Oct 17, 2024  ·  16 min read

Amazon SEO 101: How To Achieve Better Ranking On Amazon

Demian Lazurko – CEO at MyRealProfit
Demian Lazurko
CEO @ MyRealProfit
Amazon SEO guide

Okay, I won’t bore you with statistics on the number of sellers and products in the Amazon marketplace. The bottom line is that Amazon is a sea of products, and competition among sellers is cutthroat. Not everyone gets a piece of the pie in such a marketplace. Only sellers with highly visible products make decent sales numbers while the rest try to keep up. You want to be the seller whose products get many eyeballs, and you can only do that by ranking your product high on Amazon SEO. In this Amazon SEO guide, you’ll learn Amazon SEO tips that will help you improve your product’s ranking and generate more sales on Amazon.

What Is Amazon SEO 

Before we dissect Amazon SEO, let’s first discuss what SEO is. Search engine optimization is optimizing content to rank higher and get more visibility on a particular platform. An SEO algorithm determines the ranking based on its objectives and the KPIs it considers.

For Amazon, the content you’d be ranking is your Amazon product listing, and the Amazon SEO algorithm responsible for ranking it is the A9 algorithm. We discussed the  A9 algorithm here.

Product rank is a product’s position in Amazon’s organic search results. Your Amazon SEO game must be on lock to achieve a higher product rank.

The Factors Affecting Amazon Search Ranking

The Amazon A9 algorithm considers several factors when ranking products. Amazon aims to offer shoppers a seamless shopping experience, so the algorithm will naturally consider factors that facilitate an excellent shopping experience and then show the products matching these criteria for each search.

We can split Amazon SEO ranking factors into two categories:

  • Relevance-based ranking factors
  • Performance-based ranking factors

Relevance-Based Amazon Ranking Factors

Creating a seamless shopping experience requires Amazon to ensure shoppers see the most relevant products when they search for a product on the platform. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a seamless experience if a shopper had to dig through search results pages to find the product they’re looking for.

Let’s see the relevance-based factors the Amazon A9 algorithm considers for ranking:

Amazon Listing Optimization

Proper Amazon listing optimization is crucial for ranking on Amazon SEO. You must have relevant keywords in your product listing for the algorithm to index it and show your product when a shopper searches on Amazon using those keywords. In a previous article, we’ve already explored all you need to know about product listing optimization. Read about it here!

Backend Keywords

Backend keywords are the “hidden” keywords you add to the backend section of your Amazon listing. These keywords are relevant to your product, but adding them to the listing copy would negatively impact its readability.

For example, a misspelled keyword would look like a typing error to a shopper if you added it to your listing copy. This might hurt your Amazon brand’s credibility with shoppers. But, if you add this keyword to your backend, the algorithm can index it without ruining your Amazon product listing readability.

Answered Questions

A product listing has a Customer Questions & Answers section that allows sellers to answer common questions about the product. This saves shoppers the hassle of messaging the seller to get answers to their questions.

Think of it as your Amazon listing’s FAQ section.

Amazon customer questions

Amazon product listings with a well-populated questions & answers section are more informative and helpful to shoppers. Amazon likes sellers who are helpful to shoppers, and the algorithm rewards you for this by ranking your product higher. Answered questions also help with conversions which is one of the crucial Amazon metrics the algorithm considers when ranking products on Amazon.

Amazon Brand Name And Product Number

If you have high brand awareness, customers will likely search for your products using your Amazon brand name rather than the actual product name. If you have branded keywords, the algorithm will index them and make it easy for shoppers to find your products even when they search using your brand name. 

For example, a shopper looking to buy a Hisense smart TV may not know the exact model number of the TV they want, so they’ll search for Hisense 65-inch smart TV to narrow down the options and identify the TV model they want.

Amazon SEO strategy brand name search

Alternatively, a shopper might use a product number to narrow their search, especially in broad categories. Adding your product number to your Amazon listing text makes it easier for shoppers to find your product.

Let’s go back to the Hisense TV example. If a shopper wants to find a particular Hisense TV, they can use a product number to find it. For example, instead of searching for a Hisense 65-inch smart TV, the shopper can search for Hisense 65U8H to find this particular TV model.

Amazon product number search

Performance-Based Amazon Ranking Factors

A product’s performance is the other side of the Amazon SEO ranking coin. The A9 algorithm wants to show products relevant to the shopper and perform exceptionally well in the marketplace. This ensures shoppers get the best products without any friction. Let’s look at the performance factors that affect Amazon’s search engine optimization.

Amazon Product Price

Product price is a big deal in Amazon SEO and Amazon in general. Amazon takes fair pricing so seriously that it came up with a fair pricing policy to ensure sellers offer the best prices for their products.

The algorithm favors reasonably priced products compared to competing products. But that’s not all. Competitive pricing creates a snowball effect that positively impacts other Amazon SEO ranking factors. When you price your product competitively, you increase your chances of winning the Buy Box. Winning the Buy Box boosts your conversion rate, which is another critical ranking factor on Amazon.

Sales Rank

Amazon Sales Rank, also known as Best Sellers Rank (BSR), measures how well your product sells compared to other products in your category. Amazon accounts for your sales history, including dips in sales, when calculating your Sales Rank. Fluctuations in sales will have a negative impact on your Sales Rank because it signifies that something is causing shoppers to stop buying from you. Consistent sales velocity, on the other hand, will improve your Sales Rank.

Amazon product sales rank

Sales Rank matters when ranking your product because it’s an indicator of high conversion rates and sales numbers, which are crucial performance metrics on Amazon. A good Sales Rank tells the Amazon SEO algorithm that customers love buying your product, so, naturally, it’ll want to show your product to more shoppers.

Amazon PPC Advertising

Amazon SEO and Amazon PPC represent the two prominent sides of Amazon marketing. Contrary to what some people may believe, Amazon SEO and PPC aren’t competitors. They’re allies. When they’re strong, they feed off each other to build a robust marketing tool, which boosts your sales and amplifies your success on Amazon. When weak, they drag each other down and cost you money in wasted ad spend.

So, how does Amazon PPC influence Amazon’s SEO ranking?

Amazon PPC advertising, when done right, boosts conversions, which also positively influences sales rank. Additionally, the only way to rank higher for a search term is by converting for it continuously. When you use Amazon PPC to gather a much-needed flow of conversions, you positively impact the performance factors needed to improve your organic ranking.

Another thing to consider is that if you hold a high SEO rank on a particular search term, you can quickly lose your rank to your competitors. If you’re not running PPC ads, you leave yourself vulnerable to competitors stealing your ranking for a search term by advertising for it. Amazon PPC provides the defense to hold on to your ranking by helping you consistently generate conversions.

Click-Through Rate

Amazon click-through rate formula

Click-through rate is the metric Amazon uses to measure your product’s past performance when it comes up in search results. If you have a high click-through rate for a particular search term, it shows that many shoppers are clicking on your Amazon listing. This tells the algorithm that shoppers are highly interested in your product and that it matches that search term. To create a seamless shopping experience, the algorithm will rank your listing higher in search results so more shoppers can see your listing.

Conversion Rate

The click-through rate measures how many clicks your listing gets. The conversion rate (CVR) measures how many of those clicks turn into a sale. You can calculate your Amazon conversion rate using this formula:

Amazon conversion rate formula

Conversion rate is one of the core metrics of listing performance. There’s so much that happens between a customer clicking on your listing and adding your product to cart. Your Amazon product listing quality, price, image quality, and A+ content are all key factors that affect your conversion rate.

A high conversion rate indicates that you’re selling a superior product at a fair price, offering excellent customer service, and you have a perfectly optimized listing. And since Amazon is about customer-centricity, your product will rank higher on the Amazon search engine.

A low conversion rate, on the other hand, tells the algorithm that your Amazon listing is irrelevant or that you’re slacking in other vital areas, such as listing optimization and pricing. This will prompt the algorithm to rank your product lower in Amazon search results.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are direct customer feedback and an accurate measure of your product quality. It’s a no-brainer that they’re a crucial ranking factor on Amazon.

Amazon SEO checklist customer reviews

Many positive reviews show that the product is superior and customers are satisfied with the buy. This prompts the algorithm to rank that product higher on Amazon search results. Negative reviews show that customers are dissatisfied with the product, which results in the algorithm ranking the product lower.

Customer reviews significantly impact your conversion rate. Positive reviews boost conversions and help your listing rank higher on Amazon product SEO, while negative reviews lower conversions and hurt your ranking.

Customer Satisfaction

To clarify, customer satisfaction and customer reviews are two different things. Customer satisfaction measures the quality of your customer service based on different metrics. Customer reviews are one of the metrics of customer satisfaction.

Amazon uses customer reviews, Refund Rates, and Order Defect Rate metrics to measure customer satisfaction. If your performance in these metrics falls below the threshold, it’ll communicate to the A9 algorithm that you’re not offering the best customer service. And, if the algorithm detects customer dissatisfaction, it’ll respond by lowering your listing ranking on Amazon SEO.

The Role of Keywords in Amazon Search Optimization

Keywords are the thread that connects your product to a shopper’s search on Amazon. You need to incorporate relevant keywords in your listing and backend keywords section so the algorithm can show your product whenever a shopper uses any of these keywords in their search. 

Several factors determine a keyword’s relevance to your product. First, you want to ensure the keyword has a decent search volume. How many shoppers are searching for products in your category using that keyword?

Another crucial Amazon ranking factor is buyer intent. Buyer intent measures a shopper’s likelihood of buying a product based on where the shopper is in the purchase funnel. Shoppers with high buyer intent tend to use specific keywords or keyphrases to find the specific item they want to buy. These are called long-tail keywords.

For example, a watch shopper with high buyer intent would search for “Men’s skeleton mechanic watch leather strap” instead of “Men’s watch.” These two keywords are relevant for a watch seller, but the long-tail keyword, “Men’s skeleton mechanic watch leather strap,” has higher buyer intent than the short-tail keyword, “Men’s watch.” 

Long-tail keywords usually have lower search volumes but higher buyer intent, while short-tail keywords have higher search volume and lower buyer intent. Ideally, you want to use both to achieve visibility and conversions for your product.

How To Conduct Keyword Research to Rank on Amazon

Let’s explore the sources of relevant keywords for Amazon SEO.

Use The Amazon Search Bar Keyword Suggestions

When you enter a keyword in the Amazon search bar, Amazon auto-fills it with the most relevant keyword suggestions for that product. For example, if you input the keyword “headset,” Amazon will suggest additional keywords you can add to your search to give you more accurate results.

How to improve SEO on Amazon with keyword suggestions

This makes the Amazon search bar a free resource for finding your competitors’ keywords. You can find more keywords using the Amazon search bar by using one of the auto-fill keyword suggestions from the first search to find more keywords.

For example, the first keyword suggestion was a Headset stand. Let’s see what more keyword suggestions we can get from it.

How to use Amazon for keyword research

Alternatively, you can cycle through one keyword and add a single letter of the alphabet after it to see Amazon’s keyword suggestions that stem from it. Repeat this with all letters, one at a time, to get multiple suggestions of relevant keywords related to your product.

Amazon product SEO search terms

Conduct Competitor Analysis

Conducting a thorough competitor analysis can help you identify the keywords your competitors are ranking for. Looking through competitors’ listings lets you identify and incorporate their keywords into your Amazon product listing. Alternatively, you can use a reverse ASIN lookup tool to pull keywords from competitors’ listings, identify their most valuable keywords, and determine how they’re ranking for them. You can then use this information to identify keywords in your listing to improve your rank.

Target Your Product’s Complimentary Products

Complementary products are products that are consumed together with your product. If your product has complementary products, they’ll show up in the Frequently Bought Together section of your listing.

Frequently bought together items on Amazon

When you target the keywords in your complementary products, you make your product visible to a section of shoppers who might need it but aren’t directly looking for it. For example, if you sell gaming headset stands, you could target shoppers looking for gaming headsets. These shoppers aren’t looking for a gaming headset stand, but they’ll likely need one for their new gaming headset.

Utilize Keyword Research Tools

All the free keyword research strategies mentioned above are highly effective in helping you identify relevant keywords. However, extensive Amazon SEO keyword research requires you to dig deeper to find more valuable keywords and ranking data. This is where Amazon keyword research tools come in. 

Amazon keyword research tools give you access to keyword data such as search volume, historical Amazon ranking data, keyword suggestions, and cost per click for keywords. You can’t access this information with the free keyword research methods, although the data is crucial to helping you optimize your listing for SEO.

Amazon SEO Best Practices To Help You Maintain High Ranking

So, you’ve done your keyword research, optimized your listing, and ranked well. Your PPC campaigns are firing on all cylinders, and sales are streaming in. Everything is hunky-dory.

So, what do you do?

Do you sit back, your legs on the desk, your hands behind your head, and bask in the glory of finally conquering Amazon SEO? I hope not. Like in every conquest, the war doesn’t end when you plant your flag in newly conquered territory. You now have to defend it. Once you’ve started ranking on Amazon SEO, you must defend that rank so competitors don’t steal it from under you.

Here are the best practices you should consider to hold on to and even improve your Amazon SEO rank:

Combine Amazon SEO With PPC Advertising

We’ve already explored the relationship between Amazon SEO and Amazon PPC. By now, it’s pretty clear that a combination of SEO and PPC is Amazon’s most effective marketing tool. Amazon SEO helps you identify new keywords, and PPC advertising generates the conversions you need to rank for these keywords. If you want to hold on to your ranking and improve it, make sure you combine SEO optimization and PPC advertising. 

Conduct Competitor Analysis Regularly

Slacking can be the death knell for your business when you’re in a competitive space like Amazon. Successful Amazon sellers constantly optimize their listings, adjust their PPC campaign bids, and reprice their products to stay competitive.

You need to conduct competitor analysis regularly to monitor your competition’s activities. If you slack in this area, you risk being overtaken by the competition, losing your Amazon SEO ranking and a huge chunk of your market share.

PS: Our automated Search Query Performance Analytics help you stay on top of your market share analysis.

Manage Your Inventory Efficiently

Stock availability is a big deal on Amazon. Amazon wants to ensure shoppers have a pleasant experience, and one way of doing this is by ensuring that products in stock appear higher in Amazon search results.

You must implement an efficient inventory management strategy to ensure you never go out of stock. Otherwise, when you go out of stock, the Amazon SEO algorithm will rank your listing lower, and a competitor will claim your ranking and take your market share.

Avoid Spamming Your Primary Keyword

Repeating your primary keyword all over your listing doesn’t help with Amazon ranking. It’s counterproductive and might look spammy to shoppers. Placing your primary keyword in high-impact areas like the listing title, once in the features section, and the product description is more efficient. You can then use the rest of the space to incorporate multiple different but relevant keywords to boost your visibility in search results.

Include Product Synonyms In Backend Keywords

Does your product have more than one name? If so, you need to ensure you optimize your listing with your product synonyms by adding them to backend keywords.

For example, let’s say you sell personalized mugs. Some shoppers may refer to them as “personalized cups.” If you haven’t added the keywords “personalized cup” and “cup” in your backend keywords, your product won’t be shown to this demographic, and you’ll lose the sale.

Your product name in another language also counts as a synonym. For example, a mug in Spanish is “taza.” Adding your product name in another language as backend keywords helps your listing show up when shoppers run a search in that language.

Add Misspelled Keyword Variations To Backend Keywords

Shoppers can sometimes make spelling errors when running searches on Amazon. You want your product to be shown even when a shopper misspells a keyword. The only way to guarantee that you don’t miss a sale when a shopper misspells a keyword is by adding misspelled variations of your main keywords as backend keywords.

Expand Your Product Line

You can only sell so many units of a single ASIN. If you’re only selling one product, sales will plateau at some point, no matter how effectively you optimize your listings. Expanding your product line is the fastest and most efficient way of growing sales on Amazon.

What products can you pair with your existing product? What other products can you sell on Amazon? Start finding product ideas to add to your product line. You can then start running PPC campaigns on the new product to help rank it faster and generate sales.

Wrapping Up

Improving your Amazon SEO ranking comes down to satisfying the customers and being on the algorithm’s good side. Armed with the Amazon SEO tips and best strategies from this article, you can start optimizing your listing to get more eyeballs on your product and more revenue in your pockets. And as your sales grow, you’ll need to keep track of all important metrics. My Real Profit suite of analytics tools helps you get real-time reports on your KPIs so you have an overview of your business performance at all times. Book a demo today to experience the power of our Amazon analytics tools.


Subscribe to our newsletter

Researching to share with you

Let’s make data your business asset and transform it into your competitive edge.