2025 Case Study for Amazon PPC & SEO Organic Ranking Correlation

There’s a lot of misinformation online about Amazon PPC, generally by agencies trying to sell PPC services without actually knowing anything about how useless this is nowadays in 2025 for sellers.

If you can make a profit on the front end, or you have a great LTVC so losing money upfront is fine for you then this post is not for you, continue on.

For 99% of sellers though there’s a few common points I see thrown around that based on our prior testing seems to be incorrect.

To solve this once and for all we ran a few case studies to split test some of these variations and answer some core questions/hypothesis below.

Yes, this is a short-term, low sample case study and your products are different, market is different, etc.

But the core issue nowadays is that Amazon Advertising has become so saturated that any front-end advertising on the platform very rarely results in profit, and spending for “reviews, rankings, gain traction” is usually just sales jargon by consultants or agencies trying to sell you on using their PPC management services.

Questions to answer:

1. Does Amazon PPC for SPECIFIC KEYWORDS impact rankings for those exact specific keywords directly for organic listings? [So is it kind of like a low level keyword focused sale?]
2. Does closely-associated Amazon PPC for keywords impact rankings for target keywords?
3. Does overall increase in ad spend (and sales) impact organic rankings in general across the board? [This is the line that most people use when talking individuals into ad spends].
4. Does this work for both KDP books & FBA products? [personal research I wanted to run].

Case Study 1: Specific Keywords

Does Amazon PPC for specific keywords impact rankings for those exact specific keywords directly for organic listings?

To test this we have to ensure that the specific keyword(s) has enough search volume on its own (so usually something quite broad related to the product) to avoid us bidding on other keywords, but still enough search volume to ensure we make multiple sales per day.

For this I set-up 2 campaigns, all in the UK — To save exact product info I’ve just coded this info:

1. MP, 2 keywords only, exact match both;
   1. Exact keyword itself.
   2. longer tail variation of the same thing.
2. KDP cookbook, 2 keywords only, exact match:
   1. AFC
   2. VC

All set-up on 19th December, rankings tracked in H10.

And to ensure we get enough data I added bids well above the recommended range as this whole case study isn’t about making money on the front end it’s about seeing if there is any legitimate correlations between PPC & Organic rankings and PROOF of this either way.

Results of Case Study 1:

So for case study 1A: MP, we spent £170 and achieved £400 in sales for a 2.35 ROAS.

In terms of the net loss for this, the margin on this product is close to £3, so 36x£3 = £108 – £170 = Roughly -£60.

But we weren’t testing the profitability.

This volume of 36 is actually a really nice amount as a 30-40 KWFS campaign would (and has) ranked a similar product from 85th to top 7 in that same 10-14 day window (albeit more expensive than a £60 ad spend).

To the ranking results…..

For our primary keyword (3,000 searches a month), we actually went down slightly, but in terms of the 36 sales we saw through this keyword, this is zero correlation between actual exact match PPC sales and increase in organic rankings.

Our second keyword in the 1A case study trial did increase slightly, but only going from 120th to 71st.

But for the sake of this campaign that’s a tiny movement.

For case study 1B we used the same process for a book, the results were almost identical, a slight negative ROI.

Almost identical with one keyword decreasing 4 positions (40 to 44) and another increasing slightly 118 to 94. But again for the sake of this case study that’s negligible.

So in conclusion, for exact match keywords on PPC, does not improve ranking organically (I’ll explain why this is in a second and actually why in some cases it does).

Case Study 2: “Phrase” Match Keywords

Does close-associated Amazon PPC for keywords impact rankings for target keywords?

This one is fairly easy to set-up and is quite similar to that above, but instead of using exact match we’re just going to use variations, close matching keywords and keep things “phrase” instead of exact match filtered.

This should give Amazon ads a lot more reach so targeting super broad keywords shouldn’t be needed, but we’ll keep things quite concise just so we can get some good data on this;

For this I set-up 2 campaigns, all in the UK:

1. Amazon FBA product (different to above case study): “FDB” (and variations).
   1. fireproof document box & variations of these terms
2. KDP book (SB)

All set-up on 19th December, rankings tracked in H10.

Results:

A lot less volume on this one but still close to a £150 spend and only a 1 ROAS.

In this case the sales were pretty low so you wouldn’t really expect much movement.

As expected, nothing doing.

For the other product (book) run in Case study 2.2 we had some better data, although still only 8 sales.

Better ACOS as well.

But again, no movement. This product started 14th and ended 13th.

Case Study 3: Overall Ad Spend Increases Overall Rankings…

Does overall increase in ad spend (and sales) impact organic rankings in generally across the board?

For this I wanted to just go with Amazon’s recommendations and let them do everything automatically, no manual KW targeting at all.

For this I set-up 2 campaigns, all in the UK:

1. Amazon FBA product: CSO.
   1. Automatic targeting.
2. KDP product — Puzzle.
   1. Automatic targeting.

Results

As you can probably guess by now, this didn’t do much either.

On the KDP side we did see sales, but the ACOS/ROAS was poor, but 39 sales was a strong amount over 8-10 days, similar to the volume and timeline we use for our organic ranking campaigns.

And rankings, as expected, nothing doing.

Of our top search volume keywords, nothing made a notable jump in any way.

For our other product we had even more sales to work with. £280 spend for £624 in sales with a 2.23 ROAS. Although not profitable for us, this might be one of those campaigns that we’re told about to “keep running” to help overall performance of the brand….

And actually….

Our first sign of some kind of correlation…. Maybe?

I would have to admit there is an increase here that is correlated with this timing, so this one is potentially correlated, but I’ll explain why and how this all actually works in a second.

Here’s another better example of how and how much it increased in general, 27th to 19th, albeit not much that will change from a sales volume perspective, definitely not nothing.

Conclusion, Explaining the Algorithm Itself & A Better Approach

So the reason why all but one of the case studies failed is that Amazon’s rankings are judged purely on sales. The algorithm credits higher rankings based on relative sales per keyword, time period AND conversion.

Those are the 3 largest variables, they can be split by any parameter, but in general if you run an Amazon business you want to rank as high as possible for as long as possible, so for the sake of this conversation we can ignore timeframe as a variable.

From here it’s simply conversions (How many people who come to your listing, make a sale, the higher the better). This is why I always say that reviews are only an indirect ranking factor (the higher and better reviews, the higher the conversion, obviously, but that doesn’t lead to rankings directly).

The direct ranking factor is sales (hence conversions) per keyword (or hyper closely associated terms).

Not sold?

Here’s a 30 KWFS we ran in December, because we had some excess stock (and Amazon Q4).

21st to 2nd…. Keyword search volume: 10,000.

Increase in sales? (Proof using sellerboard, and proof of the zero ad spend as well).

Granted you have to reduce the units sold by 30 in December as that was the KWFS volume.

Even so a 3.5+X increase in sales, all organic, from a £700 spend. Not only making profit on the front end of a campaign, but ranking 2nd as well, with zero ad spend….

So in short, ranking campaigns have a crazy better ROI than Amazon PPC as well as additional strong secondary benefits.

Any questions on anything, get in touch.