You promote your goods on Amazon or your shop is set up there, which instantly gives you access to the biggest online shopping demographic in the country. For years, search engine optimization (SEO) has been used interchangeably with “SEO for Google” since Google is the biggest search engine in the US. However, Amazon is quickly catching up and is clearly the biggest shopping search engine in the country (and in many parts of the world).

If you’re a retailer and your customers can purchase your items on Amazon, that’s only half the battle. Going into 2015, SEO experts are recommending that businesses optimize for Amazon as well as Google (though not in lieu of).

However, that’s kind of tricky since Amazon has provided no guidelines to indicate how its algorithm works. For example, there’s no list of rules to get ranked first when someone searches on Amazon for “kids guitar.”

Going into the new year, Search Engine Land has offered great tips for local SEO, but what about Amazon SEO? Here are a few tips to get started:

  1. People search differently on Amazon

If you’re deep into SEO for your website, you’re probably used to those really strange SEO key phrases such as “shop custom pillow Atlanta” because people don’t like using articles like “the,” “a,” “an,” etc., when they’re searching on Google.

However, on Amazon people are often shopping for very specific things and may even copy and paste a product’s official title into the search bar. This means your SEO for Amazon can be more organic and natural sounding.

  1. People might not know what they’re looking for

It’s easy to go to Amazon and find a present for your friend’s kid’s birthday party, but what if you don’t have kids of your own? Some people might go to Parenting’s list of the best toys of 2015, but some people might query “best kids toys” right into Amazon.

This means you need to pitch your Amazon SEO appeal both to people who know exactly what they’re looking for (down to the model number) and to those who don’t have a clue.

  1. Your Amazon description should match your website description

This is a built-in cross-referencing system you can use to your advantage. Whenever a product description changes or gets updated, or another model is added you want to include, make sure to update both your website and Amazon description.

Plus, remember that if you reply to comments or include any outside reviews, this is also a great way to use SEO-rich words directly on Amazon.

  1. Don’t forget link building

Amazon obviously won’t allow you to link to authority sites that aren’t your own (you can basically link only to your store), because Amazon is a business. They don’t want to send surfers to other sites, and you’re just a cog that helps them keep visitors on their pages.

Feel free to link with abandon to as many Amazon pages on your website as you like, though. If that’s not an authority/quality link, then nothing is.

  1. Ask for reviews

There’s nothing wrong with asking for honest reviews on Amazon. You can’t tell people what to say, but you can certainly include suggested verbiage (that just happens to be SEO-friendly).

That can include such items as your full product name, your business name, and the like. Incentives are also legitimate.

Optimizing for Amazon will entail a learning process, just as optimizing for Google was. But if you make it a priority in 2015, you’ll be ahead of the curve and more people will find your products or store first.

By Kar

Dr. Kar works in the interface of digital transformation and data science. Professionally a professor in one of the top B-Schools of Asia and an alumni of XLRI, he has extensive experience in teaching, training, consultancy and research in reputed institutes. He is a regular contributor of Business Fundas and a frequent author in research platforms. He is widely cited as a researcher. Note: The articles authored in this blog are his personal views and does not reflect that of his affiliations.