How to use PPC to rank number 1 on Amazon
Did you know that a whopping 80% of Amazon customers start their product searches on Amazon? If you’re serious about ranking high in the Amazon SERPs and getting more sales, paid advertising is the way to go! Paid search (or “pay-per-click”) advertising allows you to target highly qualified shoppers with relevant ads that drive traffic directly to your listing page.
In this blog post we’ll show you how easy it is to set up PPC campaigns on Seller Central with our proven strategies for getting started and maximizing your ROI.*
1.Know the keywords for your niche
Start by knowing the keywords that are relevant to your product. Knowing which words and phrases you want to target is essential, because it will help determine what keywords you bid on in your ad group.
There are many keyword research tools that can help you find this information—and it’s worth experimenting with a few of them until you find one that works for you.
However, there are also some basic guidelines when it comes to choosing keywords:
- Think about what people would search for if they were looking for a solution like yours
- Use long-tail keywords whenever possible (longer than three words). These type of keywords are the best way to rank on Amazon because they are:
- Less competitive
- Easier to rank for
- More relevant to the buyer’s conversion intent
- Have higher conversion rates
- Less expensive per click than shorter terms, making them more cost effective overall
2. Long Tail Keywords vs. Broad Match Keywords (‘seed keywords’):
Long tail keywords are more specific, which means you’ll only start getting traffic from them if you’ve already done some work in your niche and built up trust with your customer base.
So when someone searches for “gardening books”, this could mean anything from gardening tips for beginners all the way through advanced horticulture. The long tail version of this keyword is “organic gardening books for beginners” or maybe even something like “how to grow tomatoes in containers”.
The first version (gardening books) will get a lot of traffic but it’s not very targeted or relevant so it’s not going to convert well and doesn’t have as much value either since you don’t know who those people are or what they want yet (this is why this type of keyword is called broad match – or a ‘seed keyword’).
3. Discover your competition’s keyword data
Once you know what keywords to target, it’s time to find out how your competitors are targeting them. There are three main ways to do this:
A keyword research tool like helium10. This method is a little more time-consuming, but can be very useful if you’re looking to learn more about your market and see what kind of keywords have been working for other sellers in the past.
A keyword tool like brand analytics will show you the terms that people are using when they search for brands similar to yours—which is especially useful if there are any big gaps between your product and theirs (e.g., if they’re selling organic dog food while yours contains artificial ingredients).
A keyword tool like Search Query Report will show you which specific keywords people search with when looking for products like yours—and thus give insight into what terms might work best for SEO purposes (which we’ll discuss below).
4. Search terms reports
Search terms reports are a feature in Amazon PPC that show you what keywords people use to find products on Amazon. You can see performance at the search term level so you can get more specific with your bidding strategy, which is useful if some of your keywords have low click-through rates (CTRs).
For example, let’s say one of your product keywords has a high CTR but low conversions; maybe there are better options out there?
5. CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) and ranking factors
Conversion Rate Optimization is an important part of your ranking strategy. It’s easy to get overly caught up in the back end numbers, but if you don’t have a solid CRO strategy in place, your hard work will be for nothing.
6. Create a strong listing
Make sure the title is relevant to the main search queries.
Use “hero” keywords in the title, and secondary keywords in the bullet points.
Ensure bullet points and images are BENEFIT FOCUSED, not just feature focused.
Utilize misspellings in the backend areas – Amazon allows you to write out misspelled words or spell them correctly (like “color” vs “colour”).
7. Use PPC to drive enough sales velocity to the product
In order to rank high on Amazon, you need to have sales velocity. Sales velocity is the number of sales you make in a given period of time. The higher your sales velocity, the better your product ranking will be and vice versa.
Sales velocity is one of three factors that Amazon uses to rank products:
- Sales Velocity
- Conversion Rate
- Relevance
I hope this post has given you some insights into how to use PPC effectively for Amazon. If you want to rank on Amazon, you need a product that sells well. And if your product doesn’t sell well, then it won’t rank well either!
A strong ranking is the key to success in any business—but especially so when it comes to Amazon.