A common concern among clients is how to improve their best seller ranking (BSR) for specific products. BSR is a ranking of products in every product category and subcategory on Amazon, calculated by sales volume.
Where to Find the Best Sellers Rank
If you are curious about where your products that you are selling rank or where products that you are shopping for rank, you can find that on the product page.
Sometimes, you may need to scroll down to the product details section to find that information. As usual on Amazon, the product pages vary by category.
How to View the Best Sellers Page
If you click on the link, you will then be able to find the entire best seller ranking – a list that has 50 products per page – for that category. In the example above, it’s the best seller ranking for Men’s Road Running Shoes.
On the Best Seller page, you can also see how the category breaks down on the left side of the page. Amazon also has an overall Best Seller page that you can find on the top navigation menu, which is a compilation of these rankings, and you can navigate by category.
Now that we have established what the Best Sellers page is and where to find it, we can cover how it works and provide some tips on how to improve yours.
How Does the BSR Work?
A product’s BSR is essentially driven solely by sales volume. Two factors play into how Amazon considers sales volume: recent sales and lifetime sales. Amazon does prioritize recent sales over lifetime in this process.
That is how BSR differs from search page ranking. In short, a good BSR won’t necessarily translate into placing high on the search page because the search page takes SEO into account.
Tips for Improving Your BSR
The first tip I will throw out there, if you are looking to improve your products’ BSR, is to make sure your products are in the proper category. You can adjust product categories by editing the listing in Seller Central. If you are a vendor, you can suggest an adjustment in Vendor Central.
Outside of that, it’s all the usual tips that come with trying to increase sales – having a well-planned advertising strategy, obtaining good product reviews and ratings, and taking SEO very seriously for your product pages.
These tips might sound familiar from your research on how to place higher on the search page. Although BSR and search page rankings are calculated differently, they can work in tandem. The higher your product is showing on the search page (and remember, the vast majority of shoppers on Amazon won’t click past the first page of the search results), the more eyes you will get on your products and the more sales that will come in. The more sales that come in, the better your BSR will be.
TL;DR: Amazon’s BSR is calculated based on sales volume, with an emphasis on recent sales. BSR differs from search page ranking, but the two work together in many ways. The best way to improve your BSRs is by selling more and making sure your products are categorized correctly. You can improve sales by running effective ads, taking SEO seriously, and working diligently to earn positive reviews and ratings on your product pages.
