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UNDERSTANDING AMAZON’S A9 SEARCH ENGINE AND HOW IT IMPACTS YOUR SALES – Part 2

UNDERSTANDING AMAZON’S A9 SEARCH ENGINE AND HOW IT IMPACTS YOUR SALES – Part 2

In our first blog, we discussed the impact of search ranking on Amazon, paid and organic search. In this blog, we will discuss four factors that directly influence the natural search ranking for selected search terms that are relevant to your product. In the third blog we will discuss factors that influence sales velocity and in the last blog in this series, we will discuss specific implementation strategies to improve the sales velocity, your organic search ranking and your Best Seller Rating (BSR).

We will now review direct factors Amazon A9 Search engine uses to present product to the consumer searching for a product. No one knows exactly how A9 search engine works except Amazon, but we can identify various factors that can improve your results. Many of these factors are simple common sense “best practices” that make an ecommerce business successful.

There are direct and indirect factors used by Amazon to evaluate products that fit the search terms used by the consumer. We will discuss the indirect factors in the Blog #3 in this series. Amazon will take the entire selection of relevant products and apply these factors to rank the products that are most likely to generate sales.  

How does Amazon A9 search work for product searches

RelevancyText match– First criteria A9 search engine uses is product relevancy. Amazon’s relevancy is based on what consumers buy after searching for a product on Amazon. Creating a listing that includes the appropriate keywords is important for a product to be successful. Before you write the listing content, you must do keyword search to see which keywords are relevant to your product. There are many third-party tools that can help with the keyword research and write the content that is optimized for search. This includes optimizing product Title, Bullets, Description as well as “back-end” keywords are not visible on the listing.

Here are a few guidelines for optimizing your listings:

  1. Remember, your listings need to satisfy two audiences: 1. Amazon A9 Search engine and 2. A consumer who is reading your listing to make the buying decision. Even though you will be including the relevant search terms in the content, it still has to make sense to a consumer when they read the listing.
  2. You should try to use all the space Amazon has provided you for each field in the listing such as Title, Bullets, and Description. For example, Product title can be 250 characters.
  3. Do not repeat search word or term unless it makes reading your listing easy for the consumer.
  4. You can also use synonyms or alternate words to describe your keywords. For example, “Skin brightening” product can also be described as “Skin enhancing, Skin revitalizing or Skin Illuminating”
  5. We do not believe that adding HTML tags and Symbols influences the A9 search, but it may be more readable and highlight specific features for a buyer such as Italics, Bold, Bullets.
  6. Use at least 5 images with at least 1000 pixels in either width or height. Amazon recommends 2560 pixels wide to enable magnify feature. The product should fill 85% of the frame. Main product images must have white background. 
  7. Start by using the highest converting keyword in the title, then bullets and lastly description.

Availability (Inventory trends) – Amazon will take a look at your available inventory and your past inventory trends. Consistent inventory availability will get higher priority over a product that runs out of inventory on a frequent basis. Having a consistent inventory at Amazon warehouse (FBA) will provide you an advantage over someone who is inconsistent and is fulfilling products form their own warehouse. Also, being out of inventory sets you back and your Best Seller Rating (BSR) will drop as a result.

Competitive pricing – Amazon looks at other similar products on Amazon and determines if your price is competitive with these products. Amazon’s goal is to offer an unlimited selection at a competitive price. Before pricing your products, take a look at like products on Amazon to see the price range. Make sure you are pricing your products within a reasonable range with other similar products. If your product is unique and has features superior to others, you can sell your products at a higher price. In addition, Amazon will also look at prices for your product on other online retail sites such as Walmart, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot and Kohls to make sure your prices on Amazon are consistent with other online retailers.

Sales Velocity – Sales Velocity is the King, this may be the most important factor for Amazon search algorithm. A product’s sales velocity is a measure of how well your product sold in a 24-hour period within the category you have listed the product in. Amazon will give you higher Best Seller Rating if you show consistent trending sales.   

Products that have increase sales on consistent basis are more likely to generate sales. Many other indirect factors such as your fulfillment method (Amazon FBA vs Seller fulfilled), Number of reviews, Rating of reviews, Review Velocity (change in the number of reviews in last 30 days), Enhanced Brand Content, Storefront and few others. In addition, you can fuel the Sales Velocity by driving traffic and sales by aggressive Sponsored Ads and Sponsored Brands (formerly Headline Search Ads) within Amazon and from Social Media and Coupon sites.

We will discuss these factors in the Blog #3 in this series.