What is Amazon’s Choice Badge?
Amazon’s Choice is a label given to a product when Amazon believes it is the best match for a specific keyword. In search results, the badge is visible in the top left corner of a product’s image, or just below the title on product detail pages.
Amazon’s Choice products first appeared on the platform in 2015, with the arrival of the Echo Dot. As Echo became more popular, more and more customers spoke their requests to Alexa, Echo’s voice assistant. Unlike shopping on a desktop, it’s difficult to browse and filter results via voice search. (Although Alexa’s AI is smart, she’s not that smart.)
Amazon needed a way to simplify shopping for voice, so they introduced Amazon’s Choice as a way to quickly match keyword searches with the most relevant products. Today, the badge can be found on both mobile and desktop, in addition to voice.
Amazon’s Choice Vs. Best Seller Badge
Contrary to popular belief, Amazon’s Choice is not the same thing as the Best Seller Badge. Although both badges indicate high-quality products, Amazon’s Choice is given to the best match for a particular keyword. The Best Seller badge, on the other hand, is given to products that have sold the most units per hour in their category.
In other words, Amazon’s Choice is determined by SEO, and the Best Seller badge is determined by sales velocity. You can see the difference between Amazon’s Choice and the Best Seller Badge by looking at the search results for “decorative stapler.”
The first product, an attractive stapler in white and gold, is an excellent match for the query “decorative stapler.” Its counterpart, a heavy-duty black one, is half the price and handles twice the capacity. The heavy-duty one is less “decorative”, but it’s certainly a better stapler.
Therefore, the better-selling product gets a Best Seller badge because it sells better in the stapler category. The more relevant stapler, however, receives Amazon’s Choice for the keyword.
Notice that a product can have a Best Seller badge AND be Amazon’s Choice for a keyword. That same bestselling stapler, for example, is Amazon’s Choice for another query, “stabler”.
(Typically, Amazon doesn’t recognize misspellings as keywords, but this particular example seems to be so commonly misspelled that Amazon can’t tell the difference.)
What Does Amazon’s Choice Mean?
What does Amazon’s Choice badge mean for your bottom line? Well, this little badge carries a lot of meaning for Amazon sellers, including huge boosts in conversion rates. In fact, a Profitero study found that products with an Amazon’s Choice Badge received twice the traffic than comparable products without one.
It’s clear – Amazon’s Choice products sell more units. Is there some Amazon’s choice badge hack that is sure to get you that coveted seal of approval from Amazon? Bad news for the sellers that scroll Reddit looking for a shortcut to Amazon’s choice and sales – the best way to get the badge is to be an all-around amazing seller, plain and simple.
When you are a great Amazon seller with a well-optimized listing, you will have no problem being Amazon’s most relevant product for a search term. As with most things on Amazon, the devil is in the details. In order to optimize your listing for Amazon’s Choice, you need to know more about the process.
How does Amazon choose the most relevant products for search terms? Well, Jeff Bezos sits in one of his many homes and sorts through millions of customer queries to pick his favorite. He buys and surveys each Amazon product, pays special attention to small owned businesses…
Made you look.
Actually, the eCommerce behemoth developed an algorithm to do the picking automatically. Their equation is based on a series of inputs. The most important factor? The number of clicks and conversion rates on a given search term’s results page.
How To Get Amazon’s Choice
In addition to clicks and conversions, there are some supplemental improvements you can make to increase your chances of being selected. Start with our top three tips to crack the code and get your next Amazon’s Choice badge.
1. Be a Great FBA Seller
Amazon doesn’t want to promote products that are hard to buy! To make a profit, Amazon needs to connect shoppers with products that are available to ship, ready at the click of a button, and Prime eligible.
If you’re not an FBA seller already, apply to be one. Once you offer fast, free shipping, it will be far easier to convert shoppers and move products. Side note: make sure that you have enough inventory so that you always win the Buy Box.
All these tips are general best practices for successful Amazon selling, but implement them now, and you’ll be one step closer to Amazon’s Choice.
2. Tailor Your Listing to Highly Relevant Keywords
A lot of new sellers don’t understand Amazon SEO and get distracted by high search volume keywords. Remember to always think about search intent when selecting a target keyword.
For example, Paladone sells a novelty Game Boy mug. Game Boys were big in the 90s, so they’re probably not going to convince someone shopping for “gifts for boys 5 years old” to purchase it.
Even though the keyword “gifts for gamers” has a lower search volume, it more relevant to this product. They’ve got a better chance of conversion on the results page for this keyword.
Basically, a keyword is only as valuable as your product’s potential to convert on that search term’s results page. Select a long-tail keyword to target with your listing, and you’re more likely to rank, sell products, and get the badge.
Don’t stop at one keyword though! Expand on your keyword by finding phrases that semantically related. A keyword tool will show you related search terms, so that you can then sprinkle spelling variants and alternate phrasings throughout your listing like chocolate chips in cookies.
3. Maximize Sales Velocity and Reviews
The better your product listing, the easier it will be to get Amazon’s Choice. However, you can optimize until the cows come home, without ever getting the magic badge. Why? You likely don’t have enough sales or reviews.
If you’re selling on Amazon, you already know that a high sales velocity and multiple reviews are good for business. But sales and reviews are also a huge benefit to the overall SEO of your listing.
Start by improving your star rating. A highly rated, well-priced product will make it easier for all the SEO you’ve done to pay off. Sure, you may be in control of things like setting competitive pricing, but you can’t exactly leave yourself good reviews. With a tool like Seller Labs Pro, you can solicit reviews AND stay Amazon compliant.
Pro Tip: As your customer rating improves and you start to make more sales, you’ll want to ensure your return rate stays low. Check your return rate periodically in your Seller Central Account.
Conclusion
The nifty part about all this fun work? It pays off twice. The three tips above will not only help you get Amazon Choice, but it will also help you get a Best Seller badge for your category! If you’re looking for specifics on how to get the Best Seller badge, read our full article.
Learn how to get the much-coveted Amazon Best Seller badge for your product by selling the greatest number of products within your category.
Ashley KochansAshley is an SEO & Digital Marketing Specialist and Founder of Kochans Consulting, also, a self-proclaimed die-hard SEO nerd. When she's not maximizing organic traffic, she's cooking organic meals, practicing yoga, or oil painting.
