Every time we read the acronym SEO, our thoughts immediately go to the search engine par excellence: Google.But if we wanted to give visibility to our products, are we really sure we need to be found on Google?If I told you that 55% of users start their own product search on Amazon, your answer would probably be "NO".The e-commerce founded by Jeff Bezos, in fact, is the second online sales website in the world after Alibaba, and is the first in the western market.
Its search engine is also the most used in the final phase of the purchasing cycle.There are many users (about 90%) who, after seeing the product physically in the store or on another website, declare that they also look for it on Amazon.The reasons are to be found on the three main advantages that the website offers compared to many others:Cheaper prices;Better shopping experience (e.g.
buy with one click);Fast and free shipping (with prime).If there is, therefore, a ranking of the “most relevant” products, in all probability, there is also a way to be considered as suchGoogle VS Amazon: differences in goals and algorithmFirst of all, let's analyze the differences in the functioning of the two engines.The first, really macroscopic, is the goal: if Google "earns" (in a nutshell) by selling advertising, Amazon has, instead, the purpose of selling products.This is necessarily expressed in a different approach to the user / consumer:for Big G, what matters most is the engagement generated and the authority that the internet user evaluates with respect to the engine;Amazon has the primary goal of converting the user directly into a buyer.Ergo, it follows that the indicators taken into consideration also change: if relevance, the CTR, the time spent on the site and the search refinement rate count for Google, for Bezos' creature the relevance and the CTR will weigh.
But also and above the entire conversion rate, the revenue and the gross margin per search.Ranking factors on AmazonSo what are the ranking factors on Amazon?
From our tests, we have identified 38, divided into 7 macro-categories:Keyword, to be included in the title and description of the product, in the category, in the search terms, in reviews and comments;Sales, Amazon monetization, price, number of items purchased, conversion rate, purchase along with other best-selling products;Review, number of reviews, average grade, length, presence of images and keywords, questions / answers;CTR, which has a positive impact: captivating title, good quality / number of reviews ratio, quality images;On-page performanceof the product page, from the number of page views , sessions and unique users, to the average time spent on the page;Off-page factors: quantity and quality of traffic from external referrals, use of Amazon affiliate links for product promotion, Facebook / Twitter re-share;Characteristics of the seller: authority (high number of positive feedbacks), age, history and sales growth rate, optimal inventory management (high number of products in stock).Case study: placing a book on AmazonOk, nice theory, all very interesting… but does it work?We decided to test the above, at the beginning (analysis object of the White Paper), for a period of 3 months, with the aim of placing a product on Amazon (a book), and, subsequently, to all other customers who have requested the SEO service for Amazon.The factors we tried to influence were:Product reviews;Title and description;Off-site factors (link from Facebook + link from the product site);Sales;Although the variations of all these elements have had an impact on the placements, the real leap in quality usually occurs at the first purchase.
In the case of the sale of the book, for example, immediately after the first sale, in fact, the book went from 2450th to 106th position in the Bestseller ranking and grew, albeit slightly, also in SERPs (from 56th to 43rd position).Another consideration that emerged from the tests concerns the importance of the CTR from the category page.
