In this post I’m going to discuss ranking an Amazon product page with SEO and why it’s much easier to do than on standard websites.
I must say its been a while since my last blog post, my apologies folks, things have been a little busy with business, but anyway I’m back to blogging more regularly now. I’ve decided I’ll be doing a series of blog posts over the next few months about selling on Amazon, as its a great way to make money online, and I’ve seen loads of people, my other brother being one, that have created very profitable businesses selling on Amazon.
The first thing I need to state is that doing SEO on a standard website is VERY different than doing SEO on an Amazon product page. The main thing is that you can get away with a lot more on Amazon!!
Most of you will be aware that Google made it harder for the average web master to rank their sites organically, with updates such as Google Penguin. I can testify to being ‘slapped’ a few times myself. Gone are the days where you can blast your websites with 1000’s of links from anywhere and hope it will rank just fine.
However….it doesn’t seem to be this way for Amazon product pages!
Amazon SEO
I’ve been selling on Amazon for the past 6 months or so, however I only do it very part time as I have my own health food brand here in New Zealand which is my main focus these days and a bigger business, however I must say the money on Amazon is pretty darn easy to make, hence why I encourage people to get into it now.
In fact if I’m brutally honest, I’ve done hardly anything on my Amazon business for over a month, as my time has been soaked up in my other business, but regardless I am just about to reach $25,000 a month in sales on Amazon a month, not bad considering I’ve done nothing on it, I’m not kidding either, when you use Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) you can get away with doing pretty much nothing when set up.
The SEO Plan
So for one product I sell on Amazon, I did the usual SEO stuff, press releases, article submissions, bookmarking etc…the usual suspects, however the rankings were suprizingly sluggish for this product. Other products I’ve done SEO for responded faster to this stuff. After adding more and more links and still no results for this product, I decided to try a different approach, as more of an experiment.
So what did I do?
Well I did an intense amount of deep research, and planned for weeks and weeks the perfect backlink plan and networked with many top level internet marketers to gain more insight…..
….Ha ha, actually I did none of that at all, instead all I did was bring in the HEAVY ARTILLERY and increased the links to the Amazon product listing page hard core with 1000’s and 1000’s of links from services I used over at the Warrior Forum.
You can find loads in the WSO section there. To my surprize the keyword I was trying to rank for went straight to the top of Google in a week and has been there for the past 4 weeks.
When looking at using services over at Warrior forum I would recommend you read the reviews before just using anything, as there is some garbage over there too, but there are also some pretty good services too.
So what did my little experiment show me? Well for Amazon product pages Google doesn’t penalize you for huge amounts of low quality links and in fact these Amazon URL’s respond really well.
I know this kind of goes in the face of everything that we are all told to do with SEO, but hey it works. I would never do this for any other web property, but when you’re trying to rank a page on a domain with the authority of Amazon then the rules are different.
Head over to Google yourself and search for keywords related to products and time and time again Amazon is right there and often has multiple listing, and sometimes I have even seen the first 3 organic results are Amazon!!
So How Can This Make YOU Money?
The obvious question I’m sure you’re all wondering is how can this make me money? Well the short answer is quite easily, as all you have to do is get YOUR OWN product listed on Amazon, and then you can backlink that URL of YOUR OWN product, and when it ranks, which it will, you will get loads of traffic to your Amazon product page and make sales.
If you’re ever wondered how you can beat big authority sites in the Google rankings, well here’s another approach, DON’T TRY, just join them and rank your own Amazon page!
Furthermore, the more sales you make with good conversions, the higher up the Amazon rankings you will go and you will make even more sales!
How Do I Get My Own Product Though?
I’m sure some of you are wondering how on earth do I get my own product on Amazon though. One easy way to do this is by private labeling a product and branding it as your own. This way you have your own unique product on Amazon and you can use the Amazon FBA system to managed all the fulfillment.
The moral of the story is that you can get great rankings fast with link volume IF you’re trying to rank an Amazon page. What this means is for your product that you sell on Amazon you’ll drive more traffic and make more money.
You MUST be selling your own brand on Amazon, via private labeling, which my friend Matt Clark showed me to do (for Amazon anyway). Private labeling is pretty easy to do when you know how, and I’ll talk some more about this soon.
Anyway, I hope you can see why selling on Amazon is pretty easy to make money with.
I will be sharing more about selling on Amazon next week!
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Hey Matt
Good to see your back blogging…
Just a quick question. I’m assuming your selling your product on Amazon’s Seller Central. How did you get past the hurdle of having a bank account in US, UK or eurozone?
Your in NZ so I’m keen to find out how you did it.
Thanks
Naaman
Matt Carter Reply:
February 21st, 2014 at 8:26 am
Hi Naaman
I have a UK bank account, but you can set up a USA business and get a US bank account, there are services that make that very easy, just google “set up US LLC”
Ben Reply:
February 21st, 2014 at 12:55 pm
I can recommend Payonneer as an intermediate prior to setting up a US LLC. Very cheap and simple to do.
Naaman Reply:
February 21st, 2014 at 4:30 pm
Thanks Ben really appreciate the help
Online Income For Everyone! Reply:
February 22nd, 2014 at 1:25 am
Have to agree, -it’s always good information from Matt!
Have to say, it’s quite easy and reasonable ($) to set-up an LLC.
I use PayPal in the U.S.
Long-time Matt follower,
Tim
WOW! I really appreciate you sharing these results with us. I honestly had no idea you could use these seemingly “old school” link building tactics for an Amazon page. That’s just too AWESOME!
So the barrier to entry here is just finding and listing your own branded product on Amazon. Sounds like the rest is pretty much downhill once you got that up and running.
Very exciting and encouraging post to read– Thanks Matt!!
Looking forward to it…
Many thanks for this Matt, will be looking at it many times so it sinks in the brain.
Sorry my site is an affiliate one for another guy in the trade, I am working on the marketing of it right now and it does have some Amazon links on it.
Always good to get your info, best wishes for the future.
Steve, UK.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the article. I have private labeled a product and put it on Amazon, but I’ve only made a couple of sales.
Do you mind letting us know what sort of links your using and the best way to get them?
Can you also reveal how long it takes to rank at the top of google with this strategy?
Thanks Matt.
Matt Carter Reply:
February 21st, 2014 at 8:25 am
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Hi Sye
Just head over to the Warrior forum WSO section and look for SEO link services and read all the comments and you will find some great deals there
Congratulations Matt! High Quality post as usual 🙂 (It’s not how often you post, I think, but what you say when you do.)
I have been selling on Amazon.ca as I am based in Toronto. And I have made some money (my first money online!) I would like to expand my business here in Canada as well as enter into the much larger U.S. market. Not quite sure how to go about it, I wouldn’t say the info is that easy to find.
I imagine you are having your products shipped directly to Amazon (?) from your source because I know shipping costs would be astronomical from New Zealand to U.S. Looking forward to future posts 🙂
thanks, Lisa
Matt Carter Reply:
February 21st, 2014 at 8:24 am
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Hi Lisa
I source from in the USA and also from China for what I sell on Amazon.
Cheers
Matt
Matt,
Love the fact that you do not bomb my inbox with a ton of affiliate offers … thanks mate.
Cant wait for your next email about Amazon. Never done it … scared to lose money lol.
Just for clarity, when we find someone on wso that will do these backlinks do we actually have the links directed to our Amazon affiliate product page that Amazon gives us? Thanks
Another question Matt. When selling your own product do you you buy in bulk from reputable over seas companies?
if so how would you find who’s reputable?? Scary to say the least ….for a newbie such as myself mate.
Jason
Matt Carter Reply:
February 21st, 2014 at 8:23 am
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Hi Jason
I will blog about this in this series I am doing, so stay tuned
Hey Mat,
Great article and I could not agree more with you about Amazon. But what services at the Warrior Forum should we be looking for?
Are these services to get back links to your Amazon product to rank for your keyword? Please explain….Thanks, Dr Steve
Thanks Matt, so timely as I was just thinking should I be doing just that? I open my email and boom an email from you on exactly this topic. Now I know this is another great way to go. I was part of the first group with Matt and Jason and sell on Amazon and sold 30,000 plus in my second month crazy good with not too much effort besides the obvious press releases etc, however I’m in an restricted catergory so was taken off general search and viewable only in the search, the sales dropped not dramatically, just less. So I was defintely thinking about this approach. Great help. Thank you again.
Carrick Reply:
February 22nd, 2014 at 9:30 am
I’m from the 1st round of ASM as well and that’s insane! 30K per month? Crazy – even with very small margins you were making a killing for a while. Sorry to hear about the changes to your search listing as a result of your category…
My question for Matt is whether the resources required for backlinking your listing would produce a suitable ROI – i.e. how many visits and sales are you really going to get from the search engines versus the cost of these links? Obviously, that all depends on your specific market and keywords…but:
Would our resources be better allocated to driving traffic to our listings (say, via PPC) and/or building a list instead? In other words, if you dont have the time or money to do both, which would be better I wonder?
Matt,
I have unsubscribed from sooo many email lists from so called experts, but I kept yours even though you didn’t blog for a while, because you always deliver and recommend quality and up to date stuff 🙂
I have bought The Rankings Institute (thanks to you), and I am amazed how SEO has changed. Also they mentioned a few times the ability to rank Amazon product pages. Did some research and I will be heavily focusing on combining Google and Amazon in the upcoming months.
Can’t wait for your next post 🙂
Best regards
Matt Carter Reply:
February 21st, 2014 at 9:00 am
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Thanks Damir!
Hey Matt-
Please tell us the type of backlinks used. Web 2.0’s? Blog comments? High PR backlinks?
And are you using natural anchor text variations or are you going hard with the primary keyword?
Thanks!
Matt Carter Reply:
February 21st, 2014 at 10:18 am
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Mix of all of those.
Hi Matt. I know you’ve already said you’ll provide more details in a later post but can you give us some headlines now please?
A) did you source your private label products from outside the USA?
B) if yes, if it was sourced in china, did you use a specialist to help you ship your product to the USA so that USA customs including customs paperwork was smooth to avoid delays entering the country?
C) did you bulk buy your first order (ie 200+ items ) or did you start with a very small order (ie 10 units)?
Feel free to be brief with your answers (ie yes or no’s will be fine)
Many thanks for sharing your experience 🙂
Same format as usual from Matt, quality information. Matt’s blog is the only one I subscribe too for this kind of information, most all I subscribed to in the past were just the usual junk. I’m a naturopath in New Zealand with many USA & Canada (Skype & Facetime) patients and really want to set up an Amazon shopping cart but don’t know how! It looks like a nightmare to be honest. I guess this info will be explained in future posts?
Hi Matt.
One of your testers here. I noticed you mentioned forming an LLC for non USA residents. May I ask, however, what service do you utilize to handle all the various state sales tax registrations and filings? Thanks.
David B.
Hi Matt
Could you explain. please what fulfillment by Amazon is ? If its going to help I would ‘t mind some of it.
Regards
Erana
David Bland Reply:
February 21st, 2014 at 5:54 pm
Hi Erana,
FBA is a service where Amazon handles the storage, picking, packing, and shipping of your product for you so that you have nothing more to do other than get the inventory into their warehouse. In fact, you never even have to see the inventory if you don’t want to.
Besides relieving you of all those duties, Amazon FBA sellers have exclusive access to Amazon’s Prime members who enjoy free 2-day shipping on orders over $35. This has the added benefit of gaining you extra customers and sales.
In return for the service, you are charged a fee which tends to average about $3.50 per item for most items.
Carrick Reply:
February 22nd, 2014 at 9:33 am
Just google FBA and read the summary helps…high level though: It’s where you list your product on Amazon (who also stores your inventory) and then fulfills orders placed on their website.
It means you dont have to worry about processing orders – just marketing your product…
Hi Matt,
Congratulations with your success on Amazon, I would love to know more about how to go about building a business on Amazon.
It seems to me that you have to have quite a lot of money to get involved in Private labeling to do this, so for the normal Guy it would be quite difficult, to Get started.
What would be the best way to start?
Hey Matt, great post and very eye opening! I have a private labeled product on Amazon and after spending good money on a couple of high quality linking services, I have also had lack luster results. This particular product and brand isn’t my main focus, so I would love to try this test as well.
I know what kind of services to look for on WF, but I do have one question… What kind of anchor diversity did you implement? Did you “old school” blast your main keyword as the anchor? Or did you spread the love over a multitude of anchor texts?
Thanks!!!
Matt Ohms
Hi Matt,
Thanks for all the insights. It has always been a delight to receive your updates. Someday, would like to see a short video, on your strategies.
Regards,
Somen.
Hi Matt,
Always read your blogs and this is another good one 🙂
A step by step blog article on how us downunders (I am An Aussie) can open up US/UK bank accounts would be great – as most IM blogs are US/UK this is not a problem they encounter. However very apt for you to share the information.
Cheers
Alison
Nice post matt. I keep interest in this topic. I know Jason’s course is great, but I can’t afford it frankly speaking.
The great part you make me interested is using SEO to make money by selling Private Label products. Seems promising!
And by the way, I got a surprised info of payoneer. As I am really annoyed by the amazon payment option for my country. Before I can only collect my commission by checks, which is too slow.
But as I learned from the comments, I think payoneer is a very nice option to try now.
Thanks for your great post, I really don’t expect learn so much great info.
Hy Matt
i have question about Amazon affiliate program, there are too many complaint about there commission affiliate system since you are the expert in amazon affiliate products, i wonder why see these complaints about there system affiliate commission.
Hi Matt,
First i like to say thank you very much for your great information on different topic. Second you are the real guy on affiliates marketing as teacher…… keep up the good work.
Best Regards
Amir
Matt,
Always good sound and honest information from you. I have been hearing about the Amazon opportunity for a year or longer now, and glad to hear you will be filling in the all important details on this!
Having your own product(s),or one with private label rights, is the way to make real money for sure.
Again, looking forward to the details!
This is really awesome, I wish I had money to invest in Amazon’s FBA. Thanks for sharing though, it’s very interesting, so I will keep it as one of my future prospects to fulfil.
Excellent post. Just working on some backlinking for Amazon myself. I was certain Google would penalize for too many links. Nice to know it’s the opposite. Time to get back to it. Today I am going to do some more press releases. 🙂
Hello Matt,
I did not think that you can get ranking in google with the amazon product like this.
Got a question how do you heave to with anchor text? You need to use multiple variation of anchor text or you can use only let’s say 5 variation of your main product?
It’s nice to see, that you back in action :).
Thanks for that helpful info, Matt. Last month I added my first private label product on Amazon and am now in the marketing phase. It’s good to know that you can leave tons of back links to your Amazon product page and not have to be concerned about getting Google slapped.
Great concept until Google updates their search algorithm. Let’s see what happens to those back links then. Your Amazon product page(s) may fall into oblivion due to those back links. May not be a great long term strategy because you are still at the mercy of Google’s algorithm.
Matt Carter Reply:
February 22nd, 2014 at 7:47 pm
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Maybe but doesn’t matter as by doing this you rank well in Amazon as you are making sales for Amazon and they reward you with better Amazon rankings, so it really doesn’t matter now if Google slaps that page
Hi Matt,
Can I ask what made you get into health food industry? It is a passion of yours? or is it a solution to a problem you came across?
Ross
Great info I just ordered a service on the warrior forum for this. How do you check the ranking for a specific keyword on an amazon product page. It seems like all the services check the ranking for amazon.com instead of the actual product page.