Does Amazon PPC Improve Organic Ranking? Here’s What You Need to Know

You’re running Amazon PPC campaigns, seeing some sales, but wondering if it’s actually helping your organic rankings. Are you wasting money on ads that aren’t providing a long-term benefit?

Many Amazon sellers ask this question. The reality is, the relationship between PPC and organic ranking is complex, and it’s easy to get confused by conflicting information.

In this article, we’ll break down the connection between PPC and organic rank. We’ll look at what’s proven, what’s just a theory, and how to use PPC to actually influence where your products show up in organic search. Let’s dive in.

How Amazon PPC Can Indirectly Boost Organic Ranking

While Amazon doesn’t explicitly state that PPC directly improves organic rank, there are several indirect ways well-managed campaigns can help. Here’s what’s happening:

• Increased Sales Velocity: Products that sell more often tend to rank higher organically. PPC drives sales, which can, in turn, improve your organic position. It’s like a flywheel effect – more sales lead to better rank, which leads to even more sales.
• Improved Conversion Rate: A well-optimized listing that gets a lot of clicks from PPC but doesn’t convert is a signal to Amazon that the product might not be relevant or appealing. But high converting PPC traffic sends positive signals to Amazon, increasing the organic rank.
• Keyword Relevance: When your PPC campaigns target specific keywords and result in sales, Amazon sees your product as relevant for those terms. This relevance can then translate into higher organic rankings for those keywords. Let me break this down… if your PPC ACOS is high on specific keywords, but your conversion rate for those keywords is also high, Amazon is going to rank you organically.

The thing is, all of these factors are interconnected. Increased sales velocity often leads to a higher conversion rate, which further strengthens keyword relevance.

What’s Not Proven: Direct Ranking Signals

Despite the indirect benefits, some theories about PPC and organic ranking are less concrete. Let’s look at a couple:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR) Alone: While a high CTR on your ads is great for lowering ACOS, it doesn’t automatically translate to higher organic rankings. Clicks without conversions are less valuable to Amazon.
• Impressions Volume: Simply showing your ads to a lot of people won’t move the needle. It’s the quality of traffic – those who are actually interested in buying – that matters most.

The reality is, Amazon’s algorithm is complex and constantly changing. Focusing solely on metrics like CTR or impressions without considering conversions is a recipe for wasted ad spend.

Real Example: Launching a New Product with PPC

Let’s look at a real example of how PPC can influence organic rank, especially when launching a new product.

• Before: A new client was launching a kitchen gadget with zero organic ranking for their target keywords. They were on page 10 and beyond for most relevant search terms.
• PPC Strategy: We launched aggressive PPC campaigns targeting those keywords with a goal of driving initial sales velocity and ranking up organically. We focused on high converting keywords.
• After 60 Days: After 60 days, the product ranked on page one for several key organic keywords. Their ACOS was higher than ideal during the launch phase (around 40%), but the organic ranking boost justified the initial investment.

Here’s why this worked: The PPC campaigns generated initial sales, which signaled to Amazon that the product was relevant and valuable. As organic ranking improved, organic sales also increased, leading to a virtuous cycle.

How to Use PPC to Actually Influence Organic Rank

So, how can you use PPC strategically to boost your organic rankings? Here’s how to fix it:

1. Keyword Research is Key: Identify the most relevant and high-converting keywords for your product. These are the terms you want to target with both your PPC and organic efforts.
2. Optimize Your Product Listing: Make sure your product title, bullet points, and description are optimized for those keywords. A compelling listing will improve your conversion rate.
3. Launch Targeted PPC Campaigns: Focus on driving sales for those keywords. Use a mix of automatic and manual campaigns to find the best-performing search terms.
4. Monitor Your Organic Rank: Track your organic ranking for your target keywords. Use a tool like Helium 10 or Semrush to see how your rank changes over time.
5. Adjust Your Strategy: Based on your results, adjust your PPC campaigns and product listing to further improve your organic ranking. It’s an ongoing process of testing and optimization.

Remember, the goal isn’t just to drive PPC sales, but to use PPC as a catalyst for long-term organic growth.

Don’t Forget Your Customer

When optimizing your product listings and PPC campaigns, it’s easy to get hung up on keywords and numbers. But one of the best things you can do to improve your organic ranking is prioritize your customer. Focus on the following:

• Product reviews
• Photos
• Pricing
• Customer service

Final Thoughts: It’s a Holistic Approach

While PPC doesn’t directly guarantee higher organic rankings, it’s a powerful tool for driving sales, improving conversion rates, and signaling relevance to Amazon. The key is to use PPC strategically as part of a broader Amazon SEO strategy. Focus on the customer and long term ranking.

By focusing on the customer and optimizing your product listings, PPC campaigns, and organic efforts in tandem, you can maximize your chances of ranking higher and driving sustainable sales growth.

Key Discussion Points from the Episode

Here are some of the most valuable insights Andrew and Stephen shared during the full episode discussion:

No, we just. We just do Amazon ads management, just the PPC side of things to really kind of focus and, you know, hone our expertise there. Yeah, that’s really cool.

Cool backstory, too. I mean, coming from a seller and then launching their own PPC side of things, I always love to see that, because a good test of, like, you know, you got a lot of people coming into the Amazon space. New people claim to be experts, but usually the people who actually know it are the people who have actually sold products on Amazon before.

Seen that full process. So kind of an interesting take there. I haven’t really heard a lot of sellers branching off and doing that type of stuff, so.

Really cool. Yeah, it’s helped a lot. You know, and we.

Everything that we do in the agency, we apply to our own, you know, portfolio of SKUs. We. We eat our own cooking as.

As they say. Okay. I don’t know if I have a yes or no answer.

That would be a very short episode, I think. I guess how I kind of want to start out is that I think that it’s sort of a myth that you can just spend a lot of money on PPC and get ranked number one, and that you could do that for any sku. Right.

That any SKU can potentially get ranked number one. And I just don’t think that that’s always the case and maybe not even on the first page. And the reason behind that is just not every ASIN inherently deserves to have that top spot.

Spot. Right. So, yeah, again, I know that’s controversial, but just.

Just hear me out, because the reason I think that this is such an important concept to understand is because I think it can save you money, you know, as, as sellers. It, it would be so nice if we could just spend money on PPC and get ranked, but since that’s not the case, you know, maybe, maybe save that ad spend and invest those resources somewhere else. So that’s kind of my, my initial stance.

Yeah, again, I know that’s controversial, but just, just hear me out. And how do you think they’re determining, like, the happiness index of a product? No, it was perfect.

Now you just started lagging. I’m doing great, Stephen. Thank you so much for having me.

I’m excited to be here and to talk about Organic Rank.

This article is based on Episode 49 of That Amazon Ads Podcast. Subscribe for weekly Amazon PPC strategies.