When crafting your listing optimization in any language, it helps to think of your customer’s wants and needs first and foremost, and let that inform your keyword research and copywriting. Start with the customer experience, then move down to the technical aspects of listing optimizations, like keywords and language. In this video, Jana takes apart 2 listings from top-performing German brands, who surprisingly did not employ the best practices in listing optimization. As a result, they missed out on a possibly higher conversion rate. Click on this link to access the video!
With the help of Data Dive, Jana pokes holes in the two brands’ keyword research. Here’s some of what she uncovers:
Keywords
One brand put 4 keywords in the title – which is an excellent practice. However, the keywords are then repeated in the bullet points, which is a waste of conversion optimization. There would have been so many more keywords that would have led to improved ranking. Why waste keyword optimization by repeating the keywords you already used in the title? Better to find outlying keywords, or keywords with high relevance but lower search volume, for the bullet points.
In fact, there were also some English keywords in the listings. We understand putting English keywords in the listing if they pop up in the keyword research, but they don’t convert well for the German audience. So they would alert the algorithm, but they wouldn’t sit well with your customers. In that case, move the English keywords to the back end.
Last but not least, many people make the mistake of using word count minimum 2 on Helium 10. German has so many compound words, it doesn’t make sense to search for two words. Use word count 1 and see how many keywords that pop up! Data Dive is a great tool for cross-referencing the keywords you’re trying to rank for vs. your competitors. With the help of this tool, Jana found a lot of keywords that nobody was trying to convert for. What a huge lost opportunity!
Copywriting
Imagine. The product proclaims it’s German-made but there are awful German grammar mistakes. How true is that claim, then? If it’s true indeed that the product is German-made, could it be that the content wasn’t built by a German native speaker? The result was clunky language that won’t convert the particular German customer, at all. At worst, it looks like the brand didn’t care enough about its conversion optimization, and fulfilled the bare minimum just to get by. It doesn’t really look good.
In fact, this might actually be the case, because the A+ of one brand was inconsistent with the title and the bullets. Ideally speaking, your listing should tell a story from start to finish. It’s important to bring the customer through a journey. Your A+ or product description don’t have to have the exact same content as your bullets, but the information needs to flow. At least, echo what you wrote in the bullets, so you provide seamless messaging throughout the entire listing optimization.
Does this sound complicated?
For newer sellers, this can sound intimidating. There’s a lot to process. But as you’ve seen from Jana’s video, even seasoned sellers can get it wrong sometimes.
If you’re not 100% sure about your listing performance, send it to us. We’ll happily perform a listing audit free of charge, so you can hear it from the experts – where to improve, and where you’re already doing great! Also, don’t forget to follow Jana on LinkedIn for more of this kind of content.