SellerSprite Keyword Research Tool’s Tips

Amazon keywords are a user's definition of specific products, such as headphones for kids.
When the same keyword is constantly searched by users, a market is gradually created.
In other words, the essence of keywords is a subdivided market.

Any product belongs to one or more subdivided markets(subcategories), and the market can be subdivided based on the product attributes, population, use, etc.
For example, based on the scene(daily/travel/outdoor), a power bank can have three specifications of 5000/10000/20000mAh.

Keyword research is the warming stage of product selection.
Product selection is a comprehensive decision-making process, such as cost and profit, supply chain, market maturity, and competition, especially in combination with its own strength and positioning. Keyword research just provides a preliminary decision-making process.

For example, the capable sellers would not focus on the market with monthly search volume less than 100,000 and want to find a potential market(the searches growth rate in the last 3 months is higher than 10%). If they concentrate on children's products, then they can filter with the keyword “kids”.

Keyword research provides a basic macro dimension of the market. Let’s take a look.

Searches
The searches directly reflects the size and capacity of the market demand.
However, a keyword is often a traffic entrance of the subdivided market, and there may be many such traffic entrances.
The keywords you imagine maybe only 50% of the demand in this subdivided market. For example, “Bluetooth earbuds” and “wireless earbuds”, the search volume is comparable.

How to find out relevant keywords of a subdivided market? Utilize SellerSprite - Intelligent Mining.
Intelligent Mining will find similar subdivided markets with similar target groups and scenes, such as lemon squeezer and citrus juicer. But only if the keyword is accurate enough to define an exact market.

Search volume is generally used for horizontal comparison (relevant keywords searches comparison) and vertical comparison (the historical trend of the keyword) to maximize its value.

Products
It reflects the market supply.
However, since 2018, Amazon has gradually hidden the specific number of products and only provide fuzzy numbers, such as 100,000+.
From the second half of 2019, in order to optimize logistics efficiency, Amazon gives priority to showing the products closest to the users based on local FBA warehouses(different IP addresses correspond to different regions), resulting in different products in different regions; It also provides more personalized product display based on user profiles.

The products only has a reference value to the core precise words.

There is a popular way to judge competition: supply and demand index = demand/supply = search volume/products. For two markets with similar search volume, the larger the products, the greater the competition(there are too many suppliers), that is, the smaller the supply and demand index, the greater the competition.

Our interpretation of this is:
1. The premise of this metric is that the keywords must be limited to core precise keywords so that the number of products is meaningful;
2. The number of products does not fully reflect market competition.
3. What can be used to reflect market competition is the monopoly metric(supply competition), such as the sales ratio of the top 10 products and the top 100 products in the subdivided market(refer to SellerSprite - Market Research- Commodity Concentration).

Searches Trend
Searches trend intuitively reflects the life cycle of the subdivided market, as well as seasonality.
The life cycle has a greater reference value for products that are updated quickly and iteratively.
For product seasonality, the value of the searches trend should be the largest, which is greater than the product sales trend.

Category
For a similar product, sellers may classify it to different markets based on different usage scenarios or groups.
For example, iPhone x case, the main category is “Cell Phone & Accessories”, but some sellers launched products under “Sports & Outdoors”, because it is waterproof and anti-fall; and other sellers launched products under “Home & Kitchen”, because it is a mobile phone case with a wallet.
Therefore, the category is still valuable for product selection. It is difficult to face the competition directly. If I focus on personalization, I can launch products under “Arts, Crafts & Sewing”.

Keywords
If you are deeply engaged in certain industries, such as children's market and lighting market, you can add a keyword root, such as “led” and “kids” to filter.
Then combined with other auxiliary criteria, such as the growth rate in the last three months is higher than 10%.

PPC Price
For the same market, the horizontal comparison of PPC prices can reflect the market competition, such as the iPhone x case (1.0$) and the iPhone x clear case (0.8$).

Please note that it must be in the same market. It is meaningless to compare the PPC price of the standing desk ($5.0) and the iPad holder ($1.3).

Traffic Cost
It represents the traffic cost of selling products of the same value.
Traffic Cost = PPC price/average price*100%. For example, the iPhone x case, the PPC price is $1.0, the average price is $12.1, and the traffic cost = 1.0/12.1 = 8.3%, which means that for every $100 worth of goods sold, the cost per traffic is $8.3.

Please note that 8.3 is a relative value (metric) and does not represent the PPC price or ACOS.
The lower the traffic cost, the lower the marketing cost, and the less competition of the subdivided industry, which may also mean that the market is still in the blue ocean.


Click Concentration
For example, when searching for a certain keyword, the search results page received 10,000 clicks, and the top 3 ASINs get roughly 80% of all clicks, which shows that the top three ASINs attract the search traffic. Although this keyword search volume is large, it is difficult for other sellers to grab. A typical example is AirPods(over 10 million searches per month).

1. For capable sellers
They will choose the search volume is greater than a certain threshold, such as 3C products’ search volume >200,000, and pet products’ search volume > 50,000.
For small sellers, they will choose a market with less search volume, such as pet products, with search volume between 10,000 and 50,000.

2. For sellers who looking for new potential markets
Keyword research will prioritize two dimensions:
1) The search volume continues to grow (the searches growth rate exceeds 10% or even 15% in the last 3 months). Please note that the surge in the month may be just traditional seasonal products.
2) Markets that newly appeared this year (last year search volume = 0).

3. For sellers who deeply engaged in a specific field or category
For example, if you focus on outdoor sports products, then “Sports & Outdoors” is your first choice.
If you focus on children's products, the filter criteria will generally include the keyword "kids" by default.

4. Sellers who pay more attention to the competition
Competition is the performance of market maturity. Generally speaking, the competition in the blue ocean market is small, that is, in the early stage of the market;
So you can prioritize the click concentration or traffic cost to find the market with the smallest click monopoly rate.