#699 – Amazon Keyword Research Masterclass

What if a single tweak to your Amazon listing could skyrocket your sales in 2025? In this episode, we uncover powerful Amazon keyword research strategies that are transforming the way sellers approach e-commerce on Amazon. Broadcasting from Jakarta, Indonesia, I take you on a journey that bridges past and future, drawing inspiration from the famous Bali Blast Strategy episodes. Discover how the dawn of AI and Amazon’s own Rufus are reshaping the landscape, demanding we rethink our tried-and-true methods for optimal product visibility.

Join me as we unravel the intricacies of Amazon’s evolving search ecosystem. Despite the buzz around AI, traditional keyword research remains a cornerstone for success. We dissect examples like the “noodle camera” to illustrate the power of keywords in product indexing and visibility. Moreover, we’ll examine the impact of Amazon’s Rufus, revealing why sticking to foundational keyword strategies is still crucial amidst technological advancements.

As we journey through advanced tactics, you’ll learn how to leverage the Helium 10 tools to not only identify top-performing keywords but also capitalize on seasonal trends and competitor strategies. From using Etsy’s related searches to uncovering niche opportunities with Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer, this episode shares a ton of insights. Whether you’re launching a new product or refining an existing Amazon listing, these cutting-edge tactics will position you ahead of the curve in Amazon’s competitive marketplace.

In episode 699 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley talks about:

• 00:00 – A New Bali Blast Episode
• 01:57 – New Approaches to Amazon Keyword Research
• 03:39 – The Importance of Amazon Keyword Research
• 11:50 – Amazon Product Page Usage Analysis
• 12:25 – Impact of Rufus on Amazon Search
• 25:27 – Maximizing Keyword Research for Amazon
• 28:10 – Brand Analytics Keywords in Helium 10
• 30:42 – Advanced Amazon Keyword Research Techniques
• 36:25 – Comprehensive Amazon Keyword Research Guide
• 39:31 – Leveraging Keywords for Complementary Sales

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

It’s time for another Bali Blast episode. That’s where I give you the most comprehensive keyword research strategies for Amazon listings in 2025 and beyond. 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 a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, this is an episode that I do once every other year and we call it the Bali Blast episode. The first time I did this episode, I was recording in Bali and I wanted to come up with some unique name for SEO purposes, so that somebody could just write, you know, in YouTube or somewhere you know, Helium 10, Bali Blast, and then, obviously, only this video would show up. I’m not in Bali right now, but I am in Indonesia. I’m actually in Jakarta, Indonesia. So, I’m still going to call this the Bali Blast episode so that you guys can find this and bookmark it later. But basically, what this is a deep, deep, deep dive into every aspect of what you should be doing for keyword research for a new listing or perhaps to refresh a listing.

Bradley Sutton:

Now the Maldives Honeymoon episode, which is right after this. This is it’s kind of like part of this. Back in the day, I used to do like two Maldives honeymoons episodes and one was just about keyword research, the kind of like the prep this is about. This is about the prep for launch, but just from a keyword research angle and all the steps that you have to take. Now the Maldives is every year because launch things with launch are changing all the time. I don’t do this one every year because keyword research for the most part stays very similar. There’s not too many new things. There are new things that we have to do this year and there’s new things we’re going to talk about, like Rufus and stuff, and so I was like, hey, hey, it’s time to do a new one. Um, you probably won’t see one for another couple years unless a whole bunch of things changes from now until next year.

Bradley Sutton:

So, anyways, we’re going to talk about two main aspects here. First, there’s going to be some stuff you’ve never heard before that might prove to you that people have been lying to you about Rufus. Now, I say that just for clicks and drama. I don’t think anybody really lies to people. There’s people who might be misguided or people might be interpreting what they say. Nobody’s purposely giving you misinformation them differently once you see about Rufus, what I’m going to show today. So we’re going to talk about how AI has changed keyword research, if at all, how people are using Rufus, going to show you some staggering numbers, and also we’re going to talk about all the different ways on Amazon, off Amazon, with Helium 10, without Helium 10, that you should be doing keyword research and how much money it can mean to your bottom line just by changing a couple things here and there. All right, so let’s go ahead and hop into it.

Bradley Sutton:

You wanna watch the Serious Sellers Podcast in video form? Make sure to go to YouTube and check out our brand-new YouTube channel. Just type in the search bar Helium 10 Serious Sellers podcast and you’ll see our S logo come up. Make sure to hit that subscribe button. Go to the channel and binge watch any of our episodes that we have done lately. We’ll see you there.

Bradley Sutton:

Now the first one I did, like I said, was in Bali a couple years ago. I was doing this cool event and I broke away from the event to do it tomorrow. I’m actually doing an event here in Jakarta, breaking away from that here at uh 4 20 in the morning to record this. Um. Now the first question we want to talk about is does keyword research even matter? Because this is one of those narratives that you might have heard out there like oh no, you just have to optimize for AI. Oh no, you know. Like AI is the way that people are going to shop on Amazon. Rufus is the way you know. Isn’t everybody shopping with Rufus? Who needs keywords anymore? But is that true? I’m going to talk about some things I’ve been talking about on the speaker circuit the last few months. I know not everybody you know gets to see me out there, so you might have missed my presentation, so I’m just going to rehash a little bit of this.

Bradley Sutton:

But how things show up in SEO, how keywords get indexed, how AI changes things, this is not new. It’s definitely not from Rufus as far as when it started that we did episode 499. We’re now in episode 699. So, this episode was about two years ago almost, or more than two years ago, where we were interviewing somebody talking about a noodle camera. Right, there was no such thing as a noodle camera. We talked about that episode. There are no products on Amazon that have the word noodle camera in it. However, there are results when you search up noodle camera and what it is like this stethoscope camera that kind of actually resembles a noodle, and so even two years ago or that was just when we caught it could have been even before then. Amazon was kind of like making you index for keywords based on its own AI of learning how people could potentially describe a product even though the product didn’t have those keywords in there. So, this is this is like you know, not something completely new.

Bradley Sutton:

Now another example here is a winter coat. Somebody pointed out that the one of the page one position one in the amazon search results a while back for winter coats actually this year, um is an amazon essentials winter coat. Now, what’s notable about that is that the word winter coat does not appear anywhere in this listing. So, what we did I actually, you know, looked at what’s called the Ajax URL it’s like a special URL to be able to analyze both the front and back end and, sure enough, the word winter does not appear anywhere in this listing. But this listing is page one, position one. At the time, you know, I had originally grabbed the screenshot for the word winter coat and then, if I run it through Helium 10 Index Checker, sure enough, it’s absolutely indexed for the word winter coat. Now here’s the interesting thing In Helium 10’s keyword tracker no other tool has this. Whatever other tool you’re using, you’re only gonna get keyword tracking. From when it started here, I threw this word winter coat in this listing in Helium 10. I found that this keyword did not start ranking for the word winter coat until October of 2020.

Bradley Sutton:

However, if you look at the BSR history, the product has been around since at least 2019. So, one point is that, hey, does Amazon eventually figure out what a product is for and thus will index you and make you searchable through AI or for whatever other means? Um, for keywords, not in your listing, because it understands, kind of like semantically, what your product might be for and how users are going to buy it. No, this is not new. This has been around for more than six, seven years. All right, and Amazon can do it. However, do you want to wait one year, six months, whatever the case is, for Amazon to figure it out? No, like, if winter coat is an important keyword for your listing, put the freaking word winter coat in your listing so you can be indexed from day one. All right. So, this is one misconception out there is hey, let me just like, talk about what my product can do and let me let Amazon fill in the blanks. Sure, amazon’s going to fill in the blanks after a week, after a month, after a year, like why do you want to like? It doesn’t make any sense. Why would you want to wait to be indexed or searchable for keyword? If it’s important to you be searchable from day one, how do you do that? By putting into your listing Let me show you how I prove this point what I did with that very winter coat listing.

Bradley Sutton:

I made a completely identical listing on the Project X account and I did not include the word winter coat in it. Day one of this listing, was I indexable for coat? Sure, was I indexable for winter coat? Nope, why not? Because I didn’t have the word winter in my listing. So the Amazon one didn’t have winter, but it was indexed because Amazon eventually figured out that, hey, by the way that people are buying this product, it probably is a winter coat, you know. So this still is the case, even this year, most of the time, from day one, if you do not put a keyword in your listing, you are not searchable. What did I do? I went back to that listing, added the word winter somewhere in like the bullet points update. The listing ran index checker boom goes dynamite. I was indexed for the word winter coat. So the traditional keyword research and indexing still works pretty much the same way. Don’t wait to be indexed for something If it’s important, be indexed for it right away.

Bradley Sutton:

And again, I always have to give this disclaimer because then people say oh, why are you anti Rufus? Blah, blah, i’m-Rufus, in that I don’t use it as a buyer much because I don’t like it. There are some things I do like it, like being able to look at price charts if I don’t have Helium 10 handy, or being able to set alerts and stuff like that. Rufus is pretty cool. But for like searching, yeah, I don’t like Rufus, but again, I am not anti-. From an Amazon seller standpoint, you absolutely should be optimizing for Rufus. All right, my point that I’m going to make here is it should not affect what you’re doing for keyword research. How do I optimize for Rufus? What I do is I look at the questions that are showing up on my listing and I make sure my product has a good answer to it. Here’s one example I’m showing on the page where it says how steady and durable in it and the first time, my coffin shelf it says oh, I’m sorry, product description doesn’t mention durability. What did I do to optimize for Rufus? I added hey, this is made of MDF wood, so it’s very durable. 15 minutes later, what did Rufus say when I asked the same question? Oh, the description says it is sturdy and durable, right? So, so like that’s a very actual act, actionable thing you can do for Rufus. It’s something that I literally do. So I am not saying, oh, disregard Rufus altogether. Absolutely be optimizing your listing for Rufus, but this should not be in place of your keyword research. This, to me, is kind of like what we’ve always been doing for 10 years analyzing reviews, trying to get customer pain points, making sure that customer reviews or customer questions are answered in our listing. Rufus is just another way to do that. Absolutely, you need to be doing that.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, I had some theories about Rufus, because Amazon hasn’t really given out a lot of exact data about Rufus, right, we don’t know how customers are using it. There’s no search query performance for Rufus where we can see the number of times people are answering queries or how people are using Rufus. We have no idea. My theory has always been hey, people might be using it, similar to how I use it. They don’t use it too much in search. It’s my theory, which I don’t. I figured that, hey, they’re probably using it. Those who are theory which I don’t. Um, I figured that, hey, they’re probably using it. Those who are, and I don’t think it’s that many people on the actual product page itself, because it can do some pretty cool things like hey, analyze the reviews. Give me a summary of the reviews. Let me ask follow-up questions about this product. That’s why I don’t have to read the whole thing. Um, what is the price history of this product? These are all things you couldn’t have done before as a buyer and now you can. So, my theory was okay, that’s how people are using Rufus.

Bradley Sutton:

So, months ago I ran a Helium 10 Audience or PickFu survey 50 Prime members. It’s not some overarching survey, but I’m like hey, did you guys do you use Rufus? 76% said no. Did you guys do you use Rufus? 76% said no. 8% said they use it with searching. That was actually a significant amount. 8% is pretty decent, but 16%, sure enough, said they use it on the product page itself. So not many people using it, but the ones who are using it in that small survey was on the product page itself. So again, kind of showing you this is not about SEO. Now, one of the ways that I was tracking before it’s not. I’m going to show you that it’s not possible now, how was I tracking if people were using Rufus in search? Well before, if you typed in a question or you hit one of the auto questions in the search results at the end of Amazon’s long kind of like explanation, they would give you like four or five keywords and if you hit it, it would actually bring you to a search. Now, before that, here’s the one that that’s so hilarious, where I used to make fun of Rufus. This is obviously not asking questions that are commonly asked, because it says here are coffin shelves suitable for displaying memorabilia or keepsakes. Right, come on, do you think my target market of Gothic people are searching for that? No, the people who are searching for the coffin shelves have black makeup and eyeliner and nose rings or I don’t know. I’m stereotyping here, but you get the drift right. They’re not typing that.

Bradley Sutton:

Now the funny thing is, if I did type it in those days, what would come up is a few different keywords and each of these keywords would actually take you to an Amazon search. This is not a Rufus search. It would literally put the keyword into the search bar and so in this way, I could tell that almost nobody was using Rufus in the search and clicking this because, for example, on these keywords that it would come up with, my products would be at the top of the search results, but there would be zero impressions for it in Search Query Performance. Unless I did it. And search query performance, you know, would show me that, hey, nobody’s searching for this. Guess what guys Amazon figured that out. Uh, the last time I had done this was like four or five months ago. If you type right now, coffin shelf and hit Rufus, it’s. It’s funny. It’s still saying do you want to? You know, do you want to do something for memorabilia or keepsakes? No-transcript At the end of it, because it realized, hey, nobody’s even searching these other keywords that we’re doing. So again, rufus, not for SEO, not for people are not using it necessarily too much in the search bar experience.

Bradley Sutton:

So the question is, has it changed at all how people search? Because this is important, you know, I think in the future it’s going to be used more and more as it gets refined and guess what? I think it will change the way that people search. Now my theory is more I think discovery commerce, if that’s what we call it, or discovery purchasing, is going to happen more directly on Amazon, as opposed to ChatGPT or Google, where people don’t know what they want and they’re going to start having conversations with ChatGPT or Google, trying to research something and then figure out what they want and then search. That’s kind of like what’s going on now. But in the future, if Rufus gets better, I think ChatGPT, google is skipped. Somebody is going to do their research right in Rufus. But anyways, I digress, that’s just my theory. I have no proof of that. But do we have documented facts of if buyer behavior has changed because of Rufus?

Bradley Sutton:

I had our team shout out to Ava on our Helium 10 Pacvue team who did a deep dive into thousands and thousands of keywords that we have in our Search Query Performance database. The Search Query Performance database is directly from Amazon. All right, this is not Helium 10 estimations or anything we took performance database is directly from Amazon. All right, this is not Helium 10 estimations or anything. We took the search data directly from Amazon and the first thing we’re checking, all right, has search volume changed? Why would I look at that? Well, search volume is only in Search Query Performance is only if somebody types out a keyword and presses enter. Okay, if somebody goes to Amazon and is just going directly to Rufus to search, what should we see? If there’s a drastic change in search, the search volume is going to go way down. So, we analyzed thousands of keywords that we have at least 18 continuous months. Unfortunately, there’s not much. You know we can’t go back further from Amazon’s API and, interestingly enough, search volume has actually increased. It’s almost stayed the same. But if we’re going to say, uh, something different, it’s increased 1.4 percent and you could see this chart here month over month. It’s either up only it was down one month, or one month down by a point or negative two percent. All right, search volume 2024 versus 2025 has been almost identical.

Bradley Sutton:

Ok, so first of all, maybe if we, if there was a such thing as Search Query Performance years ago, perhaps we would see that search volumes increasing every year. We’re not sure, because we can only see data from 2024. But the point is, hey, if 100,000 people were searching your product last year, guess what 101,000 people are searching it this year. The same amount of people. So should you have taken away focus from keyword research and shifted it to Rufus? Absolutely not. The same amount of people are searching your product today than shifted it to Rufus. Absolutely not. The same amount of people are searching your product today than last year, before Rufus existed, which was July of 2024 is when it had its big rollout. So again, you still have got to be doing the same stuff. You just add on the Rufus research.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, what’s the second thing? I checked the number of clicks. Now, why would I check this? All right, let’s say there’s a search form. Right, when is a click registered? In Search Query Performance? It’s if somebody clicks on a sponsored product ad or an organic placement without interacting, all right. As soon as they hit a sponsored brand ad, there’s no click. That click is not registered. Um, if they hit one of the filters now, it’s not registered. All right, does that make sense? So, I wanted to see. Hey, my theory is that no, clicks are not affected too much, because I don’t think that people are hitting Rufus Like if people hit Rufus in after the search. Now that’s not. There’s no more clicks, the clicks are not going to be counted, all right. So again, my theory was no, I don’t think clicks have been changed too much.

What did the data show? Clicks are actually up, all right. So, the click through rate is up. That was kind of interesting to me. The search volume was only up like 1%, but clicks are up over 5%. But again, the main point being, when July 2024 happened, there was not some big shift in the number of clicks. That would happen, that you would think would happen, if all of a sudden people are not clicking products anymore after the search. Instead they’re going to Rufus. So again, more data that we have that. No, in the search experience, people are not using Rufus that much. The number of clicks compared to search volume is kind of like the click-through rate, all right. Now, interestingly, it’s not the same pattern as we saw with the clicks. The clicks were going up. Click-through rate has also gone up a little bit.

Bradley Sutton:

But you’ll notice into, I don’t know. You know I might be just looking into things, but in July of 2024, click rate did go down the click through rate. So, to me, I think people were experimenting that July. Maybe I could be wrong, and when I say it went down, I’m talking like literally 2%, okay, so, so this is not like some drastic decrease, but it’s interesting that when Rufus came on in July 24, the click-through rate went down, as if people were like, ooh, what’s this showing up? But then what happened? The very next month it shot back up 3%. So, my theory is that or was that? Hey, people are playing around with it. That’s what I did in July when I had Rufus. I was like, let me play around with it, and as a buyer I’m like, oh, this kind of sucks, I’m not going to use this anymore. And that seems to be what happened here. Now maybe I’m drawing too much from that, but you can clearly see from the data that there was a dip in 2024, July, but then it kind of went back up and started slowly declining. But the main point is not a huge, huge difference with the click-through rate percentage going on after Rufus.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, one of the most important ones is conversion rate, because, remember, like I said, in my opinion, if things are happening that are different with Rufus due to search. It would be, or not due to search, just with Rufus at all. It would be on the product page, because there are some pretty cool things that Rufus does on the product page. So has that been happening? Ava on my team as a data scientist, was actually like I don’t know if I want you to show this information, because it looks like the numbers from Amazon are a little bit wonky, so I’m going to show you some. I’m going to show you the numbers, as is. I told her to just show it to me. You’re going to see some strange stuff here, but you’re going to see something fascinating, in my opinion at least, to kind of prove what I had been theorizing on for months.

Theorizing on for months. First of all, the weird data that you see is in 2024, January it said there was a 37% conversion rate, all right, which is which is kind of crazy, but in February it went down to 21%. But anyways, after that the data kind of normalized. But when did Rufus come? On July 2024. Look at this graph, guys. What happened from June to July of 2024 with the conversion rate? It dropped pretty significantly. And again, when I say significantly, I’m talking like, like what, 10% here or something like that. Right, 10 percentage points from what was it? 28, 25% to 15%. Okay, so that’s interesting. Why is that interesting? Because that might show that, hey, people are still searching, people are still clicking, but when they get to the page now they’re having fun playing with Rufus, getting the price history, getting the reviews, et cetera, et cetera. But the point again is that that’s not search and there’s not much you can control about that. But what happens when somebody interacts with that is now those conversions are no longer counted. They might end up still buying the product, but now you’re not going to see it in Search Query Performance. And remember that was from like June of 2024 to July of 2024, when rufus came on. We have data from this year, June to July and it wasn’t like rufus went away or came back or anything and look what happened from June of July this year. It was almost steady. So again, like another kind of proof that hey, you know what people are playing around with rufus on the product pages. So again, to button this up, Rufus is being used by customers. We don’t know exactly what it’s being used for, but we have data that shows it’s not being used too much to replace search. It’s not being used too much in search results, but probably it’s being used substantially on product pages itself, which means you probably don’t need to change how you’re trying to show up in Amazon search results.

Bradley Sutton:

Now more proof that traditional keyword research is still king. Now here’s an example of Search  Query Performance in an actual account we did. I saw this uh keyword, CBD, roll on. This is for a hemp pain cream. Um, it had three purchases and I had a better conversion rate on this keyword than the market. So I’m like all right, what were my impressions like? My impressions were 1414 out of 3700 search volume, meaning less than half of the time I was showing up at the top. So what strategy is just a one keyword I’m talking about? What I did was I was like let me increase my sponsored brand or my sponsored product bid on this so I can show up at the top of the page. And now my impressions went to 4,800 out of 3,800 search volume. The search volume stayed identical almost compared to this other time period, but now I was showing up more than once at the top of the page in the search results and my purchases increased 300%. It went from three to 10. All right, that’s just one keyword.

Doing traditional keyword research, looking at the keyword data from Search Query Performance that I wasn’t paying too much attention to and by optimizing my ads for, increase my purchases 300 percent. Does that sound like something that’s worth your while to do? One keyword Can you do that to 10 keywords? 30 keywords, guys, every keyword is not going to bring you a million dollars’ worth of sales. This 300% it’s still only represented seven extra sales in a two-week period. But, guys, these things add up. Two sales here, five sales here.

Bradley Sutton:

If you are missing keywords and not doing all of the keyword research that you can and I’ll be blunt, like if you’re not using Helium 10, you are leaving hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on the table. You might think, whatever tool you’re using, oh, this is so good and I’m getting all the best keywords. You’re not, because it doesn’t have. They don’t have the kind of data that Helium 10 has. All right, and that’s why this is so important Keyword research that you’re not just like forgetting about it for Rufus and you’re not using other inferior data points. That’s not going to get you all the keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, something at the time I’m recording this was not ready yet, but a lot of this stuff that I’m going to be showing you in all these slides, it can actually be done in one tool, which is listing builder. By the time you’re watching this, or by you know, by the end of September, Listing Builder is going to have all of these keyword research strategies built into it. So it just you just click one button, it’s all there and it’s going to show you the source of Brand Analytics and Search, Query Performance and Historical Keywords and it’s going to like help you understand, like how many times a keyword came up on one of these data sources. So, you’re like, oh shoot, it came up in all seven of these situations. This is obviously a very important keyword, so it gives you a level of understanding on these keywords that nothing else out there has, and so be looking forward to that, that you’re not going to have to do it one by one, like I’m about to show you, um, but if those of you who have the Diamond plan and Listing Builder, you’re going to be able to do this in one fell swoop. But in the meantime, and for those of you who just like to do it and have a little bit more control over it, here is a list, in no particular order, of all of the ways to do keyword research.

Bradley Sutton:

Number one identify the niches, top keywords. You use Cerebro for this super easy. There’s a button on the top of the screen that says top keywords. You use Cerebro for this Super easy. There’s a button on the top of the screen that says top keywords. Hit that button If you put in a seed ASIN plus at least like five to 10 other ASINs of the top ones. Hit one button, boom goes the dynamite. You have got tens or even a hundred of the top keywords, because it’s showing where most of those competitors that you put in are all ranking for. So that’s the easiest one. Hit one button.

Bradley Sutton:

Another one is a one button filter. If you have a seed ASIN plus, like five to 10 other ASINs, hit the button that says opportunity keywords. These are keywords where only one or two of the products are ranking in the top 10 and the others aren’t even ranking at all right, or at least not ranking on page one. This we call opportunity, because it means that probably you’re going to have a little bit easier track to page one because you’re not going against all of your competitors. Step number three this is something you can only do in Helium 10. Do the Brand Analytics keywords, guys. This is like Search Query Performance, except for your competitors. So put your ASIN if you have an ASIN that’s similar to the one you’re doing, or if you’re just optimizing your own ASIN, plus like 5, 10 of your top competitors, run it and run it through multiple weeks. Don’t do the months, do weeks. Put like 10 weeks, 12 weeks, whatever, so that we are checking number one anywhere where any of these products were one of the top three clicked. That might give you a list that’s a little bit too big.

Bradley Sutton:

If you’re looking for something super actionable, there is a advanced filter in the Brand Analytics. This is again in Black Box where it says conversion share, select inputted ASINs and then greater than 1%. What does that mean? This is Amazon telling you hey, these products actually got sales from these keywords in this week. That’s what that is. People don’t realize that. They’re like oh, Search Query Performance. I can only see what I’m doing in brand analytics. You can see what any competitor has done if they were one of the top three clicked. And now the reason why this is important is half the keywords that a product is one of the top three clicked for. It might have not even gotten a sale that whole week. So, is it really that valuable? You know it’s kind of debatable, but if they got a sale for the keyword, that means their conversion share is at least 1%. That’s a pretty good keyword If they got a sale from it. Helium 10 is the only tool that can do this Black Box Brand Analytics. This is going to get you a gold mine of keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

Next, let’s just completely switch gears. Check off Amazon keywords, especially when there’s not much Amazon history, if nobody has this product on Amazon or only one seller who kind of sucks and you’re like I don’t even know where I can find keywords. Check if the listing is on Etsy. If the product is on Etsy, find a good seller and then go to the bottom and look at the explore related searches bar. That’s actually like the back-end search terms of an Etsy listing. That is an Etsy seller and that is a prompt like where they get those keywords. They’re putting what their top keywords are and Etsy is exposing that to the public. So whatever the seller thinks is the top keywords based on their own research or their own advertising data or whatever they’re actually showing you what that is. So, you can just get some good keyword ideas on there.

Bradley Sutton:

Step number five find Historical Keywords. You can only do this with Helium 10, guys. What I like to do is, hey, let me find a couple of months where there was a big increase in sales, right, and then let me go to that month in history. This is important, especially for seasonal products or any other product you know, like Christmas products or Valentine’s Day products. Right now that I’m recording this, it’s September. Am I gonna be able to use a reverse accent tool, Cerebro or any other tool out there that is gonna be able to tell me what are the best converting keywords for Valentine’s Day, for a Valentine’s Day product? Probably not, but I just look what was a top selling Valentine’s Day product in February of 2025, February of 2024. And I take a time machine using Cerebro by hitting the historical trends button, and now I’m going to go and see what all the keywords they were ranking for and advertising for in whatever month I am looking at Super, super valuable. You’re only going to get this in Helium 10. And, guys, there are keywords that can get you sales that maybe you would never even put in your listing because you are doing your keyword research using other tools, or even Helium 10, because you don’t know how to use these historical trends feature. Where you’re using these, these functions that are only looking at where the product is ranking at now, but where the product is ranking in September, guys, you’re it’s not the same exact keywords of where they’re getting sales from in March or in April or in June of 2023. But guess what? You can do that research in Helium 10.

Bradley Sutton:

Number six use the best Search Query Performance keywords. So the way to do that, go to Helium 10 Search Query Analyzer tool. Again, use the month one, not the week one, but check multiple months. Don’t just look at one month, look at 12 months, look at 15 months, look at multiple products. Now, this is if you have a product that you’re launching that’s very similar to another one, or if you’re just like doing research on your own product, you’re trying to re-optimize your listing. Uh, this is. You know, if you’ve never sold a coffin shelf, you’re not going to be able to use Search Query Performance with this. All right, hope that makes sense, but anyways, select like 10, 12, 15 months in a row, right there in Search Query Performance, and then what you can do is the advanced filter there’s one for my purchases, but minimum one and now instantly like I can’t believe this. Here’s a bat shaped bath mat that I’ve been selling. There’s 94 different keywords that I have gotten sales from and I barely got sales on this product at all. And some of these keywords are kind of like off the wall, like gothic shower curtain. What in the actual heck, how in the world am I getting sales on a bath mat with gothic shower curtain? Well, guess what? People are searching gothic shower curtain. They’re like, hey, this back shaped bath mat will look good next to my gothic shower curtain. Let me go ahead and purchase this. And so now I know that that’s relevant. All right, Search Query Performance a great way to get keywords. Make sure you are doing it.

Bradley Sutton:

Step number seven you can reverse engineer your competitor PPC or Ad Strategy. One way you can do that is by running Cerebro on their listing. First of all, if they show auto keywords or auto keywords, what am I saying? First of all, if they show that there’s only maybe 10 or 15 keywords that they have been detected in sponsored ads, you know their entire PPC strategy, because it means they’re only doing an exact manual campaign and those are the keywords they’re targeting. They’re obviously not running an auto, broader phrase. Otherwise, there’d be hundreds of keywords that should be showing up. So, but even if they do have hundreds of keywords showing up in their advertising, use the Helium 10 filter to say, hey, show me where they’re showing up in the top five or top 10 results. So now I know, hey, they’re bidding high on top of search, they’re bidding to be on page one. If they’re consistently showing up on page one in sponsored ads, they got to be keeping that bid pretty high. And if they’re keeping that bid high, what they must be getting some data that show that says, hey, I’m getting sales from these keywords at good a cost and profitable, so I’m going to keep them.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So again, use Helium 10 to look at where they’re advertising for. And sometimes another filter I like to use is hey, show me where at least five of my competitors are all advertising for it. Now here’s the thing If you’re using other tools out there, they’re only checking two pages of search results. You’re not going to see what is going to happen on page three, four, five, six or seven. But what if, like all six of your competitors, are all advertising on a certain? They’re all showing up, but maybe they’re all on page three, or most of them are on page three. You’re not even going to know that if you’re using, if you’re not using, Helium 10, because only Helium 10 is checking all the pages of the search results, so you know what is happening in advertising. So again, look at your competitor PPC strategy. Get those keywords that they’re bidding top of search and then find other keywords that everybody seems to be showing up for in advertising. Find where they’re sending traffic with us or find where they’re using sponsored video ads too. You can do that in Helium 10.

Bradley Sutton:

Next thing let’s go off of Helium 10. Number eight find the keywords in Product Opportunity Explorer. A lot of products out there have a niche in it and in that niche, in Product Opportunity Explorer in Amazon, you’re going to be able to see all the keywords that go to that niche. 98% of them you would have already found in Helium 10. But for those who don’t have Helium 10, this is a great way to get started and to maybe find one or two keywords that you know you might not have found in the other traditional ways that you are looking, and it kind of shows you what keywords make up a niche. So again, product opportunity to explore that is free for all Amazon sellers to have.

Bradley Sutton:

Number nine expand out your Cerebro search to see, hey, where’s any competitor in the top two, three or four pages. Once again, if you’re not using Helium 10, you’re only going to see two pages of search results, only up to like rank 100. Helium 10 will show you all pages of search results. So, whether you want to say, hey, show me where they’re in the top 150, they’re in the top 200, they’re in the top 250. That is what’s going to help you round out your keyword research. Are these going to be your top keywords If a whole bunch of competitors are on page three? Probably not, but do you want to look into it so you can see, like, what are people indexed for? What are people searchable for? I should at least be searchable for it, why not? It’s a good thing to do. So. Make sure to expand out your search in Cerebro as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Number 10, another exclusive thing in Helium 10, amazon recommended. This is Helium 10’s exclusive connection to Amazon’s relevancy engine, where Amazon is saying what keywords it thinks is most relevant to a product. What I like to do is I like to run my competitors there and say, hey, are there any commonalities, where Amazon thinks X keyword is like in the top 30 or in the top 40 for most relevant keywords, but across multiple products, that’s probably a good sign. It’s an important keyword for me. Why Number one? It’s what Amazon thinks. But two, this is we’re talking to Amazon algorithm here. If you can have some of those keywords in phrase form that Amazon thinks your other products are now for a new listing, if you set up your product with some of those keywords now Amazon, without much data, it’s going to relate your product a little bit more to those existing products and it helps you with your advertising, it helps you with your searchability and your eventual ranking. So do a little bit of research in Cerebro by playing with the filters of Amazon Recommended rank.

Bradley Sutton:

Number 11. Use Helium 10 Magnet to get long tail keywords of the top 10 phrase roots. That’s a. That’s a mouthful, but let’s say um, I’m doing a coffin letter board, right, and I’ve got a lot of keywords that start with coffin letter, like coffin letter board, coffin letter sign, you know coffin letter numbers or whatever. So what I can do is I can put coffin letter or even just coffin in magnet and then I’m going to filter out smart, complete so I can see the long tail versions of other keywords whether they’re related or unrelated that have that root keyword coffin letter somewhere in it. Because that’s going to help me round out my keyword research, I might want to throw some of those individual keywords in there. Right, I don’t have to put all those phrases in. I’ve got coffin letter board. That means I have coffin and letter. I’ve got coffin letter board. That means I have coffin and letter. So if all of a sudden coffin letter neon shows up, all I have to do is put neon to be indexable for coffin letter neon. So again, this is something that helps me round out my keyword research. It’s not something that’s gonna get me hundreds of sales, but it helps me to be indexable or searchable for more variations of some of my main parts of my main keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

Number 12, get the top keywords from the top. Frequently bought together products I like doing this I’ve been talking about frequently bought together for seven years now. It’s not just for bundling, it’s not just for looking at potential product targeting ASIN, but it also helps you to be related to these products that Amazon is telling you people are buying in the same purchase. All right, I ran a coffin letter board and I saw hey, people are buying these bat shaped stickers at the same time as a coffin letter board, like literally in the same shopping cart. That could be from two different sellers.

But now what I want to do is I’m going to. I want to be searchable for like the top two or three keywords that people are using for the bat-shaped stickers. Because, first of all, if I start targeting that in PPC, I’m going to start showing up right away. Amazon’s going to relate my product for when people see different ads on product targeting or when they get suggested from Amazon different products. I’m going to start showing up in these scenarios because Amazon is going to relate my product a little bit more to the others, because I’m going to be searchable for its main keywords, where probably my competitors are not putting the keyword bat-shaped sticker in their coffin letterboard listing because they’re like well, what does my product have to do with a bat-shaped sticker? No, so I’m going to be the only one with that keyword in my listing. It’s going to make it a lot easier for me to get some complimentary sales from that product.

Bradley Sutton:

Last one for keyword research and I know I’m probably missing a couple of things here, but this covers like 95% of the important stuff. Last thing is if you’ve got more than 10 relevant Spanish keywords, you know Cerebro is going to find you those Spanish keywords. Check the translation to see if they’re in phrase form. Okay, so change the Amazon to like Spanish if you’re in the USA, and then look at those keywords that Cerebro came up with that are Spanish, that seem to be good, and make sure it was translated correctly. If not, you can open up a case to Amazon and say, hey, can you change my translation? Because this keyword that is what most Spanish speaking people use, as the data shows it is not showing up in my listing when the auto translate is selected. The other thing you can do is like try and put it into one of the back-end search terms which called generic keywords. But like eight times out of ten nowadays, generic keyword section is not even indexing if it’s nowhere else in your listing. So your best bet for the Spanish keywords is to make sure that it’s in the auto translation and trying to get amazon to change it if not now.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, after you do that, I can probably spend a whole other episode talking about writing your listing with Listing Builder because it’s a matter of SEO, which Helium 10 is going to help you with that. We have a scoring system. We have AI that can write the listing for you to optimize your keywords. It’s about making sure your most important keywords, the ones that hit multiple ones for multiple competitors and multiple data points like hey, this keyword was in Brand Analytics and was in Search Query Performance, it was in top keywords, it was in advertising. That’s like probably an important keyword, those important ones you’ve got to get in phrase form and then individual keywords round out so you can be searchable.

Bradley Sutton:

Remember, you have to have the individual keywords in your listing to have the best chance at being searchable from day one. I showed you that example about the winter coat. But then it cannot be just some keyword stuff listing. That’s not good. If you’re trying to optimize for Rufus, it’s not good if you’re trying to optimize for a customer. No, you have to speak to your customers’ wants and needs and pain points and questions. To speak to your customers wants and needs and pain points and questions, you’ve got to be optimized for Amazon’s AI systems. All right, don’t just think SEO. Think about your customer. How are they going to use your product? What are the use cases? What fears does it solve? What problems does it solve? All right, make sure that’s how you write your listing. That’s a very overgeneralized statement, but at the end of the day, the key point is, while keywords are important, that’s only 50% of your listing. The other 50% is you have to be speaking to your consumers’ emotions to get them to purchase your product. All right, guys, there you have it. We just did a deep dive into how Rufus has changed very slightly the search experience and what people are using for it, why keywords are still important in 2025.

Bradley Sutton:

And we talked about a 14-step way that you can get keywords for your listing. Like five or six of those steps you can only do in Helium 10, guys, and remember, each keyword you do not have is money off of the table. So don’t think, hey, I’m, I’m not going to use a, a keyword research tool anymore. I’m only going to use product opportunity sport and be fine with my 20 keywords that it finds. Nope, that’s not going to, that’s not going to win it for you. Hey, I’m going to use this other tool, um, instead of Helium 10, they’ve got good keywords. I’m sure they do, but do they have all the good keywords. Do they have Brand Analytics? Do they have historical cerebral? They don’t All right. So this is super important, guys. Make sure you are using Helium 10 to get all these keywords and to write a great listing. I wish the best, and if you don’t have Helium 10, use the discount code SSP20. Save 20% for the next six months. Try this, guys. You’re going to see the sales start pouring in if you’ve never done the proper keyword research for your listing. Get indexed, start advertising for those keywords at top of search. Get visibility, get those sales up. We’ll see you next time on the Bali Blast.

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Helium 10: 30+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon or Walmart business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation.
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