When Should You Give Up On Keywords On Amazon?

If you have experience in PPC, you know that keywords are one of the main things to target when creating ads in Seller Central or AMS. Some of them will bring you lots of sales and some of them will end up spending money without a single sale. So when is the right time to give up on keywords and when you should still reconsider them? 

Structuring Your Amazon Marketing Campaigns

So, let's say that you sell cool T-shirts with illustrations and quotes. Obviously you are not the first person on Amazon to think of this. What is the first step to restructuring your campaign?

First, you need keywords. There are a lot of ways to get the list of keywords that are likely to make a sale. You can extract converting search terms from your existing campaigns or you can use research tools. A proven way to pick the most relevant keywords is to use a tool where you place your ASIN and do reverse ASIN research. As a result, you will get lots of keywords that people use when searching for your type of product and their search volume. ZonGuru’s Keywords on Fire tool helps you do just that. 

After you go through this analysis, you should filter your keywords in order to use the most relevant ones for your campaigns. Relevance is the main criteria when choosing the keywords for PPC campaigns. The best solution is to create ad groups with around 30 relevant keywords of the same match type. Now, maybe you are wondering why you shouldn’t use different match types in the same ad group. Well, if you use broad, exact, and phrase match in the same ad group you won’t be able to narrow down the search funnel and optimize spend. 

When Should You Abandon Certain PPC Keywords?

Maybe you’re thinking,  “what does giving up on keywords mean?” Do you forget them forever and never use them again? One thing is for sure, the worst thing that you can do with keywords is archive them. 

If phrase and broad match keywords are not doing well and exact match keywords are super relevant and bring you sales, you may wonder if it’s best to archive those and focus only on exact form keywords. Broad and phrase match type keywords are usually triggering lots of different products that you don’t want to show up for. The first thing you should do is to go to your Search term report, check all the search queries that are triggering your ad, and remove the ones that you consider irrelevant. 

A lot of sellers have problems removing search terms that are not their chosen keywords, but are highly relevant and triggered by their phrase and broad match keywords. On the other hand, if these search terms are not profitable, what should you do with them? 

The first option is to check if you have that specific search term as a keyword somewhere. If you do, you should remove it in the campaign where it was triggered. Another option is, if you don’t have this search term among your keywords, you should remove it and create a new campaign with it. This campaign is called non-profitable and consists of non-converting keywords that are highly relevant and can bring you profit in the future. You shouldn’t give up on certain keywords right away, but rather try to increase and decrease bids and give them a chance.

ZonGuru’s CEO, Jon Tilley, recently had a chat with PPC expert Howard Lee about the ins and outs of these different campaigns. 

When Is A Keyword Considered Unprofitable?

There are a lot of things to consider when thinking about whether some keywords are profitable or not. For example: when you add a new keyword, get three clicks, and the CPC is really high(maybe even 10$), is it really unprofitable at that point? 

Most sellers and advertisers don’t take different time frames into consideration. People tend to stick to one time frame when checking the results of different campaigns instead of thinking about the bigger picture. Global changes like COVID 19 can affect your campaigns by decreasing search volume. Also, you shouldn't consider that a keyword is going to perform the same after you’ve added some negative keywords to the same ad group and/or decreased your PPC bid.

If you want to focus on one keyword at all costs, you may end up costing yourself as this can affect your organic ranking. Always have in mind that you can spend less than someone else for the same keyword and still win a better position. How? Well, if your relevance score is higher,  you are on the right path. Even though we don’t know much about Amazon’s relevance score, it is certainly there. You should pay attention to it.

In Conclusion 

Don’t give up on keywords right away. Give yourself time to collect relevant search terms that you can use to optimize your campaigns. You can even create campaigns with those highly relevant, non-converting search terms. Experiment with the bids and single out some budget for A/B testing so you could see what works and what doesn’t. 

Revisit keywords once in a while to see if things have changed during a certain time frame. This way, you will have a more clear picture of what’s happening with your campaigns. Remember: the worst thing that you can do with keywords is archive them. If some keywords don’t bring you lots of sales but have a large number of impressions, that can be a good leading indicator. Also, don’t forget that relevance is very important when it comes to keywords. Even if these relevant keywords don’t bring you profit now, who says that won’t change in the future? 

Pro Tip: Want to find the best keywords you can use for Amazon PPC? Find out how you can download our step-by-step guide breaking down how to harness the power of The Halo Effect™ here.

About Sellers Alley

Professional team at Sellers Alley is highly committed to providing Amazon PPC services and exclusively tailored advertising campaigns. Our team completely understands the complexity of the Amazon marketplace and the unique challenges that your brand can face in such a competitive environment. That is why our approach to clients is different. We start with a bigger picture in mind, but along the way, we recognize and focus on details that can help us improve and set your product apart.

If you want to get a free audit of your Amazon account and if you’re ready to boost your sales apply here.