Ranking products on Amazon relies on three things:
That is the secret sauce of Amazon SEO.
A basic list, but it’s the fundamentals of Amazon Search Engine Optimization (SEO) where most sellers go wrong.
“There will always be new tactics and shiny objects to help give you an edge on Amazon (and we all know it’s important to take every edge). But the real big rocks are moved with boring, solid fundamentals focusing on visibility and conversion.”
Packed with tried-and-tested strategies from the ECF community, this guide will help you understand the nuances of Amazon SEO optimization. It will equip you with effective SEO strategies and tools to boost product visibility and increase conversions.
Amazon’s product ranking algorithm—A9—determines what position your product listing has in Amazon’s search results.
A9 shares similarities to Google’s algorithm by analyzing the textual content of a product listing (title, description etc.) to identify relevant keywords. It then evaluates the relevance and prominence of these keywords to gauge how well a product aligns with a customer’s search query.
Author note: There is speculation out there on whether Amazon’s A9 algorithm is now A10. I reached out to one of ECF’s Amazon experts Joshua Rawe to clear this up:
“Many ex-employees claim there is no ONE algorithm and that there is no algo named A8, 9, 10, etc.
However, so many articles are written referencing A9 or A10 that it’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.
At the end of the day, we’re all just talking about figuring out how to manipulate a machine to show your product for keyword searches. Whatever you want to call that machine is up to you, but the community seems to really like the Algorithmic (AX) approach.”
So we’re going to stick with ‘A9 algorithm.’
Amazon A9 VS Google’s Algorithm
The key distinction between A9 (Amazon’s product ranking algorithm) and other search engines like Google is that Amazon is primarily a buying platform. People searching on Amazon intend to purchase, so its algorithm prioritizes products likely to sell.
Amazon seller Joe Reeves leveraged some of these Amazon SEO ranking factors to achieve an astounding $5 million in wallet sales within a year.
The moral of his success story:
“Every little quarter or half a percent of optimization gets you that much closer to a better listing. Even a 1% improvement in profit can result in a substantial $10,000 increase for sellers making $1 million a year.”
Here are some of the small but powerful SEO optimization strategies and tips from the ECF community for boosting traffic, improving conversion rates, and encouraging reviews.
Using the most relevant keywords on Amazon product listings involves front-end and back-end optimization.
You’ll want to optimize both.
The type of keywords you should focus on for higher conversion rates are long-tail keywords. Potential customers might use longer, more specific phrases when searching for a product.
Long-tail keywords often have lower search volumes but can have higher conversion rates due to their specificity. For example, “wireless Bluetooth speaker with deep bass” or “waterproof portable Bluetooth speaker for outdoor use” are long-tail keywords.
Add keywords in your title, product description, and key features/benefits bullet points—but avoid keyword stuffing. Stay focused on writing high-quality, informative content that naturally incorporates the important keywords as much as possible.
An ECF Member shares his keyword strategy:
Amazon assigns a unique canonical URL to each product listing to make sure that search engines index and rank the correct URL. Optimize your product title with relevant keywords for improved visibility and ranking in search results.
✍️ Learning Take Five: This 5-minute video will help you understand the concept of optimizing your canonical URL.
Another ECF Member shares some notes from his optimization playbook:
“Crafting a compelling title requires a mix of art (good copywriting) and science (important keywords).”
A client asked an ECF Member (an Amazon expert) why they had stagnant sales on Amazon. The problem? They had never optimized the channel.
So they immediately started listing optimization (images, copy, back-end keywords) and switched to FBA.
“We saw a 2x increase in Sessions and a 1.5x increase in Sales on their top listing.”
Moral of the story: Optimize from the beginning.
📚 Related: Is Selling On Amazon Worth It? A Practical Guide For Founders
Before building your own, look at the listings of the hottest-selling Amazon products in any category for inspiration.
After? Show your listing when it’s live and solicit feedback in the forum. One ECF Member did this, garring 61 replies with an average read time of 20 minutes! 🤯
That’s a lot of value you can get from the ECF community in the space of a month if you join today.
Another ECF Member spoke about the results of running small-scale tests with 65 Amazon shoppers. They found the listings with clear headers, common objections addressed, unique feature details, and plenty of customer photos with reviews were more successful.
Here are the learnings to help you nail your product listing build from the get-go:
Quickly overcome common objections:
Detail product differentiation:
More reviews with customer photos:
Now that you’ve built and optimized your product listing, monitoring and adjusting your Amazon SEO and listing optimization efforts are just as important.
Howard Thai, an Amazon Algorithm expert, shares on Helium 10’s podcast his strategies for maintaining keyword ranking and enhancing conversion rates:
Another suggestion from an ECF member is weekly price testing to gauge profitability instead of session-by-session Amazon split testing tools.
“Instead of split testing price session by session, we prefer to do it week by week. We want to see the “snowball effect” (if any) on organic sessions in addition to looking at conversion rate. So we do Wk1 at Price A, Wk2 at Price B, Wk3 back to Price A, then Wk4 back to Price B. We ultimately want to see which weeks were the most profitable overall.
This ECF member recommends swapping out keywords in the title based on what you’re ranking well for vs what you want to be ranking well for. This is also helpful if you’re not indexing for a certain keyword.
“Use Helium 10’s Index Checker to help you track this.”
Different tools cater to various needs. That’s where ECF’s Review Directory could come in handy (exclusively available to our members 😉).
Another ECF recommendation is watching this Amazon SEO Tools deep dive video. Fair warning: It’s an hour long, but according to a few members, worth it.
One of the ECF members used this video when vetting for their software partner late last year.
“I went with Ad Badger, but it’s not one size fits all. Figure out what matters for you.”
For quick scan purposes, here’s a summary of the recommended Amazon SEO tools taken directly from the comments section of the video:
Best value for money:
For higher Amazon SEO ambitions:
For sellers looking for just one main Amazon FBA software with Amazon SEO tools set:
One ECF member explains using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) to test keywords for organic search rankings on Amazon. The overall strategy is to use PPC data to gain insights into keyword performance and determine the competitiveness of specific keywords for organic rankings.
He breaks down the process by looking at three main metrics: clickthrough rate (CTR), conversion rate (CVR), and conversions per search impression (CPI).
“Conveniently, all three of these metrics have a sponsored products metric equivalent if you pull a placement report for your campaigns. Typically, I will test my head terms for search in a single keyword campaign as the placement report only reports at the campaign level, not the keyword level.”
To determine the effectiveness of keywords, he explains what you need to look at for each metric:
This strategy should help you make informed decisions and avoid wasting time and resources chasing unachievable rankings.
If you plan on running sponsored advertising, Joshua Rawe, Amazon expert and ECF Member says you’ll find that top-of-funnel search terms will perform worse (on a conversion rate basis) than long-tail search terms.
His advice: 👉 Start with highly relevant, detailed search terms and run broad match modifiers (+) on them.
Broad match modifiers make sure specific keywords are always included in the search terms targeted by your advertising bids. You can apply broad match modifiers by adding a “+” symbol before a word.
For instance, using the keywords “+men shoes” with a broad match will make your ad appear for queries containing the word “men,” including terms like “men sneakers” or “running shoes for men.”
However, it won’t match with “running shoes” alone. This feature means you don’t miss out on potential customers actively searching.
“Then scale up from there. You’ll find Conversion rates improve as your review rate and count increase. Don’t expect to crush it with ads on launch day.”
To reiterate: Positive reviews increase conversion rates and influence search rankings.
Here are some strategies and tips you can use:
“Through all these efforts, we’ve increased our client’s star rating from 4.2 to 4.7 and doubled their review/rating count from 550+ to 1200+.”
The same ECF member suggests launching your product at roughly 50% of the target price, earning the right to raise your price as reviews accumulate.
He gives three reasons why:
One ECF member recommends offering a generous mail-in rebate to your email list for all Amazon purchases within the first month. While it doesn’t incentivize reviews directly, it starts the conversation with customers who might be willing to leave a review.
According to Joshua Rawe, this strategy has worked well with his clients.
“Getting early reviews is key to building sales momentum. The standard review rate on Amazon is roughly 1.5%, so if you rely entirely on sales you’ll be waiting forever to get your first 25 reviews.”
The advice and strategies in this guide share a common objective: driving more traffic and turning that traffic into sales. Whether through keyword research, content optimization, external traffic generation, or review management, the goal is to increase visibility, engagement, and sales.
So, as you begin your journey to master Amazon SEO, remember to stay grounded in the fundamentals. Continuously refine and optimize your strategies based on the insights shared here and stay on top of the evolving dynamics of the platform.
Connect with over 1000+ like-minded members who are eager to share their experiences, opinions, and feedback. Many of them are on their own journey to master Amazon SEO, just like you.
You can learn more about the community or apply to join today.