Retailers taking to Amazon for selling opportunities should focus on optimizing their product titles for mobile with less than 74 characters, as these items sell the most, according to research from Ripen eCommerce.

As many retailers are taking to Amazon as another place to sell their merchandise, research is showing that products sold to the online marketplace at wholesale are ranked much higher within search results, and those that do not partner at all see the least positive outcomes. However, all retailers must adhere to the 74 character guideline or risk missing out on a huge sale opportunity, as Amazon’s application cuts off titles after that.

Searching with Amazon
The potential for retailers on Amazon is substantial, as many consumers treat the online marketplace as a go-to for any information regarding retail and significantly drive sales. However, there is a clear correlation between search result rankings and sales numbers, which means marketers need to think about how their products appear when users are searching for a specific item.

Amazon has noted that the key method for users in discovering products on mobile is its search bar. Retailers that sell products to Amazon at wholesale, which then appear on the marketplace are ranked higher than other items for sale within search and those that allow Amazon to handle the shipping appear second most.

For instance, items sold by Amazon.com saw a ranking factor of .08, whereas third party merchants saw a negative .05.

Products that see the most sales have a strong standing within search rankings on multiple queries, not just one. On Amazon’s mobile search, research shows that as sales grow for a particular product, so do search queries for the item, which is different than traditional SEO.

The average item appeared within 2.2 search queries, with 344,936 individual products for 746,500 results.

Key word importance
Marketers should also focus on including prominent keywords in the product title itself, as products that have the exact keyword in the title appear much higher. It does not matter if the keyword in search matches the title exactly, but just that it is included.

It is very rare for products to appear exactly as the keyword, since as the titles get longer, the less likely they are to match perfectly. For instance, a search query with only one word will see exact matches 44.64 percent of the time, while six words will only see .36 percent.