🚀 This Week’s Walmart Hack: How to Rank on Walmart the Simple Way

Relevance and Performance. Those are the two main components that Walmart’s search algorithm considers when deciding how to rank results.

Looks simple at a glance, doesn’t it? Of course, so do Diet and Exercise, being the two main components of a healthy lifestyle. But even a concept that’s easy to understand on the surface requires a detailed and nuanced plan. How many calories should we be consuming? What workouts should we be doing at the gym?

I’ll leave those diet and exercise questions to the fitness newsletter writers, and stay in my lane to help you put a plan in place to optimize for relevance and performance.

Relevance refers to how closely your listing matches what the customer is searching for. Walmart wants to help its shoppers find exactly what they are looking for as easily as possible, and you want to make it crystal clear to Walmart what you sell so those relevant search results get sent your way.

• Clean Titles – Title formatting is arguably the biggest difference between optimizing product listings on Amazon and Walmart. Unlike on Amazon, where it is often advantageous to use an ugly title with a ton of different keywords crammed in, Walmart’s algorithm actually boosts cleanly formatted titles that follow the site’s preferred structure: Brand + Product Type +  Key Attributes (such as quantity or color).
   

• Informative Bullet Points and Descriptions – Well-written bullet points and descriptions should provide important details about your product and clearly demonstrate the value that it will provide to the customer. Focus on making this information easy to read and sprinkling in useful keywords organically as opposed to forcing them in where they don’t fit.
   

• Complete Back-End Attributes – The Walmart Marketplace search engine gives shoppers the ability to fine-tune their search with dozens of specific filters. Accurately completing all of your spec sheets will ensure that your products are properly listed in all of these filtered queries.  

Performance, being a driving force behind search rankings, should be very familiar to Amazon sellers. Walmart’s algorithm is very similar to Amazon’s in this regard, honing in on the following product and seller metrics:

• Competitive Pricing – Walmart puts a heavy emphasis on providing great value to its customers by promoting relevant products at the lowest prices.
   

• In-Stock and Sell-Through Rates – In Walmart’s perfect world, your products are always in stock and always flying off the shelves. Striking this balance can be tricky, but those who do are typically rewarded with the top search rankings.
   

• Excellent Shipping – Fast and reliable shipments are crucial to satisfying customers and Walmart’s algorithm.
   

• Customer Feedback – Positive product reviews and seller ratings can also give a boost to your search rankings.

Fortunately, Walmart’s Seller Center lends a helping hand with all of this. Use tools like the Performance Dashboard, Search Insights, Buy Box Report, and Listing Quality Score to verify what’s working and to spot potential areas for improvement!

🔥 Hot Walmart Seller News: Pro Seller Program Criteria Will Now Include Fast Shipping

Big changes are coming to Walmart’s popular Pro Seller program.

The program currently rewards sellers who meet Walmart’s standards for competitive pricing on eligible products with improved visibility and fee discounts. Starting next month, competitive pricing alone won’t be enough to score these Pro Listings perks; you’ll also need to provide fast and free shipping to be eligible for them.

The policy shift brings Walmart’s algorithm more in line with Amazon’s, and makes sense given the major emphasis both of these e-commerce titans have placed on the convenience of speedy deliveries.

And it serves as yet another reminder that slow shipping is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Sellers who aren’t taking advantage of Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS) or Amazon’s Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) are already missing out on some potential sales to competitors that are, and now they’ll soon be missing out on visibility and discount perks as well. If you haven’t set up your shipping logistics with WFS or MCF, now is the time!

Next month’s criteria update will also include a new tiered Price Competitiveness Score, placing sellers in the program into one of three categories based on performance: Rising Sellers, Advanced Sellers, and Pro Sellers. While all three tiers will receive some perks, Pro Sellers will earn exclusive benefits including a Pro Seller Badge, Search Engine Marketing credits, and a 10% referral-fee discount on Pro Listings.

🙏 THANK YOU for reading this week’s edition!

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Until next time,

— Jon