Here’s why you should utilize two search engines, not one.
6 min read
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How do you get customers to see your products?
Sure, it’s great that you have them listed on Amazon. You’re going to get some hits from Amazon’s own search algorithm. However, there is a search engine that most Amazon sellers don’t even compete on that can bring in lots of additional hits to your listings, and that search engine is Google.
Related: How to Protect Your Brand on Amazon
If you’re not trying to get your products to rank on the most popular search engine in the world yet, why not? You can come at it from two different angles, doubling your chances of getting discovered.
Maximize your impact and rank on both Amazon and Google. It’s worth it, trust me. And I’m going to show you how.
1. First, optimize for Amazon.
Much like Google’s algorithm, Amazon’s A9 search algorithm is a black box. But, we can infer a few things about it from its behavior — again, much like Google. One of those is that the conversion rate of a product plays a role in where it ranks on Amazon.
What does that mean for an external search engine strategy?
It means that if you’re doing really well, driving traffic to a product listing but not converting while people are there, you’re losing out on both sales and Amazon search rankings. Ideally, you don’t want to rank well on Amazon and badly on Google, or badly on Amazon and well on Google. You want to optimize both.
Prioritize getting rich, helpful content for Amazon first — then focus on Google. Otherwise, you’re probably shooting yourself in the foot. There are plenty of helpful guides out there on how to do this — do a little digging and you’ll have your content up to snuff in no time.
Related: Guide to Starting a Fulfillment by Amazon Business
2. Add a link on another indexed site.
If you want to increase the chances that GoogleBot crawls your product page, there’s one simple step you can take: Add the link on another indexed website.
The best website for this is obviously your own if you have one (and why wouldn’t you?). Make sure that it’s not an affiliate link, which can torpedo your chances of this working.
In addition, the higher the domain authority of the indexed website, the better off you’ll be. Amazon’s domain authority is incredibly high.
Related: 3 Branding Secrets for Ecommerce Success on Amazon
3. Focus on building links to your product elsewhere.
When you add a new product to Amazon, that page starts with no page authority at all. To get your page authority up, you need to build links — quality links. It’s just the same as any other search engine optimization operation and uses the same best practices.
My co-founder of WebMetrix Group, Huey Lee, has noted that link building has a real benefit for Amazon products. “We’ve seen jumps in traffic when we pursue a link-building strategy for our customers’ product listings on Amazon,” he said. “There’s not a lot out there about that specifically yet, but it’s going to pick up as time goes on and people figure out that SEO for Google is a crucial part of driving traffic to Amazon.”
Again, avoid affiliate links, which should be “nofollow.” If high numbers of affiliate links try to pass equity to a page, Google is likely to penalize it instead, undoing all your hard work.
Go for high authority sources. Your website may or may not be one, depending on what sort of authority you have right now. Blogs and review sites with high domain authority can be great options.
Related: 3 Ways to Get Your Amazon Customers to Buy Directly From You
4. Truncate your product’s title.
Google prefers title descriptions around 70 characters or less for desktops and 78 characters for mobile. But, Amazon’s algorithm autogenerates titles that can come out significantly longer than that, and if you aren’t aware of it you can hurt your ranking significantly.
Here’s the format Amazon uses to autogenerate titles:
Amazon.com: [your product title here] : [Amazon’s product category here]
Depending on the product, this can put you well over Google’s guidelines. Your control is limited, since the title isn’t controlled by the tag like it is on most pages, but autogenerated from your product title. Consider going a little shorter on your titles and making up for it with detail elsewhere.
Related: How to Get Your First 100 Sales on Amazon
5. Be aware of your product’s meta description length.
Optimal Google meta descriptions usually max out at 150-160 characters, but on mobile, they’re shorter — between 110 and 120 characters.
Amazon autogenerates its meta descriptions from the product title as well. Most of the time this shouldn’t be an issue — descriptions can go up to 300 characters total, so they probably won’t be cut off. But, be aware of it when you’re listing your product.
6. Dedicate some time to a comparison study.
This one’s pretty easy: Just open a private browser window and search for terms similar to the ones you want your products to rank for on both Amazon and Google.
What are your competitors doing? If they’re ranking well on Google, look at the lengths of their descriptions. Look what information they’re using. It may differ from category to category.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It’s also a good way to find out what works already. A little research can go a long way.
Two search engines, one goal
Amazon and Google are two of the largest search engines on earth, and they have separate standards for content. But, you can harness them both to work together and bring attention to your products.
Use these six tips and you’ll be on your way to better conversion rates, better traffic and better profits.