What is Amazon BSR (Best Sellers Rank)? Everything You Need to Know

But What is The Best Seller Rank (BSR)?

BSR, or the Best Seller Rank, is the numerical metric that the platform creates once the product has had at least one sale in order for businesses and marketers to understand how their products perform on Amazon. For example, the BSR can go up and down based on sales, so having a lower score indicates a higher Amazon sales rank.
This means if a Frozen pillow set ranks #3 in the Home & Kitchen category, it’s the third best-selling product among active Home & Kitchen listings.

Simply put, you need to be adept at tracking your BSR to increase your Amazon sales and long-term revenue growth.
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And why is it important to know about Amazon (BSR)? 

Learning how to strategize Amazon BSR is crucial for sellers to assess their product popularity and competitiveness with consumers. This metric can guide you in aiding your own product selection, pricing strategy, inventory management, consumer confidence, discovering trending products, product research, benchmarking performance, and inventory management that allows sellers to adjust their pricing based on demand. Meanwhile, for consumers, it denotes product quality and the popularity of the product listing. 

However, BSR is a dynamic metric that should be used alongside other data and research when making decisions on Amazon.

So how do you find Amazon (BSR)?

One way to look for the BSR of a product on Amazon is to find a section under the Amazon product detail page called “Additional Information.” In this section, you’ll find the BSR score and its category or categories. For the products that don’t have sales yet or enough data, the BSR will just show as “None.”

Sellers and retailers can access the BSR for products through Seller Central, which is the platform dedicated to managing their seller’s account or business. Businesses have the ability to see the BSR for their product inventory through their Seller Central account. The location for accessing the Best Sellers Rank (BSR) on Amazon’s Seller Central platform is as follows:

1. Navigate to Reports in the top menu bar
2. Click on Business Reports button
3. Choose inventory in stock from the left-side column
4. Select Brand Performance for registered brand sellers
5. The Sales Rank data for each of their items will be displayed in the last column

How is Amazon’s Best Seller Rank (BSR) calculated?

Amazon hasn’t really shown the exact way to calculate the BSR, but there are some factors that can contribute to it that can help business owners monitor it, including:

• Product price changes and promotions
• Current and past history of sales, which is updated hourly
• Competing products

For example, if a product has 20 units of sales in an hour but drops to only one unit sale the next, this won’t mean that it will automatically drop down to a BSR that’s for products that solely sell per hour. Instead, the BSR algorithm will include both sales velocity and sales volume.

What does BSR indicate for product/ASIN variations on Amazon?

Amazon frequently categorizes product listings containing variations (“children” ASINs) under a “parent” ASIN and classifies the variations as members of the same product family.  Under certain circumstances, Amazon may compile the sales data of these offspring ASINs and incorporate it into the Best Sellers Rank (BSR) of the parent ASIN. 

As a result, given that their rankings are based on the combined sales of all variants, the parent and child ASINs might have the same BSR. These product variations are also handled depending on the WDG “website display group” of the parent ASIN, according to Amazon’s FAQ page.

Learning this, business owners should make sure that the parent and child ASINs should be assigned to the same website display group, and the parent ASINs should also be observed under the right category. If ever not, then the sales rank of variants would be different. 

How can you use Amazon Best Sellers Rank to estimate sales?

To have a calculated understanding of a product’s success, comparing its BSR with other products in the same category is notable. BSR is tracked over time using historical data, and tools like third-party sales estimators can help determine actual sales based on BSR. When estimating sales, it’s necessary to consider seasonality and compare against competitors. 

However, it’s important to consider that the BSR can be influenced by other factors, such as short-term promotions, and may not always accurately reflect long-term sales trends.

How can you improve the Amazon Best Sellers Rank?

Playing and improving your Amazon BSR is part of the online competition, for if you are selling the same number of products or even less than your competition, your BSR will not likely improve. So, here are the four tips for improving your Amazon BSR:

1. Create and optimize your listing copy

To enhance the product’s searchability and conversion rate, it is advisable to optimize the listing through the use of pertinent keywords and persuasive copy. 

2. Set your price right and competitively

Develop an appropriate pricing strategy for your merchandise. By setting competitive prices that are reasonable in relation to the competition and within your product category, you will ultimately increase your product sales and BSR. 

3. Choose and improve your listing images correctly

Products are what will aid in their sale, given that customers are unable to physically examine or handle them. Ensure that the quality of your images is exceptional and that they effectively highlight significant attributes and advantages. BSR increases as conversions increase and images improve.

4. Create and add a video of the product to your listing

In addition to the persuasive power of images, the inclusion of a product video in your listing elevates it to an entirely new level. A video is the closest an individual can get to experiencing your product firsthand.

Aside from the four points listed above, there are other known ways of increasing your Amazon sales and BSR, and these include search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) ways of advertising products on Amazon. These are actually the most effective ways to improve your Amazon rankings. A better ranking means more product and brand visibility, which leads to more sales and a higher BSR. 

Utilizing external traffic to your listing is a top-notch solution to increase your product’s visibility and in turn — your BSR!

For business owners and Amazon marketers to take advantage of these methods, they have to focus on the intention of putting driven keyword strategies that can be created into the products’ custom ads, listings, and descriptions that can work with Amazon’s advanced A9 algorithm. Doing this also means leveraging better click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates (CR) to improve your rankings. 

Takeaways

Overall, understanding and leveraging Amazon’s Best Seller Rank is important for business owners aiming to succeed on Amazon. The BSR is a dynamic metric that reflects a product’s performance and popularity, impacting pricing strategies, inventory management, and product research. To estimate sales using BSR, compare it with competitors and use historical data with the help of third-party tools. Improving your BSR involves optimizing product listings, competitive pricing, high-quality images, and the addition of product videos.

Lastly, leveraging SEO and PPC advertising can further boost rankings, leading to increased sales and a higher BSR for maximizing your presence and sales on Amazon.

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