How Do I Fix Low-Impression, Low-Click Keywords in Amazon PPC?

November 5, 2021
By The Badger

The Badger’s favorite prey is the low impression, low click keyword. It’s the notorious keyword that we all obsessively hunt because it wastes our ad spend funds. There’s only one way to deal with these keywords at Ad Badger; by tracking it back to its source and eradicating it from the Amazon landscape quickly.

Today in The Badger Den, you’ll learn what a low impression, low click keyword is, why it’s bad for your Amazon business, why you may have them, and how to fix the problem so you can have a stronger business, including more sales and higher profit margins. If that sounds good, keep reading.

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What is a Low Impression, Low Click Keyword?

A low impression keyword is a keyword with below 2,500 impressions in the last 30 days. Keep in mind, this depends on the monthly search volume of each keyword.

A low click keyword is a keyword with 0 to 5 clicks within the last 30 days and a CTR below 0.18%.

Side note: If your keyword is getting plenty of impressions and clicks but no sales, then we recommend reading How to Optimize Keywords With 0 Sales in Amazon PPC instead.

Why is a Low Impression, Low Click Keyword Bad for your Amazon Campaigns?

Low impression, low click keywords are bad for your Amazon Advertising business because they cost you money. We strongly advise against wasting money. They also hurt your overall campaign score when being crawled by the A9 algorithm.

There can be many situations within Amazon Advertising where low impression, low click keywords may occur. Every situation is different. Every niche is unique.

Before solving the problem of low impression, low click keywords in your Amazon PPC account, we must consider what specific metric is underperforming.

3 Reasons Why Your Amazon Keywords May Have Low Impressions

There are three main reasons why your Amazon Advertising account is experiencing low impressions including:

Which mistake are you making? Don’t worry, after we explain the issue, we’ll cover how you can fix it so low impression keywords in your Amazon PPC will be a thing of the past!

Insufficient Data

One possibility for a keyword with no impressions is when impressions are simply not gathered. This can happen when the bid is highly uncompetitive so it’s not even considered in the bidding pool.

Poor SEO

Another possibility for a keyword lacking impressions is if the keyword is not explicitly named in the listing itself. This means the keyword is underrepresented in SEO. If this is the case, the crawlers of the A9 algorithm cannot find the keyword in the listing to categorize it as relevant under that search query.

Overcrowding

Another example for zero impressions is when a keyword is in a campaign with too many keywords; it doesn’t receive views due to the keyword polarization of the targets with the highest search volume.

If your Amazon keywords are experiencing low impressions, then you aren’t getting enough eyes on your product. Fewer eyes on your products means fewer sales. Nobody wants that.

Next we’ll discuss strategies for increasing your impressions ranks.

How do you Increase Your Amazon Keywords’ Impression Ranks?

Now that you know why your Amazon keywords may have low impressions, here are three strategies we recommend for increasing your impressions rank.

We recommend ensuring that each keyword receives even budget distribution, grouping keywords by search volume buckets, and raising or lowering bids accordingly.

Ensure Fair Budget Distribution.

At Ad Badger, we recommend campaigns with the top 30 keywords per campaign. Or, if that is too many keywords depending on the campaign, then 10 to 20 keywords per campaign also works well.

This amount of keywords per campaign ensures that all keywords receive the same and fair amount of consideration when it comes to budget distribution.

Everything matters. Every keyword is essential.

Group Keywords by Search Volume Buckets.

Another helpful strategy to outmaneuver this low impression situation is to group keywords by search volume buckets. This approach ensures keywords with 10,000 search queries per month are not grouped with keywords that receive only 100 search queries a month.

From Amazon’s standpoint, these keywords will allocate more budget to keywords with higher search volume since their definition of successful advertising in the help section of the advertising console generates clicks, not conversions.

Raise or Lower Bids.

Raising bids based on the impression share rank report if you are in a lower position is a good strategy to get into higher bidding pools more often. Bidding wisely is always the best approach.

Cross check your indexation and search volume to know where you could adjust your bids. Are there even more impressions to “hunt”? If yes, first check your conversion rate for this keyword. If you are not driving conversions for that keyword, then Amazon will not show your product as often under that search query compared to other products that are performing well.

How do you Improve your Amazon CTR?

Perhaps your impressions are fine, but your click-through rate is low. If your click-through rate is underperforming and not generating the clicks you’d like, then you need to implement click-through rate optimization.

Amazon campaigns have low CTR either because of registration issues or because of poor product listings. To improve your CTR, we recommend implementing a few tips.

Re-upload Campaigns to Remedy Registration Issues

If a campaign is generating spend but has low CTR, sometimes the problem is a registration issue with the campaign. Amazon receives millions of uploaded campaigns per day, and they might not be registered, so go ahead and re-upload the campaign and observe if that generates spend.

Improve Your Amazon Product Listing

If your campaign has low clicks, unfortunately that means there is something unappealing about your campaign. Let’s determine how to fix it.

It is always important to double-check the search engine result page and look through your customer’s eyes.

Are your product title and central image standing out compared to your competition? Are there incentives placed on the listing compared to your competitors?

Of course, we should never compare each other to anybody in general in real life since we are all unique. However, it’s important to take our product listing apart because, at the end of the day, the best offer on the market wins and gets clicked.

Get More Amazon Product Reviews.

How many reviews do you have for your poor-performing products? Review count and review rating is highly crucial as always, and often it can be the positioning of your offer compared to the rest of the niche.

Optimize Your Amazon Listing’s Title.

Ideally, your campaign will have your ASIN’s specific details, measurements, and color material in your listing title. That will incentivize the customer to click the offer they are explicitly seeking.

We recommend putting specifications of your product at the beginning of your title since we have to consider that up to 70% of all shoppers on Amazon.com are shopping on mobile devices and mobile devices. Only 60 characters are visible on the search engine result page. When the customer is bombarded with an abundance of offers, you’ll stand out with the specific verifications of the keyword you were advertising.

Of course, a long-tail specific keyword’s click-through rate will be higher than a more broad high-level keyword. Again that’s why it can be helpful to group those keywords into dedicated buckets.

Split-Test Your Main Image.

Another technique that you can deploy is split-testing your main image and breaking the pattern recognition of your customer crawling the search engine result page. Our cognition at the end of the day is just like the algorithms of Amazon.

Split testing your main image ensures that the keywords you are advertising on are the most relevant to the product you are promoting.

Use the Search Term Impression Share Rank Report.

Another useful knife in your PPC arsenal is the search term impression share rank report. This report helps identify keywords with low impression rank, so you can go into your campaigns and scan for keywords that rank two or lower.

Break these keywords out into dedicated single keyboard campaigns, then check the relevancy of lower-ranked keywords. Execute your decision based on that data.

Consider both sides of the equation.

Firstly, look at the data through the eyes of a data scientist and adjust based on the ratios you see.

Secondly, perceive through the customer’s eyes and assess if the search term that we’re advertising on makes sense from a purchase intent standpoint.

When it’s a phrase or broad match keyword, make sure you negate any search term with a high impressions rate and below 0.18% click-through rate since that is dragging down the overall CTR for that particular keyword.

To increase your CTR, either re-upload your campaigns to remedy registration issues or improve your product listing by getting more reviews, optimize the product title, split test the main image, or use the search term impression share rank report.

Not sure what to do next because you’d like to consider ACOS? We cover that next.

What Do You Do if You’re Comfortable with Your Current ACOS?

If you’re comfortable with your current ACOS, your approach with low impression or low click keywords may differ than if you’re not comfortable with it.

We recommend beginning by determining the ratio of your spend that is going towards high CTR keywords as well as low CTR keywords. If the ratio is out of order, then shifting your budget with keywords optimization and bid modification is recommended.

An appropriate bid bump is dictated by the goal of the campaign as well as the current trend towards that goal because that dictates how much we are able to increase the bid.

If the campaign is on target, then we can increase the bid even higher than if the campaign were not on target. In performance campaigns, we recommend increasing bids more steadily and concisely.

Always cross check your search term impression share report, filter for that keyword, identify your position for that keyword, and then increase the bid based on your data.

Lastly, it is more effective to increase the bid in absolute numbers compared to percentages since the increased rhythm is going to be consistent whereas percentages can incrementally vary.

What Do You Do if You’re NOT Comfortable with Your Current ACOS?

If you’re not comfortable with your current ACOS, but you’d like to increase your CTR, then we recommend modifying the bid placement for the position with the higher CTR.

Give keywords with higher CTR a “boost” by increasing the bids; likewise, for words with lower CTR, gradually decrease the budget. (Want more formulas for calculating bid adjustment by placement?)

It is also beneficial to negate all search terms with over 2,500 impressions and no clicks in your search term field.

Finally, take our earlier advice and split test the product’s main image and write a data-oriented title based on the highest search volume search queries.

May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor

In summary, this article explained why your Amazon Advertising campaigns may have low impressions or clicks and it offered several solutions and strategies for improvements.

Now that you are equipped with valuable tools to hunt these low-data keywords and know how to deal with them, we believe sharing them with your fellow PPC-ers helps us all out because the ideas we share multiply. That is a law of nature.

Until next time, we’ll see you in The Badger Den.