They’re how you create your advertising plan. But they’re more than that: by conducting strong keyword research upfront, you can find high demand, low competition markets that set you up for success long before you’ve ever dropped a dime on a batch of inventory or advertising spend.

Today, I’m going to show you a proven method for conducting in-depth keyword research so that you can find and launch your next Amazon FBA product with confidence.  

Find keywords.

What are keywords and why do we need them?

Well keywords are…key!

Keywords are words or phrases that shoppers use to find what it is they’re searching to buy on Amazon, Google, or anywhere else you can add a search query. 

You can’t just pick whatever random idea pops into your head willy nilly as if Amazon FBA were a blindfolded game of darts. Focus on gaps in the market with keywords and calculate your risks in advance. 

This way, you can determine what shoppers are searching for and buying, and tailor your product to those very real actual shoppers.

Keywords can be a single word such as a “knife” or a string of words such as “German steel chef’s knife with ergonomic handle”. 

You can use keywords to find a product to sell on Amazon with huge potential. But first, you need to know what keywords shoppers are searching for on Amazon. A search on Amazon is a search to buy. So if a keyword has particularly high search volume on Amazon, it’s in high demand. In other words, there are a lot of shoppers actively looking to buy that product type.

To find out which keywords have high search volume, we will use Helium 10’s Magnet tool. Magnet can tell you the Amazon shopper search volume for specific keywords, as well as the search volume for keywords related to the ones you’re researching. 

Let’s use “wind chime” as our example. We type that keyword into Magnet and click Get Keywords. 

We immediately see that the keyword, “wind chime”, has an average monthly search volume of over 17,000, which is strong. That effectively means that, on average, Amazon shoppers search the term “wind chime” over 17,000 times per month. That’s a strong indicator of demand (which directly correlates with search volume). 

We can also see related keywords, their search volume on Amazon, along with the number of sales made from that keyword search. 

Finally, we can see that Magnet associates over 5,000 other keywords with the term “wind chime”, however, not all of those 5,000 words will be relevant and/or have high demand. 

Let’s narrow our search by typing “1,000” into the Min box under Search Volume and clicking Apply Filters. 

You should avoid markets with a search volume of less than 1,000 monthly searches. Lower search volume equates to lower shopper demand. It will likely be hard to sell, and even harder to compete, in a market where there are significantly fewer shoppers actively shopping for your product type. 

Now, let’s filter our search results by volume by clicking Search Volume. 

Notice that our results (at the top, no less) include keywords that are not so related to our initial search for “wind chime”. Why is that?

Magnet is showing us any words that it considers even loosely associated with the keyword “wind chime”. For example, wind chimes are a type of home decor, which is probably why that keyword holds the top spot by monthly search volume. And it just so happens that some of those loosely associated keywords have much higher search volumes than those more directly tied to “wind chime”. 

To filter out those more extraneous keywords, we can specify a term inside the returned keywords in the Phrases Containing box. For example, let’s add “wind” as a parameter.

Now our results list is hyper focused on products that contain the word “wind” and because they’re already associated with our search keyword “wind chime”, we know the results are hyper focused to this specific niche. 

Now let’s say we wanted to find a super niche market so that we could potentially differentiate our product. To differentiate means to make your product different from—and oftentimes better than—competing products. 

To do this we will simply add another parameter to the Phrases Containing field. For example, if we wanted to investigate butterfly wind chimes, specifically, we would add “butterfly” after “wind” in that field (separated by a comma). 

We’re only left with one product, however it still has over 3,000 in monthly search volume, which indicates strong demand. 

It’s important to note that as you niche down further and further and get more specific with your search, demand will start to drop. To a certain extent that’s ok; you want to find a high demand product with little competition, and lower demand correlates with lower competition. Just make sure you’re not niching down so far that demand completely drops off. While 1,000 should be the absolute lowest you should consider when assessing demand, it’s better to find keywords with at least a few thousand (think 3,000+) in monthly search volume.

For example, if we were to swap “butterfly” for “dragon” (keeping “wind”), we get a different set of results:

Products that contain the words “wind” and “dragon” only see up to a few hundred in monthly search volume. In fact, I even had to remove our earlier parameter of at least 1,000 monthly search volume to get these results. This market does not have enough demand to be worth our while. 

That said, if you find a lower search volume market that currently contains no relevant products, you might have a gold mine. 

Whenever demand exists but there are few to no competing, relevant products, you have the opportunity to be the only relevant product—or one of a handful—for that demand which means shoppers searching that niche will likely only have a few options and will be more likely to purchase from you. Additionally, fewer competitors equals reduced advertising spend, as Amazon’s pay per click (PPC) advertising system works on a bidding system in which you must outspend other sellers to get your advertised products in the top spot in search results. 

For instance, Chris Hubby—who’s on our Just One Dime YouTube channel—once found a niche market for sympathy wind chimes in which there were no relevant products, but had decent demand as seen through keyword research. It worked out that he launched one of the first relevant products for that market on Amazon, and his windchimes have sold quite well, so much so that in two years, he accrued $332,000 at about a 30% profit margin.  

Interested in finding your own specific product niche goldmine? 

With Just One Dime’s Amazon FBA Mastery membership, you can learn all of our (tried and true) tips and tricks for scouting product markets to sell in and uncovering product idea gems. Furthermore, our 100+ video lessons cover how to find and vet suppliers to build your product, different product launch strategies, and various ways to grow your business so that you can have margin to do the things you love with the people you love. Get started today at JOD.com/freedom.

Check keyword seasonality.

Let’s go back to our butterfly wind chime example. To check for seasonality, we’ll assess each keyword’s Search Volume Trend. In this case, that trend is 7%, which means this product’s search volume has increased 7% over the past 30 days from the previous month. 

That’s not huge, but let’s keep going. If we click on the graph icon in the Search Volume column, we get the following:

This graph represents that keyword’s search volume over the past year (although you can adjust the time frame from the left drop down arrow). Notice how the search volume jumps in mid April, peaking May 07, 2022. 

It also jumps in December right around the holidays, however for the rest of the year, the search volume remains fairly low with some smaller peaks and valleys.

That said, sometimes it takes more than one year’s worth of data to determine if a product is truly seasonal or not. Let’s expand our graph to All Time; we get the following results:

Notice we see consistent spikes around each May, with smaller (but still relevant) spikes in December as well. 

We can deduce that the market for butterfly wind chimes is, in fact, seasonal. Shoppers get excited about warmer weather and anticipate their ability to spend more time outside, so searches (and thus sales) in butterfly wind chimes peak. 

Additionally, this product does well around the holidays when shoppers are looking for a gift for their wind chime loving friends and family.

So what do we do with this information? Is it a smart idea to sell seasonal products, especially considering they don’t maintain high sales volume year round? 

A lot of sellers poo-poo seasonal products because they do tend to go dormant, as it were, when not in-season. However, it just so happens seasonal products can make you extremely strong sales on Amazon…if done correctly. There are some acutely specific nuances that go into launching and selling seasonal products. That said, seasonal products can have absolutely huge potential. Check out our guide here. 

Once you’ve selected a product to build and then sell on Amazon based on your keyword search, you’ll need to find even more keywords to go with it. 

Compile relevant keywords for your product.

It’s not enough to have a high-demand product with one main, identifying keyword. You’re going to need dozens of relevant keywords. Why?

Because shoppers search for the same product in different ways. Take our initial keyword, “wind chime”. Many shoppers will simply search “wind chime”, however other shoppers will search “wind chimes for outside”, and both groups of shoppers will likely see similar search results.

Let’s use the “sympathy wind chime” niche as an example. Locate that keyword in Magnet.

Click the box and arrow next to the Amazon logo to visit that specific search results page on Amazon.

Let’s choose the Amazon’s Choice product as an example. Click the link button to visit its product listing. 

For this next step you’ll need Helium 10’s XRay Google Chrome extension, which is free to use. 

Once it’s installed, click on the extension from the product’s Amazon listing and then select XRay — Amazon Product Research.

Now we can see sales data about this specific product. For instance, notice that this product does over $38,000 in revenue per month. 

If we decide to build a product like this, we now need to know how we could differentiate our product and how shoppers are finding it on Amazon. We’ll need to know what keywords shoppers are searching to achieve both objectives. 

From XRay, copy the product's Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN).

Jump over to Helium 10’s Cerebro tool, paste that ASIN into the search bar, and click Get Keywords. 

Now we see all the keywords this specific product is ranking for. Rank refers to how high in search results a product appears when a shopper searches a relevant keyword. 

As you can see, that’s a lot of keywords. 

Keep in mind that most shoppers don’t scroll past the first page of search results. We don’t need to look at keywords that would land this product on page ten of search results, we just need its main ones, the ones that land it at the top of page one. 

In the Organic Rank box up top, add a range from 1 to 30. 

Organic rank refers to how high in search results the product ranks without the help of PPC advertising (although it likely earned that organic rank thanks to strategic PPC advertising, which we teach our students). 

Most Amazon search results pages contain about 20-30 products, so searching for keywords that rank this particular product between 1 and 30 ensures that we’re looking at the keywords that land this product on page one. 

Click the Search Volume column header to filter your results by most to least searched. 

At the far right of the table, notice the Organic Rank column: that tells you where in search results this product appears when a customer searches that exact keyword. Click that column to filter highest to lowest rank. This should now present us with the most relevant, specific keywords for this product. 

We’re not going to use all of these; there will still be some keywords that are not as relevant to the product we might build. That said, we’ll hang on to most of these keywords. 

Before we decide this is our product, we must finally ensure that the relevant keywords associated with this specific niche have enough demand. 

In the Min box under Search Volume, enter 1,000.

Then, filter the results by Search Volume.

If there are several keywords that both have high search volume and help that product to rank well, that market has enough demand. Note each keyword that meets these criteria. You will eventually use those keywords to help shoppers find your product once it’s built and for-sale. 

Strategically place relevant keywords throughout your Amazon product listing. 

As you build out your product listing, you need to know which keywords will lead shoppers to your product. Return to your list of relevant keywords. Rank them by relevance to your product. 

You will place most of those keywords throughout your product listing, thereby telling Amazon’s algorithm that your product is relevant for those search queries, which will allow your listing to appear when a shopper searches one of those terms. Our product listing tutorial will show you where each type of keyword should go as you build out your listing and its copy. 

Once your product is on-sale, you can use those same keywords for PPC advertising to drive conversions. 

Keywords are quite the big deal when it comes to selling on Amazon. In fact, keywords are so important, you should start your search for the perfect product with keyword research. In doing so, you can ensure that you create a product with sufficient demand and save yourself a lot of time and effort down the road when it’s time to build out your product listing and begin advertising.

However, keyword research is not all there is to selling on Amazon, it’s just the beginning. To get the full selling on Amazon how-to, start to finish and everything in between, visit JOD.com/freedom. Our Amazon FBA Mastery membership can help you build your brand, find products and suppliers, and even grow your business off of Amazon (once you make it big there). 

Which tools do you use to research keywords? Let me know in the comments.