What 90% of Sellers Get Wrong On Their Product Listing (That Sinks Their Ranking)

539,726. That’s the approximate number of people who visited Amazon.com today alone.

That’s a lot of people. What’s more, these people all visited Amazon with one intention: to buy something.

In many ways, Amazon has done the hard work for us. They’ve created a marketplace where millions of people are looking to buy products every single month. There’s only one factor that determines whether or not we succeed or fail on Amazon: where our products rank in Amazon search.

It sounds simple. But as sellers know, actually ranking is far from easy. In today’s article, I want to go over the primary reason why I believe most sellers struggle on Amazon.

The Core Delusion

Amazon is an algorithm. Which means as a seller, there is a lot of technical knowledge you need to sell on the platform. You have to learn how to do keyword research. You have to learn about metrics like time on page and bounce rate. You need to understand how to read the sales data Amazon gives you.

With all of this time spent learning technology, it’s easy to forget one thing…

At the end of the day, your customers are human beings!

If you play Amazon like a video game, trying to game the algorithm just right, you are likely to fail. That’s because instead of focusing on tapping into the unending demand and desire that the platform hosts, you’re trying to beat Amazon at its own game.

What you’ll find is that when you focus on your customers… even above Amazon’s algorithm… your listing becomes much more attractive to Amazon’s algorithm. Let me give you a few examples on why that’s so.

Keyword Research

We all know that keywords are important. It’s how Amazon knows where to rank your products. But, the reason why keywords are so important, is they’re how Amazon knows what HUMANS are typing into their search bar… and what they want to get as a result.

Again, it seems obvious. Yet when most sellers do their keyword research, they don’t talk to human beings. They use keyword research tools. Although using this kind of tool is fine, in theory, in reality, it brings up a lot of problems.

For example, Amazon doesn’t even give us access to accurate keyword data. So most of the keyword research tools are just using data from Google and other search engines. Now, most of these search engines also don’t give us the most complete information.

That means that ultimately, these keyword research tools are giving you a guess of a guess!

If all you use are keywords generated by a tool, not only are you getting vague and unreliable keywords… you’re also getting the exact same keywords your competitors are getting. You are getting the most competitive, least accurate keywords, and using them to base your entire listing around.

Can you see why most sellers struggle to rank?

So if you shouldn’t use a tool, what should you do?

You need to put yourself in the customer’s head. You need to figure out all the NATURAL ways people are searching for your products. If you sell a natural cleaner, for example, a customer may try and find it by searching “plant-based cleaner”.

To find these kinds of natural keywords, comb your competitor’s Amazon product reviews. Use the language people are writing in. Read YouTube comments. Talk to people who fit your customer profile in person. Even better, if you know someone who is your target customer, ask to watch them use Amazon. You’ll learn some fascinating insights I can guarantee your competitors aren’t even thinking of.

How Engaging Is Your Product Listing?

If you want to rank well on Amazon, you know you need to make sales. You know you need a high conversion rate. Yet what you may not know, is that Amazon has detailed exactly how you can get that.

It comes in the form of two metrics: bounce rate and average time spent on page.

These analytics show us just how engaging our product page is.

Bounce rate measures the number of customers who immediately leave your page. So if our customer searches “garden hose” on Amazon, and for some reason, your fake green snake listing shows up on page #1, if someone does visit that listing, they’ll bounce immediately.

A high bounce rate demonstrates to Amazon that your listing is not giving customers what they want.

Average time spent on page is a similar indicator. The idea is, if Amazon has ranked you correctly, people will spend a lot of time on your listing.

These two metrics are working on the sales principal of investment. That is, the more time your customer spends with you, the more likely they are to buy. When you optimize your listing to be viewed and consumed by your perfect customer, you put yourself in the perfect position to increase your conversion rate.

In future articles we will discuss detailed ways you can increase all of these metrics. Yet the core principal of this article—that your customers are human beings—is the backbone of a successful Amazon business.

So take it to heart!