Do you want to know everything there is around Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR)?
You are in the right place.
In this guide, you’ll find out what Amazon BSR is, why it is important, as well as discover 24 more ranking factors that affect organic rankings on Amazon.
So if you want to increase your Amazon sales, get high rankings and stand out among other Amazon sellers, you’ll need this guide.
Let’s dive right into it.
Chapter 1: Amazon’s Algorithm
If you want to know how to improve your sales ranking on Amazon organic search, you’ve got to start with the basics.
Amazon’s algorithm was initially called A9, and it was responsible for ranking products in the Amazon marketplace.
This algorithm is essentially what organizes product research on Amazon.
When you type something like “Yoga Mat” on Amazon’s search bar, it’s the algorithm that decides what you are going to see next.
Image Source: Amazon
When you type something like “Yoga Mat” on Amazon’s search bar, it’s the algorithm that decides what you are going to see next.
Before we delve any further, I need you to keep one thing in mind: The Amazon Best Seller Rank is only one of the factors affecting Amazon’s algorithm.
In other words, the algorithm is not one-dimensional, as it is affected by several ranking factors.
According to a 2019 article by the Wall Street Journal:
When people are searching for products on Amazon, nearly two-thirds of all product clicks come from the first page of results.
This means that if you want your product listing to be visible in the Amazon rankings, you have to be on the first page.
Otherwise, you’ll end up on the second page, fighting for (roughly) one-third of the product clicks.
According to a 2018 report by Jumpshot, from 2015 to 2018, Amazon surpassed Google in product searches.
The eCommerce giant—which now has over 80% market share in many product categories—now powers 54% of all product searches.
This means two things:
- Most people seem to trust Amazon for product research
- Ranking in the Amazon marketplace will become much more difficult
Also, you’ve got to keep in mind that 87% of shoppers nowadays begin their product research online, which means that the growth for Amazon’s search engine is not going to slow anytime soon.
Let’s get back to Amazon’s algorithm.
According to Marc Delingat, Director of Core Search on Amazon:
Source: Archive.org
This means that the algorithm ranks Amazon products long before the user types in a search query.
The question, of course, is what makes a product page better than another one so that it ranks higher on the Amazon marketplace.
As per Delingat:
Source: Archive.org
Thus, as it is evident, the algorithm works in two simple parts:
- Pull all the relevant product listings from Amazon’s product catalog
- Sort and deliver the most relevant results to the user
Amazon’s algorithm was up until recently called Amazon A9.
Image Source: Archive.org
According to Wikipedia, A9 was created back in 2003 as “an independent company aimed at producing technology for search and advertising.”
A9 was a subsidiary of Amazon that developed search engine and search advertising technology.
As you can see, Amazon A9 used to handle 1.2 billion ad requests and 45 million visual search queries per day.
Image Source: Archive.org
A9 has three main areas of focus:
- Product Search
- Visual Search
- Advertising
According to A9’s website, Product Search is the mechanism that returns search results (product pages) when a visitor makes a search on Amazon.
Image Source: Amazon
Visual Search, according to A9’s website, has a different role:
Deep learning-based computer vision solutions that help our customers use visual information to search and discover the world around them.
Visual Search includes applications like Augmented Reality, image matching, and geospatial recognition.
The last of the three areas—Advertising—had as its purpose to “build advertising products and ad-serving systems that handle billions of queries every day.”
Amazon is always trying to improve its algorithm so that it maximizes the value for the visitor.
Source: Archive.org
What is interesting is that in 2019, Amazon updated its algorithm and at the same time closed the website A9.com, which was the website of the team behind Amazon search.
According to a 2019 article by The Wall Street Journal, this update in the algorithm boosts Amazon’s own products, instead of treating all products in the Amazon marketplace as equal.
The article mentions that the updated algorithm is using future profitability as a ranking factor—something that we don’t know for sure.
However, Amazon has denied that Amazon’s ranking algorithm takes into consideration long-term profitability.
Amazon’s A9 algorithm works using two very simple goals:
- Give back to the users the most relevant results
- Give back Amazon listings that the user is more likely to buy
Based on those two goals, we can understand that:
- Amazon’s top goal in everything they do is always maximize Revenue Per Customer (RPC)
- Amazon tracks every action that the user takes on Amazon, from the categories they visit, right down to where their mouse hovers on the page
Of course, “relevancy” here is slightly different than in other search engines (i.e. Google).
When you are searching for the term “red laces” on Google…
You’ll get results that are relevant to the search term…
While on Amazon, you’ll get back results that are both relevant, and that may lead to a sale.
We can say that ranking on Google is way more difficult than ranking on Amazon.
With Google, you have to worry about things such as on-page SEO, technical SEO, content, or backlinks.
These are things that you don’t have to worry about when it comes to Amazon SEO.
So if you don’t have to worry about these things, what do you have to worry about?
This is what we are doing to cover in the next chapter.
For now, let me give you the three factors that influence the Amazon ranking algorithm for a new product or an existing one.
What influences the Amazon ranking algorithm?
1) Conversion Rate
These are ranking factors that Amazon found to have a statistically relevant effect on conversion rates. Examples of conversion rate factors include product reviews, meeting the Amazon image requirements and pricing.
2) Relevancy
These are ranking factors that Amazon uses to consider if a product page is relevant to a certain search term. Relevancy factors include your title and product description.
2) Customer Satisfaction
How do you make the most money from a single customer? Make them so happy that they keep coming back. Amazon knows that the secret to max RPC lies in customer retention. It’s a lot harder to get someone to spend $100 once than $10 ten times. Customer Retention ranking factors include seller feedback and Order Defect Rate.
→ Check Out the Best Software & Tools for Amazon Sellers ←
Author’s Note: Amazon uses both predicted and real conversion rates for product rankings. For example, if your product is priced higher than other similar items, Amazon will predict a lower conversion rate for your listing and use that rate until real data corrects it.
You now know almost everything there is about Amazon’s ranking algorithm.
Now, it’s time to start deploying how Amazon sales really happen, by taking a deep dive into a product’s BSR, the sales rank and other ranking factors that Amazon sellers need to be aware of.
Extra Tip: For a complete training around Amazon FBA, make sure to take a look at our complete Amazon course.
Chapter 2: Top 25 Amazon Ranking Factors
At this point, I am going to show you some of the most critical Amazon ranking factors.
According to some unconfirmed sources, there may be less than 25 ranking factors.
However, as with Google, we are not able to know for sure what makes product listing go up in the Amazon search results.
Of course, Amazon is more open than Google, but still, you can’t be 100% sure about the factors that affect the search results.
Can product details, recent sales, term relevancy, historical sales data, sales volume of the product or even future sales, be some of the factors that Amazon is using to rank products on the marketplace?
Let’s see what the top ranking factors for each of the three categories that I shared with you earlier.
→ 20 Amazon Seller Forums to Help You Succeed with Amazon FBA ←
Conversion Rate Ranking Factors
1. Sales Rank
So let’s start with one of the most critical Amazon ranking factors.
What is the Amazon sales ranking?
The Amazon Sales Rank is one of the most critical ranking factors for Amazon. It counts the sales that a product has as a way to determine its position in the Amazon search results page.
Simply put, the number of historical sales compared to other products can make a product rank higher on Amazon’s results page.
For example, take a look at the following results for the term “mixer:”
Image Source: Amazon
If you see the results ranking at the top (below Sponsored Products), you’ll notice that they all have many reviews.
In fact, three of them have over 2,000 product reviews each.
This shows us that thousands of people have bought these products.
And, more sales on Amazon mean higher rankings, which result in even more sales.
What is a good sales ranking on Amazon?
The truth is that there isn’t a good sales ranking on Amazon. The higher the sales rank, the better. And, to achieve that, you need more sales and more happy customers for your products.
Now, you may say that this is not fair for new products entering Amazon.
Unfortunately, no one said it would be.
But, let’s dive a bit deeper to see what Amazon best sellers rank is all about.
If you visit a product page and scroll down until you find the product details, you’ll find a small field that is called “Best Sellers Rank.”
Image Source: Amazon
This number essentially tells you how this product ranks for category-specific searches.
For example, for a category-specific product search for “strollers,” you’ll get a list of results where some of them will have the following banner in the left corner of the product listing:
Image Source: Amazon
Except for showing your product page higher, this BSR banner makes your “real estate” in the Amazon results page more interesting.
How to increase Amazon ranking?
Increasing your Amazon ranking is something that is affected by many parameters. This means that the Amazon seller rank is not the only factor that affects your rankings. Overall, you want to offer an excellent experience for your customers.
This means that becoming a best-seller is not only a matter of the number of sales.
Your product has to be AWESOME; you have to have great customer support and offer an overall great experience.
But, rest assured that the Amazon best sellers rank can (and will) affect your sales.
If you visit the best selling products for any category, you’ll see that Amazon indeed takes into account the number of sales for ranking these products.
Image Source: Amazon
However, it is critical to understand that a high number of sales by itself means nothing.
If you want to have a high sales rank, you need to provide a great experience overall for your customers.
Do that, and after a while, you’ll see your BSR going up.
Let’s move on to the next ranking factor.
2. Product Reviews
The number of product reviews for a given product is another critical ranking factor.
If you want to know how Airtame managed to increase its sales by getting more positive reviews on Amazon, make sure to take a look at the following case study:
→ How Amazon Reviews Increased Our Sales Dramatically in 9 Months ←
When selling on Amazon, you shouldn’t expect all your product reviews to be positive.
Having said that, how you respond to those reviews matters as well.
This example product search for the keyword “vacuum” illustrates some interesting points about how Amazon weights review volume vs. review quality:
Let’s dissect this search results page:
- The BISSEL vacuum (green) has the most reviews AND the highest review rating. It’s also the best-seller in its category, so it ranks at the top.
- The second-ranked Dirt Devil (red) has more reviews, but a lower review rating. It’s also a best-seller, so it ranks second.
- The third-ranked Shark Navigator (blue) has fewer reviews, but a higher rating than #2, and it’s also a best-seller, so it ranks #3.
- The Hoover WindTunnel at #4 has substantially more reviews than any of the top three listings, but it’s not as highly rated as #1 and #3, and it’s not a best-seller, so it ranks #4.
Let’s move on to the next ranking factor.
3. Answered Questions
The number of Answered Questions—even though not a direct ranking factor—definitely affect conversions, since it is located at the top of the product page.
Usually, the higher the number of Answered Questions, the best.
For example, if you take a look at the following Amazon listing for a vacuum cleaner, you’ll notice that besides having many product reviews, this product also has almost 500 answered questions.
Image Source: Amazon
This is one of the reasons why it is ranking high for the term “vacuum,” which is a popular term.
Also, apart from affecting Amazon rankings, Answered Questions usually show that there is a community around a product, which is also good for social proof.
4. Image Size & Quality
Image size and quality is another factor that indirectly affects rankings.
If you visit the pages of best selling products, you’ll notice that most of them have high-quality images with the ability to zoom in and take a closer look at the product.
In fact, Amazon continues to tighten its image size and quality policies for product listings.
Right now, some categories won’t even display results that don’t have at least one image that is 1000×1000 pixels or larger. (These are called “suppressed listings.”)
The 1000×1000 pixel image size allows Amazon to offer customers their Hover-to-Zoom feature, shown below, which they’ve found has a dramatic effect on conversion rates.
For example, take a look at the Tippmann Cronus Tactical Marker.
Image Source: Amazon
This product is #1 Best Seller in Paintball Markers with only product image.
If you take a closer look at this image though, you’ll notice that it’s super clear and in-depth.
Image Source: Amazon
This offers a unique experience for the customers and can skyrocket Amazon sales for this particular product.
If you want to learn more about Amazon product photography, make sure to read the following guide:
→ The Be-All End-All Guide to Amazon Product Photography ←
This means that the number of images here is not as important as quality.
Not to say that multiple images won’t convert better than one image, just that the benefits quickly taper off after the first.
It also means that the quality of the images can have a positive impact on conversions.
You can rank better if you have one large, high-quality image than having multiple normal-sized images.
Make sure to try the DIY route to high quality product photography.
5. Price
Remember earlier, when we talked about how the Amazon ranking algorithm uses both predicted and real conversion rates to determine which products to show in their search results?
One of the biggest ranking factors Amazon uses to determine the predicted conversion rate is pricing—they know that customers tend to seek the best deals.
More importantly, Amazon uses pricing as a major factor in picking which product to show in the buy box, which is the part of the page containing the “Add to Cart” button (we’ll talk more about that later).
Notice here that the top-ranking product for the search term “juicer” has fewer customer reviews, lower customer rating, and lower Sales Rank than every other listing in the top 4 ranking products.
It still shows #1 because it’s got decent ratings and is priced way below the category average.
Note that product reviews are still vital here.
And pricing isn’t the only reason that the Black & Decker Juicer ranks #1.
6. Parent-Child Products
If you have a product listing (parent) and decide to offer color or size variation those are known as (child listings).
They appear on the same listing as variations.
It’s much better to use Amazon’s built-in parent-child product functionality to direct all customers to a single product page.
This has several benefits:
- It maximizes your product reviews since Amazon will combine your similar products into a single primary product page
- It makes the most sense from a UX standpoint; keeping customers on the same page makes it more likely they’ll buy your product
- Amazon has shown a preference for ranking products with multiple options in their listing
Image Source: Amazon
If you click on the “Color” button, you’ll notice that this product comes in many different colors.
Not every color is a best selling product (best seller in a specific category), but most of them are.
Generally speaking, products with parent-child product connections tend to rank higher on Amazon’s search results.
7. Time on Page & Bounce Rate
As you already know, Amazon is able to measure every way a customer interacts with their website, so it’s easy for them to track detailed time on page and bounce rate stats.
Having said that, time on page and bounce rate are indicators of whether or not someone is going to buy a specific product.
If the visitor comes and bounces right away, it means that either she didn’t find what she wanted, or that she found what she wanted but decided to proceed with the payment another time.
On the other hand, the more a visitor stays on your website, the higher the chance that she is interested in buying a product.
But let’s get to the metrics and what each of them actually means.
Time on Page: Amazon believes that the amount of time a customer spends on your listing page is a good measure of how interested they are in your product.
A customer who reads your full product description, looks through reviews, and investigates the Q&A’s is much more likely to buy than the one that spends a couple seconds skimming the features.
Bounce Rate: A “bounce” is when a customer performs a search, visits your page, and then either goes back to the search results or clicks on a Related Product offer.
Keep in mind that Amazon has a much more exact measurement of bounce rate than Google, again, because all user activity happens within their platform.
8. Product Listing Completeness
Finally, the last conversion metric to optimize for is listing completeness.
This is what most people call “product listing optimization.”
The individual sections of the Amazon listing mostly have to do with relevancy, as you’ll learn below, but the actual completeness of the listing has an effect on conversion rate.
To make sure that your product listing is well-optimized, visit the product pages of big brand and see how they’ve optimized all the different sections.
Image Source: Amazon
The more complete your Amazon product listing, the higher the chance that you’ll rank high on Amazon.
Below, you’ll find a GREAT guide on how to optimize your product listing so that it has a good chance of ranking high on Amazon:
→ The 6 Pillars of Amazon Product Listing Optimization ←
If you have a new product, do your best to fill in every single field in the listing setup page to maximize your chances of appearing at the top of product search results.
Now that we’ve seen all conversion ranking factors, let’s move on to the second category, the relevancy ranking factors.
Relevancy Ranking Factors
9. Title
In Google, you want a concise, engaging title with your keyword close to the beginning.
on Amazon, all you care about is keywords and keyword rankings. You want to cram as many keywords into about 80 characters as you possibly can.
In fact, you can actually go beyond 80 characters if you want, and it’s better to have too many keywords than too few.
I’ve seen top-listed products with titles that make no sense to have over 200 characters.
Let’s take this charger as an example:
Image Source: Amazon
As you can see, the title includes brand names (i.e. Huawei, Motorola) and even devices (i.e. phone, tablet) that the charger is applicable for.
This probably helps the product listing to be more visible; however, Amazon is starting to crack down and standardize Product Titles.
So you should keep an eye out for this moving forward.
10. Features / Bullet Points
The other big reason that particular Nexus charger ranks so highly is because it has lots of keyword-rich, informative features.
Image Source: Amazon
Features, which are displayed as bullet points right below the pricing and product options, are an absolute must.
Just like with images, features are so important that Amazon no longer allows products without bullet points to be featured in the buy box, and not having them is a serious road-block to good Amazon rankings.
Another good example of proper Feature usage is this Asus computer monitor, which ranks really high for the term “computer screen”:
Image Source: Amazon
Notice how the bullet-points are both incredibly detailed and include a ton of keywords?
At the same time, they’re easily readable, which means they won’t confuse customers and risk hurting conversions.
11. Product Description
You don’t need me to tell you that product descriptions are important for rankings.
Your product description is basically where you expand on your Features.
It’s also the part of the page you have the most control over.
If there’s anywhere to really put a lot of effort into engagement, it’s in the product description.
→ Learn How to Write Effective Product Descriptions That Sell! ←
That being said, keep in mind that unlike with Google there is no benefit to having a keyword appear multiple times on the product page; if it’s anywhere in your product listing at least once, you will be relevant to rank for it.
If you want to see a truly appetizing product description, check out the one for this DeLhongi Espresso Maker—one of the top-ranking listings for the term “espresso maker.”
Image Source: Amazon
This listing is thorough, inviting, easy to skim, includes plenty of images, captions, and they even included extra technical specifications that aren’t listed in the normal Specifications section (which we’ll talk more about below).
12. Brand & Manufacturer Part #
Another very important thing that you need to include in your title is the brand name and the manufacturer number.
Something that every single one of the top listings does right in that category lists the brand and manufacturer number first in the product title.
Image Source: Amazon
It seems that Amazon now rarely shows a product in the top results without the brand name and—in many cases—the manufacturer number included in the title.
You always need to include a brand in your title because it enables your product for search filters AND allows you to capture customers searching for a specific brand.
Especially if you’re in a niche where customers are using the manufacturer number to search for products, you definitely want to include that keyword in your title.
Let’s move on to the next one.
13. Specifications (Product information)
Specifications (now referred to as Product information) are different than Features—this is the part of the page where you actually list the technical and physical details of your product.
This includes size, shipping weight, color, publication date (if you’re doing books), technical specifications, and more.
You can see the following #2 best seller for the “home theater” subcategory, using their product specifications to the max:
Image Source: Amazon
Let’s move on to the next ranking factor.
14. Category & Subcategory
You probably didn’t realize this, but once a customer has entered into a category—every other search they perform on Amazon will, by default, be limited to that category.
For example, when I am in the Kindle Store category, all the search terms that I am going to insert are going to be limited in that category or subcategory.
Image Source: Amazon
You can see the category or subcategory you are in at any given time by taking a look at what we call breadcrumbs.
When setting up your product listing, make sure you put your product in the most relevant, narrow category possible.
15. Search Terms
In addition to categories, you can also specify search terms that you want to be associated with your product.
Even though Amazon lists five different 50-character search term fields, you’re better off thinking about it as one big 250 character text box in which you can enter every possible search term you can think of for your product.
If you want to learn more about the importance of search terms on Amazon rankings, make sure to check the following guide in our blog:
→ Rank Higher with This Amazon SEO Growth Strategy ←
Let’s take a look at the next one.
16. Source Keyword
This is one of the biggest ways that Amazon determines a listing’s relevance to a given product search.
This is also yet another example of how Amazon tracks every single minutiae of a customer’s activity on its website.
Take a look at this URL that links to a listing for a Black & Decker electric drill, and see if you can tell me what search term I used to find it:
You can see the source keyword right at the end of the URL—&keywords=electric+drill—that tells Amazon that the source keyword was “electric drill.”
Therefore, if I were to buy this drill, Amazon would know that this listing is highly relevant for the term “electric drill.”
The next time a customer searches for that term, this listing would be more likely to rank higher at the top.
Here’s a neat little Amazon ranking hack (we cover in this article) you can do to take advantage of this factor:
- Construct a URL for your product listing using the [&keyword=your+keyword] query (append the code inside the brackets to your product URL).
- Use a link shortening service like bit.ly to create a shareable link to that URL.
- Drive traffic to the shortened link.
Now anytime you make a sale from one of these shortened keyword links, you’re basically tricking Amazon into thinking that these visitors performed a product search for your target keyword.
If you want an in-depth look at the perfect way to make your listing perfectly relevant, check out the post below!
AMAZON KEYWORDS: 4 TIPS FOR PERFECTLY OPTIMIZED PRODUCT LISTINGS
Customer Satisfaction Ranking Factors
17. Negative Seller Feedback
Why do I list negative seller feedback specifically, as opposed to just seller feedback in general?
Interestingly, Amazon actually claims not to track positive seller feedback; at least, not for the sake of their product ranking algorithm.
Instead, they track negative seller feedback rates or frequency.
It doesn’t matter how bad the feedback is—all negative feedback is the same, and it all counts against you equally in terms of search result rankings.
To be clear— as a third-party seller attempting to win the buy box (shown below) you want your seller feedback as high as possible.
However, negative feedback rate is the only metric with a known effect on product search results.
→ 3 Strategies to Report an Amazon Seller “Hijacker” ←
18. Order Processing Speed
Amazon knows that one of the best ways to make customers happy is with fast and accurate shipping.
Therefore, a vendor or Amazon seller who has shown consistent and efficient order processing is more likely to rank higher than a vendor who’s had complaints of inaccurate or slow shipping.
19. In-Stock Rate
Customers hate it when they want a product but can’t have it.
One of the most common ways this problem occurs is when an item is out of stock, or when a seller doesn’t keep proper track of their inventory.
Image Source: Amazon
Whether you’re a first-party vendor or a third-party seller, keeping your inventory in stock is vital to maintaining top rankings, both in A9’s product search results and in your product’s buy box.
Two of the big customer satisfaction metrics are Percentage of Orders Refunded and Pre-Fulfillment Cancellation.
In both cases, Amazon has found that vendors/sellers with low in-stock rates tend to have higher refunds and cancellations, which, of course, is bad for customer retention.
20. Perfect Order Percentage (POP)
POP is a measurement of how many orders go perfectly smoothly from the time that a customer clicks “Add to Cart” to the product arriving at their home.
If you have a high Perfect Order Percentage, that means you have a high in-stock rate, accurate product listings, and prompt shipping.
That’s precisely what Amazon wants for every one of their customers, so they’ll naturally rank high-POP sellers above lower-POP ones.
Nowadays, Amazon also takes into account how many orders (for clothing) fit was as expected.
Image Source: Amazon
Even though this is a direct ranking factor, it can indirectly affect conversions and thus rankings.
Also, this metric may indicate problems with the product in terms of how it fits, which means that it obviously affects the overall experience.
We can’t say for sure that this affects how a product ranks on Amazon, but it can affect the decision of visitors of that particular product page.
21. Order Defect Rate (ODR)
ODR is basically the opposite metric of POP.
Every time a customer makes a claim with an order, that’s considered an order defect.
Here are some of the most ways an order can defect:
- Negative buyer feedback
- A-to-Z Guarantee claim
- Any kind of shipment problem
- Credit card chargeback
Each of those examples by itself would count towards your Order Defect Rate, which is the number of order defects compared to the total number of orders fulfilled over a given period of time.
Amazon says that all sellers should aim for an ODR under 1%.
Important! Buyer-removed negative feedback does not count towards your ODR.
So, it really pays to address every one of your customers’ issues.
22. Exit Rate
How often does a customer view your listing and then exit Amazon.com? That’s your exit rate.
If your page has an above-average exit rate, Amazon takes that as a sign that you have a low-quality product listing.
Usually, a high exit rate is because your product has a low in-stock rate, or because your listing isn’t fully complete.
23. Packaging Options
This is a metric that I didn’t use to think Amazon used for ranking purposes, but recently I’ve been seeing stuff like this in product search results:
Clearly, packaging options are something that Amazon has found their potential customers care about.
But, even if it weren’t, it’s a great way to separate your listing from other similar products (and rank higher through an increased conversion rate).
An easy way to do this—seen in the example above—is to use Fulfillment by Amazon to offer Frustration-Free Packaging.
This is where Amazon uses less packaging and fully recyclable materials without sacrificing product protection. You can read more about it here.
→ Check out The 20 Top Selling Amazon Products for Your Next Idea ←
This post is getting dangerously close to 6,000 words, so I know that a lot of you probably won’t read it all.
For those of you who did, make sure to read the last chapter with some final thoughts I have regarding the Amazon best sellers rank and the other rankings that I listed here.
Chapter 3: Final Thoughts
Running an Amazon business is not easy.
Ranking a product on Amazon is only a small part of the things that you need to do to succeed on Amazon.
It takes time and requires willingness and hard work to grow an Amazon business.
Also, there are definitely some things you can’t control or can’t do anything about.
What I suggest is that you always try to improve the experience for your customers.
Besides that, I have key takeaways that I’d like to leave you with:
- Maximum RPC (Revenue Per Customer) is Amazon’s top goal.
- The Amazon Ranking algorithm uses conversion rate, relevance, and customer satisfaction to rank products.
- Fill out as much of your product listing page as possible, using as many keywords as possible. (You need to do good keyword research for that!)
- Use FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) to automate customer satisfaction.
- Find ways to encourage customer reviews, and do everything you can to keep your customers happy.
- Above all: More sales = higher rankings = more sales
There you have it! You now know exactly what it takes to rank on Amazon.
All that’s left is for you to go out there and capitalize on your superior knowledge!
Whether you’re starting on Amazon with private label or creating your own products in China, you can rank your products with this guide!
Other Amazon sellers are starting 2019 selling via retail arbitrage. So whatever your choice just take action.
In the meantime, do you have any additional questions about ranking products on Amazon? Do you need me to clarify something I didn’t explain well enough?
Let me know with a comment below! (I’ll try to respond as quickly as possible.)
Additional Resources you might be interested in:
- Easily Purchase UPC Codes for Amazon
- 3 Amazon Research Tactics Working in 2019
- Quick Guide to Figure Out What to Sell on Amazon
Special Offer…
There’s a huge section on launching and ranking new Amazon products in our brand new Amazon business course that teaches first time entrepreneurs how to launch their very own physical product Amazon business. If you want to check that out and see if it’s right for you click here…
214 Comments
Been selling on Amazon for nearly a decade now, Nd I still learned tons from this... Specifically, Had no idea about Amazons 'POP' metric, brilliant! Really simplifies a lot for me, gives me one metric to focus on... Quick question for you- if a buyer messages me, does that count against my POP? Or is it only things Amazons involved with?
Awesome to hear that Jason, congrats on the success so far! Hope this article helps you take it to the next level :) To answer your question - YES, a buyer-initiated message does affect your POP score! Amazon's goal is for the order to go as smoothly as possible - the buyer shouldn't worry at all, let alone send you a message! Sounds harsh, but such is Amazon's Seller Standards. Just be sure your listings are up to snuff (completed, accurate, etc), and your customer service is top-notch (FBA simplifies this).
Great blog post. Very long but very detailed. As Jason stated above, even though I am a full time Amazon seller I still learned a ton. More blog posts like this please!
Will- This is really helpful, thanks, although I wish it was a bit more prescriptive on how to break in. I have a reviews question for you: the example you gave were all for products that had a very high number (000s) of reviews. How does it work if you have a small number of great reviews compared to a large number of OK ones? This is one area that a startup can make progress, by getting great reviews.
I wasn't kidding around when I said 'Ultimate Guide'! Glad you enjoyed it - we'll have more posts on how to take advantage of Amazon soon :)
Great question Rob! There are a few popular ways to get reviews for new products... Most people send their products out to friends and family for the initial reviews, and that's been working fine. Some people give their products away for free, or offer it at a promotional discount through Amazon. This obviously costs more, but can be VERY effective. Our clients typically get their first few purchases/reviews through each other. No tricks here - they just sell each other their products at discounted prices. Then ask for real reviews :) No matter what you do, keep in mind you only need 4-5 initial reviews. After that, I'd work on pushing sales organically and through Amazon Ads. Hope that helps!
Hi Will, great content!!! Thanks for sharing!!! Talk soon...
JOOOSSSSEEEEEEEEE - great to hear from you buddy :)
I am interested in hearing more about how to get product reviews. I have 2 products that I am launching, but they are not something I can give away for free, as they are in the $100-$120 range. What would be the best way to do this? I am fine with not making any profit to get a few reviews, but I am not sure how that is done if it is through FBA.
Hi Will, Do you recommend FBA or some fulfillment companies based on China and selling on Amazon or eBay ?? Regards Adel
Hey Will. Great stuff. As a new seller with an unknown brand on Amazon, it has been particularly difficult to make any sales. And Amazon support, though responsive, has taken me in circles. It's been agonizing, especially since I'm doing this for a client. More sales = Higher rankings = More sales is great if you can get noticed. This came at just the right time to make some tweaks that will hopefully boost sales. Thanks for all your efforts and willingness to share.
Great post mate!
Another great article Will! Not only is this a guide on how to be a better Amazon seller, it's a great example of how to write useful blog posts.
Really great article, one of the most detailed and useful posts out there on how to rank on Amazon within the Amazon walls. Regarding driving traffic to the keyword-constructed URL, we've seen some great results through this method, either sending traffic directly to the product listings, or through coupon bridge pages. One thing to be careful about when building this URL is to make sure you are not including some params that might be used internally by Amazon to track the user session. While we haven't confirmed if it's less effective, our team avoids using the qid param and build the URL starting with the canonical link, with the keyword param at the end. Also, we make sure the outside traffic is highly targeted to our user demographic. This is obvious for anyone running paid traffic, but what I mean is we will start out very very targeted, and slowly expand out. For PPC we hardly ever expand out to broad keywords and stick to phrase or exact, to avoid the outside traffic driving down the nice conversion rate set by the internal Amazon traffic. Also, poor targeted traffic will likely drive up the exit rate metric mentioned in this article, causing you to lose rank. Dennis
Hi Kelly, Interesting question! I would look to get the first few reviews for as cheap as possible. Whether that be through swapping your product with other sellers (our clients do this often in our importing mastermind), or selling it at cost to somebody close to you - whatever works. Once you have 2-5 positive reviews, you're over the initial hump. If you wanted to continue to drive reviews, then you could run a promotion on Amazon. Either way - make sure you're reaching out to each of your buyers. Make sure their expectations are exceeded, and then kindly ask for a review of the product. Just make sure you're within Amazon's Seller Guidelines for 'Misuse of ratings and feedback or reviews' It seems there's quite a bit of interest on how to get Amazon Reviews - especially your first few. Sounds like my next blog post! :)
Hi Adel, If you're selling anything on Amazon, FBA is a great choice! You can even use their 'Multi-Channel Fulfillment' feature to ship orders made outside of Amazon (your own site, eBay, etc). It's best to ship domestically, so if you're selling in North America - I wouldn't recommend a fulfillment company based in China.
Hey Jason, hope the tweaks you've made make all the difference... The good news is - once you start making sales, the momentum builds fast! Make sure to take a look at my response to Kelly's question (above), it may give you some ideas. I'd also encourage you to experiment with Amazon's internal ads - our mastermind clients have had TONS of success with them! Thanks for bringing this question up, I'll definitely dive into this deeper in a future blog post :)
Thanks Faisal, hope you got some value out of it!
Haha, thanks Dave - appreciate that!
Really great advice here Dennis! I didn't even think to check for the qid - I'll definitely start recommending people remove that :) Sounds like you're running your PPC the right way as well - awesome stuff! I'm assuming you know this - but make sure you take advantage of Amazon's internal ads too. I see nothing but unbelievable ROIs!