If you did your keyword research at launch and haven't touched it since, you've
By Noah Wickham · May 12, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
If you did your keyword research at launch and haven't touched it since, you've already lost ground you don't know about
That's how manufacturers have approached Amazon for years
Build a list, stuff it into the listing, move on
Six months later they're wondering why their rank is sliding and their best keywords are losing to competitors
Keyword research isn't a task
It's a system you run every 60 to 90 days, and if you're not, you're falling behind brands that are
My Amazon Guy coined the phases years ago
Phase 00 is research, pull your top competitor ASINs through Cerebro, build a master keyword list that becomes the foundation for everything else
Phase 01 is indexing, get found first before you try to rank, your keywords need to live in backend search terms, title, bullets, A+ content, and alt text(unfortunately alt text is basically gone now) or Amazon won't show you at all
Phase 02 is pink terms, clean the waste, remove duplicate keywords across your fields and replace them with long-tail variants, Spanish keywords, common misspellings, the terms competitors are ignoring
Phase 03 is strikezone, find the keywords you're ranking 20 to 50 on, those are the ones a single push of relevancy and conversion data can move to page 1, that's where your fastest revenue lives
Phase 04 is ICAP, use intent data from Search Query Performance, layer in CTR and CVR by keyword, then chase the market share terms where you're underperforming relative to the category
Research, index, rotate, strike
Then 60 to 90 days later you do it again because Amazon doesn't stand still and neither do your competitors
The brands winning Amazon SEO aren't smarter than you
They're just running the loop constantly