When selling on Amazon, your success largely rises and falls on your ability to rank for keywords.
Products on page two of search results achieve a tiny percentage of overall sales, and so page one positioning is absolutely critical to the growth of your business.
But what exactly is keyword ranking, how is it determined, and how can you measure it in order to improve it? All that and more in this article!
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What is Amazon keyword rank?
It’s one of the more obvious statements you’ll read this week, but Amazon is a business designed to make as much money as possible.
As such its algorithm has been carefully designed to give the most visibility to the products likely to make the most sales.
The ranking algorithm takes into account a wide range of data points to position products in their respective positions – or “rankings”.
As Amazon sellers, it of course then becomes a big focus to do everything we can to improve the ranking of our products in relation to relevant search terms.
How do I improve keyword ranks?
Every time you make a sale on Amazon, the algorithm will give a “ranking boost” to each of the keywords in your listing – so it’s essential you do a good job of keyword research.
It will give the biggest boost to the keywords in your title, so take extra care there.
So, the more sales you make, the more your keyword ranking will improve.
To get the biggest increase in ranking you’ll need to drive sales from that specific keyword.
For instance, if you want to rank some blue light glasses for the keyword “blue light blockers”, as long as the words blue, light and blockers are in your listing, each sale will give you some extra juice on this phrase.
But to really drive an increase in your ranking you want customers to search for the exact phrase “blue light blockers” then purchase your product.
This sends a major signal to the Amazon algorithm that your product is relevant to this keyword and converts well which will result in a ranking boost.
Whilst there are black-hat tactics used by some sellers to manipulate this process, we recommend targeting these phrases with aggressive exact match PPC campaigns.
It’s also important to remember that the keyword boosts you get are in relation to your competitors.
Later in the article, I’ll share how you can estimate the volume you need to overtake other products and rise to the top of page one.
Why is it important to track Amazon keyword ranking?
There’s a classing business saying – “what gets measured gets managed.”
However, management theorist Peter Drucker rephrased it to be somewhat more accurate in our context. He said, “what gets measured gets improved.”
By measuring – or tracking – your keyword positions on Amazon you can understand the progress you’re making, whilst knowing where to prioritize efforts to increase sales.
How do I find & track my keyword ranking on Amazon?
You’ve got two options here.
You can either do a manual check of your keyword ranking by opening an incognito browser window (your cookied previous search results may impact search results) and enter the search terms one by one.
Then you’ll need to browse through the results to find your product and note down the position.
If you’re wanting to track keyword performance across multiple keywords then this can begin to get very time-consuming.
Enter the Keyword Tracker tool by Helium 10.
By using this tool that is included in the Helium 10 suite, you can track hundreds (nay, thousands!) of keywords at any one time and get updates as often as every hour!
Let’s take a look at how it works.
How do you use Helium 10 Keyword Tracker?
This Amazon keyword tracking tool is one of Helium 10‘s easier to use tools. It only takes a few minutes to add keywords and learn what each metric and button means.
How do I add keywords to Keyword Tracker?
Head to the keyword tracking tool from the main menu – you’ll find it under the “Analytics” section.
Next, hit the Add Products button.
Then, paste the URL or ASIN of the product you want to start rank tracking for, and then paste your list of keywords collected from your keyword research.
If you’ve been using the other keyword research tools inside Helium 10 and saving keywords to your list you can also import them here.
Make sure you’ve selected the right marketplace, and if you have multiple variations check the ‘track parent and child’ option to keep things nice and tidy.
Boom! You’re done. You’ll now be able to check in on your Amazon keywords whenever the desire hits you.
The tracker tool provides a super helpful summary of how many keywords you’re currently ranking in the top 10 and top 50 for along with the associated search volume.
This is a great feature that helps you assess keyword performance at a glance.
But do be warned; that stuff can get addictive!
How often does my keyword ranking get checked?
By default, all keywords are checked for rank position every 24 hours.
However, if you are launching a product and want a more detailed look at what’s happening with ranking you can hit the rocket icon next to the keyword.
This will track your most important keywords on an hourly basis.
What are the different Amazon keyword ranking metrics?
The tool provides a number of different metrics to help you understand how your Amazon SEO is performing and stay ahead of the competition.
- Organic Rank: which position in organic search results the tracked product is currently appearing in for the given keyword.
- Sponsored Rank: which position in sponsored results the tracked product is currently appearing in for the given keyword.
You can also use the tool to track competition. When you add competing ASINs in the ‘competitors’ column, you’ll also see the following metrics:
- Relative Rank: where you are ranked in comparison to your competitors. Eg. if tracking 5 competitors and your product, a relative rank of 1/6 means you are appearing above all tracked competitors for this keyword.
- Rank Average: The average ranking position of all tracked competitors for this Amazon keyword.
- Ranking ASINs: The number of tracked ASINs that are ranked in any position for this keyword.
CPR: How many sales do I need to reach page one?
The CPR metric is a propriety Helium 10 calculation designed to guide you on how many sales – attributed to a particular keyword – you need to make in order to rank on page one.
This number will appear differently in the keyword tracking tool as opposed to keyword research tools as it takes into account your current listing rankings.
So if you are already ranked well, you may only need a smaller boost in sales to catapult up to page one.
This can be a very helpful guiding metric when strategizing PPC campaigns to target these specific keywords.
How do I view my ranking history and fluctuations?
Finally, the ‘Trend’ column will display a graph showing a product’s historic rank and any fluctuations.
This can be very helpful for monitoring trends and investigating any unusual sales patterns.
The benefits of using an Amazon keyword tracking tool
Tracking keyword ranking is an absolute must for anyone serious about building an Amazon business.
The sheer volume of organic traffic on offer on Amazon is the reason why we sell on the platform, and why it’s so important to use an Amazon keyword tracker to measure and improve our products’ visibility.
Helium 10’s keyword tracker is by far the easiest to use, comes with a whole host of helpful features, and comes included in your subscription alongside a whole host of other powerful tools.
If you want to get started with this tool today, then don’t forget to claim your exclusive discount here by using code BBU50 for 50% off your first month, or BBU10 for 10% off for life.
Happy tracking!
