In today’s video were are breaking down the Amazon algorithm and all the factors that play into it. Understanding these ranking factors is necessary to be able to rank your product on the first page of Amazon.
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How To Rank Higher On Amazon - Audio file |
How To Rank Higher On Amazon - Video transcript |
Hey guys and welcome back to my channel. In today’s video I would like to go over how to rank higher on Amazon, so be sure to watch all the way through so you don't miss any of the important details as we do have a lot to cover.
Now, before I hop into this video, if you are new to this channel you're going to want to subscribe as I talk about the best ways to make a full time income with Amazon FBA and always get straight to the point.
So please consider subscribing and turning on your post notifications if you like channels that don’t waste your valuable time, with that said let's get right into this video.
Imagine getting customers without having to lift a finger. You can be doing whatever you want and people are still clicking to and buying your products.
That’s what’s in store if you master Amazon SEO and solidify a position at the top of Amazon’s search rankings.
While organic visibility is dropping these days, optimizing to show high in organic search results is still a must.
Organic rankings are the low-hanging fruit of your Amazon marketing strategy, and shouldn’t be ignored. The difference between ranking on the first page and second page is immense, especially if you rank high on the first page.
This is much like Google search, where 75% of people don’t bother with anything past the first page.
Organic search rankings are vital for attracting customers, customers who go on to give you the best profit margins, because you didn’t need to spend anything on ads to get them. And since clicks aren’t distributed evenly across all the results on the first page, each spot you move up is more and more valuable.
In this video we’re going to look at how Amazon SEO works, and the factors the search algorithm takes into account when ranking products. But at all times, remember the most important thing is the customer.
Amazon search is built to help Amazon customers. The best way to optimize for Amazon search is to focus on the customer. Keep this in the back of your mind at all times when trying to grow rankings.
There’s nothing worse than working hard to reach the wrong goal. So we’re going to spend a minute differentiating between two different “rankings” on Amazon, and which one should be your focus.
Search rank is what we’ve been talking about in the previous section. The search results presented by the Amazon algorithm when someone searches for a certain term, like “air fryer” or “ food processor”. Your search rank is where your product shows up in the organic search results for this term.
Your product will have a ton of different search rankings, for different search terms. For example, you may rank 1 for “air fryer”, but 5 for “best air fryer”. The key to search rank is ranking high for the most profitable keywords or search terms.
Understanding the ranking factors of the search algorithm is central to knowing how to grow your Amazon rankings.
Amazon, of course, doesn’t want people to be able to game the search rankings. This would have the potential to present inconvenience to their customers, if people could rank low-quality products just by knowing how to satisfy the algorithm. That’s why the specifics of the Amazonranking algorithms are secret.
Regardless, there is a lot we are 99% sure of when it comes to Amazon rankings, as many have run tests to isolate variables and see what has an impact on search performance.
As a result, there are two broad ranking factors that come into play. Relevance & popularity. These two ranking factors hold the key to ranking your product on page 1 of Amazon. Let’s break that down a little.
When a customer searches for something on Amazon, the search algorithm is designed to show results that are relevant to the search query.
The ideal outcome for Amazon is for a customer to come to the site, put in one search, and find the product they’re looking for. As opposed to needing to search a number of times to find the right thing.
Relevance is mainly defined by the keywords on your listing. Amazon will crawl what’s written on your product detail page – starting with your product title, then description, then backend search terms – to decide if your product is relevant to the given search term.
One thing that’s important to understand is that relevance and keywords are not multiplicative. Meaning, you’re not really going to make your product more relevant and rank higher by using a keyword 1000 times.
Keywords determine if your product is relevant to a specific search term and eligible to be ranked for this keyword. After that, it comes down to popularity as to whether it ranks number 1 or 99.
Second is the popularity ranking factor. I could use a few words to describe this ranking factor – popularity, performance, conversions, sales – but it all means the same thing.
Amazon wants to show products that are popular with customers. They want people to go away happy with their purchase, so they’ll come back and shop on Amazon again.
If the products showing up high in Amazon search were all low-quality products or poor sellers, Amazon would get a reputation for selling these kinds of products.
But if high-quality products show up at the top of search, these are the products Amazon’s standard is set by.
It’s also in Amazon’s best interest to promote best-selling products. The more sales a product makes, the more money Amazon makes. So it stands to reason that if you make a lot of sales, Amazon will reward you.
It all comes under the umbrella of popularity. The most popular product for a particular search term is the one that is going to come in first.
Now, the most important ranking factor is customer satisfaction. While we looked at two broad categories everything comes back to one thing: customer satisfaction.
Is a customer likely to be satisfied by this product as the number 1 result for their search query? Any ranking factor can be traced back to this. Sales velocity – fast sellers indicate people like the product. Reviews – a lot of good reviews have an obvious correlation with customer satisfaction. Conversion rate – a good conversion rate shows people are happy with this search result and willing to make a purchase after clicking through
So, whatever you’re doing to optimize and improve your Amazon search rankings, make sure you’re showing Amazon that customers are going to be satisfied by purchasing your product after searching for a certain keyword.
Now, how to do you rank your products on Page 1? When you nail down a formula to ranking on page one, it’s like starting the 100 meter sprint at the 50 meter mark.
While everyone else is stumbling and trying to get traction, you’ll know what works, and you can replicate that for new products, for new keywords for the same products, or for products you launched earlier.
The following is a number of actionable things you can do to satisfy the Amazon algorithm ranking factors and rank your products higher. Put these things into practice, observe any movements in your rankings, and start building your Amazon ranking formula.
Now, before we move on. As you can see, there are a lot of steps involved in building an Amazon business. And I wouldn't recommend piecing together everything that I am sharing with you today by simply watching videos on YouTube. This is why I suggest investing your time in a great free training that can guide you through this process.
I recommend this training because this is the best training on the market and one that I have personally gone through. They walk you through step-by-step, every aspect of what it takes to start, grow and scale your Amazon business.
This training will build off of what I've talked about inside this video so I left a link for you in the description and if you're serious about selling on Amazon I encourage you to check it out!
Now, let’s move on, the first step to ranking is just showing up. That means the first thing you need to optimize is your keywords, so your product is indexed for your target search terms.
Notice I am saying relevant keywords. There’s no point trying to optimize for keywords with low relevance to your product, even if they have high search volume. This won’t result in many sales, and at worst will even hurt you by a drop in conversion rate metrics.
You want to find relevant, high-volume keywords, and let the search engine know your product is a candidate when a customer searches for this. Ideally you’ll find and include as many of these keywords as possible, though there’s only enough room in your prime real estate for a few.
The most important keywords, those most relevant with high search volume, should go in your title. Not only is the title the first thing that the algorithm looks at,
it’s also big for getting people to click through from search results, as people will be much more likely to click if there’s an exact match of their search term in the product’s title. This space is extremely limited, so limit this only to the most important keywords.
Next is your bullet points, features and product description. This is where you’ve got a bit of free reign to fit in as many long-tail keywords as you can find which are relevant.
Finally, in your backend search terms you can add any more relevant keywords. This is a section hidden from customers only visible to the algorithm, so make sure you use all the space you’re given to increase the number of terms you can rank for.
The second step is to optimize your listing for conversions. Your conversion rate – how many people buy your product after clicking through to the product listing – is a big signal for both popularity and relevance.
A high conversion rate shows Amazon you’ve got a winning product. It also shows them that your product is relevant to the search terms it’s ranking for. So, as well as optimizing for keywords, you need to optimize your listing to convert viewers into sales.
The two biggest areas to optimize to increase conversions are: copy & images. First, you’ve got to find a balance between optimizing for keywords and creating listing copy that is readable and persuasive.
Make sure your product description is easily skimmable – shoppers on Amazon aren’t there to read blog-style paragraphs.
Also focus on the benefits rather than the features of your product. Benefits are what the customer really wants out of your product, and highlighting them will convince more people to buy.
Aside from copy, images are the other big factor that drives conversions. People want to be able to see and experience as much of the product as possible when buying online. So it’s vital to have a large number of high-quality images.
Make sure your images show a range of different angles and uses for your product. Images of the product in use are super effective. Some other things that help drive more conversions include videos, answering questions on your listing and offering prime shipping.
The third step is to increase sales velocity. Sales velocity is a pillar of the product ranking algorithm. While you can break the product ranking process down to a multitude of individual ranking factors, you can also simplify it with this small equation, more sales means higher rankings.
At the end of the day sales are king. Sales are what you want to see, and they’re what Amazon wants to see as well. Give them what they want to see, and they’ll reward you with more visibility and higher rankings.
Of course, there’s a flywheel effect that comes into play here. To get more sales, often you need to rank higher. But to rank high, you need sales.
That’s why anything you can do to proactively drive sales to your product will prove incredibly beneficial.
Driving people from outside Amazon to buy your product is especially powerful at growing your rankings. For one reason, as mentioned above, it helps you to get the sales you need to kick the sales-rankings flywheel into action.
On top of this, many sellers claim that sales from outside traffic actually carry more ranking power than regular sales. 3 times as much, in fact.
The reasoning behind this is, you’re doing work for Amazon by getting in front of people on other channels and sending them to Amazon.com.
Amazon rewards you for that with stronger popularity signals and higher rankings. It’s not just theoretical – sellers driving traffic and observing ranking changes have come to this conclusion on the back of actual data.
We know conversion rate is a pretty important ranking factor. And boosting conversion rate doesn’t just mean getting more conversions, it can also be achieved by limiting the people reaching your listing who don’t convert.
The more you can make sure only the most targeted, buy-now customers get to your detail page, the higher your conversion rate will be.
This comes into play the most when you’re driving external traffic. A lot of sellers send people straight from external channels like Google, Facebook and other social media to the product page on Amazon.
The problem is, people on these channels aren’t in buy-now mode, while shoppers on Amazon are – and Amazon products have a super high conversion rate on average as a result.
That means many people you send from Facebook and Google will not buy your product, and your conversion rate will drop because of this.
So, if you’re advertising in front of a low buyer intent audience, or an audience that is not yet 100% targeted, it’s a good idea to filter your traffic with a landing page.
Show them everything about your product on the landing page, and have them make the decision to buy or not right there. This way, only the high-intent shoppers go through to Amazon, boosting your conversion rate, and your rankings.
The next step is to use FBA. FBA does not seem to be an explicit ranking factor, but you’ve got a better chance of ranking higher if you use it. This is because of the Prime factor.
Selling with FBA makes your products Prime-eligible, and eligible for free shipping over $25. This is a big driver for conversions – getting more people to click through from the search results, and more people to convert and buy. Higher conversions result in turn with higher rankings.
Reviews are another big element in getting more conversions. They are also a direct ranking factor, so if you get a lot of reviews, your rankings will go up as a result.
Reviews are one of the best things to gauge popularity. A product with a lot of reviews and a high rating is a popular one, however you spin it.
Reviews have been a big deal for as long as Amazon has, which is why fake reviews have been a topic of contention for the last few years. Today, getting reviews is not easy, since you’ve got to tip-toe around the Amazon review guidelines to make sure you’re not doing anything that may incentivize or manipulate customer reviews.
In the post-incentivized reviews world, having a high-quality, reviewable product is essential if you want to get enough reviews to be competitive. Your product should ideally generate reviews on around 1-2% of sales by itself – you can also use outreach methods such as product inserts and emails to get a few more reviews on top of this.
Ranking on Amazon is hard, so a key part of the process is making sure you rank for the right keywords. This means ranking for a large number of different search terms, which have high search volume and can lead to a sale for your product.
Some of the tactics we discuss to boost your rankings require a lot of work and focus towards specific search terms. That means you can easily waste a lot of time and energy by focusing on the wrong keywords.
Let’s give some idea of what kind of keywords you should be targeting, and how to find them. First, you want to be looking for keywords with a lot of searches. If a lot of people are searching for a particular term, it means more people will see your product when you can get it to rank.
Investigating search volume is important, because there are often particular phrases that are searched much more often, and optimizing for the wrong keywords means you’ll miss out on a lot of traffic.
The other side of the coin is relevance. It’s better to put effort into keywords that are relevant to what we’re selling, and likely to result in a sale. Ranking for high-volume search terms doesn’t mean a whole lot if no one buys your product from these searches.
In some cases your best keywords might be the ones with lower search volume, but higher relevance. It’s also worth noting that keywords with lower search volume are often less competitive as well, which makes it easier to rank your product.
You should have a few keyword ideas before you even start doing any proper research. There should be a few terms you can think of that relate to your product.
One way you can find more keyword ideas from is to use the Amazon search related searches function. Type your initial keyword into the search bar, and see what else Amazon suggests.
You can plug these into a keyword research tool to check out the search volume and competition, and assess whether they should be priority keywords.
Another use for keyword research tools is a reverse keyword search. Plug in a product that’s ranking high for one of your main keywords, and many tools will be able to show you which keywords they are ranking for.
Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, see what your competitors are doing well and follow this as a guideline.
Amazon PPC can also help you find keyword ideas by running automatic campaigns. With this, Amazon will find related keywords for your product and set up sponsored products ads for these keywords.
This is really effective because you can then see how your product performed for these keywords, and decide if they’re a good fit to try and rank high organically for.
Now, while there’s a multitude of individual ranking factors, at the end of the day, customer experience is key. If customers love your product, and it helps Amazon grow their own brand, you’re going to find yourself near the top of the search rankings.
Thanks for joining in and please make sure to watch the next videos with more Amazon sales tips that will show up right about now.
