Amazon Product Launch Expert: “Why Your Product Launches Aren’t Going Anywhere” – [Part 1 of 3]

Colin Raja is the Owner of RIMSports, a brand and manufacturer of workout gear and exercise equipment. With a shared love for sports and fitness, Colin and his wife launched RIMSports’ products on Amazon before expanding into large-scale e-commerce and other online platforms. As a seven-figure seller and Amazon growth consultant, he has experience in brand strategy, product launches, e-commerce marketing, and the customer journey.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• [0:00] Colin Raja returns to drop insights on product launches 
• [2:14] How Amazon’s product keyword ranking update impacts launches
• [5:21] Keyword strategies to improve your rankings
• [9:41] What are social signals?
• [13:12] Colin explains keyword linking 

In this episode…

Investing thousands of dollars into an Amazon product launch only to watch it fail can be disheartening. Yet more sellers have experienced this following Amazon’s algorithm changes, which reconfigures SEO rankings. How can you navigate these updates to boost your product rankings?

With Amazon’s new keyword update, brands have noticed that even the most basic keywords aren’t ranking, and their products aren’t performing to previous standards. Data-driven Amazon seller Colin Raja explains that Amazon requires brands to assign their keywords to specific categories and subcategories to compete against those with similar products. This entails restructuring your SEO strategy on the backend of each product to align with Amazon’s categories and browser nodes. You can then relaunch your products by linking keywords to social ads like TikTok and Instagram.

In this episode of What The Teck?, Colin Raja, the Owner of RIMSports, joins Rolando Rosas for the first segment of a three-part series about improving your product rankings. Colin talks about social signals, keyword linking, and how Amazon’s keyword ranking updates impact future product launches.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Rolando Rosas on LinkedIn
• Dave Kelly on LinkedIn
• Global Teck Worldwide
• Circuit Loops
• Colin Raja on LinkedIn | Facebook
• RIMSports on Amazon

Quotable Moments:

• “If you’re not part of the right category, you’re probably not going to be able to rank.”
• “Even if you rank, there’s a possibility you slide down in the rankings.”
• “It’s about fixing the backend, and then it works out really well.”
• “We’ve been able to rank certain keywords without even running ads for them.”
• “There’s something called the honeymoon period; it’s all about daily progress with your listing.”

Action Steps:

1. Conduct a thorough backend audit on Amazon listings: This rectifies category and browse node mismatches that may hinder product visibility.
2. Align products with the correct Amazon categories and browse nodes: Proper alignment ensures that you compete in the right category, which is crucial for ranking.
3. Integrate a mix of PPC and social signals in the first week of launch: A balanced approach increases click-through and conversion rates, which boosts rankings.
4. Monitor and adapt to Amazon’s AI algorithm changes: Staying ahead of AI updates helps maintain product visibility amid the ever-evolving SEO landscape.
5. Focus on data-driven product launch strategies: Utilizing data for decisions leads to more effective launches and can decrease reliance on costly PPC campaigns.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Global Teck Worldwide. 

We are a full-service online retailer of professional headsets, webcams, and speaker phones from top manufacturers. 

Since 2002, Global Teck Worldwide has provided affordable, high-quality communications equipment and customized telecommunications services to organizations of all sizes.

Our specialists have invested hundreds of hours in technical training, certifications, and seminars to assist customers with purchasing decisions. 

We have served thousands of customers in a variety of industries with value-added services, including ergonomics, employee work accommodations, and hearing-impaired services. 

If you are a government agency, small business, or Fortune 500 company, contact us at https://circuitloops.com/contact-us/ to discover a solution that fits your communication needs.

Episode Transcript:

Colin Raja  0:00  

You’re going to spend five to $15,000 for your launch. You end up not going anywhere

Rolando Rosas  0:05  

now it’s almost impossible to get back up to pay. You

Colin Raja  0:08  

probably not going to be able to rank. 

Intro  0:10  

Colin Raja, an entrepreneur who started his Amazon journey with just $100 he owns a seven figure brand utilizing a data driven approach to launch successful products, and shares his expertise so that brands can get an edge with online sales.

Colin Raja  0:26  

There is a formula behind this. When it comes to a relaunch process, the first thing to do is and run dBc ads or Amazon. Take those keywords and run Tiktok, Google ads, Instagram traffic directly to Amazon.

Rolando Rosas  0:39  

Would you say that competitors that are ranked 123, they’re doing something correct.

Colin Raja  0:43  

They may not. Actually, there’s a funny thing, if you have more sales, then you will win the formula. Somebody who’s already have a better sales, they always do much better, actually, until we pour

Rolando Rosas  0:53  

money, we pour money, and we just see minimal results. It’s because there’s this big back end problem. Just

Colin Raja  1:01  

fix the back end and then it works out really well. You don’t even like run ads for certain keywords. You

Rolando Rosas  1:06  

need tools to help you do this. Okay,

Colin Raja  1:08  

that’s a deep Shakespeare. Actually,

Rolando Rosas  1:10  

people will say, that’s crazy, Colin, it’s

Colin Raja  1:12  

amazing, right? Like nobody will say,

Rolando Rosas  1:20  

Today, I have the pleasure of talking to Colin Raja, who will break down a three part series with me on how to improve your digital marketing strategy utilizing SEO advanced techniques. Let’s welcome to the show. Colin Raja,

Colin Raja  1:38  

hey, thanks for having me, man.

Rolando Rosas  1:41  

Thank you. I am excited to have you. You said, hey, Rolando, I got some new stuff, and you showed me. And it was like, whoa. This is the kind of stuff that makes a difference in selling online, practical things that are flying through the radar almost. So before we jump into this three part series. Tell us here on part one, why should brands be paying attention to this? And it should be part of their digital strategy on Amazon.

Colin Raja  2:14  

So when it comes to Amazon SEO and ranking aspect of the most of the people in still like a giveaways or whatever, as a launch process, actually, but they forget the fact that Amazon changing things very rapidly right now. Because of that, they’re coming up with the AI introduction. They’re coming up with so many things in the back end, which not lot of people aware of when you’re trying to launch a product. For example. I’ll give you an one example. What happened to us actually recently. So when we tried to launch one of the product, like three weeks ago, we set up all the basic things, what is required for us to launching the product perfectly. And on the day that we activate, we change our title based on what is our current strategy. What this looks like, what we approaching. What happened is Amazon changed the back end. We noticed that since we know that one, we were able to go on and check and change it back and then continue with the launch. But I assume that you don’t know this. Actually, what I would be going to talk about right now, this is where you’re going to spend five to $15,000 for your launch. You end up now going anywhere on your launch. Whoa. Even if you like, even if you’re like, ranked, it’s gonna drop back where you were back, actually, exactly. That’s

Rolando Rosas  3:26  

the problem. Let’s not gloss over that. Even if you rank, there’s a possibility you slide down into rankings. Is that what you’re saying? Exactly? Wow, wow. And so why is that? Why would you slide in your rankings? Let’s say I’m on the top of page one, and all of a sudden I find myself on the bottom of page one, or even the beginning of page two.

Colin Raja  3:47  

So basically, every keyword belongs to one certain category. Actually, it has to be like a one bros node, one Branch node, on a one leaf node. There could be like a one crossover. So each and every keyword is calculated and compete with another keyword based on that particular category. If that particular category you’re not on top, you’re probably not going to be able to rank keywords at all, actually. So assume that you are like able to run so much of CTR and CVR and get the external traffic and able to rank it. But end of the day, somebody was already in there who has, like, a better category assignment, or who have a better browse node assignment on that particular keyword, they’re going to take away. Why? Because you’re competing with not that particular category Browse Notes. You come you’re competing with a different Browse Notes, and that’s the one part. Okay,

Rolando Rosas  4:36  

so, so wait, hold on. Let’s make sure we don’t go too fast for the folks who were not as up on the uptake here, like me, yeah. So if you put in a keyword, let’s just say garlic press. This is the one in my brain, garlic press. You’re saying that against that keyword, there are several companies or brands that will come up. Up that are in different browse nodes as well as different categories, maybe like garlic press tools, garlic press recipes, I don’t know, and garlic press ingredients, something like that, but the one that’s most relevant in the category and browse nodes are the ones that are gonna be in that result. Okay,

Colin Raja  5:21  

when you talk about the Browse node, so the Amazon determined, right now, it’s each and every keywords belongs to certain categories and subcategories. Actually, if you’re not part of that category, you’re probably not able to rank, actually, and then, even if you’re like, forcefully push yourself to rank, and you’re probably going to come back because you’re not competing against the same category for other people. So

Rolando Rosas  5:45  

certain browse nodes and categories have keywords. So let’s just stay with garlic press. Moment. If you’re in a garlic press, Amazon knows the relevant keywords that should be part of garlic press, and those keywords belong to kitchen tools and your product is part of industrial instruments that those keywords are not gonna help you.

Colin Raja  6:09  

No, not at all. That’s what it is the current update is. So the current update is basically you need to be assigned yourself on a right category, which means, like a browse node and then a Branch node and leaf node, and with the product app and item type, and then a Geo, if you’re not, belongs to that. That’s the first mess of what we’re talking about right now. The second one is, like you’re probably not going to be ranked at all, because the reason is, like you have a mismatch in your basic SEO. This has been happening most I’ve been launching like 15 products this month. Actually, 10 to 15 product basically, is what happening is like more than 10 products having the same issue, even if you touch your title, Amazon, AI is automatically putting back all your basic SEOs into according to what they think. But they’re not fixing every other place. Actually, they’re fixing only few places, but they’re leaving the product app and item type all the information. So that’s like creating a so much mess in your listing right now.

Rolando Rosas  7:06  

So what I hear you saying is that it’s possible that two years ago, I put my garlic press accessory and I put it into industrial instruments that I found it it worked wonderfully. But now, because Amazon’s changing the back end, they said you have to be in kitchen, in the kitchen category in order to make that garlic press work with the keywords you have

Colin Raja  7:33  

that is exactly right, actually. And then you

Rolando Rosas  7:37  

said the mismatch. So the mismatch that’s going on the back end is then going to compound this further, so that now it’s almost impossible to get back up to page one. No,

Colin Raja  7:50  

you cannot. That’s why most of the products you try to relaunch, it may not work, because you have so much that SEO has done. Actually, if you don’t know what you’re doing in the back end, if you don’t know how to look for it, you’re probably not going to able to rank. Get credit for a pro tip. There’s nothing called the honeymoon period. So basically, in the Amazon strategy, in the back end, one of the formula for ranking your data, when you don’t have any kind of history on your product, they give, like, a basic value. That basic value give you, like a little bit of boost. Actually, for your listing, we call that as like a honeymoon period, actually. So it’s based on seven days, 14 days, 21 days, and 30 days period. If you’re seven days, you’re not doing good. You’re 21 days, you’re not going to make it very well. If you’re 21 days, you’re not doing good, your 30 days is now going to be good. So it has like a count of every single day. So you need to make sure that this is going in a proper way. But right now, the problem is, on this is like seven days, they fix your back and actually Amazon will fix your back end according to the keyword. So for example, you’re running a social signal on a certain keywords. So Amazon already attributing a building the relevancy first and keyword in your back end. So for that reason, you are automatically getting a relevant keyword right now at this point. So it’s like to conclude this in a better way, right? You can still go and then get your old product get ranked. We have done that one without even resetting anything, what they call anyone, period, right? So you just did the basic SEO aspect of it, drawn us so much of a social signal, you could be able to bring back your product. We have done multiple products like that before. So

Rolando Rosas  9:28  

social signal, for those that are not familiar with that, would that include external traffic? Would that be influencers, pushing it? Is it PPC? What exactly does social signal mean,

Colin Raja  9:41  

so we using a Google ads, sometimes certain things we cannot share here, we don’t,

Rolando Rosas  9:47  

we don’t want everybody to, we don’t want all the secrets, right? Exactly everybody’s gonna,

Colin Raja  9:52  

everybody’s gonna be like a mess up there, actually, completely. So basically, social signals, you can keep it in a layman time, which is like Social. Ads. You can run a Tiktok ads, or you can run, typically, like a Google ads. And also the PPC, which is help you to pretty much build a good number of good number of CVR and CTR for your listing. So basically, it’s required a lot of CTR when the listing you need to bring back at the first week of it, you need to bring lot of social signals come from different places, like you can run a Tiktok ads, you can run a YouTube ads, or you can run like a Instagram ads or anything.

Rolando Rosas  10:26  

So if you’re running external ads, so you’re saying you’re running basically ads pointing into the the listing, that is correct, and then would you also do Amazon sponsored products to also, is that, because that’s an internal signal, right? It’s not external. So you’re saying a combination of external signals and also internal signals in a way of PPC or Amazon ads.

Colin Raja  10:51  

Okay? So when it comes to a relaunch process, actually, the first thing to do is, like taking a highly converted keywords and run PPC ads, actually, for Amazon, take those similar keywords and run those things in a Google Ads under Tiktok and also Instagram, run this traffic directly to Amazon. So the first week, when you do that one, you may see your rankings comes to 20th, 25th position. In that case, that’s the first week. That’s what we do. When we do that one, we see the keyword ranking boost up. If that boost up, we say, okay, all right, we’re ready to go, actually, right now. Why? Because the back end is amazingly worked out. Your keyword ranking is worked out right now. Let’s move forward with the launch. If that’s not happened, then we move into next stage of finding if there is any kind of back end issue. We still have how we can fix that one.

Rolando Rosas  11:42  

Okay, so what I hear you say is that you can do the strategy, but if you haven’t cleaned up the back end, it may not work. It don’t work. Oh, so this is where I think a lot of us, and I’m including myself in here too, that are on Amazon, we probably make a huge mistake. We pour money, we pour money, and we just see minimal results, because there’s this big back end problem, a mismatch, as you’re calling it, that is not going to give us the juice that we’re looking for.

Colin Raja  12:15  

That is exactly right. Actually, once we discovered it, we found we’d be flying from that point. Actually, we can able to rank keyword in a much better way. We you might have seen my post, actually Facebook, in a very short period of time, we could be able to rank certain keywords. We don’t even run ads for certain keywords. We are able.

Rolando Rosas  12:33  

I saw that that, to me, is the most amazing part of your post, because I’m like, I we use PPC, we use Amazon sponsored products and a bunch of other ads on our products, and you’re kind of flying in the face of conventional wisdom. Hold on, it’s not true. A lot of some people are going to argue that’s not true, but you said you have the data, and we’re going to share some of that in one of the other parts, but sure that’s like, hello, you can rank without PPC. People will say that’s crazy. Colin,

Colin Raja  13:12  

now with the I wouldn’t say that without PPC. Okay, I’ll explain you a more in detail about the post, actually, what I posted. So the when you talk about the first phase of the launch. We always drive first phase of launch with the PPC and social signal. Actually, that’s the first week of test in terms of relaunch or launch process anything. It doesn’t matter what it is on the first base of the launch. What we find out is we come up with a strategy called keyword linking strategy. Right? What it means is, basically, when you try to rank a product and then you put all the basic SEO properly under well done in your listing, sometimes Amazon give a juicing for certain keyword. We have no freaking idea why it happened. They rank for certain keyword. We are not even running for it. We don’t even have a properly focusing on it. We have no idea where this come from. So we find out, okay, hey, these keywords are popping up for no reason why. So we took the data and find out, like, okay, these are not like a big volume, it’s like a decent volume keywords. But this is popping up right now. I think Amazon created a more relevant keyword, is that what means, right? When you think about a product was ranking automatically, which means Amazon is like, not even running a PPC, they were ranking that keyword, which mean Amazon seeing more relevant for this keyword, actually, right? So in that case, so we went back to the Browse keywords from there, and we retrieve all the purchase keywords and keep it separate and track it. We track it separately, okay, all right, all the relevant keywords, we took it on the rank keyword, took it and then, like, we ran a social signal under a little bit of PPC, okay, and in a week, we were able to like rank for a top five with all the big keywords I’m talking about. And I was like, oh. Wow, wow. Okay, it’s about Wow. I haven’t given any giveaways. I haven’t done any kind of very special things. I just done a basic $50 PPC and then run a couple of social signal, that’s it. And I was able to tap on that. That’s something special that we found. And then we started using it. From that point, it been working like really good, actually, for

Rolando Rosas  15:23  

us. I love this because you’re teeing up where we’re going to go here on part two, which is how to do this. Because a you should have this on your radar screen, as you’re saying that. Hey, if you’re not aware, Amazon has really changed how they do this, strictly focusing on your titles, focusing in on the bullets, focusing in on those other aspects, are not going to net you the same results that they used to, especially if there are problems on your back end, and they miss them, right? And so therefore your ad spend is going to go through the roof on new launch as well as existing products. So that is so fascinating, because to me, there’s been a gap there between people are saying, Hey, I’m focused on SEO, and it’s worked. Some people say, I’m focused on PPC, and that’s worked. And then there’s somewhere in the middle where people say, No, PPC is losing us money and everything. But this makes sense, because Amazon moved away from some of this started changing the game, and now people need to pay attention to this aspect about how to get it done. So here’s what we’re going to do. We will provide folks on part two. That’s our part two. So you’re teeing this up perfectly. So I love this, so I want to thank those that have been sticking around with us all the way to the end of Part One with Colin on why you should do this. So now if you want to join us on part two, go check out that episode with Colin and myself, and we’re going to break down how to get this done on Amazon. Thanks for joining me today.