Recently updated: May 17th, 2024
In our everyday life, the term SEO takes our attention directly to Google. However, there are various other giant websites, which not only have a large user base but also have large content, have their own search engines inside of them. Be it Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, you’ll find the search option on all these websites. Hence the search engine.
But the most massively search engine that we come across in everyday life but don’t think about is of Amazon. Being home to over 562,382,295 products, Amazon is the e-commerce monster. Almost everyone now wants to sell their product online on Amazon because of its business-related services.
Amazon Associates or Fulfilment by Amazon or Kindle Direct Publisher, have made it easy for retailers and sellers to open their shop online. The more lucrative part of Amazon, which makes it awesomely different from Google is the fact that all Amazon users are buyers. The probability of generating sales and profit is 10 times more on Amazon than on Google.
On Google, People go to gain information or look up some facts. But on Amazon, people come specifically to buy. They have their requirement or product in mind and are ready to buy it. In simple words, whosoever has the product ranked at 1 for a keyword gets not just the click but the sale. This makes the SEO of Amazon more competitive than that of Google.
As customers have the freedom to choose between the variety that is offered to them, Amazon takes leverage by throwing before them what exactly they want. This is what attracts customers and sellers too. But you need to have a good reputation in the Amazon marketplace to encash these benefits.
And not to surprise you, just like the search algorithms of all other sites are relatively unknown, the search algorithm of Amazon is also a mystery. But predictions based on hit and trial have revealed quite a number of facts about the Amazon algorithm. Let us consider this one by one and be amazed by Amazon.
Amazon is very specific about its quality and that is why it has maintained itself at the top in the e-commerce market. The first factor that takes you to the top rank of any keyword on Amazon is the total number of sales or purchases that have been made for the product recently.
This implies that any product can usurp another product by having a large amount of sales in a short span of time. However, to maintain its position the sales should be continuous and consistent. This rule of the algorithm is clearly visible when you search for candies in February and candies in October. You must have understood the difference.
The second factor that makes Amazon’s search algorithm hard to crack is the product rating and genuine reviews of the product. Genuine reviews refer to the reviews by people who have already purchased the product from Amazon and have their profiles on Amazon. Fake reviews don’t help you in rankings because Amazon matches the profile from which the product was purchased and from which it was reviewed.
The product with better product ratings and verified reviews, which are positive about the product, shoots to the upper level in searches. If there are negative comments or bad reviews by people who purchased it, Amazon responds by lowering the product’s ranking. This again shows how much Amazon banks on customer experience.
You must know that Google calculates the click-through rate (CTR) for its search results. But Amazon takes it a step further. Amazon calculates the Click Through Sales rate for a given product when it appears in searches. That is, how many people clicked the product and how many of them purchased it are compared to create rankings.
In other words, if any product at the number 2 position for a keyword on Amazon has good CTR (because of its attractive image) but the product of number 1 has higher CTS (because of its cost and features), then it will not exchange positions anytime soon. As a part of Amazon’s SEO strategy for product ranking, optimise for CTS.
Almost all search engines rely either on Hashtags or on keywords. Amazon is no different. It operates on keywords and most of the tactics apply in a similar fashion for Amazon. You might have a list of keywords you want to rank for related to your product. You need to place the most relevant keyword in the title, as close to the start as humanly possible.
The other keywords can be placed in the product description and other details in decreasing order of priority from top to bottom. You can even place them in Amazon’s special keywords. How Amazon SEO works is by searching the keyword in your title, subtitle, product description, details, reviews etc. in decreasing order of priority.
It has been very justified for the customer to purchase a product for a discounted price if the customer needs it and is looking for it. Amazon looks after this concern of the customers by automatically boosting discounted products or offers to the top of search results for specific keywords.
This is the easiest way if you don’t know how to rank products on page 1 of Amazon. Just add some discount or offer to your product and see Amazon’s response to it. Users love to pay less in a competitively priced market, and Amazon loves its users.
So, it is easy to utilise the unfair competitive advantage at Amazon to make more money out of it. These might not be the complete list of parameters that make the product rankings on Amazon, by you can seek guidance from them to get your products ranked. And if you have trouble doing so, you can turn to the experts – the e-commerce SEO services.
But since we are talking about Amazon, let us take a stance to analyse the technological marvel led by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, has created for the world.
The mystery of ML (Machine Learning) that drives growth in the e-commerce sector is best demonstrated by the functioning of Amazon. Being one of the very few companies that have incorporated ML (Machine Learning) into their business model, Amazon is utilising it at its best.
Having a large amount of data, recorded from the past activities of the user, Amazon is now able to predict user behaviour based on permutations and combinations. The SEO of Amazon works in such a manner that places before the user what the user intends to buy, based on the user’s past purchasing history.
Amazon’s search results find the mid-way between what the user wants to buy and what it wants to sell, in order to boost sales and maximise profits. (By profits, we mean both the seller and the company.) They have their algorithms working behind to predict user behaviours and present only what they are most likely to buy.
Well, we don’t mean in terms of resources and workforce. We mean the incorporation of various sophisticated machine learning algorithms of Amazon, which are brilliantly designed to manage the overall behaviour of the group of people who are visiting the website.
The fact that Amazon is selling goods is incidental. It is making people buy goods. So, if you are a retailer or a person looking forward to selling products online, you don’t have a competitor choice. Amazon is one platform that will give you the maximum conversions for they are aiming to have maximum conversions for them too.
First, if you are a seller and have the myth that most of your buyers will come from Google, just eradicate it. We empathise with the Google myopia from which most SEOs of e-commerce suffer. You people must spend a lot more energy on optimizing your products for Amazon rather than Google. And if you have a tight business schedule, It hire a low-cost e-commerce SEO company which fits your budget to look after it.
Secondly, Amazon too has organic and paid rankings. What we have discussed above in the 5 points is organic ranking on Amazon. We shall discuss advertising on Amazon separately. We shall see how sponsored products appear on Amazon for a specific Search keyword.
As of now, don’t miss out on selling your products on Amazon Marketplace. Many E-commerce SEO Services Agencies are doing great work in helping you boost conversions and sales.
Amazon knows that consumers hop on Amazon only for product searches. It knows that customers are very close to the point of purchase when coming to the website. It adjusts the things shown to the user to convince the customer to buy.
Won’t you like to put your product there?
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