Amazon SEO: How to Rank on the First Page (2026 Guide)

Over 70% of Amazon customers shop on mobile—and they only see the first 4-5 products before making a purchase. If you're not on page one, you're invisible. And if there was a dead body to hide, I'd put it on page two of Amazon search results because nobody's finding it there.

I'm Hunter Harris, founder of GigaBrands, and I've helped 50+ brands generate over $205M in Amazon sales. In this guide, I'll walk you through the exact ranking strategy we use to get products to the top of Amazon search results.

How Does the Amazon A9 Algorithm Work?

Amazon's algorithm prioritizes products that make Amazon the most money. Simple as that. The A9 algorithm evaluates your product based on three core metrics:

Click-Through Rate (CTR): How many people see your listing and actually click it. Your main image is everything here. Conversion Rate: How many clicks turn into purchases. Amazon rewards high-converting listings because they generate revenue. Sales Velocity: Consistent sales volume over time. Amazon favors sellers who can keep inventory in stock and maintain steady sales momentum.

Why Product Price Affects Your Amazon Ranking

Here's something most sellers don't understand: if two products have identical sales velocity and conversion rates, Amazon will rank the higher-priced product first.

Here's the math:

• Product A: $18 price, 100 units sold = $324 in Amazon fees

• Product B: $15 price, 100 units sold = $207 in Amazon fees

Amazon makes more money from Product A, so they'll prioritize it in search results. This doesn't mean you should arbitrarily raise prices, but it does mean you need to price strategically to maximize both revenue and ranking.

What Is Relevancy in Amazon SEO?

Marketing a fence in the "Dog Pets & Items" category will tank your conversion rate and CTR. Amazon's algorithm is category-aware and keyword-aware.

Category relevancy matters. If you're selling fences, list them in the fence category. Period. Keyword relevancy matters more. Amazon tracks performance at the individual keyword level. If 100,000 people search "fence" and 50,000 search "white fence," Amazon treats these as separate ranking opportunities. The better you convert on each specific search term, the higher you'll rank for that term. Pro tip: Place your most relevant keywords at the beginning of your title. That's how Amazon reads and weights your listing in the algorithm.

How to Rank on Amazon: The Long-Tail Keyword Strategy

Most sellers make the mistake of going after high-volume, competitive keywords right out of the gate. That's backwards.

Go bottom-up, not top-down. Target low-hanging fruit keywords that have less competition but still drive meaningful traffic. As you build revenue and ranking authority, work your way up to more competitive terms.

For example, if you're selling a shower head, you probably can't compete with the root term "shower head" immediately. But you CAN compete with "shower head for bathtubs" or "high pressure shower head for low water pressure."

By winning these long-tail keywords, you generate sales velocity that feeds into your ranking for broader terms. Eventually, you take over the entire keyword tree.

How to Improve Click-Through Rate on Amazon

Your main image is the most critical factor in your CTR. If customers don't click, you don't sell. If you don't sell, you don't rank.

The 5-second rule: Show your main image to someone for exactly 5 seconds, then hide it. If they react positively, iterate on it. If they react negatively, start over.

Your main image needs to communicate three things instantly:

• Product quality – Does it look premium or cheap?

• Packaging – Does it look like a gift or a generic commodity?

• Pain point solution – Does it visually demonstrate the problem it solves?

The customer's subconscious mind needs to instantly recognize that your product is superior in every way. This isn't about reinventing the wheel—study the top sellers in your niche and in adjacent niches. What design elements are they using? What colors? What lifestyle context?

Match your marketing to your target audience. If you're selling waist wraps for women and all your imagery is masculine, your conversion rate will suffer. Understand your customer's income level, aesthetic preferences, and emotional triggers.

Using AI to Uncover Customer Pain Points

We use AI to scan thousands of competitor reviews and identify common complaints. What's the recurring issue? Is it material quality? A missing feature? An awkward use case?

Once we identify these pain points, we make sure our product addresses them—and we highlight these improvements in our listing images and copy. Selling to emotional pain points drives impulse purchases.

Why Data-Driven Split Testing Beats Gut Instinct

You might think your new listing image is beautiful. You might be wrong.

The data doesn't lie. We've run split tests where the "ugly" image outperformed the "beautiful" one. When that happens, you go back to the drawing board and figure out why.

Every change we make to a listing—whether it's for our own brands or our clients'—is backed by split test data. If buyers aren't converting, we know exactly where in the customer journey they're dropping off. Then we fix it.

Without split testing, you're just guessing. With split testing, you're optimizing.

How to Maintain Sales Velocity Without Running Out of Stock

Amazon rewards consistent sellers. It's harder than you think to maintain inventory over time, especially as you scale.

If you can prove to Amazon that you're a reliable seller who doesn't go out of stock, they'll prioritize your product. Why? Because Amazon is customer-obsessed. They can't promote products that aren't available.

Consistency is a competitive advantage. Keep your inventory in stock, maintain steady sales, and Amazon will reward you with better organic rankings.

The Amazon Ranking Flywheel

Here's how it all fits together:

• Optimize your main image to maximize CTR

• Target long-tail keywords to generate initial sales velocity

• Convert clicks into sales with strong listing content and pain point messaging

• Split test relentlessly to improve conversion rates

• Maintain inventory to prove consistency

• Scale up to broader keywords as your ranking authority grows

Each element feeds into the next. The flywheel accelerates over time.

Next Steps: Get Your Amazon SEO Strategy Dialed In

If you're stuck at a revenue plateau and can't break through to the next level, your SEO and ranking strategy is likely the bottleneck.

At GigaBrands, we've helped brands scale from $100K/month to $1M+/month by fixing exactly this problem. We use AI-powered review analysis, data-driven split testing, and a proven long-tail keyword strategy to get products on page one and keep them there.

Download our free Amazon growth playbook or book a call with me if you want to talk through your specific situation.

Hunter Harris is the founder of GigaBrands, an AI-assisted Amazon growth agency managing 50+ brands with over $205M in total Amazon sales. Featured in Forbes, Yahoo, Tampa Bay Times, and Apple News. Published February 2026