When people are looking for a new product to buy, such as a phone, TV set or indeed, any other product, where do they look first? Google? Perhaps surprisingly, no – it’s actually Amazon. The retail giant is now used for a higher proportion of product searches than its search-focused rival.
Therefore, if you’re looking to sell products online, it’s Amazon, rather than Google, that you should target with your SEO efforts – at least initially. Here are some of the main steps to getting it right.
Choose the right products to offer
Obvious though it may seem, you should opt for products that are high in demand. However, the chances are that in your chosen market, many other brands have already beaten you to it. Therefore, you should consider offering an appealing item in a less saturated market.
To assess how much competition you could face there, try running a few searches for that product on Amazon, remembering to use a range of relevant keywords. While on the subject of those…
Insert suitable keywords into your product listing
You don’t need to keep repeating the same keywords throughout your listing’s description. If there’s one particular keyword that seems to better all others in representing your product, then just include that keyword once in the title and wherever practically necessary in the description.
The title would, however, be a good place to mention the product’s material, brand and colour – a level of detail that would be deemed excessive on a Google search listing.
Consider investing in PPC ads
Like Google-based PPC (Pay Per Click) ads, the Amazon-based counterparts would let you give your offerings prominent places on the search pages. This is a very appealing prospect when you consider that on Amazon, as on Google, few people look past the first page of listings.
Nonetheless, you should probably just treat PPC as a launchpad for your Amazon presence – as when that is more established, the traffic you generate through PPC will lessen in importance.
Optimise for the user, not Amazon itself
When tweaking your SEO for Google, it’s tempting to try to “game” the system by simply satisfying the criteria that Google’s web crawlers value highly – despite Google’s public insistence that you should optimise for the user. Well, Google’s advice is arguably more applicable to Amazon instead…
That’s because, while Google wants to feed its users information, Amazon is geared towards spurring sales. Therefore, your product listings should be crafted simply to persuade people to buy.
Make sure your products and customer service are up to scratch
Naturally, you want to impress your buyers – especially if you will be dispatching the product yourself rather than leaving that job to Amazon. Excelling in products and service can help you to strengthen your brand – which in turn, could ease a transition away from selling on Amazon itself.
Give us a call on 01325 582112 to learn about our ecommerce web design package, which would let you build your own storefront and so give you more control over how you market your products.
