If you’ve been selling on Amazon for a while, you’ve probably noticed seen that—despite your meticulously fraught Amazon strategy—your product rankings have worsened over time. That’s a big deal since 80% of all Amazon clicks happen on the first page. Our Amazon ecommerce experts offer some excellent insight as to why product rankings fall and what you can do about it. Here are some reasons why you may be getting pushed lower and lower on Amazon’s product rankings.

Increased competition

As more consumers turn to Amazon to shop, Amazon keeps pace by adding thousands and thousands of new sellers to its platform and by continually updating the Amazon product ranking algorithm. Some of these sellers are probably in the same market as you, and some may even sell the same product as you. “There’s simply more entrance into the market,” said John LeBaron, Pattern CRO. “And even though the pie is getting bigger, that slice of the pie is getting more difficult to defend.”

In the past, many brands with great brand recognition online didn’t have to do much to naturally grow sales on Amazon, said Nicola Hollow, Pattern’s General Manager in the U.K. Today, however, brand recognition doesn’t go quite so far. “Over the years it’s become harder and harder to get traction on websites like Google and Amazon. Companies are having to work harder in thinking about how people search, how people look for and find your brand through Google or marketplaces,” Hollow said.

Neglected optimization

Unless brands work harder to understand understand SEO and Amazon’s A9 product ranking algorithm, odds are their product rankings won’t improve. Hollow said thinking about how your customers are searching for your brand and your product is key. “Thinking about the right keywords to optimize for and thinking about how different markets use different terminology to search for products is vital in making sure that you gain the natural rankings that you need across Google and marketplaces,” Hollow said. Explore more strategies to stop falling product rankings here.

Is it too late to rank?

At Pattern, many of our brands hold the No. 1 rank for their category on Amazon because of our expertise in improving product rankings over time. The difference? Data-driven solutions. “If you’re able to address this in a systematic, data-driven fashion, with real experts on the background, it’s absolutely possible to turn those rankings around and improve them over time,” LeBaron said. Chat with product ranking experts at Pattern by filling out the form below.