Generic keywords

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1

Looking for guidance on this section here. In videos I’ve watched for SEO there is one section for generic keyword. The current layout has five separate text boxes.

Guidance I’ve read says keep it under 249 Bytes.

Is that 249 total across all five or each of the five permits 249 Bytes?
It also says no repetition. How strict is that and what actually happens if there is repetition?

For example the word “patch” is repeated several times as the word in front of it has variation.

TIA

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2

The 249 byte limit applies to all five backend keyword fields combined not individually.

Avoid repetition because Amazon automatically removes duplicate words and repeating them doesn’t help ranking and only wastes keyword space.

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3

To add to that 1 comment above which answered your question, in the backend you put just relevant words and amazon will match them to customerss search terms. Make sure your listing is fully SEO optimised with main keywords in the title, bullet points, description etc.

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4

Hi, based on my and some my friends’ experience I’d say that:

  • The 249‑byte limit applies across all five backend keyword fields combined, not per field.
  • Avoid repeating the same words (like “patch”) — Amazon de‑dupes duplicates, so you’re just wasting space.
  • Use synonyms, spelling variants, and related generic terms that customers might actually search — but don’t stuff in irrelevant or branded terms.
  • Format them without commas or punctuation — just space-separated lowercase words.
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5

For backend search terms, the 249-byte limit applies to the entire generic keywords section combined, not 249 bytes per box, because Amazon treats all five fields as one long string once you save them.

You should aim to keep the total under that limit, otherwise Amazon will ignore anything beyond the cutoff.

As for repetition, Amazon isn’t super strict in the sense that it won’t penalize you, but repeating words doesn’t help your ranking and only wastes valuable space because Amazon indexes each unique term only once. If “patch” appears multiple times in slightly different keyword phrases, you only need it once — Amazon automatically mixes and matches the words in any order.

If you repeat it a few times by accident, nothing bad happens, you just lose room for other potentially useful keywords. The best approach is to include each important word once, avoid commas, avoid brand names, and focus on adding as many unique relevant terms as possible within the byte limit.

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