Learn about Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR) and how you can improve your sales ranking according to Amazon SEO best practices.By ITMay 9, 2019
Amazon sales rank, commonly referred to as the Best Sellers Rank (BSR), is a calculation based on amazon.com sales that is updated on an hourly basis to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold across the platform.
While the Amazon Best Sellers list is a strong indicator of how well a product is selling overall, it does not always indicate how well an item is performing among other similar items. Category and subcategory best seller lists were created to show an item’s rank in the categories or subcategories where it stands out among the competition.
A product’s BSR is listed on multiple pages, including the Amazon Best Sellers page, within a product detail page, and on a category-level Best Selling Products page, such as Electronics. However, it is immensely important to try to be the top seller in your specific granular subcategory, instead of in your overall product category. For example, as you can see, Jenga is currently ranked as #3 in Toys & Games overall, but is #1 in Stacking Games, a subcategory of the overall Toys & Games category. Having this level of detail gives you insight into how your products are performing on both a big-picture and SKU-specific level.
The Amazon sales rank is used to determine a product’s popularity within its category and against the competition. A product’s eligibility for the metric is determined by the number of recent sales and historical sales data relative to any other products in the same category. The lower your number is, the more sales the product is receiving and vice versa. If you have the sales rank #1, your product is currently the most-purchased product in that category.
Given that BSR is based on recent and past performance, it is important not to get too caught up on winning the placement to drive sales velocity for your products. Even if a product has made it to the BSR list, it doesn’t necessarily mean the product is highly ranked for any search terms, particularly on the organic side. Although you should focus on driving sales and velocity, BSR does not have a direct correlation to helping you generate organic sales.
About the Author
Content Listing Optimization and PPC Advertising
Feedvisor data reveals that 66% of consumers to go Amazon to start their search for new products and 74% go to Amazon when they are ready to buy a specific product. In order to capitalize on these purchases, you need to make sure you are actively performing content listing optimization to capitalize on profitable keywords and strategically advertising to promote product discoverability, improve your keyword rankings with Amazon SEO, and accelerate sales.
Feedvisor’s content creation and optimization services, for example, ensures that your products are ranking effectively across both organic search and paid efforts and drives engagement in order to maximize impact. As part of this process, the team analyzes your listings and historical performance and then optimizes the visual and written content — both above and below the fold — to effectively appeal to target audiences, applying A/B testing as appropriate.
Performed according to Amazon best practices, listing optimization creates accurate naming conventions, descriptive titles, high-quality hero images, compelling product copy, and correct product variants to convey any unique differentiators or value-adds and inform the consumer’s purchase decision.
To drive impressions and conversions you also need to have a detailed Amazon Advertising strategy in place. By running PPC campaigns, you will be able to effectively get your product in front of a larger audience that is searching for similar terms. Sponsored Products, for example, are keyword-targeted — and can now be product attribute targeted — can be used to fulfill a variety of business goals. Whether you are aiming to drive exposure or visibility for new or low-exposure ASINs, generate incremental sales, maximize profits, or liquidate an underconverting product, Amazon ad campaigns will not only help you generate demand, but can positively impact your organic ranking.
Final Thoughts
Understanding the Best Sellers Rank calculation on Amazon is another way that you can make the most impactful business decisions for your Amazon operation. Looking at the rank can help inform potential product launch strategies by giving insight to anticipated demand, provide actionable takeaways when preparing for listing optimization, uncover competitive insights about how you can outpace others in your category, and more.
Although the BSR algorithm is dynamic and constantly changing, you can utilize it to understand your competitive arena and the importance of sales ranking in the more niche subcategories that the overall categories ladder down to. With the competitive benchmarking that can be done by monitoring the BSR, you can gain visibility on the areas of your business that have room for optimization in order to improve performance for the future.
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