How to Use Brand Analytic’s Search Frequency Rank and Helium 10’s Search Volume Numbers to Make Decisions on Products

March 25, 2020 – Keywords and search terms seem to be a very confusing subject for a lot of Amazon sellers, and as an Amazon coach who has worked with well over 1,000 sellers I find there are a lot of common questions that come up often about how to use Keyword Tools to help determine a products viability on Amazon.

I have been asked many times about the search volume in Helium 10’s Magnet Keyword Research tool and whether or not products should be disqualified if the Search Volume doesn’t meet a certain number on the tool.

For example, if the main keyword only has 500 searches a month according to the tool, should the product be disqualified from being a viable product?

Well, my answer may surprise you, because I would say, “Not necessarily.”

It certainly makes it a lower possibility for good sales, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be a good product.

This goes the same for Brand Analytics inside of Amazon’s Seller Central dashboard. The only difference is the numbers are reversed (meaning the lower the number, the higher the search volume), because Amazon RANKS the volume of the search terms but won’t tell you how often it is searched exactly.

For example, Helium 10’s Magnet tool will say that a search term is searched 20,000 times a month (hypothetically) which is a decent amount. Whereas Brand Analytics will (hypothetically) say that the search frequency rank of that search term is 5,000 over the last month (which means it is the 5,000th MOST searched term on Amazon).

This 5,000 number is pretty good considering there are 12 million products with multiple search terms each. It means that the products on the first page of that search term will likely sell a lot of units per day.

Of course, this is not guaranteed to be your main keyword or even a relevant keyword though. You have to be relevant for the customer.

You can’t just chase traffic because the search term is highly searched. “Why,” you ask?

Answer: Because it costs money to stay on page 1 of ANY search term, and it costs a LOT more when you are not relevant.

If you sell garden shovels and try to get on page 1 for “garden accessories”, but everyone there is selling 100 units a day (hypothetically), then you have to pay to be on that page. You may get 20% increase in sales for doing so, but you may have to spend 3 times more for advertising as your conversion rate isn’t very high on that search term.

Therefore, if you just focused on keywords around “garden shovel” you would be more relevant and save a lot of money in ad spend, customers would get what they are looking for, and you would have a leaner, more efficient way to get visibility on Amazon.

Now that keyword relevancy is more clear…

Let’s get back to the Keyword Tools to understand how to use them and how to make sure you are not disqualifying products just for the sake of choosing a number to be a criteria.

The search volume in Helium 10’s Magnet tool (or Search Frequency Rank in Brand Analytics) is not a great way to FILTER your results.

It is ONLY, and I repeat ONLY, used to determine what keywords are most commonly searched in order of most to least.

Your sales volume is not necessarily determined by how many searches are done on a search term (even though we all want this to be a 1:1 comparison, it isn’t).

The SALES volume of the search terms will allow you to understand if the products are getting sales from the search terms or not.

Let me explain…

If you go to “long handle ice scraper” and you see a bunch of long handled ice scrapers that have a TON of sales volume, you might think THAT keyword is your main keyword.

However, common sense would tell you that “ice scraper” would be searched more, because it is easier to type for the customer, and it’s a more common phrase in general for the product.

If you search “ice scraper” and look at the sales volume, you would almost CERTAINLY see the same long-handled ice scrapers that had volume on the longer keyword at or near the top of this page.

What does this tell you?

Answer: Those scrapers are most likely getting more (if not most) of their sales from “ice scraper” searches rather than the search term “long handle ice scraper.”

But why is that?

Let’s break it down.

“Ice scraper” has a lot more search volume than “long handle ice scraper.”

Here are two screenshots from Brand Analytics as proof (remember, the lower number here means it is ranked HIGHER in search frequency which means it has more volume of searches):

However, when I look at the page 1 results of the page “long handle ice scraper”, I can see that there are some top selling products with good volume at the top of the page.

This is what I call “artificially inflated data” though.

The sales volume doesn’t actually belong to “long handle ice scraper.”

The sales volume belongs to “ice scraper”, because this product is also on page 1 of the search term “ice scraper” (and at the top of the page 1 results as well).

How does H10 or Brand Analytics help here?

Answer:

H10 results might look like this: “ice scraper” should have more search volume (let’s say 20,000 during winter), than “long handle ice scraper” (let’s say 500 during winter).

Brand Analytics’ Results might look like this: “ice scraper” is 1,000 Search Frequency Rank (SFR) during winter and “long handle ice scraper” is 20,000 SFR during winter.

Therefore, it is PROVING that “ice scraper” is the main keyword where the most volume of search and sales will occur.

This is telling you based on the tools that the MAIN keyword is NOT a long-tail keyword that you WANT to compete on, but it is a shorter keyword that you NEED to compete on in order to get the same sales volume.

If you get to the top of page 1 for “long handle ice scraper”, then you are likely to only get a couple of sales a week. That is, if it is the only keyword you are ranking well for. There is NO way that you will get decent sales volume from that keyword.

However, the REVERSE of this CAN happen as well!

In the scenario where a keyword that has 137,000 Search Frequency Rank or 1,000 Search Volume (which a lot of people might filter out), but it TRULY IS the main keyword, would NOT NECESSARILY be a reason to disqualify the product.

For example, the phrase “glove box organizer” is one of the top keywords for the products that are sold under this product line.

Here is the Brand Analytics for it during December of 2019:

It doesn’t mean that it is going to get GREAT sales, but the competition might not be that tough, and you might be able to get some easy sales on it.

Here’s the Jungle Scout data for the keyword (pulled up today – March 25, 2020):

It would be stupid to disqualify the product if it has great sales for one or two competitors and no real competition after that, and the main keyword is dead clear.

Now, I may want to check other keywords for this product knowing that the main seller has “car registration holder” in the title. So, let’s see the results for that search term.

Brand Analytics for “car registration holder.”

As you can see, the keywords STILL come back as higher than 100,000 SFR on Brand Analytics.

Here’s the Jungle Scout Data from today for “car registration holder” as well:

So, in summary, do NOT DISQUALIFY products based on the search volume or SFR. In this case, you might have a GREAT opportunity to easily compete against these two products that sell over 1000 units per month (yes, at low prices, but you might find a way to get a good product at $9.99 and make great margins as well as get 20 units a day).

Basically, this is proof that you can’t necessarily disqualify products just because a number doesn’t fit your criteria. You will find GREAT opportunities if you just don’t filter as much.

Instead, use the Search Volume and/or SFR as a RANKING system to know what your main keywords are (in order) so you focus on the main keywords and NOT sub-keywords or “long tail” keywords where the sales volume is artificially inflated because the products from page 1 of the main keyword are appearing on the top of page 1 for sub-keywords.

I know this is a lot to take in, but I hope this has helped clarify that you can’t just determine things based on pre-made filters that usually have no foundation in sales opportunity or ease of competition.

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