How to Use Amazon SEO to Rank in the Top 10 Results

February 3, 2021
By The Badger

After a while of working hard on your Amazon SEO, you may find yourself hitting a wall of frustration. After tirelessly building and updating your organic power, you may find only a few keywords have high rankings. It may seem like it was all for naught, but bear (or badger) with us here; this is where things really get set in motion.

Basically, you’ve been in the shadows gathering strength this whole time, and in this phase, you’re pulling the rug right out from under your competitors and taking their top spots. In Phase 3, you’ll get your product listings into the top 10 organic results on Amazon.

The Amazon SEO Strike Zone

At this point in the game, throw out everything you learned during Phases 1 and 2 because your goals are now fundamentally different.

Where in Phases 1 and 2 you focused on indexing, Phase 3 is all about matriculation. What this means is that you’re in striking range now, and your main goal is moving from spots 20-50 and into the top 10 search results. When you start this phase, you should have at least 50 or so keywords in those 20-50 spots.

It is 10 times easier to double your traffic than it is to double your conversion rates. If you’re ranked #50 for a given search term, you might get one organic sale every couple of months from that search term. Sure, the lower your ranking, the more user intent goes up and the more likely you’ll be to score a conversion, but very few people are going to see your product, resulting in fewer conversions overall. As your listing rises through the ranks for an organic search, your organic conversions on that listing from that keyword will grow exponentially.

When you get into those top 10 rankings, your number of clicks that lead to conversions increases drastically. This provides a major helping hand to your PPC on the same keywords.

Matriculation

Matriculation is all about massaging your product listings to give them the best possible chance to rank high for your chosen strike zone keywords.

In order to do that, refocus your search term field, your title and bullet points, and your A+ content, and give them all a facelift so that you can make that final push to the top ranking spots. Make sure that your selected keywords are present as exact matches in as many places as possible.

As a matter of fact, the single most missed thing when it comes to improving your SEO is making sure your top keywords are in your A+ content.

Real quick: take a minute to make sure your strike zone keywords take center stage in your listings. The #1 thing you can do to improve your Amazon SEO may have been staring you in the face this entire time.

Back yet? Okay, good.

Phase 3 SEO Best Practices

Use a tool to filter the list of your current rankings and filter for the words that are the most relevant to your product while also taking search volume into account. There’s no right or wrong number of keywords to choose here. You could choose to focus on a few obvious keywords, but don’t count out those long-tail keywords either. Being in the top 10 results for hundreds of long-tail keywords easily beats being in the top 10 results for a couple of more obvious ones.

The main thing to ask yourself is: Can I convert with these keywords? – if you can’t do that, you’ll never reach those first ten spots.

Next, super-optimize your content for those strike zone keywords. Make sure they are present in your title, bullet points, alt text, and A+ content. It may sound like keyword stuffing, but since we’re focused on ranking rather than indexing, you want your listings to revolve around those few selected keywords.

You have to assume that your competitors are massaging their content as well to score those top rankings. Repeat the actions you take in Phase 3 every 90 days to stay ahead of them.

Repeating Phase 3 rotates your terms to capitalize on your strike zone keywords that are getting a large search volume once your current keywords are within the top 10 organic search results. As a bonus, this can help with product research, as it gives you insight into what shoppers seek and helps find new product opportunities.

You’ll know that you’re headed in the right direction when your organic ranking goes up. Sometimes, your organic ranking might go down, but that may be a temporary change, so give it a solid 30 days before you make a judgment call.

Of course, to put in new keywords, remove some old ones where you already rank. If this sounds scary, don’t worry about it! First, you’ll be able to remove some “fluff” terms that don’t provide any Amazon SEO value. Second, if you’re already ranking well on a keyword with good velocity and that offers a steady stream of conversions, then it’s totally safe to remove that keyword from your copy because you’re already doing well on conversion-based ranking factors.

Key Takeaways

In Phase 3, our focus shifts from indexing to ranking. Now that you appear for a large number of search terms, it’s time to make sure you show up in those top organic spots where shoppers are most likely to see you.

Use your keyword research tool of choice to check which keywords have your listings in the strike zone.
Prioritize which ones to use by search volume, relevancy, and ability to convert.
Hyper-focus your listing content on those keywords to get into the top 10 organic results.
Rinse and repeat every three months to keep your listings fresh and to take advantage of changes in customer searching behavior.

Pull this off just right, and you’ll be in the promised land: ranking 1-5 on your best keywords, swimming in organic conversions like Scrooge McDuck.

Next week, we’ll have the grand finale of this Amazon SEO journey: the relationship between Amazon PPC and SEO!