How to use Amazon Ads to improve organic ranking on Amazon & lower CPCs

It goes without saying that improving organic rank and building a high organic sales volume are key priorities for those selling on Amazon.  There are Amazon SEO strategies you can leverage to achieve a higher organic rank, but there are also several ways to use Amazon Ads to amplify your efforts. 

Ideally, you get to a place where 50-75% of your total sales are coming from organic traffic. The trick is to harmonize your Amazon PPC strategy to improve organic rank, especially since the two go hand in hand. We like to think of it as a flywheel effect–advertising helps build sales velocity, leading to a higher organic ranking and decreased CPCs and ultimately allowing you to scale back ad efforts and shift spending to more incremental opportunities. 

Advertising strategies to grow your organic ranking on Amazon

One of the quickest ways to improve your organic rank is by investing in the top flagship category keywords where your product either has a low rank or isn’t ranking. This is a great and easy way to start building your rank over time, with the data to back it up. For example, if I sell shampoo bars, this can be as simple as seeing where you rank for keywords like, “shampoo,” “shampoo bars,” “natural shampoos,” etc. You’ll want to focus on short-tail keywords related to the category to avoid wasting time.

To find these flagship category keywords, you can review Search Frequency Rank (SFR) in the Amazon Search Report. SFR measures the popularity of a specific search term on Amazon–assigning a numeric rank to a search term, indicating its popularity compared to all other search terms during a certain period. The lower the rank, the more frequently people search for that term. This rank helps Amazon sellers understand which search terms are in high demand and can guide their keyword selection for listings and advertising campaigns.

Once you’ve identified these flagship category keywords, you can isolate them into their own campaigns and boost them with extra budget. Over time, you’ll build your organic rank on these terms and build brand awareness in your category. 

If you’re looking to improve organic rank quickly, it’s important to consider ad placements. Since Top of Search (TOS) placements are most visible on the search results page, they tend to drive a lot of traffic and conversions.  And since sales velocity is a key metric that influences organic rank on Amazon, TOS placements tend to help you see improvements more immediately. These placements come with an increased investment since they are so coveted, but it can be worth it if you’re looking to boost performance quickly.

Metrics to consider to monitor paid and organic performance

Beyond monitoring your organic rank and organic sales, there are a few other metrics that will help you determine if the strategies you’ve put in place are working.

1. TOS Share of Voice (SOV) - Monitoring your SOV for top of search (TOS) placements. Since TOS placements drive the highest level of conversions and sales, your products must be well-represented here. This will help support your organic rank. If you notice your brand is taking up a lower percentage of this real estate, you can increase TOS ad investments to support maintaining this space and growing your organic rank. However, be sure to monitor this metric alongside your organic rank, to avoid cannibalization of your organic sales.


2. Organic Rank - Your organic rank has a clear and direct impact on your incremental sales in your advertising. The higher your rank, the more visible you are to consumers in a natural, or “organic” manner. Savvy shoppers may avoid engaging with Sponsored placements in favor of the top organic products, so being actively seen in these spots is imperative in gaining consumer trust and sales that are not paid for through advertising. You also want to avoid having both high organic rank and TOS placements at the same time so shoppers don’t click on an ad of yours in a TOS placement when you could have that click for “free” organically. This is cannibalization of your organic sales. For example, if you have a high organic SOV for the search term, “shampoo”, you’ll likely want to scale back your TOS ad efforts for that search term, since you could be generating those sales organically.

3. Organic Sales - Your organic sales inform how well you sell outside of advertising. You want to look for upward trends, ideally paired with downward trends in attributed sales, which means that you are getting more of your sales for “free” i.e. clicks that are not paid for through advertising efforts. A trend of increasing total sales from an increase in organic and a decrease in attributed sales is a good sign of incrementality.


4. Market Share - Your % market share gives insight into your overall ownership of your category. Monitoring for % changes over time will provide a good indication of performance against competitors and gives insight into needing to invest more heavily in advertising to support % increases if competitors are beating you, or reducing advertising to see if a % can be maintained to focus more on incrementality.

How to optimize your Amazon Ads in Perpetua to boost organic rank

Let’s put this into practice! Below are just a few of the ways in which you put the above recommendations into practice. 

1. Search Insights  - Perpetua makes it easy to identify keyword opportunities so that you can make strategic decisions on where to invest. You’ll want to identify your flagship keywords and add them to your custom report under Search Insights. Here you can see the organic SOV of ASINs to make informed decisions about where you want to invest. For example, where your Organic SOV is low, you’ll want to track the performance of search terms across key ad placements (ie. TOS SOV) and look for percentage increases as a signal of success.

2. Keyword Boost (KWB) - A great way to build your organic rank is by isolating top keywords into their own campaign to bid more aggressively and drive spend to some of your highest converting traffic. For example, you want to ensure that “shampoo bar” is a term you are targeting aggressively and serving high up on the search results page. We recommend using Keyword Boost as it allows you to optimize for Top of Search (TOS). You can use Keyword Boost campaigns with a TOS multiplier of +100% to ensure that your most strategic terms are winning sales and conversions on that placement.

3. Organic Rank Optimization - With this unique feature in Perpetua, you’ll be able to lower your costs of advertising spend and minimize the risk of cannibalization. Within Perpetua’s Custom Campaigns, you can easily apply customized bid multipliers, directing them downward, on targets that exhibit a higher organic rank. This not only contributes to cost-effectiveness but also ensures a more strategic allocation of resources based on the organic performance of the targets.

In Summary

Building organic rank and sales will always come down to a careful balance of Amazon SEO and advertising efforts. If you find that your organic rank isn’t as high within your category or for a specific keyword, Amazon PPC strategies can be a smart investment. Over time these efforts can help improve organic rank and increase the efficiency of our ad efforts, so you can start occupying more real estate on the search results at a lower cost.