Discoverability Matters Even on Amazon.com
Why are you hiding your website, your products or your mission? The race for discoverability goes to those who have studied and mastered SEO. SEO matters, and it is becoming more and more important in this searchable and voice-activated world — even on Amazon.
It is estimated that 80% of products on Amazon are not properly optimized for Amazon SEO. Optimized means that the words have been scrutinized and matched with a searcher’s intent in mind — not what you want to “sell” someone. You must think like buyers, not sellers. If you don’t know what your target audience is searching for, then you will not succeed in being discovered by that target audience.
Take a look at this headline for a product on Amazon. Not a sexy headline, but it is highly effective. It follows Amazon’s rules for optimization, and it shows that the writer was thinking like a buyer.
You can’t just stuff your titles with keywords, but relevant keywords must be “stuffed” in your titles, headlines and meta data.
Start with this: 1) “What does my audience want to know?” 2) Then make a first draft. 3) After Step 2, make sure you’ve included that bit of information, that product or that service people may search to find. 4) Finally, integrate all relevant keywords.
Amazon has additional rules to follow such as capitalize the first letter of each word, spell out all measurements, use numerals for numbers and avoid punctuation. Also, avoid all subjective claims such as amazing, good-quality, best-selling and new. Put words in logical order of what people will search for — Blue Glass Piggy Bank, not Piggy Bank Glass Blue.
Poor SEO writing has larger repercussions than turning away visitors. Optimization (for Google and Amazon) determines if searchers will see your site at all. And don’t forget YouTube optimization.
If you don’t show up in page search, you don’t exist to anyone, and that means you’re hiding when you didn’t mean to hide.
Mark Mathis III is chief creative & strategy officer, partner and cofounder of AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.
