Amazon sellers know how important it is to optimize listing titles to boost product discoverability. A good title can make or break your sales. It is the first thing that potential customers see when they search for your product. But how do you write a title that is catchy, informative, searchable, and relevant to your target audience? In this analysis, we will share guidelines and best practices on how to create effective titles for your Amazon products. 

At Threecolts, we are building the most comprehensive online marketplace management platform, and we believe it’s our responsibility to empower our partners with crucial information to aid their decision-making. 

In this report we look at Amazon product listings to answer the following questions:

1. What constitutes an Amazon best-selling title?
2. How can sellers improve the titles of their listings?
3. What are the most frequent keywords in the top sellers, and how are they positioned in listings?

Key Findings

• Best-selling Amazon listings tend to use a higher share of positive sentiment words. Product listings are often a customer's first point of contact with a product and brand and sellers would benefit from more positive language to gain an edge in listing visibility and engagement. 
• Best-selling Amazon listings tend to have average readability and lean into search engine optimization (SEO) with many keywords in titles. Sellers have to balance SEO demands vs. readability, and the results indicate top-selling products prioritize optimization over readability.  
• Best-selling Amazon listings make use of highly connected keywords and tend to appear within the first 8 words of a listing title. Sellers with many connected keywords in their titles receive an SEO boost and thus higher conversion rates. 

What are the features of a best-selling Amazon title?

We investigated the titles of the best sellers in different categories on Amazon and checked how easy or hard they are to read, how positive or negative they are, and how they use keywords. Here is how we did it:

• To measure how easy or hard it is to read a text, we used a score called the Flesch reading score. It uses the number of words per sentence and the number of syllables per word to estimate how easy or hard it is to read a text.
• To measure how positive or negative a text is, we used a score called text sentiment polarity. It uses a number between -1 and 1 to show how positive or negative a text is. -1 means very negative, 0 means neutral, and 1 means very positive.
• We also looked at the length, word count, character count of the titles, and how keywords are positioned in the titles.

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Here is what we found on average across the selected categories:

• Best-selling Amazon product titles have an average of 18 words with 111 characters, with each word having about 6 characters.
• The same titles have an average Flesch readability score of 58, which means they are fairly difficult to read, indicating a preference for search-optimized titles in best sellers. 
• The top 10 sellers within a group tend to have more positive language in titles. Of the top 100 best-sellers in a category, the top 10 best sellers on average have 200 basis points more positive words in their titles vs. the bottom 10 selling products.

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Amazon listing titles are on average mostly neutral in tone

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Most listing titles on Amazon have a neutral tone; however, some categories stand out with more positive words in their titles. These are Amazon Devices & Accessories, Handmade Products, and Software. These categories have a higher share of positive-sentiment words than the average. Using positive language can help you differentiate yourself from the competition and increase your sales.

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Positive words in your title can help you get more customers and sales. The best sellers have more positive words than the worst sellers. For example, the top 10 sellers have 200 basis points more positive words than the bottom 10 sellers.

Some categories need more careful analysis, as some phrases use negative words in a positive way, or vice versa. For example, “No tools wall hanging strips” is a positive phrase, but it has negative words like “no” and “hanging”. Similarly, “Tiny Thin 7mm Piercing Hoop Ring” is a positive intentioned phrase, but it has negative words like “tiny” and “thin”.

To make your title more positive, you should use at least 2 positive words (see Appendix for list of most polar keywords in top sellers), such as “smart”, “easy”, or “clear”. You should also avoid negative words, such as “bad”, “tiny”, or “flat”. This way, you can make your title more appealing and persuasive to customers.

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Top selling listing titles tend to have average readability 

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Your Amazon product titles should be easy to read and find on search engines. This depends on reviews, sales, keywords, and prices. More keywords improve SEO, but reduce readability. Amazon SEO rankings in the current A10 algorithm are determined by a combination of positive customer reviews, historical sales, relevant keywords, and competitive prices. Keywords are the easiest point of influence for sellers. SEO friendly titles can help you get more clicks and sales. A good title should ideally be both readable and SEO friendly, but in reality there is a tradeoff between readability and SEO optimized titles.

We found that the average readability score across all categories was 58, which means that the titles are fairly hard to read. But some categories had easier or harder titles than others. For example, Amazon Devices & Accessories had the easiest titles to read, with a score of 71. Software had the hardest titles to read, with a score of 42.

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The best sellers in each category had harder titles to read than the worst sellers. This suggests the top sellers prioritize SEO over readability to boost their sales; being visible on search engines is generally more important than having simple and clear titles.

These results show that there is a trade-off between readability and SEO for the titles in most categories. In general, the more keywords or phrases you use in your title, the more SEO friendly it is, but also the harder it is to read. On the other hand, the fewer keywords or phrases you use in your title, the more readable it is, but also the less SEO friendly it is. The data suggests that focusing on SEO friendly titles leads to better conversions.

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Keywords are the words or phrases that describe your product and match your customers’ search queries. Using keywords effectively in your title can help you rank higher on search engines and attract more clicks and sales.

Using a method called network analysis we investigated best selling titles on Amazon looking at the most common keywords in each category, and how they are placed in the titles. We found some interesting patterns:

• The order and connection of the keywords matter. For most categories, there is a main keyword that is related to other keywords. For example, in the “Software” category, the main keyword is “software”, and it usually comes before or after the second most common keyword “PC”. This means that the main keyword is the main topic or theme of the title, and it should be close to other important keywords.
• The best-seller titles use keywords in sequence, rather than randomly or separately. For most categories, the keywords are linked to each other in a line or a circle, rather than in a star or a cluster. For example, in the “Handmade Products” category, the keywords “personalized”, “name”, “gift”, and “gold” are linked to each other in a circle, making a phrase “personalized name gold gift”. This means that the keywords should be used as a phrase or a modifier, rather than as a single word or a list.

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Conclusions

We learned how to optimize Amazon product titles by analyzing the best sellers. They use these three factors: positive sentiment, readability, and keyword placement. 

Positive sentiment words inspire happy and engaged customers. Your title should have at least 2 positive words and ideally no negative words and at most 1 negative word. This will make your title more attractive and convincing. 

Readability and SEO are a trade-off. Top sellers use many keywords for SEO, but their readability score is low. You need to find the right balance for your category. Sometimes SEO is more important than readability, and sometimes it is not. 

Keyword placement and structure are very important. Best sellers use connected keywords in the first 8 words of the title. This gives them an SEO advantage and higher sales. They also use keywords in sequence, forming phrases or modifiers that make their title more relevant and impactful. 

To sum up, language is the key to optimize Amazon titles. Use positive sentiment, balance readability and SEO, and place connected keywords at the front of the title. This will help you stand out and drive sales on Amazon. Armed with tools like ChatGPT and the knowledge of the most important features of an Amazon title, sellers can readily improve their Amazon listing titles. Remember, your title is the first impression of your product and brand, and optimizing it can make a big difference to your bottom line.

Want to learn more about optimizing your listings? Read our guide to Amazon SEO and the A10 algorithm.

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Methodology

The Flesch reading score is a formula developed in the 1940s to improve the readability of news publications, and takes into account the number of words per sentence and the number of syllables per word to estimate the proportion of the population that should be able to read a given text with ease. Our Flesch scores were calculated using textstat.

Text sentiment polarity is a measure of how positive or negative a text is. It is expressed as a number between -1 and 1, where -1 means very negative, 0 means neutral, and 1 means very positive. We calculated sentiment scores using TextBlob.

Note: A product can be affiliated with multiple categories and thus could count multiply across categories in some cases.

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Appendix

Sample Top Sentiment Driving Keywords

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