Amazon Ruthlessly Marches Ahead Of Google In Online Shopping Search

There was a time, not too long ago, when Google was the central hub of all things searched. As the quest for buying the preferred product online begins, the consumers are underestimating the power of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). Sure, Google SEO is a league apart, but when it comes to the eCommerce SEO fraternity, Amazon offers three times more search volume for products.

According to a survey, nearly 44% of online shoppers use Amazon search for their needed products as compared to 34% who still trying their luck on search engines. With over 200 million products to choose from, Amazon is undoubtedly commanding a major chunk of consumer’s first search for products.

The Seattle-based behemoth is setting a trend in the online shopping experience and is sending strong uncomforting signals to retailers, who are lagging behind in the race to be able to convert searches into sales. With mere 21% of surveyed consumers wanting to check out the retailer’s website, the A9 – the engine behind its search functionalities – has created marvels for its parent company, Amazon, as 75% of the consumers voted in favour of Amazon for the best in personalizing shopping experience.

In an interview, Peter Faricy, VP and GM of Amazon Marketplace, spilled the beans on how the company is becoming a favourite by offering personalized online shopping experience. He says,

In the case of the Marketplace, we think about customers in two ways; we obviously think about the Amazon-buying customers and what they need and everything kind of starts with those customers in mind. But we also think of sellers on the Amazon Marketplace as our customers.  we developed some super-innovative technology three or four years ago that makes proactive, data-driven recommendations to each and every seller on the platform. And they range from suggestions on inventory quantities to new selections they should consider adding, to products they should consider fulfilling using a different surface than they use today.

Difference between Amazon SEO and Google SEO

Conversion

The fundamental difference between the two is of conversions. Google as a search engine, was built to sell ads and to help people to get educated about the products,services or companies by searching billions lines of content avaiable online. On the other hand, Amazon is essentially focused on searching the products available, make legitimate reviews of that products avaiable for people and to ensure that the search is converted into a purchase. To put it in an example, let’s assume you are looking to buy a wrist watch. If you search for watches on Google, there are over a million results on watches, ranging from ‘what is a watch‘ to a latest luxury brand wrist watch which has been recently launched. Now, as a consumer, you will have to specify the search and will need to spend more time in reading about the products reveiws, customers feedback and afer sales support of the watch that you want to buy. Once you have decided what to buy, you jump off the ship and will have to move onto an eStore to buy the watch and check out if any deals are available on it or not.

Now, let’s assume you buy the same watch on Amazon. As soon as you hit enter after typing in your query, Amazon will yield all the possible results for wrist watches that are available for sale. Not only that, you will be provided with a description, deals, discounts, offers if any and an estimated delivery date. All you have to do is, simply, select what you want, perform the necessary tasks and order it. How easy and fast was that compared to a normal search on Google?

We think that this might be the best reason why online shoppers now need to turn to Amazon for their shopping searches rather than Google, Yahoo! or Bing.

Data: Google’s unstructured data vs Amazon’s structured data

Google’s unstructured data is like a blank canvas where the sellers can fill in according to their wish. However, while Google encourages the sellers to add more of a structured data to their websites, Amazon has already done that in the form of providing sellers with a structured data form.

Optimization: On page vs Off page

Google, surely, gives you a lot of time and ease of optimizing your off-page signals. Blogs, social media presence, building links and encouraging brand mentions will strengthen your popularity and trust factor of websites. And these factors are pivotal as these form the measures that Google calculates before displaying results.

On Amazon, these measures are not the primary ones, and the focus is drawn to conversions into the sale. With little or no consumer behaviour data, optimizing can be little difficult on Amazon.

Actionable Insights

As Amazon’s algorithm is more focused, it is imperative that your page must contain the following elements to gain more visibility and better compete for the valuable shelf space that search results generate for brands online.

Product Title

As the saying goes, the first impression is the last impression, Amazon offers you a massive 500 character space to dazzle and attract the potential buyers to your product. Filling in all the relevant details and by making it more engaging by providing basics of the product is the master key.

Keywords

Use a mixture of unique and general keywords. Identification of 10 possible keywords which describe the product best, along with topic and solution based keywords must be considered. Amazon also provides for Meta Keywords through the Seller Central Platform.

Product Description

This peculiar field lets you combine the fill in the blank of science with the artsy way of creative writing. The field must be written in long content paragraph format. This primary location on the listing should contain a brand story, description, product benefits etc.  The product title and the keywords must be associated with the description.

Amazon’s algorithm places maximum weight to matching the search query with titles and since they are the only content displayed in search results, keywords must complement the title.

Category

Not categorizing your product correctly is the Great Sin of Gospel of eCommerce. One must neatly sort out the products into categories as relevant. This should not be too difficult as Amazon has a number of categories in which almost everything that is available can be categorized.

However, in some categories, products can be converted best if they are combined and organized/arranged by attributes like colour, sizes etc.

Reviews

Personally, this is the most important element on listings. Very often we seek to try out a new product on the listings. Having no prior experience or knowledge of this product, reviews come in handy and are often instrumental in deciding whether to buy it or not.

In the world of Amazon, user reviews matter the most. The more number of positive feedbacks, the higher you will be in the rankings. Positive reviews build an aura of trust and may trigger the emotions of loyalty.

Images and Videos

Five high-quality images are all that it takes to establish you as a trustworthy merchant with high ethical values. Also, an image or video of your product will let the consumer see what your product is all about and how it must be used. Often, knowing how to use a particular product and what it looks like turns into a purchase, even if one may not have been looking to buy it, initially.

As Amazon establishes itself to be one of the most trustworthy brands in India and the most reputed in the world, the eCommerce monster’s amazing feat of racing ahead comes as no surprise. With the promise of delivering everything from A to Z, we conclude with accepting that in times to come, Amazon will set industry benchmarks and will soar to newer heights, probably, overtaking Google as well.