significantly boosts conversion rates by giving customers a clearer understanding of the product.
If you still have any questions or doubts, we’ve included some common ones here for you.
FAQs
How do you start a product description?
Start with a strong headline that highlights the main benefit(s) of your product. Follow this with a brief introduction that addresses the target audience’s primary concern or desire.
What should an Amazon product description include?
An Amazon product description should include the product’s key features and their corresponding benefits. It should also be easy to read, and includes bullet points and concise sentences. Describe your product properly: mention its ingredients, INCI or materials, and add usage instructions if needed.
How many words should an Amazon product description be?
You can use up to 2,000 characters for your product description. Typically, an effective quality description’s character count ranges from 500 to 1,000. As for bullet points (five for sellers), the character limit is 1,000 symbols for each.
Summary
Writing an effective Amazon product description requires a blend of creativity, research, and optimization. By knowing your target audience, analyzing your competitors, focusing on the benefits, optimizing for SEO, and ensuring that your description is easy to read, you can create a compelling product listing that stands out in the marketplace and drives sales.
Fortunately, tools like AMZScout can make that process a whole lot easier, and if you prefer, you can even hire experts who provide services to handle everything for you. This way, you can focus on what you do best while ensuring your listings are optimized to drive sales.
Use these tips to refine your approach and watch your conversions grow.