While Amazon SEO improves organic rankings over time, Amazon PPC boosts sales immediately. SEO and PPC are both powerful marketing tools that should be combined to amplify the overall Amazon strategy and increase sales and revenue. Taking a holistic approach to search on Amazon is recommended to ensure search integration and build campaigns that drive long-term success.
Understanding the difference between Google vs Amazon is key for building an integrated search strategy
Amazon and Google, although vastly different in many ways, share the similarity that they are both search engines functioning with the help of an algorithm. Whilst Google uses its algorithm to rank trillions of webpages, Amazon has developed its own proprietary algorithm, the A9 algorithm, to rank the millions of products available on the platform.
Although consideration behaviour is growing on Amazon, predominantly users come to Amazon to do one thing – buy. Amazon wants to cater for this commercial intent, as well as fulfilling its own goal of revenue generation, by making the buying process as easy to progress through as possible. Therefore, the A9 algorithm is built in a way that will ensure users are shown the products that they are most likely to buy, to satisfy the needs of both Amazon and the customer.
What are the key factors to improve Amazon product rankings?
The key factors that the A9 algorithm considers when ranking products are mainly commercially focused. Do users have access to all the information that they need to make a purchase? Is the product well-stocked and competitively priced? Have others had positive experiences with the product/brand?
While all of these increase the probability of a purchase, the biggest predictor of whether a user will purchase a product is the product’s previous sales success: its sales velocity. Therefore, for a product to rank well it needs to sell well. But, to sell well, a product must be discoverable to users.
Why do you need to build a holistic search strategy on Amazon?
Ranking and selling on Amazon is a reciprocal process: in order to sell your product, it must be visible to users, but in order to achieve high rankings, the product must have a high sales velocity. This is where organic and paid search can support one another on Amazon.
Utilising Amazon’s paid advertising capabilities will boost your product listings to prominent positions in the search results. This will attract customers and increase click-through rates.
A good Amazon SEO strategy ensures that your product listing is optimised, increasing likelihood of a conversion In this way, Amazon SEO plays an integral role in ensuring optimal ROI of Paid Amazon campaigns through increasing conversion rate. The sales generated from the integration of PPC and SEO will increase the sales velocity of your product, which will contribute to an increase in, and sustainability of, organic rank.
A good Amazon SEO strategy is also a prerequisite for successful PPC campaigns in other ways. Understanding keyword targeting can help to ensure budget is not wasted on targeting irrelevant terms.
How to influence Amazon organic rankings and boost advertising returns
There is no shortage of criteria to consider when optimising product listings – page optimisation is an important ranking factor in Amazon and more importantly, one that you can influence by optimising your own content. Simply put – higher position translates into more visibility and more visibility leads to higher sales and revenue.
To optimise your product’s organic visibility on Amazon and boost the effectiveness of your advertising investment, you should consider reviewing the following:
Product Title
Product titles should be within 150-200 characters, address main product features and details concisely, in addition to prioritising the most relevant keywords at the front of the title.
Bullet Points
Typically, Sellers are allowed up to 500 characters per bullet point, while Vendors can only have up to 255, depending on the category. The bullet points should mention the product’s features and benefits by order of importance and include secondary keywords where relevant in a clear, uncluttered sentence structure. Sellers can add up to 5 bullet points on Amazon, whereas Vendors are allowed twice as many.
Product Description
Try to connect to the buyer's needs by creating a captivating description. Describe major product features such as style, size, and product use, and include accurate dimensions, care instructions, and warranty information.
Images
- Ensure the product is on pure white background (RGB = 255,255,255)
- 1000-pixel image quality minimum
- Ensure the product fills 85% or more of the image frame
- Include a minimum of 5 different images that display the product in different angles, outside the packaging, and in use
Reviews & Ratings
In order to qualify for retail readiness, an ASIN needs to have at least 15 customer reviews with an average rating of 3.5 stars minimum. Although this cannot be manipulated by the seller, listening to customer feedback can provide insight into product enhancements or areas that require clarification in the product description.
Product Availability
Ensure that your products are in stock as often as possible. Out of stock products cannot sell, so if your product is consistently out of stock you will not earn prominent positions in the search results. Additionally, your chances of “winning the Buy Box” will be greatly diminished, giving competitors opportunity to outsell you. Amazon Marketing Services campaigns also require you to have stock for at least the last 30 days before launching a campaign.
Enhance Brand Content
Enhanced content can be leveraged to add images and rich text to the product description to highlight the value proposition and brand story of the product. Additionally, any supplemental information not included in the product page can be input here.
How Amazon SEO Boosts the Efficiency of PPC Campaigns
Amazon advertising campaigns and especially Amazon Display are based on relevancy. Ads will show if your products are relevant to the search terms. Therefore, ensuring that your product listings include relevant keywords will amplify rankings and visibility on Amazon. Once the user has clicked on an ad, finding the right information on the pages will increase the chance of conversion. Thus, Amazon SEO’s optimisations are helping the CVR of Amazon ads.
How Amazon PPC Supports Organic Ranking
As established, sales velocity is a ranking factor in Amazon and one that could influence product visibility. New products often struggle due to lack of sales history and performance data, which could negatively impact organic rankings. Amazon PPC can drive instant traffic to these products and help Sellers to generate sales quicker. More sales generated via paid ads will in turn have a positive effect on a product’s organic rankings.
Ensuring Long-Term Success
Taking a holistic approach to search on Amazon is key for both short-term and long-term success. Building up the initial visibility of a new product or brand through paid search will help to generate sales, subsequently contributing to the build-up of organic rank. In the long-term, paid search can be used to maintain traffic, allowing for the continued and consistent build-up of sales velocity as well as bolstering other key ranking factors such as ratings and reviews. This will all feed into organic authority and rank, key for long-term success.
For more on how you can boost results through Amazon, check out our ultimate guide to Amazon – the 2020 EU Amazon Advertising Playbook. It gives the lowdown on establishing a presence, building momentum with paid advertising, and more.
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