The Ultimate Amazon Sales Rank Guide

The million-dollar question that every seller on Amazon wants an answer to – how do I improve my Amazon sales rank and pull in more revenue?

To get the answer, you must know what Amazon’s Sales Rank is and how it works.

So let’s dive in.

Amazon Sales Rank, which is also known as Best Sellers Rank (BSR) is used to determine the popularity of a product within its specific category. The sales rank is also available for products that do not have categories.

The sales rank is within the range of 1 to over 1 million. The higher the rank number, the lower the sales made, and the lower the rank number, the higher the sales made.

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This is because the sales rank calculates the time a product was last sold, and the shorter the period between two consecutive sales, the lower the rank number.

Amazon updates the sales rank hourly and products with more sales get featured at the top of Amazon’s page. It is however important to note that the sales rank results for different Amazon marketplaces vary. A product that the platform lists among the top ten in a subcategory on Amazon.co.uk can have a lower listing on Amazon.com.

Although Amazon hasn’t officially come out to state how its sales rank algorithm works, there are a few factors that have been identified to influence the sales rank of a Product.

Product Category

Even though Amazon ranks products that are uncategorized, sales rank is still specific to product categories. This is because for Amazon to determine the sales rank of a product, they compare the sales of that product to the sales of the other products in the same category.

Sub-category

Earning a good sales rank for a category is hard because of the large number of products available in a category. So Amazon also assigns sales rank for subcategories because subcategories are less competitive.

Sales recency

As stated earlier, the more sales you make, the lower your sales rank on Amazon. But the most recent sale you make on Amazon has the greatest impact on your sales rank. If there is an increase in the number of sales you make, Amazon will assume that your product has gained more popularity, and your sales rank will decrease, but if the number of sales fluctuates or drops the sales rank will increase.

Sales history

If your product sales history is consistent and doesn’t have any record of frequent fluctuation in the number of sales made, your product will earn a good sales rank. Fluctuation in the sales of your product will have a negative effect on your sales rank.

Sales Frequency

Sales frequency has to do with the time between each sale. The more products you sell, the shorter the time interval between sales. If your product is being sold often Amazon considers it to be popular and can tag it a best seller.

Finding the sales rank of a product is easy, all you need to do is to visit  Amazon.com. Type the name of the product in the search bar. You will be redirected to the product page. The products page is the page you see when you click on a product on Amazon.

When the product page opens, scroll down and click on “Product Details”. Move to the bottom of the page and you will see “Amazon Bestseller Rank” and a number, the number you see beside it is the sales rank of the product.

The sales rank of the smartwatch in the screenshot above is number 80 in the electronics category, this means that out of the thousands of products in this category, only 79 make more sales than this smartwatch. This is a good BSR.

You can also make use of the Amazon seller app to find the BSR or seller rank of a Product. Asides showing you the current rank of products, the app also enables you to check the history of the rank (ie previous rankings of the product) this will enable you to predict how well the product will sell.

There is no standard of what a good sales rank is on Amazon. Whether a sales rank is good depends on the category of the product and how many listings the category has.

For instance, if your product is in a category with about 10,000 listings and it ranks 9800, this is terrible, because out of 10,000 products, over 9000 products are making more sales than it.

If however the category contains about 5 million listings and the sales rank of your product is 1 million, the rank is excellent because your product is ahead of 4 million other products.

So while a rank of 9800 is bad for a category of 10,000 products, a rank of 1 million is excellent for a category with 5 million listings.

Whatever the number of listings your products category or subcategory has, the aim should be to keep the sales rank as low as possible and also try to push your product to become a bestseller in the category.

It is important to note that when determining the sales rank of a Product, Amazon’s algorithm does not consider the pricing, product reviews, keywords, and sellers’ feedback. This however does not mean that you should ignore these aspects because they play key roles in boosting the credibility of your product and in increasing the number of sales you make.

Amazon marketplace is highly competitive, with over 2.5 million active sellers, therefore optimizing your product listing and engaging in basic SEO practices, helps to promote your brand and increase the frequency of your product’s sale.

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Below are ways that you can boost your Amazon sales rank:

Use Relevant Keywords

Incorporating relevant keywords in your product titles increases the possibility of your product page being indexed. Amazon algorithms are similar to that of search engines like Google so ensure you conduct in-depth keyword research, this will enable you to know the right keywords to use. Also, avoid keyword stuffing.

Optimize your Product Title

With myriads of options to choose from, if you don’t optimize your product title, you may lose potential buyers to your competitors, this is because most Amazon shoppers judge the quality of a product with the title.

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When writing the title for your product, ensure that it is informative, creative, and optimized with keywords. Include the product name, brand name, and certain features like the color and product dimensions in the product title. This will make it easy for potential clients to figure out your product at first glance. See the screenshot below

Also, ensure that you adhere to Amazon’s requirements. There are certain laid down guidelines that you need to comply with to get the best result. For instance, the character limit for titles is 200 characters. Violating these guidelines will have a negative effect on your product listing.

Have a Clear Product Description

Data reveals that 23% of online shoppers who don’t have a specific product in mind to buy, visit Amazon to get inspiration, it is, therefore, important to have a clear product description.

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What you write in the product description section determines whether a potential buyer goes through with the purchase, it is, therefore, important to use this section to maximize results.

While writing the description focus on providing quality information for the user. Ensure that every information in the description section is valuable to the user. Your conversion rate and engagement depend on this section, so don’t blow it. Don’t forget to infuse some keywords in this section.

Optimize for Google

Although the algorithm for Amazon and Google function differently, they are still linked; Everything you do on Amazon is indexed on Google. This is why when you search for a product on Google, product listings on Amazon show up in the result pages.

Optimizing for Google gives you an edge over your competitors because many Amazon sellers overlook this and put in their all into Amazon but overlook Google. Adhering to basic SEO practices will make your product show in Google result pages, this increases the visibility of your product on the internet which leads to an increase in sales.

Answer Customer Questions

Your work as an Amazon seller doesn’t stop at creating a good product listing, you need to be active in the question-and-answer section and answer important questions from customers.

Most of your potential buyers will go through the questions section, which shows that they are interested in making a purchase. If, however, they do not find answers to important questions in this section, they will ignore all you wrote in the description section and go in search of another seller who has the answers they need.

People will only buy if you have established adequate value in their mind to purchase.

To have a Q&A section that adds value to the user, you need to identify major concerns of the users regarding the product and give a detailed answer to each question.

Optimize Product Images

In online marketplaces, a picture speaks a thousand words. If you want to capture the attention of your target customers and get them to buy your product, you need to optimize your images.

Make use of high-quality, clear, and bright images. Take images of the product at different angles, this will give the users an idea of what the product looks like when in use and also make your photo stand out. The acceptable image formats on Amazon are GIF/PNG/JPEG/TIFF.

Below is the product description of a smartwatch that has a BSR of 80 in the electronics category and occupies number 6 in the subcategory “smartwatches”, now, look at the beautiful HD pictures that were used to explain every important feature of the smartwatch.

It is also important to adhere to Amazon guidelines such as:

• The HD images should be 2560 pixels wide (it can be less than this, but it shouldn’t go below 1000) and regular images shouldn’t be less than 1280 pixels on the sides. The image should have a white background and fill 85% of the image frame that Amazon provides.
• Do not add borders, logos, mannequins, and watermarks to the image. And special characters, hyphens, blank spaces and underscores are not allowed either.

You can go the extra mile to include graphs and infographics into your product description where necessary. The graphs should highlight the key features of the product, this makes it easy for the reader to understand the value of the product.

Follow Best Practices

As stated earlier, adhering to Amazon’s guidelines will increase the chances of your listing performing well. So here are additional best practices you should adhere to :

• Provide the exact details of the product in the description section.
• You should capitalize every first letter of the primary words in the title and use bullet points to highlight the key features of the product. Making use of bullet points keeps the listing concise and informative and prompts the customer to read more about the product.

Prompt customers to Leave Reviews

Even though customer reviews do not directly influence the BSR of a product, good reviews help to increase the number of sales made. Encourage your customers to leave reviews by using parcel inserts, this prompts them to leave reviews about your product.

Be professional in your response to negative reviews, don’t malign or respond rudely to a negative review. If your response is rude, customers will interpret it as poor customer service and this gives them something else to complain about.

Offer Competitive Prices

Research shows that 82% of Amazon buyers say that price is an important factor they consider when shopping. It is therefore important to sell your products at prices better than what your competitors sell. This also includes reducing the shipping fee where possible.

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If the price of the product is affordable and the shipping fee is ridiculously high, your product won’t sell. There are tools that can automatically modify the price of your product based on the competition instead of going through the stress of constantly updating the price manually.

Offer Prime

Amazon Prime has a huge membership that you shouldn’t ignore if you want to generate more sales. In the United States alone there are over 95 million Amazon Prime members.

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The number keeps increasing daily because of amazing benefits such as faster shipping, discounts in certain stores, unlimited video streaming, and free monthly ebooks that the members enjoy.

The number of prime products has increased to where if a user filters out non-prime products while searching, most of the products outside Amazon Prime disappear, this reduces the visibility of such products and causes a decline in the number of sales made.

Amazon sales rank is not just important for statistics and ranking purposes, and its use is not only beneficial to Amazon sellers.

Amazon BSR can be used to monitor your competitors. Looking at the Amazon bestseller list lets you know what product is at the top in your category. If the product is similar to yours, it means that your product can also occupy the best seller position if you put in more effort. You can check the products page of the products on the bestsellers lists to see what they are doing right and you can learn how to optimize your listing properly.

If you are new to the Amazon market place and are in search of the right product to invest in, or if you are an existing seller looking for new products to sell, the Amazon BSR will give you a list of products with high demand.

Going through the Amazon BSR reduces the risk of blindly investing in a product that sells slowly.

To find products with high demand and good sales, target products with rankings lesser than 5000 or 2000  depending on the category and the number of products listed. Products with low BSRs are products that sell well in that category,. Which are the ones you should go for.

The sales rank of products on Amazon is not updated in real-time, updates happen hourly for products in the top 10,000 categories while products between 10,000 to 100,000 are updated daily and products with rankings above 100,000 are recalculated monthly. This means that the sales rank of your product may fluctuate depending on the ranking range it falls in.

Because Amazon BSR is hinged on sales, you should focus more on generating sales. When you do this, your sales rank will automatically improve.

Remember that the work doesn’t stop when you become a bestseller, to maintain your bestseller position, you need to keep on adhering to Amazon guidelines and basic SEO principles.

What has your Amazon sales rank been like? Share with us additional tips, questions and comments.