#685 – Your Listings But Smarter: AI-Ready Content That Converts

AI in e-commerce is evolving rapidly, and we’re thrilled to have Ritu Java, CEO of PPC Ninja, sharing her unique insights on how sellers can adapt. Ritu discusses using Amazon’s AI tool, Rufus, which transforms customer queries into high-converting listing copy. The shift from traditional keyword searches to conversational searches is not just a trend but a paradigm shift that sellers must grasp to remain competitive. With Ritu’s vast experience in e-commerce and Amazon advertising, she provides invaluable advice on making your product listings AI-ready, ensuring they rank and convert effectively.

Amazon’s AI ecosystem is more robust than ever, with tools like Rufus and COSMO leading the charge. We explore how these systems, in conjunction with Alexa Plus, create a more personalized shopping experience by understanding user intent beyond simple keyword matching. Rufus, with its Q&A format, assists shoppers in an intuitive way, enhancing the overall shopping journey. By diving into the intricacies of these AI models, including advancements in semantic understanding and personalization, you’ll gain a clearer understanding of how these technologies can be leveraged to enhance product discovery and customer satisfaction.

But how do you make sure Rufus notices your listings? We unpack strategies to optimize product visibility and engagement, from using synonyms in listings to transforming FAQs into compelling visuals that address customer concerns. A standout main image can significantly influence both search visibility and consumer interest, and utilizing all available image slots can cater to a diverse audience. Ritu offers creative solutions for presenting additional product information without overwhelming potential buyers, including the strategic use of comparison slides and detailed specifications. Tune in to discover how to stay ahead in the AI-powered e-commerce landscape.

In episode 658 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Ritu discuss:

• 00:00 – AI-Powered Product Listings for High Conversions
• 03:34 – Shifting to Conversational Search on Amazon
• 09:00 – The Future of Rufus Search
• 14:46 – Understanding COSMO and Rufus on Amazon
• 20:50 – Customized Ranking and Personalization on Amazon
• 25:43 – AI Strategies for Rufus Engagement
• 31:58 – Optimizing Responses to Product Questions
• 33:08 – Maximizing Product Listing Keywords for Rufus
• 36:35 – Maximizing SEO With Your Main Image
• 43:38 – Frequency of Extracting Questions From Rufus

Transcript

Carrie Miller:

In this episode, we explore how to create AI-powered product listings that don’t just rank, they convert. You’ll hear expert strategies from Ritu Java on using Amazon’s Rufus to uncover real customer questions and turn them into intentional, high-converting listing copy. Now we’re not ditching keywords, but we’re making them smarter and more aligned with how today’s shoppers actually search, ask and buy. So let’s dive in.

Bradley Sutton:

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.

Carrie Miller:

We actually have an amazing presentation for you today. It’s from one of the smartest people in our entire Amazon industry and basically, she’s going to be sharing some kind of advanced strategies here with AI and your listing optimization, and so her name is Ritu Java. She’s going to be talking about how to optimize your listings using questions from Rufus and just some AI strategies to help you beat the competition with this new AI e-commerce landscape. So I’m going to go ahead and bring her on. Hello Ritu. Good to be here. How’s it going? Go ahead and bring her on. Hello Ritu hey Keri.

Ritu Java:

hey Carrie. Good to be here.

Carrie Miller:

How’s it going?

Ritu Java:

Yeah? Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited. So today I will be talking about using AI for creating content and the things that convert in this AI era, and I’m going to give you a little bit of the progression and the background of how AI has kind of made its way into Amazon and how people’s behaviors are shifting in the way they search on Amazon. That’s actually a very important thing to understand and while you might all kind of assume that, yes, you know it’s happening, the way we’re interacting with all kinds of LLMs, you know, has become pretty mainstream, but I really want to talk about the specifics of how that is happening and how it’s unfolding on Amazon, right?

Ritu Java:

So first just a quick introduction. So, my name is Ritu Java and I am the CEO of PPC Ninja, so we founded this company seven years ago and we’re an agency, so we take care of Amazon advertising for seven, eight and nine figure brands. We help with Amazon advertising as well as Walmart and DSP and a little bit of Google as well, where Google traffic goes to Amazon that side of things. I personally have like 15 plus years of experience in the e-commerce space, like I started my first business on Etsy. That was 15 years ago and then since then I’ve trained thousands of people on Amazon advertising. I used to run PPC mastermind groups, so these were like four-week groups where we had like an intimate group and it would be live and stuff like that super fun, fun times diving into PPC stuff and nerding it out. I’ve also this is a little outdated, but I also run an AI for e-commerce. Newsletter Subscriber rate has been ticking up quite a bit and I think at this point I’m in 3,200 subscribers. It’s grown quite a bit since the last time I updated this slide.

Ritu Java:

Let’s talk about our topic today, which is to do with, you know, AI-ready listings, right? I just want to mention that. You know things are changing quite fast, quite rapidly, and those people who are aware of the shift that’s happened and is happening are the ones that will benefit from this discussion as well as anything else that unfolds on Amazon going forward. So, people are shifting from typing in keywords that are very hard to come up with to conversations, and you probably must have seen this yourself. Like there was a time when you would just go on Google and you know you would say, okay, just Google it. Or if you want to find out something about something, you would just say Google it, whereas now that’s shifted to. You know, just go to ChatGPT or ask plod or ask perplexity. So that shift has already happened in the way we do search. Amazon is not free from that either, because where we used to type keywords, as shoppers we would really have to think of what words to use so that we get the right products to show up. Well, now that’s been replaced with conversations with Rufus, this cute little dog that I think belonged to one of the employees back in the day, and so everything is kind of named after Rufus. There’s a Rufus building, there’s a project it’s called the Rufus Project. Anyway, we all know that Rufus is now pretty mainstream. It’s kind of made its way into a lot of places on Amazon and the shift is real and I know that people ask questions like but how many people use Rufus? You know, or has anyone even noticed Rufus? The thing is it is getting noticed and the thing is that Amazon is also committed to making this mainstream.

Ritu Java:

So just to give you some very simple examples of what a regular Keyword Search looks like versus what a Rufus Search looks like. So, I was just looking and this is real, because I myself was searching for this product. I was looking for salty protein snacks, because protein snacks these days they’re kind of sweet and first of all, protein. In that format it’s just taste disgusting. So, people try to kind of mask its taste with like sugar or whatever. I don’t like it, I don’t like the sugary taste. So, I was looking for salty protein snacks and I specifically said with no added sugar. Now what does the regular search look like? It actually still gave me sugary protein snacks. These were the top three results for the Keyword Search, for the same exact keyword search, and I was like, well, that doesn’t look right. I mean this is not what I wanted. I mean it did have a little bit of like salt sprinkled on it, like chocolate, with you know some amount, amount of saltiness. But that’s not what I was looking for. I was looking for looking for a salty protein snack. So then I went to Rufus and then I searched the same exact thing there and there it completely understood and it kind of, you know, got my point like I really wanted something salty. So it gave me uh, these, um, uh these salty snacks beef jerky, etc. Edamame, and when I looked at the descriptions, literally it actually was salty with no sugar added. So this was a win for Rufus and I think there’s going to be more and more people realizing that, oh, Rufus is better.

Ritu Java:

Rufus understands more than just the regular A9 search does. So that’s one thing. So that’s you know it’s understanding what you want as a shopper. But there’s also this thing called contextual continuity. I mean, I probably might have made this term up, but what I mean with that is that you know when you’re searching on Rufus, you can actually follow up on the response that it gives you. So it’s not just a one-time search, you can actually ask follow-up questions. Just to give you an example, I was looking for like a 5×3 storage shed.

Bradley Sutton:

You want to be able to sync your listings that you create in Helium 10 to your Amazon account in one click, including being able to sync subject matter which you’re not 10 to your Amazon account in one click, including being able to sync subject matter which you’re not able to even edit. Now, in most listings on Amazon, you’re going to want to use Helium 10 Listing Builder. Make sure to find out how to use Listing Builder by going to h10.me forward slash Listing Builder. That’s h10.me forward slash listing builder.

Ritu Java:

So this was my first question. I asked for outdoor shed under 200, right. And then it gave me something which was like this, right, and it was kind of flimsy for $200 product. It did give me something pretty flimsy. And then I said something more sturdy question mark. Now, this is continuity, right, because I am not repeating myself. I am just adding something more in a conversation in a chat, right? So then I said something more sturdy, so it gives me something more sturdy, but then it kind of goes above my budget of $279. So I said, is that the cheapest option? Like, I’m like digging in, I’m saying, hey, can you, you know, are you sure this is the cheapest option? You don’t have anything better than that. And so, then it gave me this result which is like for the outdoors, it is within $200 and it is sturdy. It says heavy duty. So you see how a simple query became such a nice conversation that led to the product that I will probably purchase, right? So, like, something like this is not possible with your regular search, and shoppers are going to realize this sooner rather than later. It’s going to happen.

Ritu Java:

Now again, for those people, the naysayers, or people who say, oh, nobody’s using Rufus, blah, blah blah. Max Sinclair did a little bit of analysis last year of how many searches go through Rufus and he estimated based on AWS I don’t know, he’s a whiz so he figured out something and he kind of guesstimated that 13.7% of all Amazon searches were going through Rufus. And that number is just going to go up and up and up. But then look at these like investments the heavy, heavy, heavy investments that Amazon is making on Rufus and how they’re quickly expanding, you know, from US to other markets and this is becoming mainstream. Now it’s just a matter of time before Rufus actually replaces the search bar, is what I think.

Ritu Java:

Now, what makes Rufus such a game changer for product discovery? Well, first of all, it can answer any questions about the product conversationally, right. So it knows everything about your products the title of the bullet points, the A plus content, the backend keywords, the product attributes, the questions that have been asked, the reviews that have been placed on, everything right. All of that is picked up by Rufus. So there’s no hiding. You can’t hide, because what’s there is available. You can’t like mask it by trying to push keyword ranking or trying to get up somehow by stuffing your listings with keywords, et cetera. You’ve got to have a more holistic approach to how you improve and make your listing very, very Rufus friendly or AI friendly.

Ritu Java:

So the other thing that’s happening is that Rufus understands the visuals, which is a new thing, because previously the only space or area that we had to play with SEO was our actual title and bullet points and the actual textual content, whereas now Rufus understands your visuals. It understands if there is a gamer sitting in a game room. It understands that. Or if there’s a person sitting in a desk environment in an office, it understands that. So it can understand visuals and it can read text on images. It can also understand image collections. Andrew Bell has been talking about this stuff, about how rufus can understand the whole set, like your entire gallery. It can understand that whole thing. So, the more variations of you know use cases you can introduce in your images, the better, because all of those are getting picked up and being indexed.

Ritu Java:

Now it also provides recommendations for complex needs. You just saw an example from me. It had to be a sturdy product, it had to be under 200, you know, and it had to be something for outdoors, etc. So those are complex needs that cannot be described through just keywords. It gives you trusted guidance because it shares reviews very, you know, openly. It’s not going to mince words. If there’s one negative listing, a negative review on your listing, then unfortunately it will get picked up by Rufus. So, you’ve got to figure out ways and I’ll talk about some of those ways towards the end of how we can tackle that and how we can proactively address negative reviews that Rufus is so openly sharing with shoppers. It can dig deep into your product questions. It can show you the latest updates and comparisons. So, for example, you can ask questions like how does this product compare with that other product? You can also compare across brands. You can say what about that product from that other brand, how does this compare with that? And it’s going to do a comparison. So any kind of extra information that you can provide on your listings that feeds these sorts of things like updates or comparisons. It’ll be good for you to control the narrative by proactively providing information that Rufus can start indexing for and then we know that it is instant action. It’s like you’re just having a conversation in real time almost, and it can provide price history. You can ask for price history. It engages in real-time conversation and it’s also surfacing sponsored brand video ads. So if you don’t have video ads, I would highly recommend that you start creating those, because some of those video pieces get, you know, get shown as part of the answer, and that’s a really good thing.

Ritu Java:

So, we’ll talk a little bit about all of these things. Just an example of a complex query from a person in Florida who wanted a pool umbrella and she said a pool umbrella for Florida, and this actually did a great job about, you know, understanding the geographical location and the kind of weather conditions like humidity, wind resistance, and suggested top rated option for her specific need, which is unbelievable, because you can’t do that with just keywords. Okay, and then there’s more right, so it’s not just Rufus. AI is going to infiltrate every aspect of Amazon, right, and in fact it’s already doing it. There’s AI shopping guides. Now there’s interest AI I don’t know if you’ve seen this or the AI driven size recommendations. So Amazon is really really investing heavily.

Ritu Java:

Some of these products, some of these amazons uh features or products, are going to work in conjunction with rufus. So, like they’ve already said that, your AI shopping guide will work with Rufus and Alexa will work with rufus. So Alexa plus, which is new it’s coming out and I think it’s going to cost like 9.99 per household. Is this new thing where you can have conversations with it so that it can surface products that meet certain needs? Like, hey, it’s Carla’s birthday this weekend, what’s a good fit for her? So they know who Carla is, they know it’s her 30th birthday and they will find something that is appropriate for her.

Ritu Java:

So, let’s talk a little bit about where Rufus lives. Where can you find Rufus? So Rufus basically lives everywhere that shoppers ask questions. So, if you start typing anything in the search bar, you will see an autocomplete box that drops down and now you’ll also start seeing actually, this is not new. I’m sure you’ve noticed it a lot of people haven’t but I just point I like to point it out that these little things at the bottom these are questions, uh, from Rufus, right? Rufus likes to talk in q, a format like prompt and response format. So these are some Rufus placements. Then you have um, just the regular Rufus box that shows up at the bottom left of your screen. In some markets the box hasn’t appeared on desktop yet, so you’ll have to go through mobile. That’s the only way to access Rufus, like, for example, I was trying in Canada, because I’m from Canada, I am not seeing Rufus in the desktop version, but I do see it in my mobile version, so that’s Rufus there. And then we’ve also started seeing Rufus kind of spread out everywhere, like, for example, just below the image the main image you’ll see some questions, like two or three questions, and I’ve also seen it in one of the shopping cart flows where you can potentially have a final question before you make your final purchase. That’s also another place that Rufus is beginning to show up, and so it’s important to start paying attention to what questions are showing up on your listings, because that gives you huge amounts of clues as to what shoppers are asking on your listing and because Rufus knows everything about everything on your listing, it’s important to pay attention to those questions and then start to kind of try and address those.

Ritu Java:

Now let’s talk about what is running Rufus. Look what, what is, what are the uh, what is the brains behind Rufus? It’s this white paper called COSMO, and COSMO stands for large-scale e-commerce, common sense, knowledge generation and serving system at Amazon, and there’s a bunch of smart people’s names here who actually wrote this white paper and they have described in quite a lot of detail of like what are the algorithmic or AI-based models? Algorithmic or AI based models behind this search engine, the new search engine that is kind of replacing the old system of you know A9, or just like matching words to words kind of thing. This is a new way of discovering products through understanding what is the shopper actually needing. Like it’s literally trying to understand or decipher what the shopper actually wants, and this makes for better matches, right? Because otherwise we often find you know search results on Amazon being off like sometimes the video ads are off. You ask for something and you get something totally different. You’re like what? I didn’t ask for this. Or you ask for a specific color. It gives you a different color. So those kinds of things could have been gamed in the past because you could insert the wrong keyword somewhere and somehow fool shoppers. No longer. No longer, with COSMO  and Rufus you won’t be able to do that, because it understands your listing holistically and not just by the small set of keywords that you want to showcase or you want it to believe that it is.

Ritu Java:

Let’s look at exactly how this kind of Search Query Matching happens with COSMO, and I want to share that there’s four major upgrades to the way search is happening nowadays or with Rufus. So first of all is the first point, or the first upgrade is with word meanings. Right, this has always been around. Like word meanings, you match a Search Query with a keyword, right, that’s how we’ve kind of seen it over the years. Now, when you say word meanings, it basically knows what you actually typed and it maps it to like synonyms or very close word meanings in both the text and the images. Previously it was only text, now it’s text and images, right, so this part has got a certain amount of an upgrade, but it’s not a huge upgrade. It’s still word meaning match, right. Word match, for example, cozy blanket, snug blanket, the synonyms, so those will fly. Second one is semantics. Semantics is where you know it understands how words connect up with each other because it recognizes the meaning based on phrases and categories and use case context. Right. For example, if someone says cozy blanket, it basically can match to a warm winter blanket because it is semantically the same thing. It means the same thing.

Ritu Java:

Then you have Inference. These are words that you didn’t say out loud, or a shopper didn’t say out loud, so it’s filling in the blanks on what they actually meant. So let’s say, for example, someone types Netflix night setup or something, and you know it could match to something like a cozy blanket right, so it’s inferring stuff that you didn’t say right. Blanket right, so it’s inferring stuff that you didn’t say right. Then there is personalization, which is probably one of the most important features or attributes of how this this whole query matching is going, where it learns your patterns as a shopper and it adapts and it gives you results that are more applicable to you as a person and whatever you’ve done with Amazon on the Amazon platform this far. For example, if there is like a mom who’s looking for a cozy blanket, she might see something that is more soft, pastel, floral, etc. Whereas if there’s a bachelor who’s looking for like a game night setup or Netflix up or whatever, they’ll see like dark shades, you know for like a man cave or whatever, and so there’s those differences that start to pop up with such results. So then you’re you know. So then what happens to ranking? When every, every person will start getting results that are customized to them. Then how can we get into this world? Or how do we understand this world where every person will start getting results that are customized to them? Then how can we get into this world? Or how do we understand this world where ranking could be different for different people? For you, the number one product that shows up is maybe the black throw, and for me it could be the floral one.

Ritu Java:

So there are two different ranks for two different people, and so there’s a lot of challenges. Um, uh, up ahead with understanding ranking, understanding how you know how we can kind of uh, continue to show up more visibly in different places. Uh, on Amazon. I’ll give you some more examples. This is just going to help you understand a little bit more so that you can start to customize your listings accordingly. Again, I’m going to take all four of those word meanings, semantics, inference and personalization and show you some more examples. So, for example, this keyword odor resistant towel right this word can be matched to this listing, and actually Rufus did, and the reason why it matched it is because in the product description it has this uh term odor resistant. So there’s odor resistant, there’s odor resistance. Other than this, there was no other mention of odor resistant anywhere else on the listing except in the product information section. So, yeah, that’s a match, okay, except in the product information section. So, yeah, that’s a match, okay.

Ritu Java:

Then you people might start typing things like towel that doesn’t stink. So when you say towel that doesn’t stick, obviously those words do not exist on regular listings. You don’t, you don’t have, you don’t write towel that doesn’t stink, right? So what does that match to? Well, it’s matching to know. It says this these microfiber towels are designed to resist odor and stay fresh. So, it’s basically mapped, the semantics or the, you know, the association of what the customer wants with the context and of what’s written on the listing. Here’s another example of inference. So, Inference is stuff that they did not say. So when you ask shoes for pregnant women, it shows you a product like this where on this product, if you go and check, there’s no mention of pregnant women, shoes for pregnant. None of that is mentioned. But we know from the attributes of what pregnant women want. They would want something that’s flat, that’s open, that’s, you know, sturdy, that’s non-slip, non-slip and so uncomfortable, etc. So that’s how these uh inferences get uh matched, uh based on uh, like what was typed in.

Ritu Java:

Here’s another example of Inference where, uh, let’s say, a college student is looking for microwave for dorm room, uh, and she’s not saying anything more than that. You know, in terms of like, whether it should be small or cute or any of that, but in her mind she’s got this image of how her nice little dorm room is going to look like, and what props up is something like this not like our standard black, you know, large, large size microwave. They get something that is perfect for dorm room and what goes with dorm decor. And then there’s personalization, like I said. So when you type a word like noise cancellation headphones, you will, you could see different results. So, for example, a gamer might see something like this and a commuter might see something like this. Both are noise cancellation headphones. But because Amazon knows who you are pretty much, they know more about us than we do, honestly, at this point. They know exactly what kind of stuff you buy. So they’ve classified you and categorized you and profiled you and they know what you will want. And that’s where things start to get interesting, because you know, the ranking starts to change. So the moral of the story is that brands that are not optimizing for conversational e-commerce will lose out, right. And so that’s a big, broad, sweeping statement. But I want to kind of break it down a little bit and start to give you some tips on how to get indexed for Rufus, how to influence Rufus. It may not happen overnight. In fact, the speed of Rufus picking up changes is much, much, much, much slower than a regular SEO indexation scenario. So in the past we were able to kind of insert a new keyword or drop a keyword. So in the past we were able to kind of insert a new keyword or drop a keyword and then you know, within an hour you could see. You could run a Helium 10 index indexation check and you would know whether it is indexed or not. Right for that, and there’s so many indexation tests.

Ritu Java:

Whereas for Rufus, this process is going to be extremely slow because Rufus relies on real engagement with your listing and therefore you’ve got to have patience. Number one and number two you’ve got to start early because it will take time, right. So, for all those people who think that it’s a waste of time to invest in AI-ready listings for Rufus, I’m just telling you that because it’s going to take so much time, you want to get ahead of it and not just take your time and do it when it’s. You know when the cold rush starts and people start to go and try to. You know when they start to index and when Rufus starts to recommend them over you. So that’s too late, so you start now.

Ritu Java:

So how do you start? Well, first of all, like I said, you need to understand what Rufus is showing on your listing, like what are the questions that it is showing up by default? So let’s do a little exercise here. I have this product and I’m going to run Rufus here and I’m going to try and figure out what do people say, what are the typical questions that people ask, because I want to extract those questions and then I want to do stuff with them. So what I’ll do is, first of all, I’ll go to Rufus and I’ll see what Rufus is asking. What are the main ingredients? Does it contain allergies? Common any common allergies? What do customers say? Is this snack vegan? Kids eat blah, blah, blah.

Ritu Java:

Now, this is like about six or seven questions. Typically, it gives you five to six to seven questions in the first flush. Then when you start clicking on all of them, you can ask more questions or it’ll auto populate more prompts for you to go click and ask and click and ask. Now that’s a lot of work for someone who you know, who’s just wanting those questions. So we actually built tool, a little tool, that will do it for you. So this little tool actually will, if you just say auto click 15, basically it’ll go 15 times and keep like auto clicking each of the word, each of the prompts, and like I’m hands-free right now. So it’s just doing its job on the backend and it’s just opening up all the questions and extracting all the answers. Because I want to know what answers it’s giving, because that’s where my clues lie right, I want to see what I can do with those responses and see if I can influence them. So anyway, while it’s doing that thing, I’ll show you the second tool that kind of goes with it, which is this one. I’ll show you the second tool that kind of goes with it, which is this one, where I want to extract the Q&A that it it’s doing right now. So if I just click on it midway, it’s probably done three or four. Let me just click on see. So, yeah, it’s copied six questions and six answers right now. Right, so this goes into your clipboard memory and then you can copy it anywhere into a notepad or whatever and then analyze it and so on. So I’ll let this keep going, but, um, I just want to share that. Uh, you know, I  can give you that tool if you’re interested in using it. It’s free, um, so it’s an extraction and so on.

Ritu Java:

So go ahead and take a screenshot photo, whatever you want to do. That’s the tool. It has all the instructions of like how to use it. I basically showed it to you. But you can actually go in and take a screenshot photo, whatever you want to do. That’s the tool. It has all the instructions of like how to use it. I basically showed it to you. But you can actually go in and watch a little video inside in case you forget these instructions, and then you’re able to kind of run your own Rufus analysis.

Ritu Java:

Okay, the other thing I want to say is that because synonyms you know variations of your words are going to be so important, don’t forget to use magnet to kind of expand and find new words. Right, because you don’t want to just stick with the most or the highest search volume words. But that because that’s not going to be able to cover all the needs, though the only reason why those were high search volume is because, well, actually there could be a few reasons, but that, you know, those words represent the majority of people and how they express those words, like plush blanket might be, maybe a majority of people use that term, but, given that people are now getting more comfortable with having a chat mindset like they might express it in other ways, you know they’re beginning to be loose about the words that, or the choice of words that they use to describe certain products. In fact, they might have, in the past, been forced to use a term like plush blanket, whereas that’s not what they meant. They actually meant something quite different, but they had to use it because that was the only way to get the search engine to show them some results. Now it’s going to be different, right? So, therefore, the more keywords you can expand out to, the better right and that’s where Magnet comes in you can really expand. So, as you can see, plush blanket opened up quite a few keywords like throw blanket, college dorm Well, I would probably delete the deals thingy, but anyway, college dorm, essentials, dorm. So a lot of dorm stuff came up Mother, mom, gifts came up Travel blanket. Now, only if your product is a travel product blanket, it’s light and so on, otherwise you could ignore that picnic blanket blankets, queen size throw blanket for couch, pink throw blanket, etc. So expand out as many as you can and then use a combination of AI and magnet to consolidate your list of seed keywords and then start to do your keyword research when you, when you’re, you know, fleshing out either your PPC strategy or your listings and coming up with the right kind of title, bullet points, et cetera. So definitely do that.

Ritu Java:

Then let’s talk about how you can actually positively respond to Rufus prompts with images, right? So, for example, this is a question that came up in one of the listings where it says does it require rinsing after application on metals? Now, according to Rufus’s response, it says the product description doesn’t specify if rinsing is required. So, if that’s a question that people are asking and there is a doubt left in their mind, then guess what’s going to happen. They won’t find the answer right and then they’re going to walk away. They’re going to look for another product that clearly answers their question as soon as they look at it, right? So, if any of those questions are creating doubts in shoppers’ minds, make sure to address them through some sort of image or in your text or whatever. So, for example, this product could easily add an image like this by the way, this was created with AI where it says safe on metals, no rinse needed, and here you’re saying no residue, no rinsing needed. So doing this proactively can actually help making sure that people stick to your listing and then they don’t bounce off.

Ritu Java:

More examples all the Rufus Q&A. You can simply convert it into one image, which you can call an FAQ image or whatever. We just said real questions from real shoppers. Put those questions and throw your answers in right there so that you can influence Rufus, because Rufus already has the question. Now you are providing the answer. So, there you go, you can start getting indexed for it. Call outs definitely any objections that people have expressed on your Rufus Q&A, you can see. Make sure you just proactively put that into your images, put like no kinks, no twists, no tangles, easy to store All the things that they have doubts about. Pick those up and convert them into image call-outs.

Ritu Java:

Here’s another one handling negative reviews and perceptions. For example, this product you know there’s a question on Rufus that says how durable is the crystal setting? The answer is while the product description doesn’t mention anything about durability. Again, that’s a little bit of a red flag where the answer says doesn’t mention or doesn’t say. Those are important clues for you to pick up, right? So when it says doesn’t say anything about durability, well, it doesn’t hurt to throw in the word durability, right, that’s an easy thing that you can do. But it says customers generally don’t think it’s durable, right? And they also say many mentioned that the stone falls out easily and the chain tarnishes quickly. So that’s not a good situation. If uh rufus is saying that oh, this, the stone for which you’re buying this pen, this uh necklace, is actually going to fall off and you don’t know when it’s going to fall out. Is it worth it or not?

Ritu Java:

Well, there’s a nice way of handling this negative objection you basically want to throw it back at them. You make it their responsibility to take care of this delicate product because it is so delicate, right? So, if you add an image that says care instructions or treat it like a treasure or something like that caring for your crystal pendant and provide examples of the common cases where a product like this might get broken or hurt or whatever. Remove it before showering or swimming. Avoid direct contact with lotions or perfumes. Store in a dry place, away from other jewelry. Clean gently with soft cloth, no harsh chemicals. So when you proactively provide this and then you know, if someone does happen to see this negative comment, they will know that, hey, you provided your care instructions, that maybe the shopper who didn’t have a good experience probably didn’t take care of it as well as I will. For example, that could be their reaction to an image like this. So definitely take all measures to make sure that you’re addressing those negative reviews with a word of advice or something, because most reviews, most negative reviews, come from people not knowing how to use the product. Either they’ll mention that it’s incompatible or something broke or whatever. So why don’t you just proactively say to prevent it from breaking or not matching this?

Ritu Java:

This is what you need to do, all right, so then let’s keep going. Main image, addressing obvious questions. So, this has been talked about enough, so I’m not going to spend too much time on it, but I think the main image is such an important place where you can actually, you know, try to influence both SEO and Rufus, because you know Rufus is able to read everything on your listing and also on your images. So like, for example, this is like a printer with some ink and so it’s saying three months of ink included. Now, you know you might be worried about, like, putting stuff on your image that’s not actually part of the image, but people are expressing many creative ways of doing this without it being a problem, right? So, I’m not going to go into this, but you know you can watch. I don’t know there’s so many A-B testing tools that they talk about this stuff all day long, so you can pick up some examples from there. Ok, now, this is important Always include an us versus them. This is for the comparison case, because Rufus can do comparisons between your product and other people’s products. It’s always good to have a proactive slide that doesn’t us versus them comparison.

Ritu Java:

If you have like a use case of before after, definitely provide you know those images as well. Right, rich details for nerds and roofers. So, if you look at this hose pipe, it’s got a lot of detail that most people wouldn’t care about, right, it’s got like inner tube thickness, upgrade water output water output so many gallons per minute, blah, blah, blah. Now, all of this stuff may not be applicable to 90% of the people who are looking for a hose pipe for their garden, but there’ll be those one or two or three or four people out of 50 or 100 that want to know the specifics, the details, right. So there’s no harm in actually providing those details on one of your images. But let’s say you put it more towards the end of the gallery so that it’s not like so overwhelming because the text is quite busy here, right? But Rufus will also pick it up because all of these things can be indexed, and so when someone asks a specific question about the inner tube thickness, then Rufus knows what to say and you don’t have to waste any of your precious bullet points area to answer that question.

Ritu Java:

Maximizing your images somehow tide managed to get 11 images. I don’t know if there’s a way in your category to find out if you can get more images, but the more images, the more real estate you have. Nowadays with Rufus, this is all about expanding the amount of content you put out, because every piece of content is valuable real estate for you in order to get indexed for something or the other, some use case or the other, or explain your product in some more ways or the other. If you’re thinking that you have only one target audience, that’s wrong. All of your products have multiple target audiences and you want to be able to touch all of them with some example or the other, some use case scenario or the other that you can showcase on your listings video spots.

Ritu Java:

Now, Rufus currently doesn’t index videos, but it soon will, like everything is going in the direction of being able to read videos and images, of course are. But just future-proofing yourself. Let’s get you, you know, more than just one video for your listing. In fact, up to 10 videos are possible for each ascent. So go ahead and create different types of video use cases, like you. It could be an us versus them thing, how we’re better than competition or it could even be like a testimonial. It could be like a how to use. It could be the best kind of features or functions of your product.

Ritu Java:

So don’t just stick with one video and call it done, because there’s so much that you could be doing with expanding out content and you know, basically getting ready for this AI era, that requires more content, not less, right, it really, really requires. I cannot press this enough that you need more content, like previously you know, I don’t know 2010 timeframe any small listing with maybe just title and a few bullet points was enough. What A plus content? There was no A plus content, and then that became too crowded, there was too many people, and then there was too much competition, and so having an A plus component became a differentiator, because your conversion rate would go up by at least 20% if you just added A plus content. Well, now we’ve reached an age where there’s way too much competition. And how do you stand out? Well, you have to be able to feed these algorithms with as much content as possible. So, you want to maximize every inch of real estate that you can find and, honestly, there’s a lot on Amazon. If you’re really cool looking, you have every inch of real estate that you can find and, honestly, there’s a lot on Amazon. If you really go looking, you have a lot of real estate even in your storefront. You can literally make that a mini website and just maximize that content and speak to different audiences so that you can, overall, train Rufus on so many things. Okay, let’s talk quickly about flat file attributes on so many things. Okay, let’s talk quickly about flat file attributes. Definitely, maximize this out, because the way Rufus is having those smart conversations is coming from how well the attributes are optimized. If your attributes are fully optimized and you provide every possible characteristic of your product, then it will give Rufus enough to go by. So I think that’s it. So yeah, I’m opening this up to questions.

Carrie Miller:

That was awesome information. Thank you so much. We do actually have some questions in there, so it was okay. Great from Annette. How important are question-based or long-tail search terms for ranking with Rufus, as opposed to short generic keywords?

Ritu Java:

So, the thing is that if you’re going after a long-tail search, you need both right, it’s not one or the other. You’ve got to do an and strategy here. You need long-tail questions and, well, the question-based Q&A you probably want to reserve for your actual listing, making sure that you have it somewhere, like I was showing in my FAQ here, where you’ve loaded all the questions and the answers. When it comes to keywords for ranking, you’re probably still going to use the same kind of strategies we’ve used so far with exact long tail. So, what we’re experimenting with right now is long tail keywords are going into exact match. Long tail with high intent is going straight into exact match single keyword campaigns. We’re also creating broad match modifier campaigns, because broad match modifiers are the ones that can give you a lot more impression volume versus exact. That is kind of less. And then, and so you do both of those. And then there’s a third bucket, which is related keywords. And related keywords you can have like a multi keyword campaign strategy where you can keep them at a low bid because they’re kind of related but they’re not exactly the thing that you’re selling. So, you need all of those you know, so I hope that explains a little bit, but it’s all of them are going to be important for ranking with Rufus.

Carrie Miller:

I have a question too how often do you think someone should go in and extract questions from Rufus?

Ritu Java:

So, we haven’t seen them changing that frequently. So, I would say, if you want to test it out, like in your category, like once a month or something and this tool that I shared is a good one for you to kind of just grab quickly and just dump the results into a sheet and see how it’s evolving, right, and I don’t expect it to change that quickly. So, I would just try it once a month.

Carrie Miller:

Awesome. This was a really great presentation, so thank you so much to everyone who also joined, and thank you to Ritu for being an excellent host and giving us all this great information, and so I guess we’ll see you all on the next webinar. Everyone, bye, everyone.

Ritu Java:

Thank you so much, bye everyone. Thanks for watching.

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