7 Steps to Rank Your Products on Page 1 of Amazon in 2020

Table Of Contents

7 Steps to Rank Your Products on Page 1 of Amazon in 2020

Reading Time: 15 minutes

Notes: All relevant resources are made available after each step as well as linked at the end.

In this article, you are going to learn how to stop competing with hundreds of sellers and instead, rank quickly on the first page for your product type so the sales come to you! I’ll show you the perfect strategy for driving traffic to your product to quickly stack sales & rank on Amazon.

Before diving into the strategy, I want to show you actual results of a recent Launch we did for a FosterLabs PPC Client in the Health Niche.

We picked 2 keywords both with around 3K & 5K Searches monthly respectively and which were highly relevant and with more than 10K competitors each based on research done with the Helium 10 tool (our go-to tool of choice).

Started on 12th June with a completely new listing with 0 reviews and went from positions 72 and positions 96 respectively to #2 organically for both as of June 26th (14 days later)!

Keyword 1: 3K monthly searches and 6K competitors

Keyword 2: 5K monthly searches and > 10K competitors

Now that you know this strategy can deliver results quick let’s dive into the actual 7 Steps but before we do I need to do a quick recap of Amazon’s a9 algorithm. Understanding this is the foundation on which these 7 steps work.

The Secret to understanding Amazon’s A9 Algorithm

Amazon is constantly changing their TOS (“Terms of Service”) to make it harder and harder to launch & rank a product on page 1. Traditional methods like Deep Discounts (90% or more) are not working anymore and in fact have gotten a few Sellers in trouble with Amazon shaking things up recently and flagging accounts for manipulation of the search results. There’s much to be debated here on exactly what’s the safe line to stay on and what’s considered manipulation by Amazon but the bottom line is that we need to stick to the TOS more than ever.

Amazon is asking sellers to re-invent themselves and they want to see REAL marketing practices rewarded with higher rankings. So how can we succeed? It comes down to a) understanding Amazon’s new a9 algorithm and b) employing diverse marketing strategies for your product(s).

So how does the algorithm work? It’s based on the data it can find on your product. How much data can Amazon find on a new product? Virtually nothing of use in the beginning. This is why you need a marketing system for your product launch. You need to “serve up” the data that the algorithm needs, in order to rank you well for the terms you are targeting.

Now, if deep discounted giveaways don’t work to get you ranked, where does that leave us? Low Discounts (less than 20-50% OFF), PPC Sales and Full Priced sales (with 100% rebate after).

What Influences the A9 Amazon Ranking Algorithm?

While there are more than 100’s of signals that influence the algorithm, the primary 4 can be categorized as:

Relevancy – how relevant your product page is in the search terms for the target customer
Authority – how diverse is your traffic, the more diverse the better. This is why you want to send traffic from Facebook, Google, PPC, Influencers, Youtube, etc.
Conversion Rate (i.e unit session percentage) – % of people that come to your listing and buy. Your review rate is implicitly taken into consideration here.
AOV (Average Order Value) / RPC (Revenue per Customer) – Amazon rewards higher Revenues per Client including higher AOV’s as that indicates Customer Satisfaction and Trust. Make them so happy that they keep coming back. Amazon knows that the secret to max RPC lies in customer retention.

So how can we launch products to have them rank quickly, easily and profitably?

Answer: It is the cumulative success of these 4 factors primarily that will determine what position your Product will show up for a Search Term on Amazon.

So what’s our secret sauce to doing this? I’ll spill the beans in the below 7 Steps that you can implement TODAY…

Consider this your GAME PLAN!

Step #1: Pick your Top 2 or 3 HIGHLY RELEVANT Keywords to Rank on Page 1

The key to this strategy when looking to rank a new product or re-vitalize an old one is to do simple yet highly targeted Keyword Research. I’m not talking about the kind of research where you find every single possible keyword phrase possible that you could target (which is needed when you are running Amazon PPC or doing product research, but it’s not important in this step).

Instead we’re going to find the TOP 2 to 3 Keywords that’s highly relevant to your actual product and the data points show have atleast 1K searches or more and < 10K competitors. The way to shortlist your Keywords is as follows…

Identify your Top 8-10 Competitors . You can do this by simply searching your ‘seed keyword’ on Amazon and choosing the top 8-10 ASIN’s showing up on Page 1, avoid the sponsored listings so you pull the listings ranked organically. You can further filter based on the BSR Rank to ensure you are including competitors that are actually making the most sales, make sure to include ASIN’s that have the ‘Best Seller’ badge and the ‘Amazon Choice’ Badge in your list. Alternatively you can use a tool like Helium 10 (use coupon FOSTERFBAH10OFF to get 10% off all plans) to find your competitors with their ‘Cerebro’ Tool.
Do a Reverse ASIN Analysis on ALL of them together. A Reverse ASIN is basically just a method to find what Keywords are indexed by Amazon for any ASIN, here you can use Helium 10 Cerebro Tool to add all the ASIN’s in, find Keywords and then you’ll need to apply a few filters to narrow down your list. The above filters are not set in stone, so feel free to play with it. But it typically gives you 8 to 15 Keywords. Now once you have that list then narrowing down and choosing your top 2-3 Keywords will be a gut manual choice and you can’t really use the tool for that. You need to assess the Competition, the search Volume, relevancy to your product etc in selecting your top keywords to go after. The Filters I use are as follows:

Next Step: For more guidance on selecting your top Keywords, you can check out our Competitor Keyword Research Services or get a tool like Helium 10 (use coupon FOSTERFBAH10OFF to get 10% off all plans) to find your competitors with their ‘Cerebro’ Tool.

Step #2: Optimize your listing for those Keywords

Once you’ve chosen your top Keywords, you need to ensure it’s added to your Title, Backend Subject Matter Fields, Bullets and Description. This ensures it’s aligned with giving the maximum relevancy signals to Amazon’s a9 Algorithm and helps propel your ranking as sales come in through those keywords.

Next Step: For a complete tutorial on getting your listing optimized read, “How to Optimize your Listing Like a Pro.“ or you can even get our team to optimize it for you.

Step #3: Build a Manychat Messenger Bot Sequence (JSON) to drive traffic to and direct them to”Search-Find-Buy” at full price with refund post the sale

In this step we’re going to build a “Search Find Buy” flow with Facebook’s Messenger using Manychat software. So what’s Search Find Buy? Like the name suggests – we’re simply building a flow that will direct an interested party on how to ‘Search’ for your product, ‘Find’ it on Amazon and ‘Buy’ it along with instructions on how to reimburse them post the sale. The key here is that you are going after Full Priced Buys which are way more powerful than discounted sales although it’s hard to point to actual stats on that, call it a gut feeling that Amazon likes to make more money and as such rewards that.

The problem with Full priced buys is that most unaware of your new brand or product is willing to purchase for the full price, this is why we need to make it a 100% off rebate deal and promote it as a one time offer for getting your product for absolutely FREE. This is your ‘marketing hook’.

Here’s a Search-Find-Buy (SFB) Manychat sequence we use to get ranked for keywords (using a sample product found on Amazon):

Don’t worry if this flow sounds complicated, it really isn’t. It’s a simple decision tree on how we want the potential customer to perform the Search Find Buy and I’ve included the exact template here for download so you don’t have to build it from scratch.

Next Step: Grab the above Search Find Buy Manychat Messenger sequence that you can edit for your own products here for free.

Step #4: Create a Facebook Ad Creative to advertise your Search Find Buy Promotion

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll need a simple but effective FB ad (using JSON) to drive paid traffic to your SFB Manychat Sequence.

All you’ll need is Canva to create a attention grabbing image with the right text showcasing your product and your 200% REBATE Search Find Buy offer. We typically use the following format but feel free to improvise! ?

You’ll see the addition of the “Amazon Prime” and the “5 stars” images – this is to add the trust factor that Amazon has in the eyes of customers. Someone seeing this ad pop up on their Facebook feed would immediately trust the destination if they clicked on this ad as they know and trust Amazon. That coupled with the 100% FREE offer and you are sure to have a winning conversion on your paid Ad.

If you can construct your discount offer to entice a lead to buy more than 1 unit to claim the offer, then you are also maximizing your AOV (Average Order Value). As we now know that it is a key factor in ranking high.

Next you’ll want to create your Facebook Ad with the Messenger objective so that people can click your Ad and get taken directly to your Manychat Messenger Sequence and be able to opt-in and follow along. You’ll need a few things like the JSON Code from the sequence you’re using or you can use ours here and grab the JSON from the settings and you’ll need to go into your Facebook Ads Manager and setup your Ad, here’s a good read on how to set that up.

A creative we’ve used for that looks something like this.

“Would you like to get these BBQ Gloves for absolutely FREE Today?

We’re running a quick promo to celebrate the launch and generate some word of mouth and are giving away 30 of them for FREE.

Hurry up and claim yours while it’s available!”

Headline: FREE BBQ GLOVES (<insert your own product>)

CTA: Send to Messenger

Next Step: Setup your Ad using the step by step outlined here and have it scheduled to run at 12 AM the next day.

Step #5: Setup Highly Aggressive PPC Campaigns to achieve Top Placements for your Target Keywords

Now sending people via FB Ads into your Search Find Buy funnel only really works if they can actually “find” your product when they organically search for a keyword you want to rank for. Given new products will never be organically ranked on Page 1, the only way to ensure they see your product on Page 1 or atleast Page 2 is to run a highly aggressive PPC Campaign just for those Keywords.

I recommend the following structure:

Keyword 1:

Campaign 1

Ad Group 1 – Keyword (EXACT MATCH) – AGGRESSIVE HIGH BID

Ad Group 2 – Keyword (PHRASE MATCH) – AGGRESSIVE HIGH BID x 0.9

and so on for each Keyword you are targeting via Search Find Buy, the goal is to ensure you show for Top of Search on Page 1 for each keyword.

Now, not only does this let them find you and execute the Full Price Buy but Amazon loves Sponsored sales and this further juices your BSR (best seller rank). If you are new to PPC and how to setup campaigns effectively – not to worry, I recently recorded a free strategy packed PPC Case Study video where we share the 4-Step Blueprint That has allowed us to increase our PPC Client Ad Sales by 57%, that you can implement TODAY in just a few hours

These are solid strategies that have brought results like below…

Next Step: Watch the free PPC Case Study here before it’s taken offline..

Step #6: Make sure you TURN OFF any Review Follow up Sequences for up to 45 days after your Marketing completes

There’s no better Review Follow up sequences like Messenger as it has incredible open rates compared to Email. In fact, I recently released the ‘TSR Amazon Jumpstart Pack‘ that gives you an entire Plug & Play framework and includes a solid Review Followup sequence in Manychat that you can use to increase your review rate by 5% or more.

However to stay compliant with Amazon’s TOS you need to have these follow up services turned OFF for the days from when you start running your SFB full priced buys to about 45 days after you end the promotion to avoid getting reviews from these customers and triggering the ‘incentivized reviews’ clause which is a big no-no for Amazon and can get your account in trouble.

Once the 45 days post your promotion period is turned off you can go ahead and get it turned on.

I recommend having both an email follow up and a Messenger follow up sequence to have the maximum reach.

Next Step: Check out our #HappyCustomers Email Follow up series and the TrafficSalesReviews Jumpstart Pack to learn exactly how to use Manychat sequences to follow up in tandem with Product Inserts to increase your Review Rate by 5% or more.

Step #7: Rinse & Repeat the process for additional Keywords

Your building a business, so you’ll need to constantly be at the top of your game and looking for additional keywords to outrank your competitors so make sure to pick a few more and rinse & repeat the process above as your business brings in revenue, look to re-invest that here and feed the machine.

After a while your product will start to gain traction and momentum. It’s a long game. Don’t expect your product to be a home run overnight but with these 7 steps you can ensure you get there.

Next Step: I am thrilled to announce an exclusive new plug & play system I’ve been working on for the last 6 months with some great results!
It’s a simple but extremely effective list of assets you can implement that attacks the 3 key areas in any Amazon business – Traffic, Sales & Reviews. And yes all within TOS. Go grab the TrafficSalesReviews Jumpstart Pack now.

Wrap-Up: If You Want to Rank your Product on Page 1 of Amazon, You Have to Stick to the Process

While launching a product successfully today on Amazon isn’t as easy as it was a few years ago. It certainly is not impossible and the eCommerce space is still considered to have a lot more runway to go, so you just need to cut through the noise, present a product that truly services a raving audience and follow the 7 steps above to get it in front of them.

I hope you get immense value from it and make a LOT of sales. Don’t forget to tell me how your marketing efforts went! 🙂

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