How to Outrank Competitors on Amazon with Alina Vlaic

Unlock the secrets to achieving the coveted page one ranking on Amazon as we sit down with Alina Vlaic from AZRank. You’ll learn to master the nuances of constructing effective listings and targeting the right keywords to enhance your visibility and sales. Alina shares stories from her journey in the e-commerce world, highlighting the dynamic Romanian e-commerce community and how it’s being driven forward by a strong IT and programming culture.

We trace the evolution of Amazon’s ranking strategies, from the early days of product giveaways for reviews to today’s focus on relevance and customer engagement. Discover how sellers have adapted to changes in Amazon’s algorithm and hear about the tactics that continue to thrive. Alina and her team at AZ Rank, in collaboration with Helium 10, have pioneered methods like the CPR formula to help sellers navigate these challenges. Their insights shed light on crafting strategies that keep your products relevant in the ever-changing Amazon landscape.

Finally, we delve into the science of reverse engineering Amazon’s AI, Rufus, to give your listings the competitive edge they need. Alina discusses the growing importance of rich media content like images, videos, and user-generated content, and how these elements can significantly amplify your product’s appeal. Whether you’re launching a new product or refining an existing one, learn how to harness tools like Helium 10 and Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer to strategically position your brand for success.

In episode 429 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Alina discuss:

• 00:00 – Strategies for Amazon Page One Ranking
• 04:40 – Entrepreneurial Journey in E-Commerce
• 15:47 – Evolving Strategies for Amazon Ranking
• 17:05 – Amazon Bans Activity, Goes Underground
• 19:41 – Developing Formula for Amazon Ranking
• 22:35 – Crucial Strategies for Amazon Ranking
• 27:57 – Optimizing Flat Files for Amazon Success
• 29:53 – Optimizing Amazon Launch Strategy and Ranking
• 31:22 – Product Testing and Data Collection Techniques
• 37:04 – Product Success Maintenance Planning Strategy
• 40:07 – Reversing Amazon AI for Ranking Success
• 44:42 – Amazon Listing Optimization Through UGCs
• 48:12 – Trends in Product Innovation
• 50:14 – Kevin King’s Words of Wisdom

Transcript

Kevin King:

Welcome to episode 429 of the AM/PM podcast. This week we’re talking about everybody’s favorite subject how to rank on page one on Amazon. That’s right, I’ve got Alina Vlaic from AZ Rank on the episode. This week we talk strategies about how to create your listing, what you need to do, how do you target your keywords, which reports you should be looking at on Amazon, everything you need to know to actually get on that first page and start making some sales. Alina is going to walk you through a couple of things and even talk about how AI is affecting everything right now. So enjoy this episode with Alina. Coming to you all the way from Austin, Texas and Romania. That’s right, Romania. Alina Vlaic, how are you doing? Good to have you finally on the AM/PM podcast.

Alina:

Yes, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I’m good, thank you.

Kevin King:

When it comes to e-commerce, there’s a big e-commerce community in Romania. A lot of people selling on Amazon. Some of that’s due to Alex and a couple other big courses right? But why is there so many e-commerce sellers in Romania?

Alina:

I think there are a couple of reasons. Romania has always been very potent, very high on everything IT and programming in terms of very good schools. Recruiters still come nowadays big IT companies to recruit from Romania because we have good people that leading to a lot of websites. I mean online websites. We don’t have Amazon here, but we have a similar one called eMag, which is an international. It’s in also Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria everything from the same marketplace. They’re copying a lot from there, not copying, okay, they’re inspiring themselves from Amazon quite a lot, but it’s big. We’ve been with them I think Costin was one of the first 10 sellers to sell on this marketplace and this was like many years ago, 2007, something like that. Yeah, e-commerce is big here. Younger people started to embrace this, but also I think the IT had quite a lot of importance and also it’s not a huge country, but it’s not. I mean, we’re 20 million in quite a small landscape. So, yeah, I think that’s pretty much it. A lot of young entrepreneurs starting their own businesses and everybody, of course, went online. It doesn’t matter if it’s actually selling physical products or services or whatever.

Kevin King:

The average wage in Romania for the average worker is not real high, right? So a lot of people in e-commerce can like what we might consider in America to be just pretty good wages, or pretty good earnings from our Amazon store would be considered very wealthy by Romanian standards, right?

Alina:

Yes. Now we’re not that far behind as we used to be. It’s starting to be similar to Eastern European for like the smallest or average 1,000 euros we have here, let’s say $1,200 to $1,500, something like that, which—

Kevin King:

Per month, per month.

Alina:

Per month.

Kevin King:

So that’s, about 25,000 to 30,000 US dollars per year. Okay, that would be like a good wage for a middle-class worker.

Alina:

Yes. Yes that would be a good wage.

Kevin King:

Or is that more like a doctor’s wages?

Alina:

Not doctor’s wages, no, they are a lot like I don’t know, maybe school teacher, corporate, low to middle management, not management like a level in a corporation, something like that.

Kevin King:

So how did your husband Costin get into being one of the first 10 in e-commerce? Was he already running some stores, or he had some distribution and this came along and they invited him, or he saw the opportunity, or how did that? Were you all together then?

Alina:

He’s been in. He started his own company in 2005. We’ve met in 2006. So next year is going to be 20 years for the companies and he he was always this type of entrepreneurial guy wanted to do his own thing. The first products he ever did import from China and I’m sure you know them probably Brandon Young knows them better because he’s in the toy space are those wooden puzzles like 3D. They come into a wooden sheet and you take the pieces and then you build the Eiffel Tower in 3D. They come into a wooden, wooden like sheet and you take the pieces and then you build the Eiffel Tower. Yes, it did. Those were the first, and then we did foam and a lot of others, but he started that as a distributor, so he was selling to retail. Online was very thin at the moment, and then eMag came and he literally saw the opportunity and jumped right in. That’s how we entered Amazon as well, 10 years later.

Kevin King:

Were you working for him originally when you met?

Alina:

I was in a totally different city across the country and I was in the acquisition department of that particular company and he was calling as a supplier. That’s how we actually met. So he pitched me his products technically.

Kevin King:

And then we started talking more.

Alina:

Yeah, yeah, when I moved here one year later, to towards the end of 2007, I had a different job in also a distribution company, and our two companies worked closely together. The company is still here. We still, we still do distribution to retailers, but not so much into toys, not so much toys. We’re trying to expand a little bit the range to other products, because toy market has become very difficult. A lot of people don’t buy too many toys right now, especially for older toddlers, because you know we have tablets and smartphones, video games. But, yeah, we’re still here. So literally, technically, it was an opportunity. We’re still selling on the marketplace. We also, uh, are on the vendor side of the platform, but this is a whole different business. Nothing related to Amazon, not even the same products, um, just just, this is just for Romania.

Kevin King:

When did you all branch into Amazon itself?

Alina:

Amazon came to our attention Actually, Costin was the one who discovered it. It was late 2016, early 2017, something like that. We were with them, started to explore a little bit. What does it mean? We both realized it was pretty complex and we decided to buy a course. And it wasn’t Alex’s, because you know Alex it was. There were two other guys I don’t know if you ever talked to them. They were called Mava Sports, very good sellers, very smart. They exited their business successfully a couple of years ago, but then we took that course and started learning and this is something that I have never told you in none of the times that we’ve met. But the actual video that made us sell on Amazon was yours. It was 15 minutes. I think I have it somewhere. It was on a black background and I remember it was related to Helium 10. And you were explaining that it’s better to have 50 products that sell five units a day rather than one product that sells to 50 or 500 units a day, because, of course, you then get hijacked and things like that. And this was 2017, 2018. No, 2017, because we started the end of 2017. So that and the course. And then we started to look into Helium 10. There was a lot of content there. Well, Helium 10 back then had only like three tools it was Helium 3.

Kevin King:

And now it’s like Helium 27.

Alina:

That’s who counts I love counting. Around 15.

Kevin King:

So you started selling in the US marketplace. Do you also sell in Europe, or just US?

Alina:

Europe. We started in Europe.

Kevin King:

We started in Europe.

Alina:

We used. This is actually a piece of advice I would use. I would give anyone trying to enter or to give it a try to Amazon in 2025. If you already have a business similar or if you can relate anyhow to my story, I mean with our story because we had physical products in the warehouse and we said, okay, let’s use these products rather than to place an order for a container or I don’t know how many pallets in China, since we don’t know the business very well. So we found a brand that we were already selling. There were garden slides for kids, pretty compact, but you used to unpack it and put it in your garden. Not huge, but still one, two, three, four meters long slides.

Kevin King:

These are the slides like you put water on, they slip down them.

Alina:

Yeah some of them had water, the plastic ones that had a few stairs and maybe some other accessories, but the main thing was the slide. Some of them had the hose to put the water and slide over. And we spoke to the brand. The brand had some listings on Amazon I mean you could find it but none of them were available so they weren’t focusing on that business. So we asked for their approval to sell those on Amazon UK, and that’s how we started. So basically it was a kind of a wholesale model, let’s say in today’s words, and we did pretty well for a couple of years. I think it was one summer and then the next whole year we sold I don’t know two or three containers, but remember we were doing FBM from Romania because they were so big it wasn’t worth it to send them into FBA. So we were doing FBM from Romania and then we started to explore Germany and I think that’s all Germany. That’s all we had back then. Germany was recently opened. And then, after this, we tried another brand it was swings. In the same scenario. We did well, and then we said, okay, now it’s time. Now we know Amazon, right, we know how to do a listing, we know how to do PPC, we know this and that we know some tools. And then, okay, so we’re ready to do a private label. And we did that’s when we launched, it was 2018 when we first launched in the US with our baby brand, knocked it out big time. Failed it. Successful. Yeah Yeah. It was our very harsh lesson that we didn’t know nothing. I don’t know if you’re allowing nasty words, so I say nothing, no, just kidding. So, no, uh, we. We realized, uh, yeah, we knew some stuff, but we, we really need to learn because it’s a completely different competition, completely different market. Pretty much normal, I mean, if I’m looking back now and saying how could you be so naive to compare UK and well my mind.

Kevin Kiing:  

it’s a much more competitive market. For sure, much more factor.

Alina:

Exactly.

Kevin King:

It’s the biggest. So you’re still selling today, right, still operating your—

Alina:

Yes, nothing of what I’ve spoken here. So the first, the baby brand. We closed it after we sold out. Actually, we didn’t even sell out. We brought the last couple of hundred units. There were some blankets, some baby blankets. We brought them to Romania and managed to sell them here. Ecom so—

Kevin King:

It’s local. Yeah.

Alina:

Yeah. Different brands. We have a brand in industrial scientific, one in sports. We have a few products in Walmart that we’re keeping them separate because, you know, Walmart is a little bit different in terms of what people want and how much people afford to pay and how premium the products should be, and it’s also full of Chinese sellers and hijackers. And we recently bought another brand it is our first time adventure into this. It’s a one, a single asset brand that we want to grow and also use it for the agency to create like a. I want to create a few very interesting case studies from scratch to success, with all you know, all the partners that we have here in the space and there are so many good sourcing agencies, marketing agencies, things like that to show a little bit all the behinds, all the backstages of the agencies as well.

Kevin King:

So how did you evolve? So you started off selling in Romania, then expanded into Europe and then came into the US, lost your business, then regrouped and now you’re doing good. Then, somewhere along the way, you decided you know what I’m going to start a little service on the side. You know. Maybe you saw an opportunity, or maybe it was like we need some money for inventory. How can we do this? We need to figure out a way to raise some more money. So you started AZ Rank. When did that happen and what led to you starting AZ Rank?

Alina:

It happened in 2018 and it was right in the middle. Actually, we still had the baby brand and we were struggling with it. So I came to one point when I was literally trying everything so from Facebook Ads, Instagram, Pinterest, Google, you name it, whatever it was on, you know, whatever people said it worked for them, I was willing to try for them. I was willing to try and, of course, like all products launches, back in those days, I did giveaways. I used Isabella. You know, Isabella, she’s your friend, she’s also from Romania and she was the only one everybody was going to her. It’s what everybody was using her from.

Kevin King:

Just to explain to those listening that might be new to selling on Amazon. Back in like 2015, 2016, you could actually give products away to people in exchange for a review, and so someone, you could just give someone a product on Amazon 100% discount, and they would get the product. And then they would leave a review and they had to put a disclaimer that would say something to the effect of I received this product in exchange for my honest opinion, or something like that. In October of 2016, Amazon eliminated that. I think it was October of 2017. October 2017, Amazon banned that, and so then what happened is there were several websites at that time that were actually many websites all over the world that specialized in like free giveaway. So you go to the website as a seller. We we would pay a fee. They would put us on the website, they would connect us with people, they would have Facebook groups, they would have all kinds of different ways, and you just go on there and people get free stuff, and the promise was they would order it on Amazon with a coupon that would give it to them for free. They would get it and then they were incentivized or required to leave a review, otherwise these services would cut them off and say you can’t have any more free stuff from us because you’re not holding up your end of the bargain. Amazon got in a lot of heat in the press. They banned that activity. So what happened? So what happened is a lot of it went underground. A lot of these software companies went away that were offering these platforms, that were offering this stuff.

Kevin King:

You had the emergence of like RebateKey, which Ian Sells did, the guy that has joined brands now and he started that where it’s like well, people have always given rebates. We can do it a different way. Then there was companies that started doing what was called search, find, buy, where they would have groups of people that would go out and buy the product not through these websites, not publicly and then they would get reimbursed by the sellers. And then there were agents that would charge a fee for coordinating that connection. And so around that time there were several companies. Isabella had one of them, there was a couple of others, and then you saw an opportunity and you started AZ Rank. That was helping. This was allowed. This was actually allowed. It was the way people were ranking.

Alina:

Yes. So why did I see an opportunity? Because, as I was telling you, I was trying Facebook Ads, Google Ads, micro, nano influencers whatever you call them because I was selling a baby item. So they were like, let’s say, easier to find in Facebook groups or on Instagram. You could easily find new ones, or months to be that would be willing to try a product. So that’s how I started. From these, uh, from this, these ladies, the influencers, I started, I don’t know, I had something like 50 to 100, maybe 150 people, database of moms, uh, that helped me with my product. And then, actually, the day I realized this was the day one of my friends who was starting on Amazon back then, a kitchen product, I don’t remember, or it was some drainer or something like that and she said I know you have a few people that help to your blog. Do you think that if you ask them to get my product, they would, they want to do that? And that that was the moment when I did hey, I, I can use these people. I mean, okay, it was like 10 units, 20 units, 30 units. That’s how we started for this friend and then from another friend and then, and then it got big. I mean big in the way of you know, everybody was in need of this type of services.

Kevin King:

Just word of mouth, basically. And then you got—

Alina:

Word of mouth.

Kevin King:

A few people, a few mastermind groups like Tryon, a few people like that mentioned you.

Alina:

And then it was Helium 10.

Kevin King:

And then Helium 10. And then you actually a lot of people don’t realize this you worked with Bradley and Helium 10 to actually come up with I forget the exact name of it, but they had a. What was it called?

Alina:

The CPR.

Kevin King:

Yeah, the CPR. It was basically Manny, when he started they had come up with some sort of form of him and Bojan. This is about how many units you need to give away to rank. You need to sell X number of units per day or over a period of time to actually rank your product on the first page, ideally in the first spot, and so they were trying to figure out how many units is that based on each keyword that you need to do? And they had a formula and it worked in the beginning and Amazon was changing the A9 algorithm and it wasn’t very accurate anymore. So they actually came to you and you guys did like a year-long test or something like a project. A year and a half, and around 2,500 launches 2,500 launches and these were like your clients, or Helium 10 was helping you?

Alina:

No, no, no, only mine.

Kevin King:

Only your clients.

Alina:

Yes, and we were keeping track of the data, together with Helium 10, in order to see patterns, to, you know, to define some averages in order to get the formula.

Kevin King:

And so after a year and a half of analyzing all this data and working with the data guys at Helium 10, you guys figured out okay, here’s a formula that’s it may not be exactly, but it’s pretty close, based on all this data. And then they changed everything the CPR to actually show this is basically how many you need and that has now evolved. It’s changed a little bit now and there’s some other tools that are out there, that private tools that people have that can do some crazy stuff too. So what happened? The search, find, buy was. Everybody was doing that for a while. Then, all of a sudden, a couple of years ago, Amazon said oh, you can’t do this anymore. They went after RebateKey, they went after everybody else, and so people quit. Well, I know it still exists, but people quit advertising it as that, and now they switched to a model of testers. We’re going to get feedback and we’re going to get tester instead of surveys, and we’re going to have them shoot a video of them surfing on the page. There’s all these things that it was couched in a different way. It’s still basically the same thing, but it’s just some extra steps and some extra things. So where has the rankings now, with all the AI and with all the new stuff that’s happening, and the A9? There’s people out there will say, oh, there’s a new A10. There’s no such thing as an A10. So anybody that says there’s an A10, shoot them in the head and run away. That’s just marketing. There’s only an A9. It’s always been the A9. It does evolve over time and they do tweak it and change it. What are you seeing now with the evolution from just the straight up giveaways to the SFR, to the testing to now. Where’s it at? What do people need to know when it comes to ranking now? What are some techniques that are strategies that they need to keep in mind?

Alina:

So first of all, I would start with something that is one of my favorites, let’s say, in the last couple of years. So Amazon changed in November 2021. This was the major change that changed the old search find buy into whatever we’re calling it right now. But together with that, the most important and major change we have seen in all this A9 craziness except the AI we’re not talking AI right now is relevant. So back in the days, if you would do 1000 giveaways or search find buy on a keyword, I think I could say that it doesn’t even matter if your product is that keyword, but you could rank on it somehow. Eventually, with a lot of velocity and a lot of maybe other tricks and tips, you could rank any keyword. Now it’s not happening.

Kevin King:

So you’re saying that if I had a product that was a soccer ball and I sent out a lot of special links because you could embed the keyword in the link back in the day and you could do all kinds of stuff, if I did it for the word uh, baseball, I could have my soccer ball show up because it wasn’t. It didn’t matter, you just got a thousand sales on that keyword. So I just said, okay, this must be relevant, this must be a good people no relevance, right?

Alina:

Exactly.

Kevin King:

I just want to explain that to people listening, okay.

Alina:

Exactly, yeah. So, Amazon, I think they were aware of this, but not up to that point when they wouldn’t show it, so they showed your product for whatever keyword they had velocity on. Nowadays it’s much more complicated than that. We have clients and brands we work with that. They have marvelous, excellent listings, very well thought images, immaculate, and they still sometimes cannot rank on specific keywords because somewhere, somehow, Amazon made a change to the browsing notes, to this or to the categories or whatever, and they find the product irrelevant. They don’t find the product to be relevant for that specific browse notes or category or subcategory they want and that’s the end of the game. You cannot do anything in terms of ranking. If you’re not relevant, you cannot rank. That’s my name.

Kevin King:

Was that humans at Amazon actually typing in a list of things? Do you think? Do you think in 2021, Amazon had a bunch of people going through and looking at every product. Okay, which keywords actually are relevant for this, which ones aren’t? Or do you think that was machine learning that did that?

Alina:

I think it was machine. This is just like a personal opinion. It’s hard to say, I don’t have any insiders or things like that but I think it’s machine because there are so many millions of people, also of products, on Amazon, it would be pretty complicated to be done manually and on top of that, they are still doing this even to this day, in 2025. They are still doing a lot of changes every day. For example, I have, uh, for one of my brands, I have a lot of parents with multiple variations. Some of them have 10, some of them have 20, some of them have two. They’re messing them around every day. So I have a person who, pretty much four hours a day probably, checks all the variations, because they change a browsing note here or a little bit of something there and you get. You get an error. The product, the variation, gets out of the drug, drip or drawn out of the parent and they say it’s not relevant. How can? How can it not be relevant, since it’s the same product, just a different color? You know what I mean? I just try to make it more, but this is just like a raw example or a broader example. Long story, short. Relevance is the new name of the game, together with the AI.

Kevin King:

How do you figure out relevance when I’m building my listing? You just said some of your clients have beautiful, well-done listings but they still can’t get that relevance. So what are some things that influence the relevance? What are some things I need to do to try to? Is it checking the browse node? Is it checking making sure I have all these semantic keywords and intended use and all this kind of stuff? Or what are some things that I need to do?

Alina:

So, first of all, of course, we start from where we know, and that would be our competitors. So we look at them and see what they do. Now, we don’t have the information in the back end, of course, but we see the keywords they rank on, because we have a lot of tools. Helium 10 does that. We see the keywords they rank on one, two, three. When you look at 10, you will realize that there is a pattern, or even more, more, more than 10. There is a pattern. They go into one direction. For example, if it’s a broader keyword or a broader category. Look at competitors. Make sure to fill every possible cell and field in the flat file. This is something a lot of sellers don’t pay enough attention to and it is very important because, first of all one, you are safe. Safer, let’s say, in terms of hijackers. If you have all your products, all your fields checked. If everything is checked, they cannot go and make contributions to your listing through their hidden channels. They used to do it. That’s number one and number two the more you feed the flat file and the whole listing with data, the more you’ll get from the algorithm. Sometimes you just need to, sometimes it’s trial and error, you sometimes need to go back, change something, give it some time, see if it’s better or not, Because we don’t have exact formulas for all the fields. I mean, we know what to put in some of the fields, but flat files are huge and in today’s landscape of Amazon, in my opinion, in our opinion, flat file is one of the first places for AI and for everything algorithm let’s say. So the first place they look it’s not the front end or the back end that we see in server center is the flat five.

Kevin King:

So if I’m launching a new product, I just I just came up with a new idea. I went to Helium 10, did my research and I figured out that I don’t know, slow feed, a slow feed dog bowl, uh, is a good opportunity right now, and I’ve got my list of 20 keywords. There’s maybe 200 keywords that are applicable, but I’m going to target these 20 because I think I can compete on them. Maybe the people have less reviews or whatever all the other requirements that there’s less people on those keywords, and maybe it’s not the big keywords, they’re the middle of the pack keywords. Then I come to you and I say, Alina, I need to launch this product. I’m going to start running some PPC ads and I’m going to. I don’t have a list of customers, though, of my own customers I can go out to and say, hey, my brand just launched a new product, check it out. What do you do? So you do your own analysis using Helium 10 and some other proprietary stuff that you have, and then what do you tell me? Like, okay, Kevin, you got this dog bowl. I gave you my 20 keywords. I think you’re going to tell me no, Kevin, those aren’t the right ones. You should do these based on your analysis. And then what happens next? If I come to AZ Rank and I say I want your help to get me to get this thing going.

Alina:

This can go for like one hour. You know just this question,

Kevin King:

Just give me the short end of it the short end, so people listening are like just the gist.

Alina:

Just the gist, okay. So yes, we do our own analysis, based on not only tools, but now we have information inside Amazon which is formed out of two things, called Product Opportunity Explorer, which gives you the best keywords of each niche, each category. Basically, those are the keywords that Amazon sees relevant for your product. That’s number one, and number two is SQP, search query performance.

Kevin King:

Those two reports are the two reports that people need to pay attention to the search query performance and opportunity explorer.

—

Alina:

You, Kevin, are launching a brand new product right? So you don’t have any data in SQP, in search query performance because it’s a new product.

Kevin King:

My product?

Alina:

Yes. However, if I may, there is an episode of my newsletter a couple of weeks ago when I was saying how can you get data for a new launch with doing a test launch? I’m not going to go too much into that, but it’s a very interesting concept. You can actually spend like $50 or $100 and get this SQP data for your brand new product, so you can have both to look at.

Kevin King:

So I take my brand new product and do a test with it, or I buy a competitor’s product and just kind of—

Alina:

No, you, just—

Kevin King:

I kind of fake it?

Alina:

No, no no. It’s you make a listing, a true, very real product and that, for example, you are going to sell your product for like 20 bucks. You would price this of 200 bucks, so you make sure nobody sells it.

Kevin King:

We used to do that in the old days. I used to do that exactly where nobody would normally buy it, but I just want to see how the PPC was going to run against it and stuff. Okay, all right, I got you.

Alina:

Now you can use it for SQP and it gives you some really good data that otherwise you don’t have it. So you have the product.

Kevin King:

Then you get rid of that product. Then you just close that listing down and then, because you don’t want–

Alina:

Close the listing. If some crazy person buys it, you just order it.

Kevin King:

I had that happen one time I did dog treats, and this is like five years ago. I did exactly what you said. I went to Walmart and I bought my competitors dog treats and I sent it in because I wanted to be FBA, so I had to have inventory in stock and I put it at these like seven dollars and 99 cents or something. I put it at uh 213 dollars or whatever. So no one bought. Somebody bought it. Yeah, I was like you gotta be kidding me and I felt bad. I canceled their order because I was going to cancel the listing, but but yeah, it was crazy, but that’s a good technique.

Alina:

It is. It actually is.

Kevin King:

I’m sorry, go ahead, continue.

Alina:

Yes, so now we have some some uh data from Helium 10 or some other tool, right, we have the product opportunity explorer. We have some data from SQP. All this data and I have your list of keywords because you brought them to me. Now we take all this together. I cannot give you an exact recipe. We don’t have an exact recipe because we analyze them manually, even to the day. Each campaign is different. Even if you are launching the same product as I will be launching in the same category, there will still be two different launches, two different sets of keywords, because we have different budgets, we have different approaches, we have different goals. What I would say? To keep it short, as I said, from this, from the list of keywords that we have, we’ll make a top based on your goal, right? Because if your product is in a less competitive niche, I’m going to say, Kevin, let’s do some surveys or giveaways, or however you want to call them in today’s language, with our model, the way we do them right now, and I would say, okay, 15 days and this group of keywords, and you will be in a good place. After these 15 days, we’re going to focus on the big keywords and then we’re going to be talking about different budgets and different story. Or you might be a seller that wants to bring it all in and just win the niche after 30 days, which I don’t recommend, but there are people who do that, and then it’s a different story. So, depending on your goal, depending on your budgets, depending on how competitive the niche is and everything that I’ve mentioned before, we come up with a strategy to you. Then we discuss that strategy and bring it to life.

Kevin King:

What does this cost me? I mean, what am I looking at if I’m not going to be aggressive, if I’m not going to be the guy that wants to own it in 30 days?

Alina:

What does that cost you? Okay, like you said, your keywords are right in the middle. We usually recommend to go with a bunch of keywords, not just one, minimum of three, ideally five to six keywords during the launch, but small ones. It’s relevant and related. That’s also a very important thing. Your keywords should ideally have the same root keyword all six, or maybe three and three, and the root keywords inside them will be your main keywords in the next phase.

Kevin King:

Can you explain what root keyword is for those listening? That might not know.

Alina:

A root keyword is for example garlic press, which will be found in a long tail keyword, which is garlic press, stainless steel or red garlic press, and based on these keywords, I would send your product costing like 20 bucks. I would say all in all, together with our fees and everything, $2,000.

Kevin King:

And for $2,000, then is there any promise or guarantee, or are you just saying that I’ll get you ranked on page one?

Alina:

I wish I could guarantee and sign something, but no, it’s. There aren’t any guarantees. However, what I can guarantee, and what we constantly do, is come to you and say after a couple of days, and I would say Kevin, something is not doing well, this is what we should do. Or something is, or everything is going extremely well. You’re already where you’re supposed to be. Let’s reconsider, let’s readjust. This is something that we do, and this is the most complicated part of everything to keep adjusting the campaign as you go in order to get the best bang for your buck.

Kevin King:

How long do I have to maintain this? Because this is all dependent on I have a good product. Because if I do all these steps and spend this $2,000 and the reviews start coming in and they’re all bad, or there’s a lot of bad reviews, it’s going to derail the whole thing and basically I just spent a lot of money and I’m just going to be spinning my wheels. But also you, you got to maintain. So you’re doing your magic to help it, help get the ball rolling, but I’ve got to actually start converting on, you know. So I’ve got to have good images, or I got to have a good listing and I got to be. I got, because when you’re doing your part, the conversion rate is going to be skewed a little bit because of the system. But, once quote unquote real orders start coming. You’ve got to have a listing that converts, otherwise you might get me to page one and I’m just going to slowly fall back off. And that happens quite a bit right, because people is all so are you helping people and making recommendations like, hey, you need to do some split testing with your images? You might want to consider changing this on your listing or changing your price or changing these different things. Do you all make those recommendations too?

Alina:

Yes, yes, when we see a listing that shouts at you or images that are, you know, not as they were supposed to be, we always tell the people. Some of them trust us, some don’t. However, this is a point very well touched by you. We can get you rent. Yes, you don’t have to come to me. You can spend a fortune on PPC and get the same result, but eventually, if the product isn’t good enough and the listing isn’t competitive enough and now it’s a lot of other things you have Rufus to consider. To rank for Rufus, you need what else? UDC. You need to have UDC on your listing. You need to have a bunch of stuff right now, but the most important things is the basics. Listings, images A+. It has to be good.

Kevin King:

How do you see AI changing all this? I mean, I know in your newsletter which is called the Ranking Pill, is it therankingpill.com? rankingpill.com. If you want to sign up, she puts out a newsletter every it’s weekly, right? Every week?

Alina:

Bi-weekly, bi-weekly, uh, it’s sorry for interrupting, it’s just on our website. I don’t have a it’s on website yet, so it’s azrank.com and they can find it.

Kevin King:

Okay, yes, you go to azrank.com, um, and you’re hosting it. I think I saw on Beehive, which is, which is a good platform. That’s what. I use for my newsletter you just did something for how to actually Rufus. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Alina:

Yes, so basically, that was based on Tryon’s idea. You know, Tryon, I read something related on one of his courses a couple of months ago. The long story short is how to reverse engineer the AI Rufus in order to get data from Rufus about the product you are willing to sell, so that you build your listing towards Rufus. So then when I am going to go and ask as a buyer right, what product were you launching? I forgot.

Kevin King:

Slow feed dog bowl.

Alina:

Slow feed dog bowl, right, and I go to I don’t have time, right, I’m driving my kids to school and I go to Amazon and I say, hey, Rufus, which is the best slow feeding dog bowl on Amazon and should give me yours, or at least to be on the list. The way to do that is starting backwards and asking, right now, Rufus, hey, Rufus, which is the best slow feeding dog bowl? And you get a list of answers. And then you go and ask a couple of more questions and you build a list of they’re not keywords, they’re characteristic attributes, things that people look at because otherwise Rufus wouldn’t know them right and you build all that together and then go to ChatGPT or Cloud and draft one or several listings and then choose one of them. Ideally, I would see this I didn’t mention this in the newsletter, but I think I should have. I would see this done as a split test to actually realize whether it’s an improvement. It’s a real improvement in conversion because, yes, I’ve seen done, I’ve seen something, but I cannot give you the real data or numbers because we don’t have any from MSI yet in terms of you know what’s your position in Rufus.

Kevin King:

I think one of the things you did is you asked it like on a slow feed dog bowl. It’s like what’s important, what are some important features I should look for in a slow feed dog bowl? And then you did some. I think you showed it like an intent like what does a slow feed dog bowl do? How does it help a dog? And it spits back a bunch of answers and then you keep you keep reverse engineering it that way, and then you look at those answers and then you’re like okay, now I need to make sure this is what it, what Rufus thinks is. I need to make sure that stuff is now in my listing or I’m mentioning it or I’m relevant for these types of phrases or this type of content. And then you should start appearing more in Rufus when someone asks the question what’s the best dog bowl? Because you meet all those requirements of what it thinks the best dog bowl should have.

Alina:

That’s pretty much how I see the AI nowadays. Especially on Amazon, we have to think backwards, we have to as sellers, we have to feed it what they want to see in our listings in order to get better results, in order to beat the competition technically.

Kevin King:

When it comes to images, there’s a lot of talk that Amazon, with Amazon recognition and comprehend. They’re actually taking a look at images now, and the context of your images makes a difference in how you rank too.

Alina:

I remember with the baby blanket back in the days, the meta description in the Photoshop, it was a thing. From what I’ve seen, it’s coming back.

Kevin King:

It’s not just the meta, though it’s actually what they’re analyzing the photo.

Alina:

Now they’re analyzing the. They’re getting there, yes, but I would start to do-.

Kevin King:

I was giving the example of like beach, of a beach umbrella. If I need an umbrella, I’m going to the beach and I want an umbrella to put over me when I’m sitting on the sand to keep the sun away. If my pictures at least one of my lifestyle pictures doesn’t have someone sitting on the beach with an umbrella over their head, it’s just people walking down the street in the rain with an umbrella, which the same umbrella might be fine, or they’re sitting at a barbecue around the pool or something it’s not going to have as high a relevance because it’s not in that. So Amazon’s not just looking at the metadata, the keywords and the phrases you put, but they’re also looking at the context of the image and analyzing the image. And does this image convey that this is for use on the beach?

Alina:

Yes, and I think the next step is going to be the videos, all the videos, which, when I say all the videos, I’m talking about the videos in the listing below the photos, the videos in the reviews what people say and the video in the related video section, the other videos. Everything should speak about the same thing. We’re back to relevance, see.

Kevin King:

It’s all about relevance. That’s right. It’s all about relevance now. So you did the ranking stuff and then you saw an opportunity and you branched off and you’re doing press releases and some other stuff too, right.

Alina:

Yes, so we have a big community of people, mostly in the US, because some of these other solutions that we have for sales are in the US. We have some talented people in our pool of people, let’s say, and we started creating some UGCs for some brands, but it’s not an influencer type of UGC. It’s literally UGC that you need to have on your Amazon listing before you launch, and I’m going to repeat this in capital letters before you launch, like when you make your product live, make sure you have even one or two videos is enough, even if you have to do it yourself. It’s so important because if competitors come and upload videos on your listings, which they can do, then when you wake up and realize that you didn’t put any and you want to put them, you might never win the first spots in those other videos, and that’s something that can easily be prevented. So, yes, we’re doing this type of UGCs lifestyle photos and videos, real people, not influencers, only dedicated to enhancing Amazon listings and optimizing them. And yes, we do some press articles as well, which is quite a different model than others. It’s a CPC-based model. Basically, we feature your product or your brand, but it’s not going to be charged. We don’t charge anything if there isn’t traffic and the main goal of these press articles is driving traffic to the listing, not necessarily converting or giving sales. Of course that’s a bonus right, because we’re putting the attribution link inside the articles. But main, main, main goal is traffic, traffic.

Kevin King:

Just sending social signals, basically backlinks and social signals at SEO.

Alina:

Exactly, and Amazon rewards that. You know, Amazon rewards high quality traffic, external traffic, even if it doesn’t convert. We’ve seen, we’ve done some tests and we’ve seen this. Empty clicks let’s say they’re not empty, but they didn’t end up with a purchase, but they helped rank that product on specific keywords without any other additional action. So just the traffic coming from a good domain.

Kevin King:

Now are you just doing all these services just in the US, or are you also helping European sellers with AZ Rank and the UGC?

Alina:

The ranking we do it in all across Europe and Canada. Now we’re trying to go into Japan and Dubai. This is a project for this year and press articles we have US and UK. UGC for now it’s just US, but it’s probably in Q2 of 2025, we’ll have Europe as well.

Kevin King:

So what’s next? What’s your next big project or big secret that you want to let the cat out of the bag on?

Alina:

The biggest project we have for this year is, as I told you, Japan and Dubai in terms of ranking. I think there’s quite an existing approach there, but also this brand that we recently bought and I want to transform it into I don’t know. I remember how Project X was in the days, but even more than that.

Kevin King:

You’re going to have your own coffin shelf.

Alina:

I’m not going to do a coffin shelf.

Kevin King:

Everybody’s going to come out with something and everybody’s going to go, oh, that’s a good idea, and there’s going to be like 700 of them. Like, there are coffin shelves now.

Alina:

It’s so funny. So Bradley was doing the Project X at one point of it, I don’t remember, and we were discussing coffin shelf and he was presenting it everywhere and I was getting requests from people launching coffin shells. And I said seriously, guys, something, be creative.

Kevin King:

Exactly. I mean, I think that happens. Anytime something’s featured somewhere in a webinar or someone’s. It’s like all of a sudden, all the services start saying like a bunch of weighted blankets or a bunch of dog leashes or whatever. But, Alina, this has been great. I really appreciate you coming on and chatting today. We’re both fighting a little bit of a cold, but I think that’s been some pretty cool information for everybody. If people want to know more or find out more about your company or what you’re doing, what’s the best way?

Alina:

Well, either message me I’m on all socials with my name which is on the screen, Alina Vlaic or find us on azrank.com. Just shoot us a message in the contact section. I will be happy to just talk or exchange ideas or debate some subjects. I would love to connect.

Kevin King:

Awesome. Well, I guess we’ll connect again, probably in Iceland, right? See you at BDSS in April. Alina, I appreciate you spending some time today. It’s been great.

Alina:

Thank you so much.

Kevin King:

Be sure to follow Alina’s newsletter. The Ranking Pill which she said you can get. If you go to azrank.com, you can find how to subscriberank.com. A-z or A-Z rank.com you can find how to subscribe there. Be sure to also subscribe to my newsletter Billion Dollar Sellers BillionDollarSellers.com. It’s free every Monday and Thursday. We’ll be back again next week with another awesome episode. In the meantime, keep crushing it and remember that fear is the biggest thing that holds people back from success. Fear is the biggest thing that holds people back from success. See you again next week.

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