#506 – The Amazon Search Shift: Why Keywords Alone Don’t Rank Anymore

Built by Business: Amazon FBA, E-Commerce, Brand Building

Andy Isom | Amazon FBA Seller & Agency Founder

Amazon, Business, Amazonfba, Selling, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Personalbusiness, Productbusiness, Ecommerce, Onlinebusiness

4.9 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Amazon SEO in 2025 is no longer about keyword stuffing. If you want to rank on Amazon, you need to understand the signals Amazon actually rewards: profitability, conversion rate, external traffic, and brand trust.

In Episode #506 of Built by Business with Andy Isom, we break down why keywords alone won’t rank your product anymore and what to do instead. You’ll learn how Amazon’s A9 → A10 algorithm shift changed the rules, why profitability is now as important as visibility, and the specific ranking signals you can optimize today.

This episode covers sales velocity, PPC efficiency, brand content upgrades, and external traffic strategies that boost organic rank. Whether you’re a new seller or scaling brand, you’ll walk away knowing exactly how to adapt your Amazon SEO for 2025 and beyond.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Five years ago, stuffing enough keywords into your title and bullets could get you ranked on Amazon.
0:05.0	Today, that strategy is dead.
0:07.0	Amazon doesn't just want words anymore.
0:09.0	It wants proof your product actually sells.
0:12.0	They want to see profit, and they want to see what keeps customers happy.
0:24.6	Welcome back to Built by Business with Andy Isam. In this episode, I'm unpacking the shift inside Amazon's search algorithm.
0:29.1	And we're going to talk about why relying on keywords alone won't get you ranked in 2025.
0:35.0	We're going to talk about what signals Amazon is rewarding now and how smart sellers
0:38.9	can adapt before they get left behind. Let's talk about the old keyword playbook. From 2016
0:44.8	to about 2020, keyword SEO on Amazon was simple. If you had exact match keywords in your
0:50.0	title, you'd get quick ranking bumps. You could keyword stuff your bullet points and load up the backend search terms.
0:57.0	It worked back then because keywords was one of the main ways that Amazon ranked relevance,
1:02.0	similar to how Google operated their search results.
1:05.6	But in 2020, we started to see a little bit of a shift.
1:09.1	Marketplace Pulse reported that by 2020, Amazon had over 3 million active sellers
1:13.6	globally, many chasing the same keyword SEO tricks.
1:17.9	The problem was everyone was gaming the same system and Amazon had to evolve.
1:23.0	Amazon shifted from an A9 algorithm focused mainly on keywords to an A10 algorithm focused more on
1:29.6	performance signals.
1:31.7	Now it's not just what words are on your page, but it's does this product make money for
1:37.3	Amazon?
1:38.5	The four core elements of the algorithm are first profitability.
	...

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