#122 – Amazon Keyword Ranking Strategies to Get Your Products to the Top of the Page

As eCommerce sellers, you’re constantly thinking about the factors that will ultimately affect your rank and the visibility of your products. It makes all the difference. Today on the Serious Sellers Podcast, Helium 10’s Director of Training and Customer Success, Bradley Sutton speaks with Alina Vlaic from AZrank. Alina is an expert on Amazon keyword ranking strategies and is here to talk about product launches, geo-tagging and how to help make sure that you and your products don’t become victims of the Amazon search shuffle.

You’ve done a lot of hard work to make your Amazon business a success, listen in and learn about tactics that will help your products get the recognition that they deserve.

In episode 122 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Alina discuss:

• 01:50 – Alina’s Origin Story
• 04:00 – A Job in Imports Allows Her to Use Her University Skills
• 06:20 – Alina Discovers Amazon
• 09:00 – Learning and Discovering a Passion for eCommerce
• 12:20 – Doing “Everything” Differently
• 14:30 – Keeping Her Amazon Markets Separate
• 16:00 – What’s Required of European Amazon Sellers in the US?
• 18:00 – Amazon Launch Strategies
• 20:15 – Alina’s Search, Find, Buy Method
• 22:20 – Bringing Juice to the Rankings
• 24:00 – Geo-Ranking and the Amazon Search Shuffle
• 26:25 – Alina’s Title Research Wisdom
• 28:15 – Using Helium 10’s Xray and Frankenstein
• 30:00 – Bradley’s Search Volume Game 
• 32:40 – Alina’s 30 Second Tip
• 33:35 – How to Reach Out to Alina

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Ultimate Resource Guide: Discover the best tools and services to help you dominate on Amazon.
• Helium 10: 20+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation. 
• SellerTradmarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

Transcript

Bradley Sutton: Today’s guest is an expert on keyword-ranking strategies. For one of our Project X products that we used her for, we got to page one on a keyword with thousands of monthly searches with only 11 people searching, finding, and buying it. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS free, unscripted, and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. We’ve got a serious seller from another part of the world, from Romania, in the house today. Alina, how’s it going?

Alina Vlaic: Hey, Bradley. It’s going great. Thank you. Great to be here.

Bradley Sutton: Excellent. Excellent. Now we met in person. You went to one of our meetups there in Barcelona when I was over there. It was great to meet you in person. Even though you had a bad experience there. I felt bad, like she came to this meetup and what happened when you’re in Barcelona?

Alina Vlaic: Oh my God. I didn’t want to remember that, but okay. My backpack got stolen with the laptop and all my documents and everything, everything, everything inside.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, no, I felt so bad, but were you able to get everything? You got your new passport and everything is okay now?

Alina Vlaic: Yes, yes, yes. Now, I’m legal again.

Bradley Sutton: Actually, guys, that’s why I felt obligated to have her on the podcast right now. I’m just playing. No, she’s here on the podcast because she has some cool information. I’ve been using her service lately for some of our tests, including with Project X, and I wanted to talk about that. But before we get into that, let’s go to your backstory, you know, way before you lost your passport in Barcelona. Let’s go back to when you were growing up. Now, did you grow up in Romania?

Alina Vlaic: Yes, I did. I grew up in Romania. I’m currently living in Sibiu, which is a great city. Actually it’s the first and the only city in Romania who has a three-star Michelin rating. It’s amazing for tourists. We have a lot of those. I grew up in another city because I moved to Sibiu quite some time ago, around 15 years. I went to high school in my hometown.

Bradley Sutton: Wait, when you were in high school, did you already have an idea of what you wanted to be when you grew up at all?

Alina Vlaic: Actually, I could say I had some contact with the business world and entrepreneurship, if you want to call it like that, because I was working at my parents’ company even from high school. My parents had some local businesses, small business, printing and publishing house. I started working there and helping them with whatever I could. But then I left and when to college, and I studied international business and working at the same time not in the field actually. I used to be a bartender and a waitress at that time during college.

Bradley Sutton: When you were studying international business though, what was your goal? Maybe you thought you were going to, what, still to work with your parents’ company or did you have something else?

Alina Vlaic: No. Actually, I had something else in mind, even if I’m “Okay, all the parents they want to keep their children close,” but I always felt like I wanted to go a little further, like, I don’t know, find my own way in life. I chose international business because at that point it was attractive to me. I didn’t know pretty much¾nothing¾about it at that point. But on the way, I’ve learned a lot. And actually, my first real job after college was pretty much in the same field. I used to work at a small company, who was a division of a bigger company who did imports and retail. Pretty much, I was responsible for the import department. I got connected with the…

Bradley Sutton: Okay, you actually got a job right into what you were doing?

Alina Vlaic: Yes, yes, yes.

Bradley Sutton: Or right into what you studied? I’m sorry.

Alina Vlaic: Yes, yes. And that was really cool, I think, because not all the people graduating college can do that. It’s quite stuff, but I would like it.

Bradley Sutton: Alright. What time did you get into e-commerce? Was Amazon your first e-commerce or was there something else you did?

Alina Vlaic: No. After this job I was telling you about, I spent there like about two years, and then I moved to Sibiu, where I got a new job, which had nothing to do with e-commerce at that point. But at the same time, me and my husband, we started our own business. A retail company, dealing with the toys and the baby stuff. And we were one of the first companies in Romania, small companies, that you started doing e-commerce. We have here like a very big a marketplace. You can say it’s like an Amazon in Romania. And our company was one of the first ones who entered on that marketplace. We were there on the very beginning. That’s how the journey started with the e-commerce. And then of course…

Bradley Sutton: What year was that?

Alina Vlaic: Oh, that’s a tough one. 2010 maybe. Something like that. 2010, 2011, something like that. It was slow, but it grew up really fast, this sales channel, the online commerce.

Bradley Sutton: But that was still selling the similar products that you and your husband were doing it for the retail and wholesale business?

Alina Vlaic: Yes.

Bradley Sutton: Now, at what point did you discover the Amazon opportunity and how did you discover it?

Alina Vlaic: Well, that was around 2017. After around 11 years at the job I came to, and our own business was at the same time. Basically, I worked two jobs and at that point, early 2017, I was preparing to have my second baby, and I was at home in the maternity leave and I was, I don’t know, getting like, “I need an adventure” or something like that. I know over there in the United States, all, I mean not all, but many successful businesses were started in the garage. Well, over here in Romania, we don’t have a lot of garages, because many people keep their cars outside. I didn’t have a garage to start with. I started it in the nursery or in the living room basically. That’s how I discovered it.

Bradley Sutton: Was it selling your products that you guys were already selling or you were just trying to start out?

Alina Vlaic: Yes, yes. The products we were already selling and we started selling them on European marketplaces because it was somehow easy.

Bradley Sutton: You started first on Amazon Europe?

Alina Vlaic: Yes. Amazon Europe, Amazon UK, and then all the other ones.

Bradley Sutton: This was 2017 or 2018?

Alina Vlaic: 2017. 2017.

Bradley Sutton: All right. In your first full year of selling on Amazon Europe and Amazon Europe exclusively, what were your sales?

Alina Vlaic: Oh, I don’t know. Not much. Not much. We were unexperienced, and we did a lot of FBM because, I don’t know, I’m sure you do, but I don’t know if all the other listeners do. Now, in Europe, it’s a little more bureaucracy. You know, when selling on Amazon, you have to file for a VAT in the country you’re selling on in all the countries. It’s a lot of paperwork to do and goes a little, I don’t know, it takes a lot of time. More than when you go directly to Amazon.com. That took a lot of time. To answer your question, I don’t know, maybe 20-30 thousand pounds or euros maybe.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. But this wasn’t like products that you are looking for the opportunity and you launched a brand new product.

Alina Vlaic: No.

Bradley Sutton: You were just like selling what you already were selling.

Alina Vlaic: Yes. Yes.

Bradley Sutton: I’m sure you found that a lot of them there really wasn’t maybe opportunity or there’s too much competition and it was harder to get traction because you were doing it that way, right?

Alina Vlaic: Correct, correct. To be perfectly honest with you, we didn’t know at that point or I didn’t know at that point because I was in charge of this so many strategies. I didn’t have the knowledge that I have now regarding the Amazon business and what you actually have to do to be successful on Amazon. Basically, it was the learning phase, the first learning phase of the business. But the most important thing for me during that year was that I found somehow my passion. I got addicted, I can say, to Amazon, and I realized that it’s a huge opportunity for doing great business and it’s an amazing opportunity to meeting a lot of people and it somehow I can say changed my life for good.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. I’m assuming your sales were low the first year. The first year you’re like, “Aw man. I’m not sure if this is going to work,” but did you start getting educated more on Amazon so you can understand the other, like the more private label side of it? Tell me how that went in 2018.

Alina Vlaic: Yes, that’s exactly how it went. I started to study a lot and to try to bring more products into the FBA, because like I told you, in the first months, it was only FBM, and it’s a little different about rankings and all the stuff, how the FBM versus FBA works. I started studying a lot, and then, we decided that at some point we need to go FBA more and also to start a private label on the USA marketplace because that’s the Wonderland.

Bradley Sutton: Let’s talk more about that journey. You started learning about the how to sell privately about how to find opportunities. When was your very first product using the traditional new method now that private label sellers where you are doing kind of separate from your husband and your wholesale and retail business. When was that? Was that 2018 or 2019?

Alina Vlaic: 2018.

Bradley Sutton: And that first product, are you still selling it?

Alina Vlaic: Oh, no. Not on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, good. Tell us what that product was.

Alina Vlaic: Oh my God. It was the famous milestone blankets.

Bradley Sutton: Ah, milestone blanket. Yes. I remember those very well. Yes. Why didn’t it work out well? What happened there?

Alina Vlaic: Looking back now with what I know now compared to what I knew back then, I have the answers. It’s a really tough niche. It’s a design niche. It’s really, really difficult to find that perfect design that everybody wants for the blanket, for their baby, or for the gift or whatever. It was also extremely high competition and constantly new sellers were entering the niche. I remember it was really strange to me at that point because page one and page two, when I looked at it, it was always different. Like, “Oh my God, what’s happening here? Where did those go? When did the new ones he came in?” Now I can understand why because it was difficult to be there. I wasn’t aware at that point how to properly launch, how to properly rank a product, how to do the perfect combination to be successful. But, again, the first few months in or the first year was in Europe. It was the same thing on the United States market because it was like starting from scratch again and learning again¾learning, learning, learning.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Did you launch that in the US or was it in Europe or both?

Alina Vlaic: No, I launched it only in the US as a private label.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right. Then your second product, did that make it and now you’re still selling it or that one failed to?

Alina Vlaic: No. That one, it depends what the first milestone blankets was the first product. I actually didn’t do only one because I was sure I’m going to succeed with it. I did three variations all at once. Basically, you can count them as three products which were failed and then, all the products I’ve launched afterwards are basically still selling.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Cool. What did you do differently that made your subsequent launches more successful than the milestone blanket?

Alina Vlaic: What did I do differently? Everything, starting from keyword research, to photos, to listing, to optimization, constant optimization, and of course launching, and constantly ranking products¾ranking, reranking, and so on.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, now 2019 was better for you on Amazon. What was your Amazon sales in 2019?

Alina Vlaic: It was about, if you believe me, I don’t know if you believe me or not, I haven’t calculated yet exactly because it’s all together on the same company, and Europe has a lot of faxes, but I can tell it was 6 figure, less than expected, but I’m very confident that this year is going to be better of course.

Bradley Sutton: What is just over a hundred thousand or 500,000 or more?

Alina Vlaic: No, no. It was a little more.

Bradley Sutton: Closer to 500 or 100?

Alina Vlaic: Somewhere in the middle, let’s say.

Bradley Sutton: Somewhere in the middle. Okay. Being dodgy here, Alina. Okay. That’s all right. That’s all right. Now is that overall between…tell, tell me what, what’s of that? Somewhere in the middle of 100 to 500 hundred thousand. What’s the division between US and Europe Amazon.

Alina Vlaic: I’d say right now it’s around 60-40: 60 is US and 40 is  Europe.

Bradley Sutton: And do you have products that are just exclusively your only selling in the USA that you’re not doing in Europe or ones that you are only doing in Europe and not in the USA or is everything mainly both marketplaces?

Alina Vlaic: No. They are all separate.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, what you’re selling US, you don’t sell in Europe?

Alina Vlaic: Yes. Correct.

Bradley Sutton: Why? Why not?

Alina Vlaic: Because the model of Amazon business we are doing and we are trying to do in Europe is mostly based on that wholesale I was telling you about, the one we started and the one where we continued to do and we are doing right now, but differently. Like now I know how to source for opportunities first and then select the products and not only sell the product, send to the products on the first time. I didn’t bring them all the to the European market because in 2019 I tried to, I mean that’s what I decided at that point to keep it separate, to make it a good division between these two models to test everything. I’m pretty much a seller who likes to test a lot, maybe too much. You know, I’m always trying to do a new product and discover that’s maybe sometimes okay. They’re not like really, really, really successful. But I’m a strong believer that having many products can be good as well. Not like two or three, which are doing some enormous figures. Let’s say, maybe I like to be on the safe side, like not keeping all my eggs in the same basket.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. Sounds good. Sounds good. We’re doing the egg¾how about not all your eggs in the egg tray because that’s the product that we’ve been doing for Project X. Right. Okay. There we go. All right. Now let me ask you something. We have a lot of European listeners as well. I’ve told this story before, I think it’s funny on some random countries that I’ve never even been to, like, ah man, where is it? It’s one of the former Soviet countries, but I can’t even think of which one it is, but we’re like the number two podcast in the whole business category or something. I’m like, what are the words? I know we have a lot of European listeners on the show and a lot of them are interested in selling on Amazon Europe. But what’s the process for a European person such as yourself, you’re not an American citizen or anything, you didn’t have a bank account over here maybe or you didn’t have a corporation to start. But what is needed, for a European person to start selling an Amazon USA? Number one, do you need to have a US bank? Do you need to have a US LLC? What was that setup like for you and what obstacles did you have?

Alina Vlaic: Okay, You don’t need to have an LLC. Currently, I am selling on a Romanian company. It works perfectly like this. You can also do it as an individual, but with the business account on Amazon, you can also do that. But it’s more difficult because every country has different taxes for you to pay, like when you have to declare your income and stuff like that. If you have a company, it should be easier because there are services that can keep the books for you. First I would say, have a company established in your country, and then, open of course on Amazon account; you can very well use a bank account established or opened in your country. You don’t need a USA bank account. And that’s pretty much it. After this, everything goes to the rules and regulations and laws of each different country because it’s very much different. I couldn’t tell what happens in Romania happens also in Germany or France or Spain. No.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Yeah. That’s interesting. Now, I’d like to talk to you about now, launch, for the last part of this, because you know that you actually now started a business like this. You know, we’ve had you, I know you heard the podcast we had Isabella on here from Rank Bel. Oh, she’s also from Romania too, right?

Alina Vlaic: You’re right, yes.

Bradley Sutton: What is it with Romanian women entrepreneurs who are really into starting their own launch companies. That’s pretty interesting. Anyways, that’s a side topic, but I know you do something similar. I’ve tested it out a few times. We used it for Project X a little bit, but let’s just talk about how you came across this service, like why you saw the need for this kind of service? Basically, guys, what she does is she has a service similar to a rebate company, but instead of you having to go out and find the customers, she has her own network of customers who will buy their product and use it like the Search, Find, Buy method, and then she handles the rebates to them for that. First of all, when did you start this? And how did you even come across this method?

Alina Vlaic: Okay, it all started from my own needs actually. As I was telling you before, I wasn’t very experienced in doing launches in the United States when I started the private label. Of course studying and talking and seeing the information on groups and stuff, I found out about this rebates and the power launches done at that point. This was 2018 first part. I used a few, didn’t actually know at the first time what they were about. But then I learned and with my knowhow and with what I’ve learned, basically on the way, and being also an Amazon seller, I thought at that point I felt, and I was confident, that I could do this better. I mean, I could do a better launch for any private label product on Amazon United States. That’s how it all began. And then I started building the community and the rest is history.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. Explain how it works in a nutshell. I kind of explained that a little bit, but I’m sure you can explain it a little bit better and why you think this best, I’m assuming you think is the best way for launch right now.

Alina Vlaic: Yes. I’m definitely positive that it’s the best way. And I also believe strongly that we are doing it really well. And let me explain to you why. The Search, Find, Buy method, it’s the most powerful ranking method to launch or relaunch a product because it’s what Amazon algorithm likes. Basically the customer searches for a keyword and then scrolls down products and pages and finds your product, the one you are trying to launch, and buys that one. Many people are doing that constantly on a certain period of time. Of course, the algorithm then considers, “okay, this is a good product; this is relevant. Many people want it; let me give it a higher position.” Then you get to page one. What we do different because, like you said, there are a lot of other services that do this Search, Find, Buy method. I strongly believe that being also an Amazon seller is very important because there as you know, Amazon changes a lot. There are a lot of new things happening every week or every month. A lot of changes due to the algorithm. And that’s important to be aware of because if you’re not aware of it, you cannot do it right. You cannot target the right keywords. You cannot do a good keyword research. All this is a very important stage. The preparing for a launch or for a ranking campaign. This would be basically the first thing that comes to being here. Being an Amazon seller is very important. Second, we don’t use the URLs, the controversial super URLs that have been used for a long time. We don’t do them. We have other methods to be able to find a product using Search, Find, Buy, searching for a certain keyword even from day one.

Alina Vlaic: We can do that. And that brings a lot of juice to the rankings in order to use the proper Amazon terms. Also, what I think is very important is that we use custom plans for every client. This ranking and this Search, Find, Buy method, it’s not something standard. There isn’t a mathematical formula to do it. As much as you try to make one, there’s always, even the Amazon changes, things that can interfere at the time. I use Helium 10 and all the tools there to track the keywords or to find the proper keywords. But, for instance, this January, we’ve had a lot of spikes in rankings and that proved to be because of all the changes there that Amazon are making right now, transforming the two-day prime into one-day prime. Oh, and there’s something else. Actually, it’s the first time I’m saying this, so you can consider it a premiere at your podcast.

Bradley Sutton: Breaking news, breaking news.

Alina Vlaic: Breaking news. Yeah. The geo rank is starting to be very real. I don’t know if a lot of people are familiar with this.

Bradley Sutton: That’s been around for like a year, more like almost two years, Alina. But you’re saying you’re seeing it more, more, more frequently now?

Alina Vlaic: Yes, yes, yes. Extremely. From what we do and from other campaigns, it’s starting to be really, really making a difference. You know? I don’t know where they’re going.

Bradley Sutton: That’s interesting. You know what I would suggest you could start doing on some of these, when you have people buy things like start tracking the zip code, because I know it’s not really by state or by city even necessarily. Sometimes it’s just by zip code. I’ve even had different ranks: across the street in a different zip code and it’s a different rank. And that’s not necessarily the geolocation as far as proximity to an Amazon warehouse. But it would be interesting to kind of maybe make a heat map of that. That’d be a fun project; talk to me offline. Let’s see if we can track a little bit about this geo rank, but if anybody is new and they don’t understand what this means. And the reason why I say it’s nothing new is because I’ve done videos a couple of years ago where if, for example, let’s say you’re searching on an Amazon browser and you have your delivery address set to San Diego, California, and maybe this collagen peptides will be page one, position five, but then maybe in Orlando, Florida, somebody at the very same time is searching for the same keyword, but they see it like position 15 or 17 or even crazier, like maybe they’re like on page five or something. It’s something that’s always been around. But people have been saying they’re seeing it more frequently. Now, a lot of these fluctuations in the way that you guys can know if your product is fluctuating, for whatever reason, that’s just one of the many reasons rank fluctuates. I mean, it also depends on what browser you’re using, your browsing history, if you’re signed in Amazon, if you’re not signed in Amazon, many different, you know, mobile versus desktop. But if you are ever wondering if your product or keyword is suffering from what we call the Amazon search shuffle, just use keyword tracker by Helium 10 and make sure Boost is on. And if you start seeing wild fluctuations, that’s what’s happening because Helium 10 is not just checking your rank at a certain browsing scenario. It’s doing random ones that you could have that visibility. But that is definitely something that is affecting launches like Alina said.

Alina Vlaic: I think that’s correlated. I wanted to say that I strongly believe it’s correlated to what they’re doing now, changing the two-day prime into one-day prime. It depends a lot on the inventory you’re having. If you have 500 units of collagen peptides and I have 5,000 units, I’m going to get a better rank with or without the GeoRank. But somehow from all our tests, it shows that these two are well put together depends a lot on the inventory because if you have a lot of inventory, they are able to spread it out across all the United States’ most important warehouses and the smarter ones they can show you higher in rank in many more locations. If you have only 500, then they just speak, I don’t know, 10 warehouses. Your ranking will be a lot lower the further locations from those warehouses.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, good to know. Good to know. Now, before we get into the thirty-second tip from you, I wanted you to talk about another tip and this is actually something that you provided for our recent keyword research, a webinar that we did that you guys should be able to see akeywordresearchnow.com. I think that’s where it’s going to be. Should be keywordresearchnow.com or H10keywordresearch.com. You could see a Alina’s tip there, but here on the podcast, can you let us know like one of your strategies from your clients and from your own business of what you do when you’re talking about keyword research on titles and analyzing your competition.

Alina Vlaic: Ah, okay. You want me to say the title research that we do?

Bradley Sutton: Yes.

Alina Vlaic: First of all, we search on Amazon for the main keyword. And how do I know the main keyword? What’s the product name? Let’s say my famous milestone blankets. I know everybody knows it’s called milestone blanket. After I search after the milestone blanket, a page of results comes out, and I am going to choose the top five sellers though, the top five listings that are selling the most. And how do I do that? Choosing the lowest BSR, of course…

Bradley Sutton: Or using Xray, of course.

Alina Vlaic: After using Xray. Sorry. You got me on this one.

Alina Vlaic: After that, I’m going to open them all in different browsers, in different tabs, and copy paste all the titles, the entire title, into a tool that I use, it’s called wordcounter.net. Actually, Frankenstein, I think Frankenstein from Helium 10 does this as well.

Bradley Sutton: I love, by the way. I love the way you say Frankenstein. It’s almost like a German accent. I love that. Frankenstein. It’s much better when you say it than I did. I’m going to start saying that. I love your accent. Continue. Continue.

Alina Vlaic: After putting all the titles in there, I will extract the repeated words and combination of two and three words. Basically, that’s what counter and Frankenstein do; they show you how many times a certain word or phrase or a combination of two and three words are repeated in those cycles. And I sort them out and I decide: okay, if all these five listings have these words and these combinations of course, besides milestone blanket, that of course has to be in there, but all the other there are repeated in all five of them means that there are important, and I have to have those words, expressions or phrases in my title too. After selecting them and putting them into a small list, then you’ll see basically you have your title. Afterwards, when you’re using Cerebro and analyzing competition and Magnet and all the other tools you use for keyword research, you’re going to discover that those keywords, 99.9% of the cases, those keywords are actually the most important. But you can double check yourself from one part to another with the title.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Excellent. I think I said that that’s a great tip, and it’s something that’s important to do, when you guys are doing your keyword research and optimizing your listing for your title. Now, we’re going to play before we get into your 30 seconds, if that was like a two and a half or three minute one, so you’ll have to think of something you can say in 30 seconds or less. But while you’re thinking about that, we’re going to play our search volume game. Okay? What I’m going to do is I’m going to give you three keywords. These are search, and don’t have Helium 10 open. I know you use Helium 10 a lot. Don’t have it open on your computer. I’ll hear if you click, no cheating. And I’m going to give you three keywords and three search volumes. And I want you to tell me which keyword goes to which search volume. Don’t feel pressure because only one person out of everybody who has ever played this game has ever gotten it completely right. No pressure. Now, in honor of what happened in Barcelona, the three keywords are backpacks, backpack for women, backpack for school. Now the three search volumes from most to least are: one of these keywords has 170,000 monthly searches. One has about 64,000 estimated monthly searches on Amazon, and another has about 4,000 searches. Again, the three key words are backpacks, backpack for women, backpack for school. Which one goes to which search volume?

Alina Vlaic: Oh, okay. Are you going to tell me if I had it right?

Bradley Sutton: Right after you guess, yeah.

Alina Vlaic: After. Okay. The 4,000 goes to backpacks. The 64,000 searches goes to backpack for school and the 170K goes to backpacks for women. I’m not sure about the last.

Bradley Sutton: All right, you got one right. One right out of three. The backpack for women is 172,000, a search one, but backpacks is 64,000, and the backpack for school is only 3,600. Why do you think that is about that backpack for school being so low?

Alina Vlaic: Because it is seasonal?

Bradley Sutton: Yes, probably. I bet you if we searched this in like August or September, this might be a little bit different. But anyways, but the whole point of the game is that I always tell people like, “Hey, what we think are the most searched keywords is not always what are the most searched keywords,” like, for example, if we were using a service like Alina’s here and we want to target a certain keyword, don’t rely on what you think is the main keyword even if it is in the titles, you know. Go with what the data shows, and of course you’d have to use a tool like Helium 10 Magnet or Cerebro like I did in this case in order to find these search volumes. Just don’t go off of what you yourself say. All right, now we’ve come to the part of the show. Yes, go ahead.

Alina Vlaic: I have to add something here. It’s going to be also in that keyword research thing, but I’ve been using this method for a few months and it’s absolutely awesome. In my community of buyers where I do the Search, Find, Buy, when we are making a plan for a client, when we are doing the keyword research, I always give them the photo of the product and ask them “How would you start it on Amazon?” and Oh my God, there are so many keywords which you haven’t even thought about it might exist, like specific expressions out of the literary words and the phrases that we all might think about or  you would say it’s normal. That’s amazing for me.

Bradley Sutton: Good, good, good. Now, give me something more amazing, but now this is our TST – T S T thirty-second tip from Alina. What can you say in 30 seconds or less that is very valuable to our listeners and that very actionable.

Alina Vlaic: Okay. Very valuable and very actionable. What I would say would be start selling in Europe if you aren’t already and don’t go to the UK market because everybody is focusing on targeting UK because of the language. Go to Germany. Even the language barrier is more difficult, but the opportunities there you’re going to see, it’s amazing. You can use Helium 10 to discover those because you guys have a lot of tools that analyze this marketplace and all the European ones actually, but definitely you will find some awesome opportunities. There are really low competition and good volume markets.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Time’s up.

Alina Vlaic: There are a lot of buyers. Okay.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Thank you much, Alina, for joining us. Hope to see you when we go to Europe, if we go to Europe this year for an event, but if people have more questions about ranking or how to make sure that you keep your backpack close to you when you’re traveling, what’s your website so they can see your services or find your contact information on the website?

Alina Vlaic: Our website is azrank[dot]com; you can find information, and contact us and we’ll have the best plan put for you.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Thanks a lot, Alina, and we’ll catch you back maybe next year and see if you hit that $500,000 mark on your Amazon sales, or maybe even 1 million.

Alina Vlaic: Or if I lost another backpack, right?

Bradley Sutton: Or if you lost another backpack.

Alina Vlaic: Okay. Thank you much.