Changes and Challenges in Amazon Ranking

Ever wonder how an Amazon ranking maestro maneuvers the complex chessboard of e-commerce strategy? Alina Vlaic, the founder of AZRank and our go-to guru, returns to the show with a fresh cache of tactics for conquering Amazon's ever-changing TOS and algorithm. With a pivot towards market research and feedback-driven methods, she reveals how her business remains a tour de force in enhancing keyword relevance. Our conversation is a riveting game plan for sellers eager to sink their teeth into compliant and effective ranking strategies, tailored for those who play to win.

Navigating the e-commerce seas requires a versatile captain, and in this episode, we chart the course through the distinct waters of Amazon, Walmart, and Etsy. Discover how social proof anchors Etsy's success, why Walmart's ecosystem is the new frontier to watch, and what Amazon's virtual bundles mean for your bulk sales strategy. I even share a personal tale of triumph with these virtual bundles that's revolutionized how my industrial scientific brand approaches the bulk market. This is your masterclass in adapting to the unique currents of each platform, a conversation not to be missed by merchants sailing towards profitable shores.

When it comes to marketing artillery, press coverage and user-generated content (UGC) are the cannons of the day. We dissect when press really packs a punch for brand awareness and the shift towards a cost-per-click payment model. Then, we turn the spotlight on UGC, contrasting its current clout with the fading glitz of external traffic channels. To cap off, I let you in on a strategic secret using Amazon's Opportunity Explorer to sharpen your PPC and ranking initiatives. For visionaries ready to unleash the power of authenticity and innovation in their online presence, this episode is your treasure map to success.

 

In episode 520 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Alina discuss:

• 03:13 - Dynamic Year in Amazon and E-Commerce
• 05:34 - New Strategies on Amazon, Walmart, Etsy
• 15:05 - Ranking and Variations in Virtual Bundles
• 18:50 - Press X and UGC in Marketing
• 22:07 - Discussion on UGC and Expanding Opportunities
• 23:03 - UGC and AI in Amazon Selling
• 31:03 - Expanding Brand With Miraclecom Dashboard

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we got Alina back on the show, and she’s gonna talk about what is working with Amazon and Walmart ranking strategies, as well as some cool Amazon virtual bundle that I didn’t even know about. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Did you know that just because you have a keyword in your listing, that does not mean that you are automatically guaranteed to be searchable or, as we say, indexed for that keyword? Well, how can you know what you are indexed for and not? You can actually use Helium 10's Index Checker to check any keywords you want. For more information, go to h10.me/indexchecker. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the series sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we're going to the other part of the world. I believe she's in Romania right now. We've got Alina back on the show here, and what city I'm trying to remember? What city in Romania are you at?

Alina:

Sibiu

Bradley Sutton:

How far away is that from the Dracula castle that I've always wanted to visit?

Alina:

Very close, like 100 kilometers.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. So, yeah, all right if we visit your family over there. I know we've hung out in Turkey, another place in around the world, but not in your home country, so I definitely want to visit over there. Now, guys, if you want to get her full backstory we're not going to go too much into it today because she's been on the podcast before, make sure to go to episodes. 122 was one of them, and also 267, and then most recently she was on in 406. All right, so this is now her fourth time on the podcast. Each time she's expanded what she's done, and you might know her from AZRank, which I've talked about a plethora of times. I've always joked with her that I wish I had some kind of contract where I get $10 every time I mention it. I might not be working at Helium 10 anymore. I'd be so rich. But hey, I mentioned things that I organically use, and no, you know, Alina doesn't pay me to, I'm not an affiliate, but I naturally will recommend services and things that I use and that I trust, and that's definitely AZRank.

Bradley Sutton:

Throughout the years has changed because of Amazon differences, and then last year we talked a little bit about one of our newer companies called Press X, and so let's just first talk about what people know you for what's going on in the AZRank world these days. Like somebody might think that, oh, AZRank must be completely out of business because now there's no search, find, buy and stuff. But you know, you guys are obviously still doing things that are above board. It's not, it's not, it's kind of on purpose. I'm wearing a gray hat, I'm not wearing a black hat, not a white hat, but it might be some gray here, but no, but anyways, update us on what's been going on the last year on the AZRanks.

Alina:

Yes, First of all, hello everybody and thank you so much for having me again. It's a pleasure, always a pleasure. It's been a very interesting year, a very dynamic year all around, I feel. I mean, from all the five and a half years I've been in the industry, it's been the most dynamic year from all points of view in the Amazon and e-commerce world. Yes, we're still alive and breathing in our ranking business. Things are working still very well In terms of TOS compliance, because I know everybody has this question on their lips. I feel like and I know we've talked a lot before about this everybody has its own, their own, risk tolerance about how the Amazon TOS is interpreted. You've known me for a bunch of years now and we've always tried to be TOS compliant or as much as TOS compliant as possible, because even back in the days, people have always been debating about even the search find buys were they compliant or not. So it's pretty much the same thing right now. We have pivoted and we have changed our way of doing things. We're mostly focused on market research and we have combined that with some surveys and with some feedback that people give you back while you're still ranking for keywords. And from my point of view. Now it's been like two years since Amazon has changed completely the TOS and I strongly can admit that the way we're doing things right now it's working much better because you're going on a broader experience with everything that means ranking and that helps you basically be more relevant in the algorithm point of view.

Alina:

So, yes, working, still doing it. We have a lot of, you know, tweaks and tricks and different strategies depending on. Depending first of all on the product, second of all on the marketplace, because Amazon is one thing, Walmart is another thing, Esty is another thing, and so on and so forth.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, now what about on? You know you're talking mainly about Amazon, but did refer a little bit to, like Walmart and Etsy. Still the same old school stuff. Working on platforms like that, as far as you know, like, like you know, potentially search, find, buy, which is not against Walmart's service, and then on Etsy is something similar, is what's working for ranking.

Alina:

These days, etsy is pretty much in the same place you need to. On Etsy, we don't have too many tools yet. It's still the E rank that we're mainly getting the info from and the organic search that you're doing and finding your ranking. But at the same time, what we've seen lately I mean not lately, like lately in the past year or so, a year and a half on Etsy is that you need to have some social proof, like you said, you need to have some reviews, you need to have some, some people talking about you posting some real, real life photos of your product, because you know, etsy is all about visual. So Etsy, that's pretty much it. And on Walmart is very dynamic, it's extremely dynamic lately. They're changing so much and, yes, search, find, buy is not against terms of service you can do those. Add to cart are not against thermal service you can do those. And there are a bunch of strategies that we were working on right now and we're doing a bunch of tests to see which way to better go on specific situations. But it's going really well and I feel like Walmart is going in the right direction.

Bradley Sutton:

Finally, Now, going back to the Amazon, you know, like you know you're kind of like me in the sense that you like, you like experimenting and different things and you've had different theories. You've tested. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But you know, I know you've talked about experimenting with the questions and answers and potentially finding the scene you can find the secret sauce of if Amazon posts. You know influence, you know algorithms and stuff. But what can you tell me like in the last year or so, like even ones that failed, because you know if you tried it, I'm sure somebody else probably had the idea that maybe it would work. So what are some experiments that worked out well? Some things that are like Nope, can't really influence, you know, can't really help this ranking at all. What are some stuff you've been doing?

Alina:

So a lot of stuff, but what? I can tell you something? That it didn't work and it's related to my latest episode of the last year, one in December, when I was very sure that I am very close to discovering the secret for Amazon posts. Unfortunately, something happened and I think in the algorithm at one point it just didn't work anymore. If you're already doing the Amazon post, go on and do them. If you don't do them at all, maybe it would be a good idea to have that content out there and more visibility for your brand, but not in the terms of doing them just for ranking. I couldn't find the secret sauce yet. Hopefully it's still going to be out there. What I found to be working, and working real well, is something about virtual bundles. I know we've talked about that a lot lately in the past. So virtual bundles before pretty recently I couldn't say exactly when, but before recently you couldn't shuffle the quantity of the same product within a virtual bundle.

Bradley Sutton:

So then yeah, because I know, let's say, I've got a coffin shelf and a coffin bath rug I could make a virtual bundle, and it's one each. But now you are ready. Now are you saying that I could do a virtual bundle with 10 each, or I can do a virtual bundle with 10 of one and one of another.

Alina:

Both. Now you could also make a virtual bundle out of two coffin shelves only.

Bradley Sutton:

Of the same ASIN. I really Well, since when I haven't even been. You see, that's what happens. That sometimes boggles my mind. You know, like Amazon, obviously we were just talking about how I had to delay you because I was on the, I was doing the weekly buzz and you know I Amazon announces so many things and a lot of it is just like little tiny things, but that seems like it would be a pretty significant announcement or a change, and I never saw that announced. Anyway, were you just like playing around with it? And that's how you?

Alina:

discovered it. Here's the story. Uh, I think I told this like back two years ago in one of your podcast. So I'm selling uh, one of my brands is an industrial scientific and I'm selling some lab supplies, which usually are a pack of 10, pack of 20, pack of 100, because there's small stuff, you know. So I I saw at one point that people were buying more of the same product, right, like two units, three units five units. But since the virtual bundles were there, I couldn't do a virtual bundle with shop with the same quantity, I mean more of the same um quantity of the same product. So then I I created some FBM listings with pack of 500, you know, and combined and basically I was it's it was the same product but I was selling. I was sending the buyer five packs instead of a pack of 500. I was sending five packs of 100 because my pack of 100 was the product I was selling on Amazon. Make sense. So.

Alina:

But I did them at the end because I couldn't do them inside Amazon and I couldn't and I didn't want to do it FBA back then, because the FBA fees and all the stuff wasn't worth it. The, the package would would be too big and everything. So the, the profitability wasn't that great on the, it wasn't worth it to keep it into FBA. Let's say so. Then I did this. And then one point recently, very recently it's a matter of 10 days, two weeks maybe I discovered that that it was allowed to. I mean, amazon allows you to create virtual bundles, two of each, two of this, with one of these, three of this was one of this five of the same thing, you know, and at that point I well hold on.

Bradley Sutton:

I'm trying to, I'm trying to do it here and I can't figure out. Let me share my screen here. Let's see. All right, so well. First of all, I was able to add more products. I never did that before, like right then how, where you can only add two, before I was able to have like three here.

Alina:

You have the couple there to add more products, if you see, like on the left.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So I'm looking here and at first I didn't see it. But right here under quantity I can now individually change this.

Alina:

That's crazy To as many as you want.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, like, and then now it's gonna reflect in the ASIN. That is super cool. I never. Why in the world would Amazon not make this an announcement is kind of crazy. And did you just randomly discover it? Like you were creating a virtual bundle and you're like, hey, what's this button do? And that's how you figured it out.

Alina:

It's not entirely my personal discovery. Like me, Alina, I was working with somebody from my team and all of a sudden was like he said I need to try this, I need to try this. I think I saw a plus button somewhere and then that's how it worked. But I have more on that, and this is something even more crazy. That was absolutely not possible at all until now. You can run PPC on the virtual bundles.

Bradley Sutton:

You couldn't run PPC on the virtual bundles, yeah, before I think you could only do sponsored brand ads back in the old days, right.

Alina:

Now you can do anything. He discovered this Really. Yes, my team made discover this first by mistake because he was doing some bulk uploads in the campaigns and he forgot some bundle ASINs out there and all of a sudden we had like some huge conversion on one ASIN and he said this is a virtual bundle. How on earth this one got here? But then we started looking into that and apparently it works Mostly. What I can guarantee for is it's working through bulk upload. I don't know if you can add them manually in your campaigns or with some tools that you're using for the PPC, but with the bulk upload 100% working.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I don't think you can do it in the campaign manager. I'll just double check or add products to advertise.

Alina:

I would check this. If anybody has some bundles that really work, I would definitely check this because, since these changes are happening, they might allow this as well.

Bradley Sutton:

And then you've actually seen it then in the wild where you see a sponsored ad and it's showing the virtual bundle as opposed to so you like confer, wow, okay, that's pretty cool. But bulk upload, then very interesting, okay, so that's like super cool. Now what about ranking? In the old days it was mainly if you're ranking for one of the component units, like the coffin shelf. Let's say, I had a double coffin shelf bundle I could only rank. It's almost like a variation listing where you can only rank for one and you can't rank for the virtual bundle. But I swear I've seen recently where I had a placement for the virtual bundle and the individual. Are you seeing that too?

Alina:

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Now I've seen it and I've seen it a lot. I haven't run any tests for clients, but on my product, since we have a lot of this type of bundles I mean in the hundreds probably I see it a lot. So it's 100% valid for my category at least. Again, I'm not sure for all categories, but I think it's out there for everybody. If you're ranking on a keyword with your main product, you can rank on the same keyword with your virtual bundles.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool, so really cool virtual bundle stuff going on. Any other hacks that you can share with us that's been working for you. These are not hacks, but another strategy or anything else.

Alina:

Relevance is still the main thing that helps you with your product launch or relaunch or ranking campaign or PPC or whatever. If you're not relevant, you cannot do anything. Basically and I know you were saying a couple of months ago about the Amazon recommended thing. Amazon recommended rank. I tested that myself and it works like a charm and it's very much valid in terms of ranking campaigns. I mean, yes, if you're having problems ranking, I double you and I say you need to check that Amazon recommended rank. Because there you have your answer and something related to keywords. I would say make sure you stay focused. I mean, of course, all of us want to rank on hundreds of keywords, on thousands of keywords, on as many keywords as possible, but for Amazon, especially when you're launching a new product, you need to be very focused on a particular set of keywords so that you can find your relevance and your ranking juice and then Amazon will start showing you on its own on some related keywords. If you have some root keywords, some good root keywords, in your title, in your bullet points, then you will have ranking on a lot of additional keywords. As I said before, try to have a logic for everything. If the common sense and if everything makes sense to you, then it will eventually make sense for the other people and for the algorithm itself.

Bradley Sutton:

What's been going on the Press X side? Last year you were doing a lot of cool work with getting a lot of traction on the Press side. Is that still a valid tactic, using Press during launch or to promote products at all?

Alina:

After one and a half years now, I can say that you should look at press and especially press acts. I mean, since we're talking about press acts, but press in general, not necessarily as a conversion tactic or a launching tactic or a ranking tactic, but it's a brand awareness, it's an appearance, it's something that people want to talk about, it's traffic. If you're looking at sales, conversions, this type of numbers, and you're planning on making a press article or getting your product featured in a magazine just for sales, then I would say, think again. And especially if we're talking about a new launch Press from what I've seen over a year, it's not necessarily for new brands. You can look at it if you're a very established brand launching new products. That's a different thing. You can very much look at it. If you have a strong Shopify website or outside Amazon and you have I mean, people know your brand and it's not just on Amazon only then, yes, you could look at that. You could also look at that, for example, if you have an extraordinary product, something that is unique, innovative, something that is very special, you can look at press too. And also an idea maybe you can look at press if you're looking at Kickstarter. I know it's very popular right now, but if you're planning a Kickstarter campaign, you can maybe consider also press to driving traffic to that Kickstarter campaign to make more money.

Alina:

So that's how press works. It's working better for some products, not that great for some other products in terms of again, in terms of ranking, in terms of sales, in terms of traffic. It's there. So it depends a lot of what your expectations are. Our model is a CPC cost base, so you only pay for the clicks you get. It's not like a retainer fee, it's not a fixed amount. If your article drives only 10 clicks, that means, for example, $20, that's all the amount you're going to pay and you're still going to get the article. And you need to consider that as the more articles you get, the more love you're going to get from Google and for all the external or outside Amazon platforms that are out there, because once the article is there, it's just there. It's there for everybody to see and click on it.

Bradley Sutton:

OK, all right. Any quick experiences of somebody it's worked out for in the last year like hey, they were doing this and then they ran a series of articles and this is what happened from it.

Alina:

We had a brand which is into the dental hygiene niche and we've had a few campaigns very successful. I mean, I remember the ROAS was six, so for $1 spent they made six, which was good. I mean, on top of the traffic and everything else, this one also made money, you know.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. All right, now switching gears. You seem you're kind of like me. You can't stay doing one thing. You have to have your hand in like 75 different things. So you and I are liking that. So the latest thing I heard you talking about which I purposely didn't ask you about because I wanted to kind of like find out about here I know nothing about what you're doing there is you've mentioned you're doing some things on the UGC side. So first of all, what prompted that? You know like you don't just dream. One time I actually did have a dream about a tool and it eventually became something in Cerebro, the advanced rank filter. It literally came from a dream ahead. Most people, I think, don't dream up things. There's a reason why you thought of doing UGC. So what started that? And then, what exactly are you doing in that field now?

Alina:

OK. So UGC I think it's the. You know how external traffic was two or three years ago, when everybody was talking about external traffic. That's how I feel UGC is right now. So I started this because, from the community of people that we have and that we use for our ranking campaigns which is huge at one point I thought these people can do more than that. So what do we need as Amazon sellers? What does the market need that we can help with? And so this came First. We only started with UGC because it's more than that. I have something else that even you don't know about.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh my goodness OK.

Alina:

So, ugc, I don't know what's your take on the AI. I love it. I'm a little bit afraid of it as well, but what I can say is that, as much as people love it, eventually everything is a cycle and they will turn back to real life photos, real life commercials, real life billboards. I've seen this happen in Europe, at least Romania, and also other places in Europe. There are billboards with burger photos or commercials saying this photo was taken using a phone and they're showing real people. Those brands could afford an AI and they probably are using AI in different other type of places. I've done some research lately and I found some really interesting data.

Alina:

For example, brands huge brands that are running Google ads, and they compared not necessarily on AI, let's say a professional studio photo which is a wide background, blah, blah, blah, everything with a photo taken with a phone, a little bit of editing, but nothing serious, and they ran Google ads on it. Guess what? The CPC was 60% lower on the UGC one. The user generated a photo and the conversion was 38% higher on the same photo. So that's how we started. I think that's where we're going to go.

Alina:

It's a lot of stuff that you can do with your UGC. We do photos and videos, especially videos that we recommend people using, filling Amazon with content on their listings. In places where it's still free, For example Q&A, you can answer every question with a video and every event I go to and I speak when I ask this question, I get a maximum of five people in the room raising their hands. Who uses this? Almost nobody's still nobody's using this, and it's a free place on Amazon where you can post content. And then there's videos about your product line, right, or it used to be called related videos, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

I have brand.

Alina:

I have eight and nine figure brands I work with. They do not launch a product without at least three to five videos filled in that section, because if you don't put them yourself, then your competitors will come and they will tag your ASIN into one of their listings and then their video is going to show on yours. So when I want to buy your product and I scroll down your listing, I'm going to find theirs and maybe, I don't know, maybe it has a thumbnail that attracts me, and then I'm going to click on that and I'm going to go buy that instead of yours and then all that content, for example, all the UGC we do. If you want to, we can post on TikTok Just like that. Not on influencer accounts we don't work with yet we don't have those type, but we're working on creating a few influencer accounts from our people, but we're posting it there. As I said, you never know what happens on TikTok. We use hashtags. Everything can be there, and this is something that you don't necessarily have to come to us to do it.

Alina:

You can do it yourself in the beginning. You can do your own Q&A videos. You can do your own unboxing or whatever More explanations you want to do about your product and post in your Amazon listing, and then you just go post it on TikTok. It just has to be there. And then, of course, as I said, you can use it on Google Ads. You can do a bunch of things with it. One of the things I do believe it's very important nowadays is that we have so many tools, including AI, because sometimes you can combine these two. You can combine UGC and AI and have something amazing without going to a professional photo studio. I'm not saying that they are bad. They have their own thing. Which they do is great and necessary, but for some things you don't need to go to a professional studio to do it and pay an arm and a leg. Most of the time you can just do this. I hope I didn't ramble too much about this.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Now, before we get into your tip of the week, which you even prepared, so that means it must be a good one here is can you just let us know how people can contact you for any of these 75 different things that we've been talking about today? How can they find you on the interwebs?

Alina:

So if they search for my name, which is Alina, like vlaic on pretty much everywhere, they can find me and message me in person. Or I'm going to just say one website which is azrank.com Contact form, or my email is alina@azrank.com. Feel free to contact me with every I don't know, critique, feedback, idea. I'm always trying to reply to everybody as fast as possible.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. All right, what's your strategy of the week?

Alina:

A lot of people ignore opportunity explorer section in the seller central. I know all of us love the search query reports and everything that's. It's out there, right. But when you're launching a new product, you don't have that data, unless you use one of my older strategies that you can have. You can have the data, but I'm not going to go into that. When you launch a new product, you don't have that data right. So you should go into opportunity explorer, because Amazon gives you a list of keywords, right. First of all, you need to identify your niche and your perfect list of keywords, because maybe your product will be in several niches, so you need to go there and find all the keywords that are relevant to your product and those should be your focus keywords for your listing and for your PPC and for your ranking campaign. Because if that data comes from Amazon and it's basically given to you for free, if you use it, I'm pretty sure you have much better chances of success to become relevant in Amazon's eyes, rather than I don't know doing your own keyword research and focusing on 3,000 keywords at the same time and spending a lot of money.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Alina:

And again, that's valid. That starts with your listing and then your PPC and whatever other ranking strategies you may use. So something else that is maybe a little bit for advanced sellers, but I found it very interesting. I spoke about this at the last Billion Dollar Seller Summit. If you've mentioned Kevin King, it's something called mirakl.com. It's Mirakl, but mirakl.com. It's a dashboard that helps you expand your brand on thousands not thousands, hundreds of marketplaces all over the world with a click of a button. What does that mean is, basically, they create you an account, you have a dashboard, you list your catalog there and they will take care of everything else. You just need to fulfill. You can connect it with your Shopify for now, but they can get you into I don't know, into Best Buy, into Target, into marketplaces that are very difficult to get in otherwise. Just give it a try and I know a lot of people will find it interesting.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome, all right, well, Alina, thank you so much for joining us today. Very few people make it to four episodes on the podcast that means that you're a popular guest. So you've made it, and I'm sure you'll be one of the ones to make it to five. So we'll reach out to you at the end of next year perhaps, and see what's going on with you In the meantime. I look forward to seeing you, hopefully at one of these upcoming conferences. And yeah, thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you soon.

Alina:

Thank you. Thank you, see you soon. Bye.