Amazon Best Seller Rank (BSR) – How to Improve and Get the Best Seller Tag

Do you sell on Amazon and aren’t sure how to boost your overall Amazon Best Seller Rank (BSR)?

Well, if you’re reading this, there’s every likelihood that this statement applies to you. 

By the tail end of this post, you will learn the following:

• What BSR is
• How to calculate your BSR
• Factors affecting your BSR
• Common mistakes that can hurt your BSR
• Tidbits on how to brush up your BSR

Let’s dive right into it!

What is Amazon BSR?

BSR, also known as Amazon sales rank, is the score awarded to a product once one sale has been completed. Usually, it’s based on historical data and fluctuates on an hourly basis.

Do not mistake BSR for organic product ranking. The former indicates how a product performs based on its sales output.

Ironically, a higher BSR score shows that a product’s sales output is low, while a low BSR score indicates good sales.

Put differently, a product with a BSR score of 10 suggests that it has higher sales than a product ranked at 100.

How to Calculate Your Amazon BSR

Nobody knows how Amazon calculates BSR. However, insiders say Amazon’s algorithm considers factors to decide which product gets labeled as a best seller.

These include:

• Product promotions and price changes
• Competitive products
• The current and historical sales

When calculating BSR, you need to factor in the current sales trends and historical sales volume. As stated, this data is updated on an hourly basis which explains the hourly fluctuations on BSR.

It is important to mention that scooping the Best Seller Rank doesn’t necessarily mean your product is the best seller in your category or sub-category.

While you may not know how to calculate your BSR, there are certain things you can to do make your product stand a chance of gaining the coveted bestseller status. We’ll get to that in a short while.

Why is Understanding Amazon BSR Important?

If you are a vendor on Amazon, understanding your BSR is crucial because it will help you in product research.

BSR will help you identify which products to sell online or in which category to list them in. It’s a good indicator of which products are in demand.

It also provides valuable insight on sales output and helps you identify which strategies you can employ to yield better sales and improve your performance.

Additionally, Amazon BSR helps you identify top Amazon sellers whose sales performances are above par. This will help you learn how they approach their businesses in terms of product optimization, keywords use, and pricing. With this knowledge, you can then replicate these best practices with your business.

What Affects Your Amazon BSR?

Several factors that affect your Amazon BSR include:

• Historical sales data
• Changes in product prices
• Promotions campaigns
• Your current sales to similar products in your Amazon category

For your products to be eligible for Amazon’s BSR, you should first make a sale. This establishes historical sales data.

Another factor that’s likely to influence your Amazon BSR is Amazon’s predictions on the product’s success. In this case, instead of using the historical sales data of a product, Amazon will factor in the product’s potential success.

If this predictive algorithm is used, you’ll see newer products triumph over products with cumulative sales based on the predictions that these products are likely to perform better than the older ones.

Common Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Amazon BSR

A Highly Competitive Niche

Avoid picking a highly saturated niche.

When starting your business, it’s essential to do thorough research and pursue a less saturated niche.

It may be difficult to wade through competition with already established brands that have millions in revenue and a massive ad budget.

You may not get much traction if you settle for competitive niches. Instead, select viable products for your business and work your way up.

Also, avoid products that your potential customers cannot easily distinguish. This will make it difficult for them to understand your business, significantly reducing your visibility on Amazon.

Make sure that your product development starts with research. A highly competitive product may not leave you with adequate areas for improvement to work on. Rather, pick a product that people use but can still evolve or modernize.

Inadequate Preparation Before Amazon Product Listing

Think of your Amazon product listing as your selling point. What are your potential customers going to learn from your listing page? 

As with selling products online, marketing online should entice potential customers to firstly check your product listing.

And then, your product listing should be able to sell you out effortlessly. The information on that page should be enough to make the customer make a decision.

It won’t help your customers if your marketing images are of low quality. You didn’t focus on how your products could benefit the customers, poor product descriptions, and products without features or benefits.

With the above points not included in your product listing, the chances of getting any significant visibility are zilch.

An attractive and compelling product listing, on the other hand, will quickly sell. Always ensure that the information provided is accurate and precise.

Remember, the goal is to reward your customers with a convenient shopping experience.

Expensive Shipping

Forbes estimates that 80% of customers are hesitant to buy products with high shipping costs.

While making purchase decisions, customers will consider shipping charges of the product they intend to purchase. Therefore, set shipping charges that are neither too high nor too low to avoid making losses.

Always calculate your profit margins with shipping costs included. You can also opt for logistic companies that provide affordable delivery rates.

Ensure that your shipping costs are not so high as to drive customers away from your product listings.

Late Deliveries

One of the best ways to beat the competition on Amazon is to deliver customer orders promptly. 

Customers love it when they can put an order in and have it delivered to their doorsteps within 1-2 working days.

Always ensure that you keep your word to customers about delivery time. This way, you’ll build trust and even attract repeat purchases.

Lying to customers about delivery timelines to entice them to buy from you may land you negative reviews, affecting your business.

Soliciting for Customer Reviews

Asking your friends, family, customers, and relatives for reviews may be the easiest way to get positive reviews for your products. However, it’s also against Amazon policies.

You risk losing your profile should you be found giving incentives to customers in exchange for reviews.

Amazon believes that a customer should leave feedback out of their own volition, and you shouldn’t influence their decision to write authentic feedback.

In order to get early reviews at an affordable cost, you can take advantage of the early reviewer program. They are an excellent source of honest reviews for your products.

An easy way of improving your business and making it stand out is by using your customers’ reviews and suggestions to improve your products.

Inventory Mismanagement

Maintaining top rankings will require that you always ensure that your products never run out of stock. The best way to do this is to monitor and track your inventory levels actively. 

An advanced inventory management software would quickly tell you how many units of a particular product you have in stock. This in turn helps you restock just in time.

One of the best strategies to give you a competitive edge is to be fully stocked as an Amazon seller. It minimizes the chances of losing potential sales to competitors.

Inadequate Preparation Before Product Launch

Taking your product to page one should be your primary goal as an Amazon seller. It’s not enough to launch your product and leave it under the mercies of Amazon’s whims and ways.

The success of your launch and the visibility you’ll get will depend on your efforts on advertising online. That is, to proactively market your products on social media, carry out amazon sponsored campaigns, and use the right keywords to ensure that your products are visible in the search engines.

Always ensure that you monitor your product’s performance and optimize for better results. Getting early reviews and sales is also a sure way of getting your products to get the intended visibility.

Running an Unorganized PPC Campaign

PPC campaigns come in handy in improving your visibility, but you must understand the most basic principles of PPC.

One basic principle in running PPC campaigns is an in-depth understanding of optimization strategies. Should the campaign not yield the intended results, you can quickly amend your campaigns for better output. 

Without such knowledge and understanding of ad campaigns, you may end up losing your investments without achieving your goals.

Optimization should be within the context of Amazon algorithm. Unlike with design web optimization that focus on enticing visuals, PPC campaign optimization works at the backend wherein it establishes connections between a search query and your product listing.

How to Boost Your Amazon BSR

The thing about Amazon BSR is that it is not influenced by outside traffic web.

Instead, sales significantly affect Amazon rankings. And for you to achieve a good ranking, your sales have to be consistent.

While it may be challenging to maintain a high sales volume every day, you’ll need to ensure that you up your game to achieve better rankings.

Below are some suggestions that’ll help you achieve optimum sales that’ll consequently ensure that you rank high.

Insert Your Keywords in Your Product’s Title

With the cutthroat competition on Amazon, potential customers should be quickly drawn to your title. It should also match what they are searching for.

Carry out thorough keyword research and adjust your title to match what customers are looking for.

It’s also of utmost importance that you check how your competition is wording their titles and use the knowledge of their practice to stand out from the crowd.

This might not directly affect your product’s Best Seller Rank, but it can help your listing capture the precious customer’s attention.

Use High-Quality Images

When customers search for your products, they are likely to take a keen interest in what the product looks like. This means that you have to pay special attention to the quality of your product images.

Ensure that your photos are framed and on a white background with no additional text on them.

Add as many images as you wish on your product page while adhering to Amazon’s image requirements.

Your images should be 1000 pixels, wide or tall. Use design and images that customers can easily engage and identify with. Highlight the features of the product.

Think of adding lifestyle imagery. Lifestyle images are the best way to help customers visualize how can they use the product and solve their pain points.

Optimize Your Product Description

Product descriptions come in handy for those customers who want to know more about your product. Some will want to know how your product works, the benefits they’ll get from using your product, and its features.

Ensure that you describe your product in an exciting and compelling way without blowing it out of proportion.

Make the customer trust that the product will address their pain points and clarify its uniqueness. When describing your product, always bullet your feature list as it’s easier to read than when written in block form.

Another important tip is to ensure that you use the right keywords in your description to make it easier for customers to find you.

Use a variety of high search volume keywords throughout your product description. But, also include long-tail keywords to capture more relevant search queries.

However, it is still best to write for your human readers and keep a natural tone throughout your product description.

Chances are, as your organic rank scales up, so is your BSR goes down.

Offer Competitive Prices

Prices play a crucial role in improving your rankings. Offer your customers competitive and affordable prices so that your BSR rankings don’t suffer.

Instead of constantly monitoring your competitors’ prices, you could use Amazon repricing software that’ll automatically price your products to ensure that you make a profit but stay within acceptable limits.

Leverage Amazon Prime

Buyers make their lives easier by using Amazon prime to look for sellers who are “prime eligible” before checking out their pages.

Sellers whose products are not prime eligible are likely to lose a lot of sales from a customer base of over 150 million prime members.

Ensure that you get sales and increase your rankings by leveraging Amazon prime, making it easier for customers to find you when browsing.

Ask for Reviews Ethically

To be successful and rank high on Amazon, ensure that you have good reviews. It is estimated that 90% of shoppers will read reviews before making the purchase decision. No matter how beautiful your product pictures are, customers will only click the buy button if you have good reviews.

Below are a few ways you can get reviews ethically:

• Take advantage of the Amazon early reviewer program, where you offer eligible shoppers Amazon credit in exchange for reviews. This method of getting reviews is fast and affordable.
• Ask your customers for reviews through their email addresses.
• Ensure there is a photo insert for your products that prompt customers to give a review. It’s much easier to get reviews when the customer is still excited about their purchase.

Promote/Optimize Your Amazon Listing

With regular promotions, you can drive new sales to your product page hence improving your sales ranking. The best way to achieve this is by offering huge discounts on limited-time sales events.

This will increase your sales for a short while, so you may consider doing it regularly to impact your rankings positively.

You could also market your listing using the different advertising options on Amazon, like PPC sponsored product listings to display ads that appear both on and off Amazon.

Giveaways on social media are also a surefire way of drawing interest to your products. While you may have to give out some of your products for free, you will likely get customers interested in buying from you.

Meanwhile, you should also consider having your own website. It can improve your overall search engine visibility while driving sales in the different marketplaces you sell to like Amazon.

Hasten your growth and development online by exploring various channels for exposure, visibility, and reachability.

Improve Your BSR With Signalytics

Amazon’s BSR is a crucial element that any seller on the platform should care about.

At Signalytics, we’re all about helping you generate more sales on Amazon, and by extension boosting your income. That’s why we offer Amazon product list optimization.

We can help improve your product’s visibility by optimizing your keywords, images, and text while ensuring that your product attracts the reviews they need to stand out.

The quest to improve your BSR couldn’t be easier.