#425 - The Fastest and Cheapest Way to Rank Your Product on Amazon

What if I told you the cheapest and fastest way to rank your product on Amazon doesn't even happen on Amazon. What's up, guys? Welcome back to built by business with Andy Isom. In today's episode, we're going to talk about why external traffic matters in 2025, the best off Amazon channels ranked by ROI, as well as how to track and attribute off channel traffic correctly. As Amazon PPC advertising continues to get more saturated and more competitive, external traffic is not only becoming more of a hack, but more of a necessity as well. Amazon's A 10 algorithm gives ranking weight to off Amazon traffic. It rewards high converting external sessions because they drive new shoppers to Amazon. And just like with every other business model in existence, new customers are gold, especially on a platform like Amazon, where any time you can get a customer to come to Amazon when maybe they weren't planning on it, they tend to stick around and shop a little bit more than they maybe had planned to. Brandon Young, another creator in the Amazon space said, quote, external traffic that converts well increases keyword ranking faster than Amazon PPC clicks at the same volume. Now, some of you already know the key A 10 Amazon ranking signals like sales velocity, keyword relevance, click-through rate, conversion rate, but off-site traffic and conversion on that off-site traffic is another huge, huge ranking signal in the algorithm. Per a report from Perpetua internal in 2023, external traffic can actually lower your blended A cost by 20 to 30 percent. And according to some recent numbers, Google ads and TikTok traffic cost around 30 to 70 cents per click on average compared to a dollar and 50 cents inside of Amazon. Stackline Q4 2024 white paper confirmed that brands using off-site traffic and BRB saw significantly improved A cost and conversion rate. Here's some of the best off Amazon channels ranked in order by ROI. Number one is something that I think a lot of people are still overlooking. And that is Google Shopping ads. Google Shopping ads are ideal for branded products that have search intent. These ads can have lower cost per clicks on average again, around the 35 to 70 cent range for most common products. You can link directly to your Amazon page via attribution. And Google Shopping ads are also great for re-targeting past site traffic. So ads for your products directly on Amazon can show up on other websites that potential customers may be browsing. Number two on the best off Amazon channels is TikTok creator traffic. TikTok videos are still a massive, massive leverage for top of funnel awareness and they can drive a pretty high Amazon click through from creators using Amazon attribution links. These are links that you can set up within your Amazon advertising console that track clicks from off Amazon platforms like TikTok or other websites. So you can see the ROI of that external traffic. Not only that, but you actually earn 10% back of the sale price when traffic is tracked through these Amazon attribution links. Now, we've found that most creators on TikTok prefer to work through the built in TikTok shop affiliate platform. Those links sync a lot better natively within TikTok. And the TikTok shop ecosystem is built in seamlessly with creators profile pages. But if you're not willing to take the time to set up your TikTok shop, at least getting your Amazon attribution links set up can be a great way to utilize and make the most of TikTok viral traffic. Number three on our list is Instagram giveaways with the Lincoln bio strategy. This is where you work with influencers on Instagram to do a giveaway. And it could be a collaborative giveaway with other products or services where people who want to enter click the link in the bio to enter, which can drive traffic to a specific Amazon listing. This could be an opt in or landing page with a thank you or redirect to your Amazon product listing. And there's other creative ways for people to earn entries as well. Using giveaway platforms like Gleam or Viral Sweep. Number four on our list is Reddit threads and niche forums. You need to be careful with this because platforms like Reddit and other forum websites can have some pretty strict rules about promotions and link sharing. But if it makes sense to you can drop your attribution links inside relevant product discussions and earn decent passive traffic over time. These are obviously best for hobbyist or enthusiast type of products, tactical gear, supplements and other things like that to wrap up. Let's talk about how to track and attribute this external traffic correctly. The number one way obviously if we're selling our products on Amazon is to use Amazon attribution to do this. Again, you're going to go to your Amazon advertising console and under measurement and reporting, click on attribution. Here you can create links, assign them to specific campaigns and track views, clicks and sales. And for added trackability, you can combine these links with a tool like Pixelme or Bitly. Something else you can do for more of a passive tracking is to track your keyword lift. You can use a tool like Helium 10 Keyword Tracker or DataDive to monitor your top five keywords. After you create a social media campaign, whether it's on TikTok or Instagram, look for jumps in the first 24 to 72 hours of offsite traffic coming from these different platforms. Now, within Helium 10 or these different tracking tools, you may not necessarily know where these different keyword searches are coming from. But you'll be able to see if the efforts of your social media marketing are leading to an increase in traffic searches for your product and if the keywords that you're tracking are improving their ranking. Make sure that you're avoiding these three mistakes if you're taking time to build external traffic to your Amazon product listings. First is sending cold traffic to Amazon without intent. You don't want to send clicks to your Amazon listing just for the sake of getting those clicks. So you want to make sure if you're running Google ads, an Instagram giveaway, a TikTok influencer campaign that you're doing it with high intent. If you're not targeting the right keywords on your Google ads, you're working with influencers that are not going to reach your target audience and you're doing giveaways just for the sake of volume and not actually towards people who may purchase your product. You're going to get clicks to your Amazon listing. But if those clicks don't end up converting into sales, that low conversion rate could actually negatively impact your listing. Second mistake is using no attribution. I'm always shocked when I see people taking time to promote on Instagram or work with influencers, but they're not using Amazon attribution links. Now you're definitely still going to get some ranking juice by using just a regular link to your product listing, but you're not going to really be able to track the data and the impact of these specific actions unless you have an attribution link set up. And the third mistake would probably be running too many channels or campaigns at once. If you decide to do a huge Google ads campaign and do a whole bunch of influencer posts and go post on a bunch of Reddit threads, all within, let's say, the same week, you might see a massive spike in search volume for your branded keywords or improved ranking for different keywords that you're tracking. But it could be difficult to know which one of those activities impacted the results the most. My challenge for you today would be to consider one of these different external traffic sources to implement more aggressively for your brand this week, whether it's off Amazon paid advertising like Google shopping ads or going more on social media with your own content or influencers on TikTok and Instagram or exploring Reddit threads and other forums. Try to find just one external traffic source that you can invest some consistent time into and then again, make sure you're attributing and tracking the results so you know the impact of your efforts. Tomorrow we're going to be talking more about how Amazon isn't the end goal. It's the launchpad. Once again, guys, I'm Andy. You're listening to Built by Business with Andy Isam. We'll see you in the next episode. .