Amazon, the world’s eCommerce giant, has grown massively over the years. It has evolved greatly to help a lot of people make some money. It has supported many, be it stay-at-home moms or a major household brand, in reaching their potential customers. The popularity, credibility, and reach of Amazon make it the best platform to sell your products.
If you intend to sell on Amazon, you are at the right place. Products have a better chance of getting converted only when it’s visible to potential customers. The more the people see a product, the more it strikes their minds and eventually leads them to click the product; ultimately conversion and sales happen. To be accessible to all, the products need to rank well on the Amazon product listings. And there is one thing about ranking, majority of the people choose the results from page one. So you need to optimise your product listings for it to reach the top positions of the search results on Amazon.
All this works based on the amazon product search algorithm, A9. Amazon SEO works differently compared to major search engines. The reason is simple, Amazon is keenly focused on selling when compared to others. Amazon continually makes changes to see what it needs to implement in order to be fully inclined with what shoppers buy frequently.
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In this article, you’ll learn the ways to rank well on Amazon by understanding the factors that affect organic rankings.
Amazon’s Product Search Algorithm (A9)
Amazon is keen on maximizing Revenue Per Customer (RPC). This is done by tracking the user’s actions from the categories they visit, right down to where their cursor hovers on the page.
Amazon’s Product Search Algorithm delivers the search result by taking out relevant results from their catalogue and then ranking them based on relevancy. This algorithm has been evolving over time to deliver a better user experience.
In the following example, the search term “wow apple cider shampoo” showed results for wow apple cider shampoo and other shampoos by wow.
Earlier, search terms with any misspellings or gibberish never used to deliver accurate product results. But now, the A9 algorithm has improved and delivers related results. In the following image, the search term with an incomplete product name along with some gibberish still delivered desired results.
There was a time when a simple variation in the search term would result in a very different search result. Now, things are changing. As mentioned before, this algorithm is growing smarter with time. You can start learning from some pro tips to boost eCommerce conversion rates here.
The Factors that you need to consider to rank well:
1. Product Title
A good product title offers an improved chance of conversion rate. Use keywords in the title, without complicating it (the title should be readable and comprehendible to the public) with not more than 200 characters.
Include brand name if possible in the product title. This practice helps people who search based on brand names to find your product. Other possible assets that you could include in the title are information about the product line, material or key feature, product type, colour, size, or packaging/quantity depending on the kind of product you sell.
Also, never include statements that are only temporarily true, for example, “new,” “on sale,” “available now”.
2. Product Description
People read the product description keenly to know more about what the product can offer and compare it with their expectations. Use keywords and your value proposition to craft a converting product description.
People don’t appreciate excessively long content. You can mention all the features of the product without boring them by listing them as bulleted points.
The most important aspect of writing a good product description is to convey the right information rather than making false claims or using inaccurate and irrelevant information. False claims lead to customer dissatisfaction and eventually making them leave negative feedback for your product. The product description seriously influences customer engagement and conversion rates.
Making too many subjective claims about the product using terms like amazing, good quality, etc makes the reader/customer question or doubt the product’s credibility.
3. Specification
Use the specification section to list the technical and physical details of your product including size, shipping weight, colour, etc. This step is important as it signals Amazon that you’re careful when it comes to listings.
4. Search Terms
Amazon provides you with five fields with character limitations to write down the search terms that you want your product to rank for. Use the help of keyword searching tools for doing this job. We recommend using Google’s Keyword Planner.
Remember to use the words in the most logical order (for search terms with multiple words) in the search term. Including abbreviations, alternate names, topics, etc as search terms also helps.
5. Product Sales Rank
Improve your product sales rank. Sales rank seriously influences ranking factors in Amazon’s Product Search Algorithm. Sales rank directly depends on the sales; you would think that why was this even explained when we used a self-explanatory way of putting it. Well, more sales = higher ranking and higher ranking = more sales!
You can improve sales by ensuring that your product is visible, and listed properly with keywords. Ensure that the products are competitively priced, maybe by using the help of automated repricing software. Earn good product reviews. Use the help of social media to drive traffic to your product pages. All these actions would eventually help in sales.
6. Customer Reviews
The number of customer reviews that your product receives along with its quality seriously influences a person in determining whether they should buy the product or not. Negative customer reviews seriously affect the sales and in turn the sales rank. All these cumulate to degrade the overall product rank.
7. Answered Questions
Answered questions induce a sense of trust in people’s minds. People will now have more reason to choose your product over your competitors’. This is because answering common queries will clear people’s concerns and make them feel that your product is legit.
8. Image Size and Quality
The size and quality of the product images you put in Amazon matters. It is perhaps the most important element of a product that any buyer notices even before reading the product description or features. So it is better to stick to Amazon’s image guidelines. You may use high-quality images of a minimum of 1,000 x 1,000 pixels so that the zoom feature can be enabled (this feature lets the buyers see your products in more detail).
9. Price
The price of a product is a key customer concern when they decide to buy a product. Your products should never be overpriced since people tend to choose products that are priced lower. At the same time, pricing your product too low won’t help either. The reason is simple, people tend to doubt the quality of a lowly priced product.
10. Parent-Child Products
Use Amazon’s Parent-child relationship functionality to direct all your customers to a single page. This is a good approach because now all the sales and customer reviews for different variations of the same product come under a single page, maximizing the overall product rank in Amazon.
11. Time Spent on Page
The amount of time spent by a buyer on the product page is a factor that Amazon takes into consideration, it is used as an indication of the buyer’s interest. The more the time spent by a person, the more he/she is interested in the product on that page.
12. Negative Seller Feedback
It is obvious that any negative feedback from the buyer affects the product’s ranking very badly. Negative feedback prevents future buyers from choosing you because of the bad impression it created. This influences sales and sales rank, which in turn affects the overall product rank.
13. Order Processing Speed
Everyone loves a speedy delivery for their products. Amazon appreciates any effort made to improve the customer experience. One simple hack to be successful in Amazon is to ship the orders quickly with accuracy. Efficiently processing the orders will help you rank better on Amazon.
14. In-Stock Rate
Always maintain a high-stock rate for products that are popular. Amazon encourages sellers who minimize refunds and pre-fulfilment cancellations due to stock deficit. Never compromise on inventory management if you want your product to rank well in Amazon. Learn how to handle out of stock product pages here.
15. Perfect Order Percentage (POP)
Amazon’s Perfect Order Percentage is a quantitative metric used to evaluate the seller. It is like a report card for the seller given by Amazon based on certain criteria. A seller who achieves a higher percentage of perfect orders ranks better in Amazon. The criteria such as A-to-Z guarantee claims, buyer-initiated messages, cancellations, chargebacks, late shipments, negative feedback, and refunds need to be taken care of by the seller to have a higher percentage of perfect orders.
16. Order Defect Rate (ODR)
Order Defect Rate is one big factor that Amazon takes into consideration seriously to decide whether they should promote or demote you. Defects can be any negative feedback against your product, A-to-Z guarantee claim, shipment problems, or chargebacks. Once any such claim has been made by a customer, it can’t be taken back even if the customer removed the feedback. So it is better to avoid any such occurrences if you don’t want your product rank to dip.
17. Exit Rate
Exit Rate is an important metric, calculated by the percentage of times a customer views your listing and then exits Amazon. When your customers view the product page but exit it abruptly, it increases the Exit Rate. Amazon keeps track of this metric as well. So try to keep the exit rates low in order to rank well and convert more.
Conclusion
Amazon cares so much about their buyers and helping them reach their desired product. They consistently evaluate their algorithms “using human judgments, programmatic analysis, key business metrics, and performance metrics”.
Ensure that you select the most relevant category for your product while setting up your product listing. Avoid delivering redundant information that is already written in other fields such as title, author, product description, bullet points, brand, etc. Also, comply with the limits that are set for various fields. You may use a single space to separate keywords without using commas semicolons or carets. Fill in all the fields in the listing setup page to complete your product listing. This practice shows Amazon as well as your product viewers that you are providing complete details of the product.
You may not find it easy to run your business on Amazon, but you can always try running it the right way. The Amazon ranking algorithm is growing and will keep on growing more complex. If you are someone who has just started out in Amazon, go ahead with your pursuit because it is going to be further complex from thereon. So keep in mind the factors influencing your ranking and start selling on Amazon now.
If all these still seem confusing to you, do not worry, we’re here to help you. We’ve got an amazing team of digital marketing experts to assist you.
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