Recently, Amazon search results have gotten a little wonky. What’s the deal?
Over the weekend, attentive Amazon sellers started noticing strange, extreme changes in organic rank for their products. Suddenly, products that were mainstays atop organic search results vanished. Instead of appearing in the most desirable digital real estate on Amazon, they could be found deeper in the seldom seen pages of search.
As a result, sales plummeted for many top sellers as visibility severely declined. Meanwhile, product listings that typically don’t receive much traction benefitted from taking up top spots usually held by competitors.
Destaney Wishon of BetterAMS discovered the issue early on, and made a quick and helpful explainer outlining an example of the issue with Amazon search results.
While many Amazon sellers state things have returned to normal for them, some sellers report the glitch has not been resolved as of Tuesday. Additionally, Amazon has not released a statement indicating that the issue has been completely resolved.
As any Amazon seller will tell you, organic rank remains the holy grail for Amazon sellers. Any rise or drop will significantly impact a product’s bottom line. With this in mind, monitoring your organic or advertising rank can be vital for tracking your product’s performance.
ALWAYS know when your keywords are rising or falling within Amazon search results with Keyword Manager
Of course, we’ll continue to monitor the situation as more information becomes available.
Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop with all things Amazon.
As a new seller on Amazon, you’re probably eager to break into the marketplace and start moving products. But there’s one major challenge that stands in your way: competition. The Amazon marketplace is giant, and it’s only getting bigger. As of the first quarter of 2020, third-party sellers make up 52% of paid units sold on Amazon, and that number will keep going up. Viral Launch is here to help with our Amazon Competitor Research software suite.
Just because the market is crowded, however, doesn’t mean new sellers can’t find an in. They just have to learn to use the competition to their advantage — with Amazon competitor research tools. A competitor analysis of Amazon is the best way for new sellers to maximize the effectiveness of their listings and get ahead of the competition.
Don’t get stuck in a spot where you create a product listing and don’t know what to do next. Learn to be savvy about the competition with a high-quality Amazon seller competitor analysis, and carve out a spot for yourself in the marketplace.
Enter the Solution: Competitor Intelligence
Our Amazon competitor research tool, Competitor Intelligence, gives you the best shot at cutting through that market chaos and finding success among fierce competition. Essentially, Competitor Intelligence allows you to compare your listings to competitors’ listings by giving you an actionable Amazon seller competitor analysis to inform your strategy.
Get the Fullest Picture With Product Analysis
You can review how your product listing compares to competitor listings in the Product Analysis tab in Competitor Intelligence. You can contrast various information such as price, review quantity, review rating, listing copy, and images. This tool allows you to quickly see which keywords your competitors are ranking highly for — even if you’re not tracking those keywords. This makes it simple for you to see where you have potential to create selling points against them.
For instance, can you offer a lower price, even if it’s only temporary? Can you upload objectively better product photos? Is the quality of your product better? Product Analysis helps you isolate tangible advantages that you can highlight to drive sales.
Keep Track of Competitors’ Keyword Rankings
Then, you can do deeper competitor research to dissect competitors’ strategies using the Competitor Keywords tab. Competitor Intelligence allows you to find competitors’ most important keywords in under a minute. It shows you every keyword a competing product currently ranks for. Unlike other keyword research tools, it shows you what a competitor has ranked for historically. This gives you a more comprehensive view of a competitor’s overall advertising strategy.
Now, as a new seller, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to jump in right away and dominate those primary keyword areas, but you can use comprehensive competitor keyword data from Competitor Intelligence to find out which keywords competitors aren’t targeting.
These lower-volume keywords may not necessarily have the same sales potential as the ones your competitors are targeting, but they can still drive some conversions for you at a lower advertising cost and with fewer competitors. As you gain visibility and drive sales through these keywords, you’ll begin to generate reviews and raise your organic search rankings.
Over time, you’ll build up your sales history and accumulate enough reviews to begin tackling some larger keyword areas and competing with the big guys.
Tracking Competitors in Real Time
Competitor Intelligence is also the only Amazon competitor research tool that updates you daily, or even hourly, on changes in important competitor data.
Product notifications alert you when a top competitor raises its prices, for instance, so you can take advantage of that as soon as possible. Keyword notifications also alert you when a competitor’s keyword rankings change, allowing you to stay up to date at all times without having to manually check the competitor’s rankings throughout the day. Competitor Intelligence is the only tool out there that will give you this real-time view of the landscape, and with it, you’ll be able to react quickly and effectively to optimize your products.
Valuable competitor analysis on Amazon will give you insights into both how your products compare to other listings and how your competitors interact with the market. Competitor Intelligence offers this through unmatched product analysis and competitor keyword research.
It may be unrealistic to expect to jump right in and sell alongside your top competitors, but the right data can reveal the best opportunities. Once you’re in, Competitor Intelligence will inform your strategy as you build your products up to the top of the increasingly crowded Amazon marketplace. And the earlier you start, the better.
Using search volume to determine the number of Amazon giveaway units needed to drive keyword ranking is an extremely flawed method.
A significant number of sellers are running promotions and giving away far too many units in promotions. When asked how they are determining the number of units they are giving away, many sellers site their keyword tool. As a result of these bloated suggestions, countless sellers are wasting thousands of dollars in extra inventory and advertising spend.
In this post, I’ll show you what’s wrong with using search volume. And then I’ll walk you through the current best strategies for determining the right number of units for a giveaway. After running over 30,000 product launches, we’ve learned a thing or two about what it takes to drive ranking, including how to best estimate number of giveaway units.
Two Major Flaws In Using Keyword Volume To Estimate Giveaway Units
Flaw #1: Conversion Rate
Remember that sales volume, not search volume, is the important metric for keyword ranking. If there are a hundred-zillion searches per month for a product but only 10 sales, you only need to drive enough sales to compete with those 10 purchases.
Conversion rate from search to purchase can be drastic. We have access to some insider, Amazon data, and what it shows is that for some keywords, the percentage of searches that result in a sale can be as high as 50% and as low as 0.01%.
Talk about a drastic difference! That means if a keyword gets 10,000 searches per month, there could be anywhere from 5,000 sales to 10 sales.
There’s no way around this huge variation in conversion rate. What if you took an average? Let’s call the middle a 25% conversion rate. That would mean 25% of 10,000 searches are sales. So monthly sales would be 2,500. But 2,500 giveaway units isn’t going to do much if the keyword is actually converting at 50%. That would mean sales were actually 5,000.
On the other hand, it would be extremely excessive to give 2,500 units if the conversion rate was only 0.01%. In that case, you would have only needed 10 sales. But instead you threw away inventory.
As you can see, without an understanding of conversion rate, estimating Amazon giveaway units using search volume is very misleading.
Flaw #2: Sales Distribution
The second major flaw in determining number of giveaway units from search volume is the distribution of sales across search results. Sales distribution can be summed up with this simple question: what percentage of shoppers who run a search, purchase the #1 ranking product? What about the #5 ranking product? The #15?
If 100% of shoppers who search a keyword end up purchasing the #1 ranking product, sales distribution would be low. Actually, in the case of 100%, the distribution would be 0.
If 10% of customers purchased the #1 ranking product, another 10% purchased the #2 ranking product, and so on, the distribution would be higher and would look like this.
So what is the likelihood that sales distribution is consistent for most keyword searches on Amazon?
If you search, “AA batteries,” you don’t have to scroll very far before you find what you’re looking for. The products are all generally the same with minimal difference other than price and quantity.
Conversely, when shopping for, “father’s day gift” or “baby bandana bib,” style and preference are important considerations for shoppers. Prospective customers are much more likely to browse the results, ultimately purchasing the style, bundle, or color they like most.
Now that you understand what sales distribution is and how it can vary wildly, you can begin to see the second flaw in using search volume to estimate number of Amazon giveaway units. Keyword tools do not consider sales distribution. In fact, they don’t have any information about sales distribution at all.
And that’s a problem for you as you determine the optimal number of giveaway units for your launch. Sales distribution plays a critical role in the number of sales your product needs to outrank the competition.
For example, let’s say 80% of the sales for a keyword search are split between the top 5 products. If your goal is just to land in the top 15, then you don’t actually need to compete with those top 5 products. You only need to match the other 20% of the sales for that keyword.
If you did want to land in the top 5 for that keyword, you would need to match the sales of those top 5 competitors. That would mean giving away enough product per day to match 80% of the sales for that search term.
Now let’s look at conversion rate and sales distribution together. Say conversion rate is 2.5% for that keyword with 100,000 searches. That’s 2,500 monthly sales. And if 80% of sales are distributed among the top 5 listings, that means 2,000 monthly sales are going to those top 5 sellers.
So if you want to land in position 6 – 15, you only need to compete with the remaining 500 monthly sales. If we assume that sales distribution between products 6 – 15 is even, we can estimate that each product has about 50 sales per month. Divide that by 30 days in a month, and you’ve got about 2 sales per day, or 2 units a day that you need to give away in your launch.
As you can see, estimating the number of giveaway units needed to be sold per day to match competitors is highly dependent on the conversion rate AND the sales distribution across the results. Both of these numbers are currently unknown to existing tools and can vary significantly across searches. These factors are what make keyword tool calculations a shot in the dark at best when it comes to giveaway unit recommendations.
How to Estimate the Number of Giveaway Units
First, let’s talk about how a launch works. The idea of a launch is to match or exceed the number of sales for listings on page one for your targeted keyword in a short amount of time. We recommend 7 days, as Amazon recognizes sales history in 7-day buckets.
In order to sell a large number of units in only a few days, you’ll likely need to use a giveaway platform. But how do you determine the number of Amazon giveaway units you need to match or exceed the monthly sales of your competition?
Unfortunately, there is no simple or straightforward answer for you just yet. We will, however, share the processes we have used here at Viral Launch to estimate the number of units to give for tens of thousands of launches over the last few years. We guarantee that this approach is far better than using search volume to estimate the number of Amazon giveaway units you need for a successful launch.
Step 1: Know Your Keywords
First and foremost, knowing your main keyword is critical to a successful Amazon business. Using an Amazon keyword tool such as Keyword Research, allows you to identify your product’s most relevant words. A good tool will help you prioritize by showing you search volume and relevancy for each keyword. We call that our Priority Score.
Step 2: Determine Your Budget
Your budget for your promotional campaign is an important factor in determining which keyword you should target. The higher the sales volume, the more units you will need to rank alongside the page one performers. If your budget is big, go for a keyword that gets a lot of sales. If your budget is smaller, go for a keyword with fewer sales.
Step 3: Determine Monthly Sales Volume for Your Keyword
Once you have selected the keyword you’re going to target based on your budget, search volume, and relevance to your listing, you need to determine the number of Amazon giveaway units to get ranking on page one.
Use a sales volume estimation tool like Market Intelligence to determine the number of sales your page one competitors are doing each month. This will allow you to see the sales volume you need to match or exceed over at least a seven day period.
A simple way to do the math is to take an average of sales for listings on page one you are looking to rank alongside. Let’s say you are looking to rank in the top 5 positions for your keyword and the average sellers are selling 3,000 units per month (100 units per day).
From your keyword research in Step #1, you should have a good feel for your market’s most popular keywords. Let’s say there are 2 high volume keywords, each highly relevant to your product market.
We would suggest giving away at 50% of the average sales volume. So 1,500 units per month or (1,500 / 30 days = 50 units per day) 50 units per day.
Multiply that by a minimum of 7 days of promotions to equal a suggested Amazon giveaway of 350 units.
We understand that the math is not perfect. There are potentially hundreds of words these top performing products are generating sales through, including PPC, outside traffic, etc. We are working hard to develop a solution for better determining the number of sales per keyword as well. However, until we have this more granular data, we are relying on this tried and true method of determining the number of units to sell from a solid metric, sales volume.
The Takeaway
Now that you understand the technique behind creating an Amazon giveaway strategy based on sales volume, NOT search volume, you can apply some of these techniques to your promotions. No matter what traffic source you’re using (i.e. discounted promotions, Amazon Sponsored Ads, or Facebook promotions) to reach page one, you need to match or exceed the average number of sales for your targeted keyword.
Basing these Amazon giveaway estimates on search volume alone could cost you tens of thousands of extra dollars and cut into the bottom line of your business. Take advantage of the advice and knowledge of the true Amazon experts at Viral Launch and make sure your next promotion sets you up for success.
Keywords are what set your listing up to rank well and sell well, but there’s a catch. People also need to understand what your product is and what it does from your copy. How can you inform shoppers and do Amazon search optimization at the same time? Join hosts Cameron Yoder and CEO Casey Gauss for this conversation with Viral Launch Lead Copywriter Yale Schalk. And find out how to set up the best possible listing with these 3 Amazon SEO tips.
Looking for an expert Amazon copywriter? Yale and the Viral Launch team would love to help you improve your Amazon search optimization. See pricing here!
CAMERON YODER:
Contrary to common belief, getting ranking on Amazon is not about lowering your BSR. It’s about getting sales attributed to a keyword. Keywords are what set your listing up to rank well and sell well, but there’s a catch. People also need to understand what your product is and what it does from your copy. How can you inform shoppers and capture all your product’s keywords at the same time?
I’m Cameron Yoder, your host for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success. In this show we leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 30,000 product launches and our experience working with 6500 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and, more importantly, the best practices for success as an Amazon seller.
In today’s episode I sit down with our Lead Listing Specialist, Yale Schalk, to talk about the best practices for writing an Amazon listing. We’ll talk about the keyword research, writing for Amazon SEO and how to convert shoppers. Let’s jump in.
So okay, we have Yale in with us today. Casey’s also sitting in on this.
CASEY GAUSS:
What’s up, guys?
CAMERON YODER:
So we’re talking to Yale today about listing optimizations. First, Yale, thank you so much for coming in on the show. How are you feeling about being on the podcast?
YALE SCHALK:
Awesome. Awesome, Cam. Really, really excited to debut on our expertly-produced podcast, which by the way I just want to say that everyone should be subscribed to, and you know, every morning you wake up just find your nearest rooftop and shout it and tell everyone. But yeah, excited for that and really excited to kind of jump into some key information that I really know is going to help a lot of people out there.
CAMERON YODER:
Yale is also already on the ball with recommending the podcast, which is great. I love it. Yale is our Lead Listing Specialist, okay? And he’s been a veteran writer with 10 years of experience writing about retail products. So he’s written for brands like Nike, Adidas and Reebok and is known in the office for his excellent taste in sneakers, okay? So actually Yale, what is your favorite pair of sneakers?
YALE SCHALK:
Oh, wow, that’s – it’s literally an impossible thing to answer. You know, obviously, I was raised on Michael Jordan and Air Jordan sneakers, so I can at least narrow it down to that, but from there it’s all bets are off. There’s just too many.
CAMERON YODER:
Well, all that being said, Yale is definitely deserving to be on this podcast talking about listing optimization when it comes to Amazon specifically. But before we dive into Amazon-specific SEO and Amazon-specific listing ops, I want Yale – Yale, can you touch on just SEO in general, SEO as a practice?
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely, for sure. So you know, when people think of, you know, the term SEO or, you know, properly search engine optimization, you know they think of Google, right? They think of, you know, their minds go right to Google because Google is this ubiquitous thing that is just out there. So but SEO is not confined to Google. You know, it’s like if you’ve ever seen the movie The Matrix, you know at the end when Neo sees everything in just this digital rain, and it’s just like streaming lines of green code everywhere, you know, I like to think of SEO like that. I think it’s, you know, it’s very much in the fiber of anything that you search on the internet, and it’s necessary, you know, any time that you type something into a search bar.
CASEY GAUSS:
Well put.
CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, The Matrix.
CASEY GAUSS:
I love that analogy. If you haven’t seen The Matrix you just missed out on a great analogy.
CAMERON YODER:
Watch The Matrix, buy some sneakers, and then you’ll be set. So that’s general SEO, right? So can you move further maybe into like, I don’t know, Amazon or Google specifically?
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely. So the way it works is basically that, you know, the input for a search is almost always language, and then the search algorithm uses that language to return a set of results, and then to get your content in that results list you have to give the algorithm basically what it wants. So then that begs the question, okay, so what does the algorithm want? In terms of Google SEO, that’s about proving credibility with, you know, relevant headings and meta-descriptions and links, and of course language for Amazon. It’s different from the standard SEO set up in that the results exist within Amazon’s platform. You know, for example, you don’t navigate to a different domain when you click on a result. So Google looks for site credibility with links and traffic, while Amazon looks for language, you know, or specifically keywords. So it’s really important for everyone to keep in mind that Amazon is really its own ecosystem when it comes to how searches are conducted and how those searches help determine the results you get when you or, you know, your potential customer, is looking for something.
CASEY GAUSS:
And I think it’s important to mention that – I think this is a stat from either 2016 or 2017, but over I think it’s like 55% of product searches begin on Amazon. So when it comes to king of search engines, when it comes to product searches, I think Amazon takes the crown.
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely.
CAMERON YODER:
And that’s something I don’t think a lot of people think of, simply put, Amazon as a search engine. But in fact, like you said, it is, and listings in a sense really are all about SEO when it comes to Amazon specifically. So Yale, would you be able to introduce to us just some tips, maybe three basic tips that you have for everyone when it comes to listing optimization and keyword optimization on Amazon?
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely, for sure. And you know, I think the good set up for this is like, you know, obviously everyone wants the highest visibility for their product. You know, ideally that’s page one. That’s what everyone wants to be on Amazon. So you really cannot afford to overlook the importance of keywords when assembling your product listing. You know you can have, and you know I never tire of saying this, but like you can have breathtaking photos, and you can have the most exquisite product description, but you know, without the proper keywords and the correct placement of those keywords in the listing, you know you’re basically – you know you’ve got a Ferrari with no engine. You know, it’s looking amazing, but it’s not going anywhere. So I just really want to emphasize, you know, first off that, you know, you can’t just throw information together and hope something happens. You know, I can tell you that it won’t. It doesn’t work that way. So it’s vital to get that keyword foundation in place.
So I would say for the first tip is plurals, plurals of words. So Amazon says that they account for plurals of words. So if you search swaddle blanket, you know, you’ll get different results than if you search swaddle blankets. So some listings will have, you know, both the plural and the singular form of the keyword while others won’t. So when someone searches blankets it’s, you know, hard for the algorithm to determine, you know, what exactly that person is expecting. So the algorithm is very smart, but it has its blind spots, and so one of the blind spots is it doesn’t know, you know, for example for this example that, you know, if you’re looking for multi-packs of swaddle blankets or if they’re looking for all the swaddle blankets on Amazon, so having both forms of the word, you know, or multiple forms of those words, those keywords, is really important for you to show up in any search related to your main search terms.
CAMERON YODER:
So tip number one, overall is suggesting to use both the singular and plural form of your primary keyword, or how many keywords do you think this would apply to?
YALE SCHALK:
I would say as long as you’re starting with your root keyword you want to kind of work in maybe the most common – and this is something that you’ll be able to kind of see in your keyword research, but and you’ll be able to notice patterns of what people are searching for, but usually you’ll just find like those simple little variations, those little, like little degrees of that root word, you know, just plurals and just different tenses of the word that people might throw in there when they’re searching for products.
CASEY GAUSS:
I think it’s important to mention also, I think one common mistake, and I don’t know if this is one of the tips, but you know, people always want to know am I indexed for this word. So just because you’re indexing for a word does not mean that you’re driving the same amount of keyword power or keyword juice, however you want to refer to it, to those words. So this is an important concept, and you’ll hear more about it.
YALE SCHALK:
For sure.
CAMERON YODER:
Let’s go on to tip number two.
YALE SCHALK:
Tip number two. Tip number two is keyword stuff the title. Yeah, you heard that right. Keyword stuff the title. So there’s been – this has always sort of been a philosophical debate on, you know, are you going to be rewarded if you keyword stuff? Are you going to be penalized if you keyword stuff? But I can tell you in the case of Amazon, in the Amazon world you’re going to be rewarded. So the title is definitely the most important, you know, real estate in your listing in terms of SEO. So you should really use as many keywords as you can fit, you know, without compromising quality or under-serving your character limit or overstepping that. I mean when you overstep that’s definitely something you’ll be penalized for, but so you know, what do I mean by compromising quality? So you know you have to make sure that you’re showing shoppers the information they’re looking for, like you know, things like ounces or fluid ounces might be important to consider, you know, if they’re considering price, or you know, certain features like dimensions or certifications like organic are there to include. So you know, this tip is really about just including as many super relevant keywords, you know, while leaving just enough space for those important, you know, product tidbits that people are looking for.
CASEY GAUSS:
And I always like to say, you know, I would much rather have, you know, a 3% lower click through rate because my title isn’t as beautiful but rank for, you know, twice as many keywords or three times as many keywords simply because I’m putting them in the title versus having that super short, you know, elegant, you know, four-word title that has like my brand name and just a few other words. Let’s say it’s a frying pan, so brand, you know, stainless steel frying pan. There are so many additional words that you need to be including in your title to maximize the position and total volume of keywords that you can rank for; well, rank well for. And so yeah, I would much rather have this longer title, rank for so many more keywords than you have this beautiful title that may drive slightly higher click through rates.
CAMERON YODER:
Yale, what’s your opinion on having the brand name in a title?
YALE SCHALK:
It’s awesome that you mentioned that because I was just going to follow up on that point. Yeah, a thing that I really want to talk about for a second is not insisting on including brand names in titles. I empathize with, you know, every seller that, you know, wants to do that. I mean, everyone wants to have the competitive advantage and get their brand out there, but I would say that you have to apply a pass/fail in terms of your brand name. So look at it this way. You just have to treat it as another keyword, and if there aren’t a ton of people searching for your brand name, then it’s always a good rule of thumb to substitute in an actual, you know, high-volume search term instead of your brand name. And I know that there might be a conception out there that, you know, people aren’t going to see your brand and you know, that’s something like that’s going to be a disadvantage for you, but you know, don’t worry. It will show up – you know, your brand is going to show up in the subheading. You just want to make sure that you make the most use of the title.
CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, to summarize it, people, you know, aren’t searching your brand name. If they are searching your brand name they’re going to see it in the search results. It says, you know, by brand in most categories. And even if not, if they’re searching for your brand name they should know what your packaging looks like because you should have cohesive labels or packaging or whatever in your photos. They will recognize your brand. You should not be concerned about them recognizing or not recognizing your brand. And by including that brand name in your title you’re just wasting super, super valuable character space.
CAMERON YODER:
I think the question should be what more valuable words you can put into your title that would take the place of your brand name.
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely.
CAMERON YODER:
Yale, what is tip number three?
YALE SCHALK:
Tip three, prioritize keywords and then write your copy. Yeah, this is another thing that I’ve seen a lot where maybe sellers get focused on, you know, really fleshing out their copy, their listing, and they’re focused on, you know, stuffing as much information and even sort of messaging, you know, that they’ve come up with into the listing. But I would say that, as we’ve said, you know keyword is king, and you really have to sort of like lay that foundation first and then, you know, work in your copy from there. You know, again, it seems to make a lot of sense to look at your listing from your sort of branding ideas and everything like that. But you’ve got to get the keywords right, and then you know, then you can provide the insight and wrap everything around that.
CASEY GAUSS:
I think this fits well, actually, with your second tip, which was keyword stuffing the title. In a lot of cases I think people have a rough time picturing where – and correct me if I’m wrong, Yale, but people have a tough time picturing where to get started with keywords, and so maybe they’ll write – they’ll try to eloquently put together like a string of words that connect well, maybe have some keywords in, and then they’ll try to like piece together other keywords that they want to put into the sentence that they’ve developed.
YALE SCHALK:
Right.
CASEY GAUSS:
When in this case you’re saying like no, start with the foundation, like with your title. Let’s say with your title. Start with the foundation of as many keywords of like a bunch of high-end keywords, keywords that are going to convert or have a lot of traffic leading to them. Start with that foundation of all those keywords, and then maybe piece them together. Is that what you’re saying?
YALE SCHALK:
Oh, for sure, for sure. I mean you really do, like we said, with the title you really have to get the right keywords up there upfront and you know obviously try to assemble those in, you know, the most beautiful way that you can and sort of balance, you know, walk that line of getting the keywords and getting the product information up there for people, and then from there it’s really just a matter of prioritizing.
CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, and this is what I was kind of alluding to earlier that I didn’t want to go into because I didn’t want to steal Yale’s thunder, but just because you are indexed for a word does not mean you are driving the same amount of ranking power. So what this means is just because you have, you know, keyword XYZ in your description that yes, you – or a bullet point or whatever – yes, you will be indexing for that, but just because you are indexing because the word is in a bullet point doesn’t mean you’re driving the optimal amount of power, and you’ll drive that optimal amount of power by having it in the title, preferably the highest volume keywords at the beginning.
CAMERON YODER:
Yale, can you touch on just a little bit about how much energy people should be putting into their bullets, into their descriptions or their backend keywords? I think a lot of people tend to freak out about the bullets as much as they do the title. And you already mentioned that the title is going to be your primary keyword ranking driver, but where are the other aspects of a listing when coming into this?
YALE SCHALK:
Oh wow, yeah, so you the – yeah, of course, like we said, the title is obviously the most important part, and you know, where the keywords are really prioritized there. But from there I think the most important point for crafting your listing is to keep in mind that buyers by and large are on Amazon to basically scan information. They’re not there to, you know, read novel length listings, and a lot of the times yes, you know, obviously your product information is obviously helpful when they’re, you know, comparing products and trying to make a decision. But a lot of the time they’re just scanning that information, and they need it very succinctly. They need it very concisely, and that’s really going to a lot of times be the difference between, you know, someone adding your product to cart and checking out and, you know, maybe passing over and going with someone else. So yeah, definitely keep that in mind. You know, think of it in terms of a priority list. So the title is the number one priority, then the bullets number two, product description three, and so on. So yeah, definitely assemble your information accordingly.
CAMERON YODER:
Yale, is there anything else that you’d want people listening to know, even if it’s just in general, about listing ops or if you’d want to summarize in any way? What more, what else do people need to know?
YALE SCHALK:
I would say, you know, I think the thing that comes to mind most for me is that each segment of the Amazon selling process is so important. And you know, that’s really why Viral Launch exists. You know, we exist to help you get that right. You know, so I would say use our software. Get in touch with us to do your product photography. Get in touch with us to do your listings. You know, we really have – we’ve really refined and really perfected the entire process. So you know, we really are here to help you be successful.
CAMERON YODER:
That’s great. Casey, do you have anything to add?
CASEY GAUSS:
No, Yale’s just been killing it. You know I think that too many people – you know, I’ve definitely seen plenty of people say, you know, I don’t have time for keyword research. I don’t have time to put into my listing so I just threw something up, and I’m moving on. Essentially people just look at it as just another box to check, and the thing is like Yale mentioned at the very beginning of the listing, or sorry, the podcast, the listing is absolutely critical to achieving success on Amazon, especially as you continue to enter more and more competitive markets. The greater the level of competition, the greater your listing needs to be from a, you know, keyword structure standpoint. So if this is not on point it’s going to be so much more difficult for you to drive rankings, to sustain rankings and to drive sales. And so if you aren’t willing to take the time to invest in this listing, you know, I think your Amazon FBA journey is going to be pretty difficult.
CAMERON YODER:
This is one of those – it’s another one of those no-brainers. It goes with photos. Like why would you not have the best photos possible? Why would you not have the best listing optimization possible? If you don’t optimize this, if you don’t put energy or effort into it, then you’re not going to get the results that you could if you would have put that time or those resources into it.
CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, it’s just another corner that people like to cut that really ends up biting them, you know, later.
CAMERON YODER:
Don’t cut corners. In this case one of those corners is listing optimization. So do not cut listing optimization.
CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, I got good feedback from somebody at a conference that I spoke at this weekend, and they loved the – you know, everybody’s looking for that silver bullet. And we say you don’t need a silver bullet. You need an arsenal. And one of those weapons in your armory needs to be an amazing listing.
CAMERON YODER:
Well thank you so much, Yale, for joining us and for providing so much valuable information on listing ops.
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely.
CAMERON YODER:
Well, that is all for this week. Thank you so much for listening to Follow the Data. For more insights and reliable information about how to succeed on Amazon, subscribe to the podcast and check us out on YouTube. For those of you who are looking for your next great product I have a series of product discovery walk-throughs videos on our YouTube channel that show you really how to leverage the tool. Just search Viral Launch on YouTube, go to our page and look for my face in one of the videos. Don’t forget to leave us a review and let us know what you think of the show. And if you really like the show and you like what we’re doing here at Viral Launch, tell your fellow Amazon sellers about us. We want to be a resource for sellers and the information source in this space. So please tell your friends, spread the word and share the show with other Amazon sellers.
Thank you, again, so much for listening. Feel absolutely free to hit us up on Facebook or tweet at us if you have any questions or feedback. And if you want to be featured on the show or have an Amazon related question or an idea for an episode, feel free to leave us a voicemail. Our number is 317-721-6590. Also feel free to just hit us up on Facebook or tweet at us if you want to be featured on the show, too. We can always take those questions and feature them on the show if you don’t want to call in. Until next time, remember, the data is out there.
It can be difficult to find reliable information in the Amazon FBA community. Many sellers turn to forms and Facebook groups to find answers, but there’s a lot of misinformation out there. In the Dispelling Myths series, Viral Launch applies data, knowledge, and experience gathered from running over 28,000 product launches and working with over 6,500 brands to 4 of the most common myths among Amazon FBA sellers.
90% Off Promotions
Myth: 90% off promotions no longer work for boosting keyword ranking. Amazon can see when a purchase is far below the listed price and disregards these sales in its ranking consideration.
Myth: Steadily increasing your sales over time is the best way to communicate to Amazon that your listing is gaining popularity and deserves a top slot on Page 1 of a search result page.
Myth: Setting yourself up on other platforms like Walmart, Ebay, or Shopify is the best way to build your brand, pull in traffic, and ensure long-term success for your business.
Myth: Amazon could suspend you any day for any reason and enjoys picking on the little guy for no reason. Tread carefully because Amazon is suspension happy!
What is the key to success on Amazon? It’s a pretty simple process when you break it down: source a great product, set up a listing to convert, and get in front of shoppers. To get your product in front of shoppers, one service we offer is called product launches, which increase your visibility on Amazon and put you in a position to sell. The Amazon selling process can be tricky and product launch mistakes are not something any seller wants to experience.
Here at Viral Launch, it’s our goal to help you succeed every step of the way. We run over 200 launches each day, and we’ve seen some awesome successes and some unfortunate failures. To help you learn from past mistakes, we’ll share 9 common product launch mistakes to avoid when running a promotion with Viral Launch.
What is a Product Launch?
When it comes to achieving rank on Amazon, sales are king. With Viral Launch promotions, we drive sales to your listing through product giveaways. We do this to promote brand awareness, which passively increases keyword ranking. For a launching period of up to 12 days, a seller will give a number of discounted units, typically for 85-95% off, targeting a specific keyword. As these sales are attributed to the keyword, the listing will move up the ranks. The goal is to reach page one, increase the product’s visibility to shoppers, and ultimately increase organic sales!
One-time-use coupon codes, coupled with a Max Order Qty. of 1 allow buyers to purchase one unit at the discounted price. At a pre-determined launch time, the product goes up on our buyer site, where everyday Amazon shoppers grab their favorite coupon for the day. The shopper is sent to your product on Amazon and purchases with his or her coupon.
The launch results typically take a couple of days to take effect, but you should start to see a change in rank anywhere from day three to day seven of the product launch. Once you’re ranking, after the promotion is completed, it’s up to the listing and reviews to convert well to maintain rank. If you’ve got a fully optimized listing with great photos, a great price, and a competitive number of reviews, you’ll be in the perfect position to outsell your competition – woohoo!
We’ve run over 14,000 launches and have seen countless product launch mistakes. Big… Small… We’ve seen them all. Here are some common errors to avoid when setting up your launch in the Launchpad.
1: There Was No Consultation with a Seller Coach.
Access to a Seller Coach is a free resource to sellers who want to utilize Viral Launch services, and our Coaches are experts in all-things Amazon. When sellers do not consult with a Seller Coach, the results are typically not as great, simply because Coaches know how to best optimize a launch. Our coaches have experience and data from thousands of launches and have seen plenty of successes and failures. A coach will work with a seller to analyze the product listing and determine an effective launch strategy, specific to that product. A launch will be most successful with the guidance and recommendations from a Viral Launch coach, so we definitely recommend getting in contact with the team! Email launches@viral-launch.com for a coaching consultation.
2: The Launch is Too Short.
We recommend launching for no less than 7 days…we’ve found it’s the sweet spot. A 3 or 4 day launch likely won’t establish the necessary sales history to increase your product’s ranking. On the other hand, a 10 day launch may require that you give away more units than necessary. With a 7-day launch, you’ll build up some credible history without giving excessive amounts of inventory.
3: Not Enough Units are Being Given Away.
To rank on page one for a target keyword, a seller must match or exceed the sales of the top sellers. When the number of promotional units is too small, the listing will not rank on page one for the target keyword. You must match or exceed the number of daily sales that the top sellers are moving, so if you give 10 units/day, and page one sellers are seeing 30 units/day, you will not land among them. In this case, you’d want to give 30-35 units/day so that Amazon would recognize that your listing is competitive with top sellers. Market Intelligence, our Amazon product research tool, can help to determine the number of units necessary to give away during a launch. In the Launchpad, when you enter your targeted keyword, you’ll find our Beta Launch Success Coach to help you to estimate the number of units needed to give per day to rank among the top sellers. For further instructions or to create the most optimized launch strategy possible, contact one of our Seller Coaches who are eager to help!
4: Too Many Keywords are Targeted.
Far too often, sellers target multiple keywords, not understanding how this will affect their rankings. Let’s break it down: Targeting multiple keywords dilutes the giveaway in a sense. For instance, let’s say you’re running a launch and giving away 200 units over a 7-day period. Take a look at the graph below:
With a launch targeting one keyword, all 200 units are attributed to that keyword. In this example, the necessary 200 units for this keyword will boost the product to page one because it’s matching the ~200 weekly sales that the top sellers are seeing. With the same launch targeting two keywords, the units are split in half so that only 100 units are attributed to each keyword. In this example, 100 units towards each keyword would not rank the product on page one for either keyword. Since page one sellers are moving around 200 units/week, a 100 units launch won’t convince Amazon’s algorithm that you’re competitive with those top sellers.
In this scenario, it would be best for the seller to only target one keyword, so that the desired ranking can be achieved. Or, the seller could give more units overall and to have a better opportunity to rank on page one for both keywords. Essentially, the more keywords you target, the more units you should give away.
5: The Coupons are Not Active When Tested.
After submitting a launch, it will show as pending approval from our team. Around 3:00pm EST on the afternoon before the launch goes live, our team will test one coupon. If the coupon is activated and set up correctly, we will approve the launch. If there is an issue with the launch, we will deny it and send you a message with the reason as to why.
When a promotion is created in Seller Central, Amazon requires a 4-hour window before activation. We strongly suggest inputting the launch after this 4 hour time frame so that there is no chance your coupons are inactive by the time we check them. Even if we check your coupons just one hour before they go live, we will have to deny the whole launch. To avoid coupon issues, we only approve launches with live coupons, so be sure that your coupons are live by the time you’ve submitted the launch for approval!
6: The Giveaway Price is Too High.
We typically recommend a giveaway price around 90-95% off retail, and our buyers are accustomed to seeing products around $1-$3. We want to be sure that we’ve got the best shot at moving the necessary inventory so that your launch is successful. For a more specific pricing suggestion, simply ask one of our coaches who would be glad to give you a recommendation.
7: The Max Order Quantity Isn’t Set.
This can turn out to be a very costly mistake. Before the fall of 2016, Amazon offered the option to set up $ off coupons. Setting these up, along with one coupon per customer and one-time use options, made it so that one customer could only get one product. It was fairly simple and straightforward.
In November of 2016, Amazon took away the $ off option for promotions, leaving % off as the only way to create coupons. In Seller Central, when you set up % off coupons, there is no way to set up a promotion that will allow you to restrict a customer from being able to grab 999 units with one coupon code. In order to protect your inventory, you need to set the Max Order Quantity to 1 for each SKU that the coupons apply to. If your Max Order Quantity is not set when running a promotion, you are putting your inventory in major jeopardy. This step cannot be overlooked!
We’re able to set your Max Order Quantity programmatically in our system through accessing your MWS account. Check out our video explaining how to protect your inventory in the Launchpad.
8: The Listing is Not Optimized.
Last but certainly not least, your entire listing (and especially your title) should be fully optimized before a launch. This is for two main reasons: ranking and conversions.
Ranking: Your title needs to be strong in order to fully utilize the launch. Although launches target one keyword, each sale is funneled through every keyword in the title. That means every word is fair game for a ranking boost with sales. With a fully optimized title, you’ll see a boost for multiple relevant keywords as sales flow through your title. Check out our blog post on How to Optimize Your Amazon Listing for Maximum Keyword Ranking for more detailed information on that topic.
Conversions: Your entire listing should be optimized with the goal of the highest conversion rate possible. This includes your price, photos, and copy. Once the launch has placed the product on page one, it’s completely up to the listing to convert well organically and maintain rank. Each listing element must be up-to-par to keep up with the top sellers. You don’t want to lose rank after all of the time and effort it took to achieve it!
9: The Listing Doesn’t Convert Post-Launch.
We often get the question, “How long is my ranking going to stick on page one after the launch?” It isn’t about sticking. It’s all about converting. Too often, we see sellers waste money by running a launch to achieve rank, ultimately to fall right back down due to a lack of organic sales. Maintaining rank is all about converting organically post-launch.
If page one sellers are seeing ~25 units/day on your specific keyword, you must continue selling competitively with them to maintain your page one rank. After a launch, if you’re only seeing 5 sales/day, your listing is going to slide down into the abyss of unseen listings. This is why we put so much emphasis on putting the time, money, and effort into having a listing that converts pre-launch. You’ll want to position your listing for success, so that it can sell competitively once it’s reached page one. The goal is to sell the necessary number of units (~25 in this example) each day at full price after the launch to be competitive with the top sellers. Then, you too will be a top seller!
Conclusion: Avoid Product Launch Mistakes
Running a promotion definitely isn’t a small investment; we understand. That’s why we want to be sure that you fully utilize your launch! Learn from others, and avoid these product launch mistakes when setting up your promotion in the Viral Launch Launchpad.
And as always, for more specific and tailored suggestions, we strongly recommend contacting one of our Seller Coaches by sending an email to launches@viral-launch.com. Happy selling!
Amazon is an incredibly vast and complex machine. While intimidating to some who have yet to find their footing, to others the complexity creates an immense frontier waiting to be explored and conquered. It seems that every day some frontiersman discovers a new trick or topic that somehow changes the Amazon private label community’s mindset or selling practices.
The brilliant Viral Launch Team made an interesting discovery over the holiday season. Have you ever been curious how Amazon decides which words to place in a product’s Canonical URL? Do you know how to influence the words that Amazon places in the canonical?
We’ve cracked the code and uncovered some key truths to keep in mind when building your listing’s title. With this understanding, you can dictate to Amazon which keywords should be in your product’s canonical URL.
What Is An Amazon Canonical URL?
A Canonical URL is a direct link to a product’s detail page that contains keywords pulled by Amazon, seemingly arbitrarily, from the product’s title and separated by hyphens. In the SEO world, this is generally referred to as the URL slug.
To find a product’s canonical URL you can either visit the product’s page through a search result or you can inspect the page elements using your browser’s developer tools: search the word “canonical” using Command + F (or Control + F for PC users), and copy the given Canonical URL. Side Note: the only reason I mention inspecting the page elements is because we have seen discrepancies in the canonical URL that shows in the address bar and the canonical that shows in the page’s code. We’ve found the inline canonical to be the “true” canonical.
The Benefit of Keywords In Your Amazon Canonical URL
Google SEO
The canonical URL is the Amazon product URL that Google indexes for search results. Run a search for “iphone scratch resistant case amazon”, and you’ll see the URLs they are indexing.
As you can see from this screenshot, Google is highlighting the keywords from the search that are found within the product’s canonical URL. We have done our fair share of Google SEO, and the Canonical URL is one element of an Amazon product listing that is ripe for leveraging ranking!
Amazon SEO
Unfortunately we don’t have a definitive answer as to whether or not the keywords in a listing’s canonical URL have impact on keyword ranking within Amazon. There have been rumors without any supporting evidence that it does. However, it is very difficult to discern with much confidence.
The reason it is so hard to properly attribute keyword ranking to the content in the canonical is that the same keywords are also found in the title, which has major influence on keyword ranking. Discerning where the keyword ranking attribution is derived from is next to impossible.
We are working to leverage our keyword data to help find any potential evidence, and we’ll let you know if we make a discovery. If you have more definitive data, we would love to hear it! Please, shoot us an email or leave a comment down below.
“Information is the oil of the 21st Century, and analytics is the combustion engine.” -Peter Sondergaard
Viral Launch was founded as a promotional Amazon product launching service. We built a massive list of discount hungry reviewers, created some software to automate the promotional process, and have been scaling ever since. The experience has been phenomenal.
Achieving Amazon Keyword Ranking
We’ve had the privilege of working with thousands of brands across every major category on Amazon. This has provided us with a tremendous amount of data and experience. It’s that data and experience that allows us to build better tools and services, stay ahead of algorithm shifts, as well as provide expert recommendations and coaching.
Throughout Launch Week we’ve provided discounts on our services that all play a crucial role in helping you build a successful Amazon business. Today we discuss a couple of aspects of the Viral Launch system that can help you achieve success in increasing your listing’s Amazon keyword ranking!
Our All-Knowing Program
As we’ve mentioned before, we track multiple keywords associated with every product that goes through our ranking platform. This has allowed us to create an incredible program, by which we are able to present it with a keyword a client wants to rank for, and it spits back the results of past launches targeting the same keyword. Essentially, our account executives can ask our all-knowing program, “Hey, what will it take to get a product ranking for this keyword?” in which the program spits back suggestions based on past launches. It’s amazing!
The program removes a lot of the guesswork (although our guesswork is generally spot-on), which has led to a lot of successful and satisfied customers! As we continue to build out this program, it will only become better equipped to provide more insights and make your launches even more effective!
Account Executives
Right now, one of the largest benefits to take advantage of is the FREE (for now) access to our account executives. The team has managed seller accounts, they’ve coached sellers, and observed thousands of products and launches. They have effectively, “seen it all” when it comes to the Amazon marketplace and are an immense help to the sellers they work with. They also have access to all the data we’ve generated from our over 9,000 product launches. That is insight only a very small amount of, if any, people in the world have access to.
Account Executives will help you:
Craft launch strategies
Analyze your products and market and provide suggestions accordingly.
Navigate both the Viral Launch & Amazon platforms
Be more successful!
Why do we offer our account executives for free? Because we want you to be successful. We want you to reach new heights whether it’s by using our platform or not. Our team increases your chances of success by offering their expertise when it comes to building a business on Amazon.
If you are interested in learning more specifically about how effective our launching service is and/or how it works. You can checkout a blog post of ours from May where we go a bit more in depth!
Today we have a one-time $50 off coupon for our industry-admired launching service as well as FREE access to our account executives.
To get setup with one of our team members, you can send an email with a brief note to launches@viral-launch.com!
“I still work hard to know my business. I’m continuously looking for ways to improve all my companies, and I’m always selling. Always.” – Mark Cuban
Over the last two years we’ve launched over 9,500 products and created hundreds of listings. We track multiple keywords for each listing we promote, which provides us with an incredible amount of data and insight! Here are the major keys to understanding how to optimize your listing for optimal success.
Drive Sales By Ranking For Everything
As we mentioned on a blog post (Product Launches More Effective Than Ever),Amazon’s A9 algorithm is highly (and usually exclusively) favoring the keywords contained in your listing. Sales are still king to achieving keyword ranking, but you must have the relevant keywords within your listing in order to achieve ranking for them.
There have been a number of instances in which a seller launching a product through our system, comes to us because they are not seeing their targeted keyword increasing in the search rankings. When we investigate, we discover they didn’t have one of the targeted keywords anywhere in their listing.
That sounds like a no brainer, but when you consider the fact that there are many possible search terms possibly related to your product, hitting each one can be a daunting task. Amazon is cracking down on listings not adhering to character limit specifications, making it even more difficult to hit all those possible search terms.
For example, if you don’t have the keyword “best” in your listing (preferably your title), then your listing may not show up when potential customers search “best grill gloves”, or “best gloves for grilling”, etc..
Word forms, tense, and pluralization all play a factor in how your product performs in search.
Placement also plays a factor. With that said, it is worth mentioning that our data, has shown a decrease in the degree to which Amazon weights the keyword placement.
The upside to the complexities of building an Amazon listing is that if your listing is well optimized, promotions and/or organic sales can help you rank for an insane number of keywords.
Here is an example of a launch we ran for a customer in the mid-high competition supplement market targeting just one keyword. Because his listing was well optimized, you can see he was able to achieve keyword ranking for 10 competitive keywords!
If your listing is not well optimized, you’re missing out on the opportunity of ranking for many more keywords! That means you are also missing out on sales!
Optimize Content For Conversions
Once your product is ranking in search and customers are clicking on it, you have to be able to convince them to buy! What is the point in ranking if you are not able to drive sales?
Truly great listings are able to synergistically marry keywords with sales inducing language.
Your content has to be well poised to convince the potential customer that your product is exactly what they are wanting to buy.
After writing hundreds of listings, we’ve developed a series of best practices that help us create the best listings on Amazon. In our listing optimizations, not only do we provide the keyword driven and sales inducing content, but our branding expert also conducts a product presentation analysis that offers tremendous insight into how customers perceive your product and brand from an outsider’s perspective.
As Amazon becomes more and more competitive, you HAVE to do everything extremely well in order to compete let alone survive. We want you to prosper! So we’ve put together an extremely talented team that can help you go above and beyond your competitors and take your sales to a new level!
We would love to help improve your sales by increasing your listing’s potential keyword exposure and sellability, so we have a 50% off discount, but only for the next 24 hours!
Amazon’s Latest Algorithm Change And How You Can Get Ahead
Originally Posted 5/12/2016
“War is 90% information” – Napoleon Bonaparte
As the secrets of the A9 ranking algorithm remain locked deep within the Amazon vault, we rely on data to reveal its inner workings and logical constructs. Without documentation and notification of algorithmic updates, staying ahead can be difficult. Even for sellers launching ten or so products, being sure of an algorithm update and its new principles can be extremely difficult. There is simply not enough data.
In today’s era of hyper competition and rapid technological change, data, and our ability to harness it, is our greatest ally. We pride ourselves on understanding the in’s and out’s of ranking products within Amazon’s organic search and we leverage data to develop that understanding. Over the past two years we have run nearly 8,000 product launches for 3,500+ products, and worked with sellers doing $100m+ /year on Amazon. This is not to boast, but rather to help illustrate the incredible volume of data we have been able to aggregate. We programmatically track the keyword ranking of each launch that runs through our platform, allowing us to know what parameters make for a successful product launch.
Approximately 60 days ago, we noticed a change in the results being produced from our promotional giveaways all else equal. We’ve seen plenty of times over the span of a week or so, odd behavior in terms of launches. This odd behavior typically lasts for around 7-10 days but then all returns to normal. Initially we believed the odd behavior was just another one of those weeks, but ~60 days later and this seemingly “odd behavior” seems to have stuck. We have been anticipating a ranking algorithm update for promotional giveaways for some time, but we had never anticipated that the update would have such positive effects.
Change Is Good (At Least This Time)
In order to explain the change in Amazon’s ranking algorithm properly, I feel it’s important to provide a brief backstory on how the algorithm allotted keyword ranking prior to the change. This will provide the context with which to understand the contrast.
The largest contributing factor to keyword ranking was sales (there are about 1,000,000 other things that contribute to a product’s ranking, but this is the largest and the one we will focus on here). Prior to the algorithmic change, what drove ranking for a particular word was largely the keyword which that sale was driven through. For example, if a customer searches “garcinia cambogia”, selects the product, and completes a purchase, Amazon would attribute keyword ranking boost for the product for the keyword “garcinia cambogia”. There would be little attribution for any other keyword associated with the product (ex. Fat burner, weight loss, etc.). Logically, it makes sense right? The more customers who purchase your product after searching a given set of keywords, the higher it will appear in organic search for that particular key term.
Fast forward to present day and we are seeing somewhat different results. Initially it may not sound like anything worth noting, but hear us out. Making adjustments according to the algorithm’s new rules can be a game changer, and we’ve seen it hundreds of times already.
We’ve always been told and known that the keywords in your product’s title is the most important and controllable field to place your product’s keywords. This is Amazon Private Label 101. Post algorithm change and that basic fundamental has become 100X more important. In the past Amazon boosted the keyword ranking for almost exclusively the keyword which drove the sale (Example, buying after searching the keyword “garcinia cambogia” provides a boost in ranking for only “garcinia cambogia”).
With the latest algorithm update, EVERY keyword in your product’s title AT THE TIME OF SALE is fair game to receive a MAJOR boost in keyword ranking! This means that when running a promotional launch, granted you have a product title that is optimized for keyword maximization, you could find yourself ranking page one for 10+ high to mid-competition keywords relative to your product. That means the ROI on promotional giveaways has skyrocketed! In the past, a targeted launch would allow a product to rank for a single keyword (up to 4 targeted keywords), whereas now we’ve run launches in mid-volume markets that walk away ranking page 1 for over 30 keywords!
Data To Prove Our Hypothesis
The team has been working hard to compile a massive amount of data to understand precisely how the new algorithm update is attributing keyword ranking. Running 200+ launches a day allows us to see exactly what is and is not working. We are breaking titles and bullet points down word by word to understand how Amazon is parsing the content and adjusting keyword ranking post-sale accordingly. I want to provide as much information as possible to help illustrate exactly how you can take advantage of the update, but one of our greatest assets is our massive aggregated data, so we don’t want to give away the farm. 🙂
This is not a particularly good title as I’m sure you can tell. In case you are unaware, the word “omega 3” is a very relevant keyword to the product. Let’s say we ran a healthy promotion to this product with a focus on the keyword “omega 3”. Prior to the algorithm shift, the product would have landed on page 1 for the search term “omega 3” just a few days after the promotion kicked off. Post-update, approximately 80% of the time, we see NO movement at all for the keyword because it was not in the product’s title or top few bullet points. We’ve tried using every URL on the market the Heatseeker, Dynamic, Organic, etc., but no movement. We saw this many times. Their launch was not all for naught as the launch did produce page 1 rankings for other keyword variations found in their product’s title, such as “fish oil pills” and “fish oil capsules”.
Illustration 2: Product Title: “Best Gym Jump Rope with Bag For Men by Fitness Brand”
This is a great example of the degree to which rankings are being affected by the algorithm change. If we were to run a small promotion to a product with the above title targeting the keyword “jump rope”, we would expect to find the product ranking for the search term “Gym Bag for Men” (among 10+ other keywords). Yes, even though we targeted the “jump rope” keyword, because the title contains the keywords “Gym”, “Bag”, and “For Men” Amazon would push it to top of the ranks for that keyword phrase. Granted “gym bag for men” is not a high volume keyword. Finding your product page one for 10+ similar keywords, is great for collectively increasing your per day sales.
(The examples are both hypothetical but based on real data)
Crafting The Perfect Title
Now more than ever your product’s title, bullet points, and backend keyword submission need to be perfect; down to the character. Literally. Not including a single word in your title could cause you to miss out on rankings for a variety of keywords, which means missed sales. And those sales add up. Amazon has begun cracking down on listing character count limits, making things all the more difficult.
Analyzing hundreds of titles and thousands of keywords over the last two months, we have compiled a vast array of data which has allowed us to break down the perfect title composition to a science. Determining word placement and priority is crucial to maximizing your product’s keyword spread.
Let us put together the perfect title to maximize the keywords and keyword variations your product can rank for in Amazon search. We have the data, experience and creatives to craft a product title that will allow you to rank for the optimum number of keywords allowing you to dramatically increase sales!
And for the first 50 signups we have a $50 off coupon for you.
Use the coupon: MAXKEYWORDS to take $50 off.
This Is Only Temporary | Get It While It’s Hot
I am quite surprised that the algorithm has been updated as so. Logically, it does not seem to make much sense to weight the characters of a product’s title so heavily in determining ranking attribution. This has led to some odd search results post-promotion. In my opinion there is nothing better in determining a product’s relevance than the keywords that drive a sale. Organically, a customer is not going to buy a jump rope if it shows up in their search for “gym bag for men”. They will buy when they search “jump rope” or “jump rope for men”, because they are relevant search terms for the product. Simple as that.
Because this seems like such an odd move and a miss of the mark, I imagine this algorithm shift will not last for very long. I don’t see how it can. As always, we will be meticulously tracking and analyzing every launch that passes through our system. If/when we see an algorithm shift, we will be sure to report our findings. We are successful when you are successful, and knowledge is more than half the battle.
With that said, the ability to rank for a large volume of keywords in a single promotion is here now, so take advantage of it! With the increased ROI due to increased volume of keywords being ranked from a single promotion, why would you allow this opportunity pass you by? Launches are more effective now than ever!
To help with the cost of running promotions using Viral Launch during this opportune time we removed our monthly subscription minimums and are offering a $50 coupon off for your next month of launches whether it be your first product or not! In addition to the coupon, we are providing free access to our account managers. In order to get the optimal results from a Viral launch, we highly recommend working with one of our account managers normally reserved for our largest sellers. They will work with you personally to develop the ideal launch strategy for your brand or product and help you execute with authority.
Take $50 off your next month of launches.
Use the coupon: UPDATE2016.
To work with one of our account managers for free, simply shoot an email to launches@viral-launch.com to get started!
Warning Against Misuse
Although we have found products for less than relevant search terms inadvertently, make sure the keywords you place in your title abide by Amazon’s standards.
Take care not to violate Amazon’s Search and Browse Policy:
Misuse of Search and Browse: When customers use Amazon’s search engine and browse structure, they expect to find relevant and accurate results. To protect the customer experience, all product-related information, including keywords and search terms, must comply with the guidelines provided under Optimize Listings for Search and Browse. Any attempt to manipulate the search and browse experience is prohibited.
As we diligently track algorithm updates we will be sure to keep you updated, so you can continue to make intelligent and informed decisions!
We are constantly working to provide our clients and the community the best tools and opportunities to be successful in their Amazon businesses. We have a ton of fantastic tools and services in the pipeline that will allow us to help you grow and optimize your business in new ways. As Amazon becomes more competitive, sophistication and a focus to be the best is the only way to walk away on top and with profits in hand. We want to help you to do just that!
