Amazon SEO: 71 Powerful Amazon Ranking Factors That Work (Updated)

There are potentially hundreds of algorithm factors that Amazon uses, some of which are more beneficial than others.

However, focusing on these steps will boost your Amazon product rankings further than before. While there are many other areas you could focus on as well, some techniques are more effective than others. Some methods are even a bit controversial, but some methods are sure to get you the attention you want to receive.

Continue reading to discover how you can boost your Amazon product ranking score quickly.

• Product Title Factors
• Multimedia Factors
• Product Bullet Points Factors
• Product Description Factors
• Product Specifications Factors
• Product Listing Completeness Factors
• Customer Reviews Factors
• Sales and Product Listing History Factors
• Customer Satisfaction Factors Factors
• Outside Traffic Sources Factors
• Brand Factors
• Seller Account Authority Factors

Product Title Factors

The product’s title acts as an H1 header on a typical webpage. As a result, it’s in prime position for ranking improvement, primarily as the product search field works as a traditional search engine.

Unfortunately, that also means having a short space for you to cram in a ton of information. You must include any relevant keywords in the title, as well as any defining colors, primary material types, as well as what sort of product it is.

However, you must make sure not to make it overly complicated, as I’m sure you’ve seen happen to others. If you have ever seen a product line that stretched for miles, that was someone failing at improving their ranking. Instead, you should envision it as if it were a product tag on a physical shelf.

When you describe an item as “SPILOVE Serend 18k Rose Gold Plated 1.5ct Heart and Arrows Cut Cubic Zirconia Solitaire Wedding Engagement Rings”, it tells users exactly what you have for sale.

Title Tag Factors:

1. Keyword in Product Title Tag
2. Brand name in the Title tag
3. Material (a key feature that’s most important) in Title
4. More in Title
   • Product type
   • Color
   • Size
   • Packaging/Quantity

Hire and Train a Virtual Assistant for Your Amazon or eCommerce Store

Multimedia: Image & Video Factors

Although you likely have at least one image of what you are selling, a few more multimedia items can take your results even further.

Amazon seems to favor pages containing between three and four pictures, while too many can cause you to impair your rankings. It would seem that as long as you can keep your multimedia collection to one high-quality image that shows off its features, you should see ranking improvements.

Just make sure that you’re adhering to their standards; at least 1,000 x 1,000 pixels, and saved as a JPEG, GIF, PNG, or TIFF.

You may also want to include a video of the product in action. That will give users a sense of scale, as well as answer any questions about how you operate it.

Note: Anyone can not upload videos if they want to. Only sellers who have outstanding metrics (higher than $1M in sales and amazing customer reviews), vendors and Amazon itself for their own products can do that.

You can act as a useful seller and improve your rankings in one simple step, giving you a straight forward edge over others. While you likely want more than one image, remember that the impact decreases with each additional one.

Amazon image & Video Factors:

5. Main Product Image
6. Product variations image
7. Number of Images
8. Image size and quality
9. Product video (How to use)

Product Bullet Points Factors

If you look at many different Amazon product listing, you likely stop paying attention to those with blocks of text. When it’s difficult for you to focus, you can guarantee your potential customers will feel the same way.

Adding bullet points to your product description helps break up text, allowing customers to find the relevant details that they need to discover the most.

10. Warranty Information

However, if you apply bullet points correctly, you’ll find it equally beneficial for your needs as well.

Bullet points can use any additional keywords that you couldn’t fit into the product title, allowing you to continue improving rankings further down the page.

An effective way to use bullet points is to:

• Explain Customer Benefits
• Reveal Product Features
• Designate an Intended Use Age Range
• Display Dimensions, Including Height, Weight, & Depth
• Explain Care Instructions
• Showcase Materials, Like Precious Metals
• Provide Warranty Information

Amazon claims their algorithms do not favor bullet lists. However, many sellers have seen ranking improvements after using them with relevant keywords.

Even if it doesn’t help you rank on Amazon, it can still get picked up by Google. Bullets can assist you in adhering to character limitations, forcing you to create concise descriptions.

Bullet Points Factors:

10. Keyword in Bullet Point
11. Highlight Customer Benefits
12. Highlight product key features
13. Product Dimensions (width, height, depth)
14. Product Care Instructions
15. Material (i.e., sterling silver, gold, platinum)
16. Age Designation
17. Warranty Information

Product Description Factors

While it doesn’t seem as though your product description makes a considerable impact on your rankings, every little bit helps.

Besides, incorrectly crafting your explanation runs the risk of negative ranking influences. Your designation does have a limited length of 2,000 total characters, which may not seem like much, but you want to keep it short and sweet anyway.

The more critical factor to contend with is avoiding keyword stuffing, which you’ll want to restrict to 2% or less. Like search engines, proper spelling and grammar also go a long way in picking up your product listings.

Keep in mind that the better copy that you come up with for your listings, the better your odds of Google and Bing discovering them in general search results. Even if you don’t outrank your competitors on Amazon, you can still improve your overall online rankings.

Finally, there is the matter of the reading level your descriptions get written. Some sellers think your descriptions should post at a basic reading level to appeal to more customers, but using intermediate-level language can help prevent you from appearing spam or clickbait-like.

Amazon Product Description Factors:

18. Product Description Length
19. Keyword density in Product Description
20. Grammar and Spelling
21. Reading Level
22. Better copy for the listing (Optimize your copy for search engines)

Product Specifications Factors

Specifications are different from features in that they explicitly tell the customer what your product can do. If you think of it as purchasing a television, for example, specifications make more sense when speaking about the technical details of your product.

For instance, is it a smart TV or a standard set? Are there HDMI ports or is it standard definition? How large is the screen, and is it LED, LCD, or another screen type? If you apply the same logic to any product specification, it can alleviate customer confusion and help your rankings increase.

While your descriptions are necessary for telling your customers why they need your product, specifications alert them to any restrictions or technical needs to make it work.

Although this can be the more tedious part of your product listings, it will help prevent returns from frustrated buyers who couldn’t get it operational.

Restating the product’s warranty details here, as well as any other relevant information, and it tells Amazon that you are a respectable, qualified seller.

Product Specifications Factors:

23. Specifications to the Features
24. Technical Details
25. Technical Specification
26. Additional Information
27. Warranty & Support

Product Listing Completeness Factors

If you have ever been inside a physical store and had an item catch your eye, then you know how exasperating it is not to understand what it’s intended to do. In the same vein, Amazon wants to see completed product listings over those that remain light on details.

At a minimum, you don’t want to leave any fields blank, or at least have something in each section. By filling it all out, it tells Amazon that you’ve done all you can and that it’s ready for sale to the masses.

However, there is more to your listings than the description page. Choosing the most relevant categories and sub-category will also improve your ranking. If, however, it turns up in a group where it shouldn’t, it will likely have the opposite effect. Price is a defining metric, which competitive pricing getting favored for your customers. And with variations of color, sizes, and other features, you create Parent-Child Product listings, which can take your results further.

Surprisingly, how you package your products, or what options you provide, are also factors you can’t ignore. Customers want to know their order will show up in one piece.

Product Listing Completeness Factors:

28. Specific Category and sub-category
29. Product Price
30. Keyword in Search Term Box (Backend Settings)
31. Parent-child products
32. Packaging Options
33. Prime shipping

Customer Reviews Factors

Every seller knows that having a considerable amount of glowing reviews helps your ranking.

However, how many reviews you receive isn’t the only factor to consider. Products that receive both the most reviews, as well as the most positive reviews, will rank higher than other competing listings.

There are many considerations at play here, including the length of the feedback. To combat sellers who buy their customer feedback, you want a lot of customer comments that are longer than just ten words. It seems that, like websites, reviews hovering around the 1,000-word mark get the most positive ranking response.

How others interact with reviews matters as well. Customer reviews that receive a lot of positive upvotes will rank higher than negatively downvoted or short reviews can.

A few negative feedback posts aren’t the end of the world and may help prove you are a real seller. If you have customer reviews with videos or images, the added multimedia will assist your ratings as well.

Relevant questions and answers that potential customers have may matter, as well as the personal rankings of reviewers leaving feedback. When your customers already got vetted by Amazon, it means trustworthy reviewers are posting feedback.

Customer Reviews Factors:

34. Score rating of stars
35. Number of Reviews
36. Length of Reviews
37. Total Votes on Reviews
38. Customer Videos & Images in Reviews
39. Customer Questions & Answers
40. Customer Negative feedback
41. Rank of Amazon Reviewers

Amazon’s Sales and Product Listing History Factors

Your sale ranking is likely the most important factor to focus. Higher sales ranking means increased sales, which in turn feeds your ranking even further.

However, there is more to becoming an Amazon top seller than units shipped. Other aspects of sales rank include outside means of impressions, such as featuring your product listings by linking back to your primary website.

That can improve other less-known factors, such as how long customers spend on a product page, your bounce rate, CTR, and others. Like many other forms of retail, old listings may not be as attractive as newer listings.

Like traditional websites, high bounce rates and low click-through rates negatively impact your ranking. And if your customers see that you shell out a ton of refunded sales, they are going to avoid you as well.

Leaving your digital shelves bare can hurt your rankings as if you never have an item in stock, why should Amazon feature you? Both long-term and short-term revenue plays a hand as well.

Amazon is always concerned with what you can make them, and poor total sales or weekly sales can hurt you.

Sales and Product Listing History Factors:

42. Amazon’s best sellers rank
43. Page Impressions
44. Time on Page
45. Bounce Rate
46. Exit rate
47. Click through rate (CTR)
48. Conversion rates
49. Refund Rate
50. Age of Product Listing
51. Revenue from Past 7, 14, 30 Days
52. Total Historic Sales Revenue
53. In-stock rate

Customer Satisfaction Factors

Even if your focus is purely on improving rankings, your customers’ satisfaction is paramount. And in the age of instant gratification, the faster you can ship orders, the happier your reviews will remain.

Late shipments, however, will impair your score. A large number of Pre-Fulfillment Cancellation request is a red flag to Amazon that you can’t be trusted to generate revenue.

What you, as a seller, want to shoot for is a higher Perfect Order Percentage, or POP, as it alerts Amazon that you keep a full stock, ship fast, and keep your customers satisfied.

Your polar opposite of POP is your Order Defect Rate, referred to as ODR. Every time your customers make a claim, Amazon considers that an order defect.

Even if you successfully keep the sale together, it still gets marked against you. While you want to keep your ODR score under 1%, you are contending with many customer service features, including Amazon’s A-to-Z Guarantee claims, negative buyer reviews, shipping issues, and credit card chargebacks.

Exit rates, which is quitting Amazon after reviewing your listing, also negatively impacts you. Unfortunately, these aren’t always in your control, making it difficult to contend with daily.

Customer Satisfaction Factors:

54. Order processing speed
55. Late shipments
56. Pre-Fulfillment Cancellation
57. Perfect Order Percentage (POP)
58. Order Defect Rate (ODR)

Outside Traffic Sources Factors (Amazon Loves External Traffic)

As mentioned, using outside traffic sources can improve your conversion rates, leading to higher sales rankings. One way to influence rankings on Amazon and Google at the same time is driving outside traffic from your brand’s website, social media sites, and especially YouTube.

Specific networks like Twitter and LinkedIn instill confidence that you’re a real seller. Outside linking improves your product listing’s visibility, and it allows Amazon to track the process as well. And if a customer repeatedly shops from you this way, it might also improve your Google ranking higher as well.

Keywords correctly inserted in source URLs are a sleek way to improve rankings, especially when shortened. While distributing coupons to customers may seem like a good idea, you should do so cautiously.

Too many promotional discounts may drive enough traffic that you’re a top seller, but you might wind up losing revenue in the process.

Using affiliate sites generally shouldn’t impair you, but too many undoubtedly will. Although using promotions or VIP mail lists isn’t controversial, too much emphasis on sponsored or affiliate listings can make you look like spam.

Outside Traffic Sources Factors:

59. Send traffic to your brand website
60. YouTube traffic
61. Traffic from social media sites
62. Distribute coupon sites
63. Traffic from the Amazon affiliate program
64. Traffic from your VIP Mail list
65. Search Engine Traffic
66. Paid Traffic

Extra Addon:

• Keyword in Source URL

Brand Factors

When a brand is recognized, it provides more authority to the listing page.

For example, if you searched for potato chips, chances are a significant brand will remain more frequently listed than a smaller regional company would. When building a brand, if you can work in keywords into the name of the company, it will help you improve rankings from increased search activity.

When combined with branded anchor text, it increases your level of authority. Try and always include your brand name within the product title to enhance your search Amazon ranking further.

Niche brands and products walk a thin line when it comes to product searches. On the one hand, operating as a niche company may help stave off the competition.

However, if you only include details like a part number or manufacturing code, your sense of mystique will confuse shoppers. If you can at least work in what your niche market is in your brand name, it will help you instill more confidence in shoppers and Amazon.

Brand Factors:

67. Using Keyword in brand name
68. Niche-specific brand name

Seller Account Authority Factors

Amazon surprisingly states that they don’t use positive seller feedback in their ranking algorithm. However, they do care about negative seller feedback, which will hurt your rankings. One or two negative feedback ratings shouldn’t stay devasting;

Amazon is more concerned with how frequently you fail your customers. If you have a mountain of complaints, however, they will likely stop promoting your listings as much. Just like with product feedbacks, the quantity of negative (or positive) reviews is what will determine your score.

Maintaining a healthy Amazon seller account is one of the most critical factors at play in your overall experience. Amazon has an Account Health Dashboard, which presents you with many different metrics that determine your current rank. While it won’t show you everything, it will display the parameters with which you must adhere to as a seller.

If you see a yellow warning sign on your dashboard, it means you are not keeping a healthy account. A red warning sign indicates you have gotten suspended, which requires an appeal process to reinstate.

Seller Account Authority Factors:

69. Seller feedback ratings
70. Seller feedback quantity
71. Maintain a healthy Amazon account

Summary

To summarize, sellers with keyword-rich product titles and descriptions and a healthy seller account score will do the best on Amazon.

Using responsible outside traffic links, either from branded websites or specific social networks can drive your rankings further as they also attract Google’s algorithms in the process.

Listings with at least one high-quality image that adheres to the photo standards are more effective than those listings without multimedia.

Positive reviews for products and sellers are essential, but repeated negative scores have the most impact. Clear product descriptions that rely on bullet points fair better than listings that only use text.

As a seller, your top concern should be making Amazon happy. Show them completed product listings, repeated glowing reviews, and product specifications to make the most of your store’s items. While there are other factors to consider for ranking, these steps should help you improve your score quickly.