How to Use Search Frequency Rank to Maximize Amazon Campaigns

February 19, 2020
By Nancy Lili Gonzalez

Welcome to the first part in a series of four articles all about Amazon Advertising Brand Analytics!

Coming posts will discuss Market Basket Analysis, Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior, and Demographics, but this feature regards how to think bigger about your most important keywords in Amazon.

Knowing how to tweak, filter, and track search term options in Brand Analytics’ Search Term report expands your keyword potential.

The Brand Analytics Search Terms report, not to be confused with the standard search report from Amazon advertising, is a completely new tool that unlocks the ability to see any product’s best terms and see your competitor’s conversion rates for certain products.

Within this tool is another tool: Search Frequency Rank.

If you are the sort of Amazon marketer who relishes having plentiful tools in the toolbox, then you are at the right place, the right link, at the right time. Lucky you!

It is our honor to teach you how to use Search Frequency Rank to interpret its data to identify the most frequently searched search terms, and then also how to morph those into single keyword campaigns.

What is Brand Analytics?

Unlike Amazon’s sponsored product search term report that gives visibility to the search terms consumers explore, resulting in clicks and impressions, Brand Analytics is a tool Amazon offers to sellers who are brand registered.

Important note: This feature is only available to sellers who own a brand.

Brand Analytics contains valuable marketing and advertising insights because it provides consumer information for all search queries, not just your current customer reach.

The Brand Analytics Search Terms report shows brand owners how customers find their products and their competitor’s products on Amazon and it shows the most popular search terms at any given time, along with each term’s search frequency rank.

Search frequency rank is the numeric rank of a specific search term’s popularity when compared to all other search terms during a given period. In other words, it tracks a search term’s popularity.

In January 2020, for example, the top three searches in all of Amazon were iPhone 11 cases, the n-95 mask (a coronavirus face mask), and the Apple airpods charging case. The seventh most searched item was the Kobe Bryant jersey.

In a way, these top searches express how society felt and operated in January– medical fear and stress, mourning and grieving a legend, and forever Apple obsessed– and that’s interesting market data to know.

Brand Analytics also details a product’s click share and conversion share.

Click share is a percentage of the number of times Amazon shoppers click on a particular product after searching for a term divided by the number of times customers click on any product after searching for that term.

Conversion share is similar, but it is more about how many times buyers actually purchased an item for a specific search term divided by how many times they purchased anything from that search term.

Now that you’re familiar with important definitions and tool features, be impressed by Brand Analytics depth of info; it currently offers 1.1 million rows of search terms, each paired with the number one product title and ASIN for that search.

Wow, right? That’s a lot.

Kobe Bryant’s jersey, for example, directs shoppers to the top three products, including the top product and ASIN for Lakers Jersey Bryant. It only had 4.9% click share, but 8.9% conversion share.

This abundance of information is available for every single search term.

These lists, by the way, are exportable.

We aren’t crazy about the Excel file or CSV file that Brand Analytics spits out because the titles are very long, but modifying Excel functions simplifies the text so it’s more readable.

Consider the possibilities of having this breadth of data instantly available! Once you’ve spent a minute considering the possibilities, continue reading for our search frequency rank strategy.

Say No to Guesswork in Keyword Research

Having an impressive tool like the Search Frequency Rank isn’t enough to just have. We also need to parse through the data to remove guesswork from keyword research.

The most important keywords in your campaigns should be the search terms that rank highest because they are the most frequently searched terms on Amazon.

A great advantage to Brand Analytics Search Terms report is the possibility of discovering new search terms or competitive keywords that didn’t originate from auto campaigns because your products weren’t ranking for them.

Three quick notes about search term frequency:

The top three ASINs are ranked by percentage of click share, not conversion share. Sometimes the third ASIN has the fewest click shares but the highest conversion share.
The search term function does not treat close variants and misspellings the same way as a normal exactement keyword, so experiment with every possibility when determining your best keywords. Test synonyms to find the highest searched search terms.
This does not show how many searches happen each week or month. It only ranks the searches. Between each search frequency rank, there may be either a handful of searches or billions of searches, and there’s no way to know how many.

After you’ve experimented with different types of searches in the Brand Analytics Search Terms report, including misspellings, close variance, and synonyms, test your ASIN and your competitor’s ASIN to compare search frequency rank, click shares, and conversion shares.

Your goal within this step is to find all the highest search terms relevant to your product.

If you launch an auto campaign and look at your search terms, you might not appear for the most popular searches for your product because your ad rank wasn’t high enough to appear in the top three of the Brand Analytics Search Terms report.

If you type a competitor’s ASIN, however, there is plenty of search term information for their ASIN that may clarify possibilities for your ASIN.

This is one instance where it’s handy to use a “real reverse ASIN tool,” a tool where you type an ASIN to see all the keywords that rank for it.

Pooling keywords from other’s ASINs as well as studying the top performing search terms according to the search frequency rank is a smart way to identify the most important keywords.

Once you know the highest performing keywords on the market relevant to your Amazon store, create single keyword campaigns.

Search Frequency Rank Helps Single Keyword Campaigns

Brand Analytics Search Terms report offer suggestions for what single keyword campaigns should be by highlighting the truest, most popular aspect of your product and singling out the truest, most popular search terms for your product.

Take advantage of this. The search frequency rank tool within Brand Analytics Search Terms report is your single keyword campaign’s best friend.

Single keyword campaigns are created because traffic for a particular keyword is very high and because you can control where to place the ad for maximum gains.

All placement settings should be optimized accordingly because each keyword performs differently in each ad placement location. This is difficult to do with less specific campaigns, like sponsored product campaigns, because those perform wildly different in different settings.

Knowing your highest traffic search term, per the search frequency rank, easily determines where to place your single keyword campaign.

The most competitive setting is the Top of Search, ToS, Only Campaign. Focus there because ToS campaigns gain traction and momentum on keywords with long term gains potential.

66% of clicks are from ads above the fold. That’s more than half, and that’s why this is worthy of your attention and your money.

A ToS campaign generates extra traffic, which then generates more reviews, which then generates more conversion shares, and this cycle increases the likelihood of winning an Amazon Choice badge.

Track ASIN performance for click share and conversion share. The number one ASIN has the best chance at winning the Amazon’s Choice badge. The winners are not always the products with the biggest click share, but the products with the greatest conversion shares.

By themselves, search frequency rank and single keyword campaigns are cool. Together, they are unstoppable! With them, you too are unstoppable.

Search Frequency Rank + Single Keyword Campaign = BFFs

Perhaps only registered brands can take advantage of Amazon Advertising’s Brand Analytics tool, but if that tool is in your arsenal, then the search frequency rank feature is incomparable for identifying your most important keywords.

With those keywords, create single keyword campaigns and prepare to dominate your niche within Amazon.

Recap:

Brand Analytics provides consumer information for all search queries, beyond just your customer reach.
Brand Analytics Search Terms report is not the same as Sponsored Products search term report.
Search frequency rank determines what’s popular.
Use Brand Analytics to identify the most searched search terms and craft impressive single keyword campaigns.

Stay tuned next week for an equally in-depth gander into Brand Analytics Market Basket analysis.

Until then, please let us know how useful this strategy is! Will you use it? Is this successful for you? What do you think about Brand Analytics? We want to know.

Badger out.