Brandon Young's diagnostic sequence for a failing Amazon listing: fix conversion rate first, then fix keyword indexing — never the reverse. Without a strong conversion rate a listing cannot rank, cannot compete, and cannot be profitable, so any ad-spend increase before conversion is solid is spend wasted on a listing that can't convert regardless of visibility.
Underlying claim: PPC is not primarily a direct-sales tool — "the number one reason you run ads is to rank." Organic rank is driven by ad strategy, so the wrong strategy can tank rank fast, and the right one restores it just as fast.
Practically this means diagnosing root-by-root and keyword-by-keyword — not with blanket account-level spend increases — to find where conversion is already strong (worth indexing effort), where money is being wasted (conversion is bad, indexing effort is premature), and where to double down. See Per-Keyword Rank Ceiling & SQP Competitor Conversion Benchmarking for the per-keyword method used to make that call, and Data Dive Rank Radar for the tool used to track indexing progress once conversion is fixed.
Related: Five Reasons Amazon FBA Products Fail covers the broader taxonomy of why listings fail; this SOP is the fix sequence once ads/ranking is the identified failure mode.
"keyword indexing is one factor, but ranking is what actually drives sales." An optimized listing is necessary but not sufficient — most sellers who get the copy right skip the indexing/ranking verification step entirely.
When integrating the finalized keyword list into the title, bullets, and description, use only as many keywords as fit naturally into readable, benefit-driven copy — don't stuff the visible listing just to cram in more keywords. Every keyword left over goes into the backend Amazon Generic Keywords (Backend Search Terms Field) instead, which indexes the listing without touching what a shopper actually reads.