Keyword research for marketplace sellers

Free methods that beat most paid tools · Updated 15 July 2026

Keyword research for marketplaces is a different job from keyword research for Google, and most of the tools sellers pay for are Google tools wearing a costume.

The good news: the best sources of marketplace keywords are free, and two of them are sitting inside your own seller account right now.

Start with the search bar

Open Amazon.in in an incognito window. Start typing what your product is. Watch the dropdown.

Those autocomplete suggestions are not guesses — they are built from what real customers actually search on that platform. Not Google. Not a third-party estimate. The platform's own demand data, handed to you for free.

How to mine it properly:

Type your product type and stop. Note every suggestion. Then add each letter of the alphabet. "phone case a", "phone case b", "phone case c". Each letter surfaces a different branch of real demand. This is tedious and it works. Do it on mobile too. Mobile suggestions differ, and most Indian marketplace traffic is mobile. Do it on each platform separately. Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho customers use different language for the same product. Genuinely different, not slightly. Use incognito. Otherwise you are looking at suggestions personalised to your own browsing, which is a mirror, not a market.

Then read your own reports

This is the source almost nobody uses, and it is the best one you have.

In Seller Central, pull your search terms report (Brand Analytics if you have Brand Registry; otherwise the business reports give you a partial view). It tells you the actual queries that led to your actual sales.

This is not estimated demand. It is confirmed, converting demand for your product. Every term in there that is not in your listing is money you are leaving on the table for no reason.

The workflow: pull the report, sort by conversion, find terms you rank for accidentally, and put them where they belong — the strong ones in your title, the rest in backend search terms.

Do not skip Hinglish

This is the biggest free opportunity in Indian marketplace SEO and most sellers ignore it entirely.

A large share of Indian customers search in transliterated Hindi, or in a mix. "mobile ka cover". "ladies kurti cotton". "bacchon ke joote". These are real queries with real volume, and your competitors' listings are written in careful English that will never match them.

Where to put them: backend search terms, not the visible title. A title with Hinglish in it looks odd to customers scanning the results page, and click-through rate matters. But the backend field exists precisely for words that should be matched but not displayed.

How to find them: the autocomplete method above, but type in Hinglish. The suggestions will tell you what is real and what you imagined.

Read competitor listings properly

Not to copy them — copying bullets is a copyright problem and gives your page no reason to outrank theirs. To find vocabulary you missed.

Find the three best-selling products like yours. Read their titles and bullets. Note every noun and adjective you would not have used. Then check those words in autocomplete to see whether they represent real demand or just that seller's habits.

Also read their reviews and questions. This is the underrated part. Customers describe products in their own words there, and they tell you what they were confused about. Both are gold — the vocabulary goes in your keywords, and the confusion goes in your bullets, where it will reduce your returns.

What to do with the list

You will end up with more terms than you can use. Sort them:

The two or three most important go in the title, naturally phrased, front-loaded.
Benefit-led terms go in the bullets, written as sentences a human would read.
Everything else goes in backend search terms — synonyms, misspellings, Hinglish, use cases.
Attribute words go in attributes, where they power filters. Especially on Flipkart.

Two rules that do not bend: never repeat a word across title and backend (both are indexed; repetition is wasted space), and never include competitor brand names (a policy violation everywhere).

On paid keyword tools

Some are useful. Many, for the Indian market specifically, are extrapolating from thin data or from US patterns that do not transfer.

Before you subscribe, ask what the tool knows that autocomplete and your own search terms report do not. Sometimes there is a real answer — competitor tracking at scale, for instance. Often there is not.

If you are a small seller with under a hundred SKUs, the free methods in this guide will get you most of the available value. Spend the subscription money on better product photos instead; the return is larger and more certain.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best free keyword tool for Amazon India?

The Amazon search bar itself. Autocomplete suggestions come from real customer searches on that platform. Combined with your own search terms report, it covers most of what a small seller needs.

Should I put Hinglish keywords in my product title?

Put them in backend search terms instead. They will be matched by search without appearing in the title, where they can look odd to customers and reduce click-through rate.

Where is the search terms report in Seller Central?

Under Brand Analytics if you have Brand Registry; sellers without it get a more limited view through business reports. It shows the queries that led to your sales, which is the most reliable keyword data you have access to.

Can I use my competitor's brand name as a keyword?

No. It is a policy violation on Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho, and it is enforced. Compatibility statements like 'cover for Samsung Galaxy A73' are fine and different — those describe what your product fits.

Do keywords from Google Keyword Planner work on Amazon?

Poorly. People search differently on Google than on a marketplace — Google gets questions and research, marketplaces get purchase-intent product terms. Use marketplace-native sources.