Just like with the rest of the internet, rank matters on Amazon. A product’s ranking in its category can substantially impact its sales and is then rewarded by Amazon with increased ranking, furthering that sales velocity. It’s the flywheel effect, and the faster it’s spinning, the more purchases are happening. But how do you get a product to reach that level? In this post, we’re going to look at five ways to increase your organic ranking on Amazon.
1. Build a Solid Product Page
When listing a product for sale on Amazon, the first thing you need to do is gather your basic product information and curate it in a way that fits the Amazon platform. This goes beyond making sure that your UPC is correct, your SKU is added properly, and you have a product name. A product page needs to tell a story. Shoppers need to feel engaged with your product and have that connection in order to complete the purchase. If they don’t make that connection, be it emotional or practical, it’s so easy for them to move on to another product, especially on one of the largest ecommerce sites in the world. So you need to build a page that engages shoppers, with a title, bullet points, images, and A+ content that all emphasizes the need or problem your product is solving for them. If you need more steps on building out your product pages, check out our 3-part series on just that!
2. Listing SEO
Once you have written your product page for human eyes, you now need to consider the bot eyes. Amazon’s algorithm scrapes every product detail page just like Google scrapes web pages. The Amazon algorithm serves a similar purpose in matching shopper searches to products it thinks will meet their needs. It’s informed by your product page content, shopper browsing data, and of course, purchase history. It’s no secret that on Amazon, a product’s sales velocity fuels its algorithm matches as much as the page content. So audit your content, and compare it to the most searched products in your category. Look at your competitors; what information do they include in their listings that you may not be? This could be helpful for both humans and bots. But most importantly, be sure it’s readable. The days of keyword stuffing on Amazon are long gone, so cater to the human first and then the bot. If you’re curious about more SEO practices, check out our blog on Balancing SEO for User Experience.
3. Use All of Amazon’s Organic Tools
Amazon has continued to develop and release tools to brand owners to gauge their organic traffic on Amazon. These tools include the Brand Analytics report, Search Analytics, and Brand Metrics. Using these tools can help brand owners set a baseline of their market ownership on Amazon and identify their key searches, categories, or products where their products dominate or could use some additional support. This data should inform your ad strategy. Utilizing your top search queries can help protect and feed your relevance for that search and make it that much more difficult for the competition to unseat your products. This same strategy can be applied for searches where you’re not dominant but need to be to grow market share. Advertising on these terms helps to feed the algorithm with conversion data, and over time, the organic ranking will increase against that search.
4. Amazon Ads
As mentioned above, purchasing ads can help to increase your ranking for desirable customer searches and protect your brand from competitors. Amazon’s algorithm is conversion driven. If a sale on your product occurs, that is a positive indicator to the algorithm that your product is a good match for that search. The more purchases that are made for that search, the stronger the relevancy and the more the Amazon algorithm will reward your listing with higher placement, both paid and organic. Utilizing Amazon Ads to help to increase the likelihood of purchases for searches that matter to your brand and brand growth is a necessary step to increase both your ads’ ranking as well as the overall organic ranking of your product.
5. Off-Amazon Advertising
Amazon rewards outside traffic. So driving traffic to your Amazon product pages or brand storefront from other sources helps to fuel the rankings of your products. This can be done organically with social media and website redirects, but also with advertising. Using Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., to drive traffic to Amazon from those platforms is highly valuable and shows Amazon that your brand is a hot destination for shoppers. So much so that Amazon introduced the Brand Referral Bonus earlier this year, where a percentage of your Amazon referral fee is reimbursed if you’re running off Amazon ads and have Amazon Attribution tagged on those ads.
Bonus Tip – Make Sure the Shoppers are Happy!
Any marketer or advertiser worth their salt knows that a happy customer can be a powerful brand ambassador. So make sure your experience on Amazon is just as delightful as your website or social media presence. Brands that take the time to have a holistic appearance across all their selling channels have happier customers who share their experiences.
By implementing these strategies and consistently maintaining your product page, organic brand presence, and advertising campaigns on and off Amazon, your overall ranking in your product category will continue to climb, provided Amazon shoppers continue to enjoy your products.
