How to Check and Track Your Organic Ranking on Amazon: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you’re not making your product stand out on Amazon, you’re already losing—no matter how good your product is. And if you’re only focusing on paid ads without keeping an eye on your organic rankings, you’re missing a crucial part of the puzzle. As our CEO, Liran Hirschkorn, put it in a recent LinkedIn post, “Your advertising and organic rankings are deeply intertwined.” This means your ad campaigns are more than just making immediate sales—they’re also sending signals to Amazon’s algorithm that can improve your product’s organic positioning.

So, why does this matter? Because organic rankings are a key driver of long-term, sustainable growth on Amazon. When your product ranks higher for relevant keywords, it naturally attracts more shoppers, leading to more sales without the need for constant ad spend. But here’s the catch: if you’re not actively tracking where your product stands organically, you can’t see the full impact of your advertising efforts.

Today, we will walk you through exactly how to track your organic rankings on Amazon, the tools you’ll need, and how to use that data to refine your ad strategy. By the end, you’ll have a clear, actionable approach to ensure your ads are driving not just immediate sales, but lasting growth.

Why Organic Rankings on Amazon Matter

The Amazon Flywheel: Sales Drive Rankings, Rankings Drive Sales

Amazon’s marketplace operates on a self-reinforcing cycle known as the “flywheel effect.” Here’s how it works: when you make sales, your product collects more customer reviews, builds credibility, and gains visibility. As more people see and buy your product, your sales velocity increases. This signals to Amazon’s algorithm that your product is relevant and in demand, leading to better rankings in search results. Better rankings mean more visibility, more clicks, and ultimately, more sales. It’s a cycle that keeps building on itself, gaining momentum as it goes.

The Connection: How Ads Boost Organic Rankings

While the flywheel can propel established products to success, getting it started can be tricky—especially for new listings. That’s where Amazon ads come in. Running strategic ads helps drive those initial sales, even if your product isn’t yet ranking high organically. When customers click on your ads and make purchases, it sends positive signals to Amazon’s algorithm. This improves your product’s organic ranking for the keywords associated with those sales, effectively helping your product gain visibility without solely relying on paid advertising.

In other words, every sale driven by an ad doesn’t just impact your short-term revenue. It also boosts your long-term organic performance, creating a ripple effect that helps sustain growth even when ad spend is reduced.

The Big Picture: Benefits of Strong Organic Rankings

Achieving and maintaining strong organic rankings on Amazon has major advantages. First, it means lower costs over time. While ads are essential to drive initial sales, relying solely on them can get expensive. A solid organic ranking allows your product to appear at the top of search results without paying for every click. This means you can capture more sales while spending less on ads, leading to a higher overall return on investment (ROI).

Secondly, strong organic rankings contribute to more sustainable growth. When your product is naturally visible for high-traffic keywords, it consistently reaches potential buyers who are searching for what you offer. This leads to more predictable sales, which you can scale further through strategic advertising.

Ultimately, the goal is to use ads not just for immediate sales, but to build a lasting presence on Amazon. By boosting your organic rankings through ads, you set your product up for continuous success, even when ad campaigns wind down.

Setting Up Your Organic Ranking Tracking Routine

To effectively monitor your organic rankings and optimize your ad strategy, you need a clear tracking routine. Here’s how to set it up:

Identify Key Metrics

Tracking the right metrics will help you understand how well your product is performing both organically and through paid ads. Here are the most crucial ones:

• Sales Velocity: The speed at which your product sells. Higher sales velocity signals Amazon that your product is in demand, boosting its organic ranking.
• Conversion Rates: The percentage of people who click on your product listing and end up purchasing. High conversion rates indicate that your listing is relevant and appealing, which can improve organic positioning.
• Click-Through Rates (CTR): The percentage of people who see your listing (whether in ads or organic search) and click on it. Higher CTRs suggest your listing catches attention, increasing visibility.
• Organic Rank Positions: Where your product naturally appears in Amazon search results for key terms. Tracking these positions shows how well your ad and sales efforts are translating into long-term organic growth.

Why These Metrics Matter: Each of these metrics influences Amazon’s algorithm. Strong performance in sales, conversions, and CTRs sends positive signals that can improve your product’s organic ranking, making it more visible without relying solely on ads. By tracking these metrics, you can see which aspects of your strategy are working and which need adjustment.

Tools to Use

To effectively track your organic rankings and related metrics, you’ll need to leverage some powerful tools. Here are a few options:

• Amazon’s Own Analytics (Seller Central & Brand Analytics): Offers insights into sales data, conversion rates, and keyword performance. Use these reports to understand which keywords are driving sales and how your listings are performing.
• Helium 10: Provides detailed tracking for organic and paid keyword rankings, competitor analysis, and keyword research. Useful for monitoring changes in ranking over time and refining keyword strategies.
• Jungle Scout: Helps you track sales performance and organic ranking, and gives insights into how your competitors are performing. Also offers tools for keyword research and product launches.

These tools allow you to monitor your organic rankings on Amazon and see how they shift over time. By analyzing this data, you can make informed decisions about which keywords to target in your ad campaigns and which areas of your product listing need improvement.

How to Track Organic Rankings Effectively

Tracking your organic rankings on Amazon isn’t just about checking where your product appears in search results; it’s about building a system that helps you monitor progress, identify opportunities, and refine your strategies. Here’s a step-by-step guide to doing it effectively:

Step 1: Select Your Core Keywords

• Focus on High-Impact Keywords: Start by identifying the keywords that are driving your sales. These are usually the ones you’re already targeting with ads. If they are helping you make sales through ads, they’re worth ranking for organically.
• Prioritize Based on Relevance and Search Volume: Use tools like Helium 10 or Jungle Scout to check the search volume of each keyword. Focus on terms that are highly relevant to your product, have decent search traffic, and aren’t overly competitive.
• Expand Your List Over Time: Don’t limit yourself to just a few keywords. As you gather more data, expand your list to include other potential keywords that can drive growth.

Step 2: Set Up Tracking Tools

To track your keywords effectively, you’ll need to set up the right tools. Here’s how to do it:

1. Choose Your Tool: Pick a tool like Helium 10 or Jungle Scout, based on your needs and budget.
2. Input Your Keywords: Add your selected core keywords into the tool’s rank tracking feature. Make sure you’re tracking both short-tail and long-tail keywords to get a comprehensive view of your performance.
3. Set Up Alerts (Optional): Some tools allow you to set up alerts for significant changes in ranking. Use these to quickly spot improvements or drops in organic rank, so you can adjust your strategy as needed.

Example with Helium 10:

• Navigate to the “Keyword Tracker” section.
• Click “Add Keywords” and input the keywords you want to monitor.
• Set tracking frequency (daily, weekly) and add notes for specific keywords if needed.
• Review the historical ranking data to understand trends.

Step 3: Monitor Consistently

• How Often to Check: Regularly check your organic ranking data, ideally once a week. This gives you enough time to see meaningful trends without reacting too quickly to short-term fluctuations.
• What Trends to Look For:
  • Upward Movement: Consistent improvements in ranking for core keywords signal that your strategy is working.
  • Plateaus or Drops: If rankings stall or decline, it’s a sign to re-evaluate your approach. You might need to adjust your ads, optimize your listing, or improve customer engagement.
• Track Progress Over Time: Keep a record of your rankings over weeks or months. This helps you spot patterns and understand which actions have the most impact.

Step 4: Use Amazon’s Search Term Reports

• Access Your Search Term Reports: Amazon provides search term reports that show which keywords are generating ad sales. This data is crucial because it helps you see which keywords are not only bringing clicks but also converting into sales.
• Compare with Organic Ranking Data: Check if the keywords driving ad sales are also improving in organic rank. If not, it might mean that your listing needs optimization for those keywords or that your product isn’t converting well without the ad.
• Adjust Based on Insights: Use the data from the reports to refine your ad campaigns. For instance, if a keyword has a high conversion rate, consider increasing your bid to drive more sales and further boost organic ranking.

Pro Tip: Automate Tracking and Reporting Where Possible

• Save Time with Automation: Many tools allow you to automate the tracking process. Set up scheduled reports that are sent directly to your inbox. This way, you’re always up-to-date without manually checking each time.
• Use Dashboard Integrations: If you’re using multiple tools, consider integrating them into a dashboard like Google Data Studio or a project management tool. This helps centralize data, making it easier to track your overall performance at a glance.

By following these steps, you can build an efficient routine for tracking your organic rankings. This consistent monitoring will give you valuable insights, enabling you to adjust your ad campaigns, optimize your listings, and ultimately boost your product’s visibility and sales on Amazon.

Analyzing Your Data to Optimize Your Ad Strategy

Tracking your organic rankings is only the first step. The real power lies in analyzing that data to refine and improve your ad strategy. Here’s how to make sense of the information you gather and use it to drive better results.

Look for Patterns

Once you start tracking your organic rankings and ad performance, look for patterns that can guide your strategic decisions:

• Correlate Ad Performance with Organic Rank Changes:
  • When you see a spike in ad-driven sales for a particular keyword, check if there’s a corresponding improvement in your organic ranking for that term. For instance, if you notice that your product moved from the 10th position to the 5th for a specific keyword after a period of increased ad spend, that’s a sign that the ads are positively influencing your organic rank.
  • Similarly, if your organic ranking for a key term drops, examine whether your ad spend or sales for that keyword have also decreased. This could indicate that consistent ad performance is necessary to maintain your organic visibility.
• Example: Higher Organic Ranking After a Spike in Ad Sales
  • Let’s say you’re running ads targeting the keyword “organic protein powder.” Over a two-week period, you increase your ad spend and see a surge in sales from this keyword. After reviewing your tracking tool, you notice your product has jumped from the 8th position to the 4th in organic search results for “organic protein powder.” This indicates that the boost in ad-driven sales helped push your organic ranking higher, resulting in more natural visibility.

Adjust Your Ad Strategy

Using the data you’ve gathered, you can make strategic adjustments to your ad campaigns to further improve your organic performance:

• When to Increase Ad Spend for Certain Keywords:
  • If a keyword shows steady improvement in organic ranking whenever there’s a spike in ad sales, consider increasing your budget for ads targeting that term. This investment could pay off by pushing your product higher in organic search, leading to more natural sales over time.
  • Prioritize keywords where you already rank moderately well (e.g., positions 5-15). Pushing these keywords into the top 3 can have a significant impact on sales, so it’s often worth increasing ad spend to boost them further.
• Identify When Breaking Even (or Slight Losses) Can Lead to Better Organic Performance:
  • Sometimes, it’s okay if your ad campaign is just breaking even or even running at a slight loss, as long as it leads to better organic ranking. This is because a higher organic position can drive more consistent and cost-effective sales in the long run, offsetting the initial ad spend.
  • For example, if you see that your product’s organic rank improves whenever you increase ad spend on a particular keyword, even if your ads aren’t turning a high profit, you may want to continue running those ads to strengthen your organic foothold.

Tips for Continuous Improvement

To make the most out of your Amazon advertising and organic ranking efforts, it’s essential to continually refine your approach. Here are some best practices and pitfalls to watch out for as you optimize your strategy.

Best Practices

• Regularly Refresh Keyword Lists to Adapt to Market Trends:
  • Amazon’s marketplace is dynamic, with search trends and consumer behavior changing frequently. Make it a habit to revisit your keyword lists and update them based on recent performance data, seasonality, and emerging trends. This ensures you’re always targeting the most relevant and high-potential keywords.
  • Use tools like Helium 10 or Jungle Scout to perform regular keyword research and uncover new search terms that are gaining popularity. By staying ahead of market shifts, you can maintain a competitive edge.
• Monitor Competitor Rankings to Identify New Opportunities:
  • Keep an eye on what keywords your competitors are ranking for, especially those who have similar products. This can help you discover new opportunities to target keywords they’re overlooking or find gaps where you can position your product.
  • If a competitor’s product starts to rank for a keyword that’s relevant to your niche, consider launching a targeted ad campaign to compete for that spot. This can help you capture some of their market share and increase your own visibility.

Pitfalls to Avoid

• Not Tracking Enough Keywords:
  • While it’s tempting to focus only on a few high-traffic keywords, this approach limits your visibility. You might be missing out on niche keywords or long-tail phrases that could drive additional sales. Ensure your keyword tracking is broad enough to cover a range of search terms, including short-tail, long-tail, and emerging keywords.
  • Diversifying your keyword pool also spreads your risk. If one keyword’s performance drops, you’re still tracking others that might compensate, helping you maintain steady sales.
• Relying Only on Short-Term Data for Decision-Making:
  • Making changes based solely on short-term data can lead to reactive decisions that might not benefit your long-term strategy. Organic ranking improvements often take time, so it’s important to assess trends over weeks or months rather than just days.
  • Focus on long-term patterns to identify which keywords and ad strategies are genuinely effective. For instance, if a keyword’s ranking improves consistently over a few months due to ad spend, that’s a sign to keep investing. Conversely, if short bursts of ad spend aren’t creating lasting organic improvements, it may be time to rethink your approach.

By following these best practices and avoiding common pitfalls, you’ll be better positioned to continually improve your Amazon advertising and organic ranking strategy. The key is to stay adaptable, use data effectively, and think long-term to build a sustainable, successful presence on the platform.

Conclusion

Tracking your organic rankings is crucial for understanding the true impact of your ad strategy. By monitoring how your keywords perform, you can make informed decisions that boost both your organic visibility and sales. Using data effectively helps you optimize your ad spend, improve ROI, and build long-term growth on Amazon.

Ready to take your Amazon strategy to the next level? Start tracking your organic rankings today and see how it can transform your ad performance.

If you need help getting started, reach out for a free consultation. Let’s build a strategy that drives sustainable success.