Just because you’re selling something on a singular online marketplace rather than the internet as a whole, doesn’t mean you can neglect typical marketing musts such as solid keyword research.

And on that front, the Jungle Scout keyword tool is going to be your secret weapon!

The Keyword Tool allows you to analyze the Amazon ecosystem and pull up all the juicy keyword details local to this particular ecommerce platform. You can then use this information to ensure your products and ads get the exposure required to send sales skyrocketing.

But before you start seeing some major Jungle Scout gains, you first need to know how to use the Keyword Tool effectively, which is precisely what we’ll be covering in today’s post.

Using The Jungle Scout Keyword Tool For Keyword Research

Online marketplaces are simply mini search engines with a 100% commercial focus, so in order to get your products and ads seen, you have to ensure they rank, which requires a robust keyword research protocol.

To get started, we’d recommend typing whatever keywords you planned on using into the Keyword Tool. To do so, open up Jungle Scout and select the Keyword Scout menu from the side bar — it’s marked with a key.

Select the appropriate nation from the drop-down menu, then type your keyword into the search bar and tap Enter.

The tool will then pull up search volume for your prospective keyword as well as for all related keywords. For instance, if you were thinking of using the word “notebook” in your listing or in your ads, you may find that other similar keywords are actually generating much more searches, meaning they might be better options.

Perhaps “notepad” is a much more commonly searched term, so if you use it, you could garner more attention, but bear in mind that ranking difficulty tends to rise in tandem with search volume.

How To Choose Keywords Using Jungle Scout’s Keyword Tool

We find the best keyword strategy involves targeting a few high search volume/difficulty and a few lower search volume/difficulty terms. The former are competitive, and thus, it takes time to rise up through the ranks and get your books noticed, so you need the latter to hold you over in the short term.

Simply put, lower volume/difficulty keywords are your short game, while higher volume/difficulty keywords are your long game.

There are a few other factors to consider before you make your final decision too, but thankfully Jungle Scout has our back with some awesome keyword metrics.

For example, 30- and 90-day trackers allow you to follow trends and identify the seasonality of keywords so you don’t fork out a bunch of money on an ad campaign that people will only take notice of during another time of year.

Saving Keyword Lists

Keyword Scout also allows you to save custom keyword lists, so if you sell a lot of a similar type of thing, you can easily keep track of all related keywords and ensure you’re optimizing outreach every step of the way.

You can select a few of the most relevant keywords and make a very short list, you can oust only the irrelevant keywords to create a long list, or failing that, you can use the “Select all” check box to transfer all results to a list for analyzing at a later date.

Using Jungle Scout’s Keyword Scout Tool For Competitor Research

The second way to extract value from the Keyword Scout tool is to use it to monitor your competitors’ keyword strategies and performance. Why? Well, they may really be onto something with their approach, especially if they’ve been working on it longer than you have on yours.

You can then “borrow” aspects of their strategy that are paying off big time and incorporate them into your own strategy, sans the legwork they had to put in. It’s sneaky, but it’s essential!

Research Multiple Competitors Simultaneously

Researching competitors individually is a total time drain, which is why Keyword Scout allows you to snoop on up to ten competitors at once.

To do so, you need to fetch either their page URLs or their ASINs, then paste them into the search bar of the tool.

Keyword Scout will then pull up all the keywords your competitors are collectively ranking for, as well as how well they’re performing. Use these to bolster the keyword list you started during your own keyword research.

Pay Heed To Broad Search Volume

Keyword Scout will also provide the broad search volume of the listed terms. This tells you how often the keyword is searched for as part of a longer keyword. For example, “notebook” might be the listed keyword, but it might appear in searches as “lined notebook” or “colorful notebook no lines”.

Higher broad search volume means there’s even more value to the keyword in question and that it might be worth adding to your list.

Recommended Promotions

The Recommended Promotions metric tells you how many of your product you’d need to sell in a day in order to rank on the first page of Amazon or the intended ad destination. 

Again, this is an indication of keyword difficulty, but it gives you more of an idea how long it might take for you to rank, as you can assess your sales records and estimate when you might reach the suggested sales volume.

Using Jungle Scout’s Keyword Scout Filters

The final thing you need to know in order to use the Jungle Scout keyword tool effectively is that you can use multiple filters simultaneously to whittle down the results it pulls, saving you from sifting through tons of data if you already have an idea what you’re looking for.

Some of the filters available to you include:

• Specific search volumes (30-day period)

• Broad matches volumes (30-day period)

• Word count of keywords

• Organic product count

• Sponsored product count

• Organic rank

• Sponsored rank

These last two are particularly fantastic, as they show you what you’re already ranking for either organically or via sponsorship, meaning you know you don’t have to allocate any funds in those directions.

Final Thoughts

If you’re serious about selling on Amazon, it’s essential that you use tools such as Keyword Scout to optimize your keyword strategy. Going with your gut may seem like a good idea, but that’s the equivalent of entering a shootout with a knife.

Your competitors will all be using this kind of resource as a way of getting a leg-up, so you have to beat them at their own game. Failing to do so will only limit your outreach, stunt potential sales, and leave your ecommerce business stagnating.