Ever imagined how Amazon understands the relevancy of your product for a search query?
Like Google, Amazon’s SEO is driven by an algorithm called the A9 algorithm. It works as the brain of Amazon SEO and showcases your listing for a customer’s search query not just by looking at the keyword but many other factors.
This article tells you about the Amazon A9 algorithm and its role in ranking your product on Amazon.
What does the Amazon A9 algorithm do?
The Amazon A9 algorithm is the backbone of the Amazon search engine. It is the official ranking algorithm of Amazon. It is responsible for the ranking of your product in the search results. It considers two factors: relevance and performance.
Amazon A9 algorithm determines which are the most relevant results for each search query, taking into consideration factors including keywords, sales history, and conversion rates.
How does the Amazon A9 algorithm work?
As an Amazon seller, you must know how the A9 algorithm works. This will help you optimize your listing for the algorithm and rank your products higher for relevant searches.
Amazon’s A9 algorithm ranks your product on top of search results only if the chances of sales are high. Once your product ranks higher, the traffic to your listing increases. This will further boost your sales.
The Amazon A9 algorithm instantly analyzes many factors and understands what matters most to the shoppers. As per the A9 algorithm, a product with the right keywords coupled with a good sales history and conversion chances will find its place on top of search results.
The A9 algorithm looks at the possibilities of conversion. This is a characteristic that distinguishes it from other ranking algorithms such as the Google search algorithm. For example, even if products A and B are eligible for a given keyword, product A will show on top because the conversion rate is higher for product A.
What factors determine your product ranking on Amazon?
Amazon is a business platform where each sale counts. The key business goal of sellers is usually to grow their revenue. So, it is imperative that Amazon will advance its algorithms. So if you’d observe, the significance of keywords on Amazon would slightly differ compared to Google. Yes, keywords are the first thing that Amazon will give importance to but a product’s ranking in the top positions depends largely on other factors related to sales. Therefore, sales conversions would equally play a role in Amazon SEO.
Factors based on relevancy
There are several factors that determine the relevancy of your product.
Click-through rate
CTR is a crucial factor that determines Amazon’s ranking. A quick way to get a decent CTR through internal traffic is to maintain an impressive main product image and title.
If you are attempting to drive traffic from off-site channels, you can use social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to promote your listings.
Product Title
The title of your listing should ideally contain the most relevant keywords and should be at least 60 characters long. The brand name should follow your product title. It will make it easy for shoppers to find your product using your brand name.
Bullet Points
You can incorporate up to five bullet points describing your product. They should contain the main keywords. You can include the most important features that tell your customers why your product is better than the other products. These bullet points appear in the “about the product” section and therefore carries great strategic weight in convincing the customer to buy the product.
Back-end search terms
These are the keywords that do not appear in the listing. Instead, they are hidden. You can add them in the backend. The length of these keywords can not exceed more than 250 bytes. You can include the high-ranking long-tail keywords other than the ones that do not fit into the title or description.
You can consider the following types of keywords to add in the back end.
- Keywords that can not find space in the product description or title
- Misspelled product keywords that people often use
- Translated keywords that people frequently type
- Synonyms for the keyword
Product description
This part is significant when it comes to product information. Instead of beating around the bush, you can give insightful information about your product in this section.
Factors based on performance history
Ranking your product also depends on your product’s performance history. These factors are tricky because, unlike keywords, you can not optimize for them easily.
Sales performance history
Improving sales will naturally improve your ranking as Amazon always looks positively at more sales. When the ranking increases, it will again boost sales and positive customer reviews.
Note: Pricing is a potential factor that can significantly boost your sales. Ensure you price right to win your competition and grow your sales in the marketplace.
Product Availability – Inventory
Product availability or the inventory at hand plays a major role in boosting your ranking. There may be reasons for the products to be unavailable. This may include your supply chain issues or less accuracy in demand forecast. But you should ensure the product is available all the time if you don’t want to lose your organic rankings on Amazon. Always keep an eye on your products and restock them before they run out of stock.
Customer Reviews
Customer reviews about your product allow Amazon to know about your product. Reviews are social proof that persuades customers to buy your product. Besides, items with high star ratings are more likely to rank higher than items with lower star ratings.
A+ Content
Amazon opens up a great opportunity to showcase the uniqueness and worthiness of your product using A+ content. You can add videos, high-quality images, charts, and text to tell about your product. This content can boost your sales at least by 10%.
Add to Cart
When more shoppers add your products to their cart, Amazon tends to rank your product higher. Amazon A9 algorithm is way smarter to filter out the bots sellers use to add multiple items to the cart. Remember, Amazon only counts on real numbers.
How to optimize your product listing for A9 algorithm?
Your product listing should be properly SEO optimized to increase your ranking. The listing should contain,
- High-quality Images
- Bullet points
- Concise Product description or A+ content
- A compelling Product title
- Price
- Reviews
- Inventory availability
- Backend keywords
If all these elements are there in your listing, you are on the right track.
One other major thing to take into consideration is prime delivery.
The listings that offer fast delivery of 2-3 days enjoy higher conversion rates than those that take their sweet time to deliver. Amazon Prime offers fast and free delivery. This attracts around 88% of Amazon customers to place an order.
If you want to optimize your listings against Amazon’s algorithm without much hassle, you should definitely check out SellerApp’s Listing Quality Feature. The feature also allows you to find the areas that you need to work on when optimizing your listings.
Difference between Amazon A9 and A10 algorithms
Amazon’s A10 algorithm is the advanced version of the A9 algorithm. Though both help in ranking, there are subtle differences between the two. They are:
Geo ranking
This is a feature unique to the A10 algorithm which ranks the product based on customers’ location. The geo ranking takes two things into consideration-the stock availability and shipping time. If your product possesses a good inventory and fast shipping in a particular region, the A10 algorithm will rank your product high in that region.
Organic sales
Amazon A9 algorithm considers conversion rate in PPC. But the A10 algorithm takes only organic sales into account.
Traffic and sales from off-site channels
A10 algorithm encourage traffic from external sources such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, brand websites, etc. So, it is a good practice to maintain a healthy presence on external platforms using off-Amazon ads.
Internal sales
The A10 algorithm looks at internal conversions but not only from search results. It also takes conversions generated from “frequently bought together” or “recommended products” into consideration for ranking a product.
Seller Authority
The A10 algorithm also considers seller authority factors including Buy Box, product listings, feedback ratings, seller’s years of experience with Amazon, product return rate, etc. Apart from these, the A10 algorithm looks at your inventory level and customer reviews before it ranks your product.
Conclusion
Amazon updates on a regular basis. This will also mean you can find frequent updates about its ranking algorithm and ads. As a seller, you may need to constantly update yourself about the developments on Amazon. Then only you can make the best out of the operating algorithms the platform incorporates.
However, the best way to keep pace with the fast developments in the marketplace is to understand your customers better and create ideas with them as a priority.
Author’s Bio:
Arishekar N is the Senior Director of Marketing and Growth at SellerApp, an e-commerce data analytics solution. He is responsible for overseeing the development and implementation of marketing strategies, as well as increasing process efficiency by executing cutting-edge Search Engine Optimization strategies at SellerApp.
Arishekar has over 10 years of experience in marketing analytics and SEO. He has worked as a Digital Specialist for the tech giant IBM and most recently as the Senior Marketing Specialist for ZioTive Technologies where he enhanced their site structure by increasing website and mobile usability. Previously, he worked as a Senior SEO Analyst for Star Group where he was responsible for managing SEO Audits and analytics.
