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Your title has less than a second to capture the customer’s interest. If it doesn’t, the shopper will continue browsing through the search results and click on the competition.
The objective of the title is to provide the customer with key pieces of information that persuade them to click on your product. Once the customer is on the product page, the other pieces of content come into play: additional photos, bullet points, product descriptions, and A+ content.
This guide takes a look at what makes a compelling title.
Amazon’s Guidelines
Before writing product titles, it is important to familiarize yourself with Amazon’s style guidelines:
- Capitalize the first letter of every word except for prepositions and conjunctions, e.g. “and,” “for,” “with,” etc.
- Do not include any promotional messaging, such as “sale” or “offer.”
- Do not use adjectives such as “great” or comparatives and superlatives such as “healthiest” and “best seller.”
- Use numerals for all numbers and spell out any measurements, e.g. “3 ounces,” not “three oz.”
Titles that don’t follow Amazon’s rules may be rejected or edited without notification.
Title Structure
Amazon also has a title structure it asks vendors and sellers to follow. This can vary slightly according to the product category. Below is an example of a recommended title structure:
Brand
The brand and sub-brand (if applicable) must appear at the beginning of the title. This creates consistency and helps the customer compare products in search results. While the brand name may be visible in the main image and elsewhere on the product page, the only place it clearly appears in the search results is in the title, so it’s important to include it.
Also, a title without a clear brand name can create a perception that the item is non-branded, which can indicate that it is of lower value and quality. Branding is very important; it looks professional and gives off a perception of higher quality, allowing the brand to charge a more premium price.
Model Name/Number
If the model name and/or number is important to the product and the customer would use it when searching for the item, make sure you include it in the title after the brand name. If a customer wouldn’t use it to find the product, leave it out, as it is taking up valuable space.
Product Type
After the brand name and model name/number, the title then needs to tell the customer exactly what the product is, e.g. dog food or laundry detergent. To increase search visibility and help your product stand out from competitors, enhance the product type by adding high-volume keywords that describe unique selling points and/or who the product is for. For example, Grain-free Dry Dog Food for Puppies or Organic Laundry Detergent for Babies with Sensitive Skin.
Variants
While variants are visible on the product page, the customer shouldn’t have to click on the item to view this information. It’s important to information such as pack size, quantity, scent, and flavor directly in the product title.
Creating Compelling Titles
Length
The maximum number of characters allowed in a product title varies across categories and whether you are a seller or vendor. On Seller Central, titles can have up to 200 characters. On the vendor side, limits range from 50 to 200 characters depending on the category.
However, even if you can have up to 200 characters, it is doubtful the customer will read your entire title word for word. In addition, only the first 60 to 70 characters of a title are sometimes shown in the search results. For this reason, it’s important to keep your titles as short and succinct as possible.
Word Order
With just over 60 characters sometimes showing in search results, this puts more importance on word order. While brands have some limitations on how to structure their titles due to Amazon’s guidelines, they still need to ensure the most important keywords are as close to the front of the title as possible, ideally right after the brand name or model number.
Keywords
Extra long titles stuffed with keywords aren’t very compelling and can actually have a negative effect on the customer experience. They both look unprofessional and can be difficult to read and understand.
Keyword stuffing is also unnecessary in terms of SEO. Amazon’s search algorithm equally weighs all of the keywords on a product page, meaning that a product will rank the same whether a keyword appears in the title or the backend search terms. What is most important to Amazon is relevancy. Take a look at this recent article on The Importance of Keywords on Amazon.
Conclusion
The key to a compelling title is to establish trust, to describe exactly what the product is, to distinguish it from the competition, and, most importantly, to ensure it is coherent and easy to read. The goal of your product title is to persuade shoppers to click on your product. The next step is to create compelling product page content that converts those clicks into sales.
