How Many Keywords Do You Need in an Amazon PPC Campaign?

Diving into Amazon PPC campaigns, the number of keywords you use can impact your success. It's not about piling on as many as possible, but choosing the right ones that lead shoppers to your products.

We're going to break down how to pinpoint the keywords that work hardest for you and how many you need to drive your campaign forward efficiently.

Knowing which keywords to bid on is crucial to getting the most out of your Amazon ads. This guide will shed light on the strategy behind keyword selection, helping you fine-tune your campaign for better performance and cost-effectiveness.

Let's get into how to strike that perfect balance and boost your visibility on Amazon.

What Is Your Amazon PPC Budget?

Before you can add keywords you need to decide on your budget. For a good campaign budget, you want to set an amount that will allow you to get impressions for all your keywords.

If you set a budget that is too low, some of your keywords may not get any chance to receive impressions because your campaign will go out of budget before they do.

On the other hand, if you set a budget that’s big enough but has too many keywords in your campaign, it will spread unevenly across your keywords. Only about 40% of those keywords will be getting the chance to obtain an impression, the rest will not be getting any impressions.

Unfortunately, your funds are not unlimited. When it comes to setting your Amazon PPC Campaign Budget, it’s entirely up to how much you can spend. Figure out the costs of the rest of your business, and how much you can set aside solely for your Amazon PPC campaigns.

Generally speaking, campaign budget limits can be anywhere between $20 to $50. Amazon Sellers with bigger budgets even spend up to $100 per ad campaign. How much you spend on your ad campaigns will depend on the stage you’re at in your product lifecycle.

For example, product launches generally need more PPC spending. If you are simply maintaining rankings for an old listing, even $20 for a campaign may suffice.

How Many Keywords Do You Need for Amazon PPC?

Have you set your daily limit for the campaign budget? Then finding out how many keywords you can feasibly have per campaign is quite easy. We like to use a simple formula we thought of ourselves.

You can easily determine your keyword “constraints” by using the above formula. First you need to research the average CPCs for the Product Category you are selling in, and then simply divide that by your daily campaign budget for a particular campaign. This will yield the maximum number of keywords you can put in a campaign, for all of them to obtain impressions.

Estimated CPCs can be found in several ways, one being running Amazon PPC Automatic Campaigns to research your niche. Automatic campaigns on Amazon are perfect for research, you don’t necessarily need to spend too much on them. Set a reasonable daily budget and just wait for Amazon to provide you with keywords and their average CPCs over time.

Another way to discover estimated CPCs is through seller software tools now available online. Programs offering such capabilities may prove useful when it comes to better budgeting practices surrounding your future campaigns.

How To Know if You’re Using Too Many Keywords

You can add up to 1000 keywords per ad group for every ad campaign. Does this mean you should? No! Adding too many keywords is called keyword dumping, and it’s doing more harm than good. Keyword dumping is what leads to a vicious “whack a mole” cycle.

Let’s say you added 1000 keywords to your campaign. Your budget is definitely not enough to win impressions for ALL of them. What does Amazon do in this case? Amazon will try to allocate impressions for your first 100 keywords. 

You will get data for the first 100, and you will optimize your bids. Next week, Amazon decides to allocate impressions for the next 100 keywords. Now you have to optimize that set of keywords.

You will become stuck in this vicious cycle of constantly optimizing only parts of total keywords as Amazon rotates your budget through them. This is what we mean by “whacking a mole”, you whacked 100 keywords and another 100 pop up next time. It would take you 10 months to fully optimize your campaign!

So what’s the solution? Limit your number of targets in one ad group of a campaign to 100 maximum. Ensure you can optimize your bids in a reasonable amount of time!

What’s the Optimal Number of Keywords?

What is the optimal number of keywords per campaign then? There’s no sure answer to this, it varies from seller to seller. It even varies on where you are in the product life cycle.

Overall though, based on our experience, you should add about 50 keywords per ad group, and 100 per campaign. This makes your campaigns manageable.

Remember, it’s not about the quantity but the quality. Curate the best, most relevant top 100 keywords you can find. Make sure you are spending your Amazon PPC budget wisely!

When it comes to curating keywords,you also have a few options aside from the traditional Amazon Automatic campaign route. Reverse ASIN Keyword tools await to help sellers navigate ad group keyword selection.

What’s the Best Amazon PPC Campaign Budget?

How do you set the RIGHT campaign budget? At this point in time you have already run several ad campaigns on your initial budget. You may start to note it’s not the best possible budget you could have. You want to find the perfect budget that will evenly spread your funds across ALL your keywords.

Finding the best campaign budget is easy, you simply rearrange the formula we provided for figuring out how many keywords you need.

Conclusion

Determining the optimal number of keywords for your Amazon PPC campaign is crucial for driving efficient and effective advertising. By focusing on quality over quantity, you can ensure that your ads reach the right audience without exhausting your budget.

With the right approach and a bit of finesse, you can streamline your keyword list and enhance your campaign's performance.

If you're ready to apply these keyword insights and elevate your Amazon advertising game, sign up for SellerSprite's free 3-day trial. Take advantage of advanced tools and analytics that can help you identify high-performing keywords and refine your PPC strategies. Join SellerSprite today and start making every keyword count for your Amazon success.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many keywords should a PPC campaign have?

A PPC campaign should have enough keywords to effectively target your audience without being too broad. This typically ranges from 20-30 quality keywords per campaign, but it can vary based on your product and niche.

How many keywords can you use on an Amazon listing?

You can use a maximum of 250 bytes in the backend search terms section of an Amazon listing. This includes spaces and punctuation, so choose your keywords wisely to maximize search discoverability.

How important are keywords in Amazon?

Keywords are critical in Amazon as they directly affect how easily customers can find your products. Precise keywords increase visibility and are essential for both organic search rankings and PPC campaigns.

How many keywords per ad group Amazon PPC?

Aim for 15-20 targeted keywords per ad group in an Amazon PPC campaign for focused ad targeting and easier performance tracking. However, the best range can vary with testing and optimization over time.