How to Outrank Amazon: 5 Tips from eCommerce SEO Experts

3) Topical Relevancy

Google wants pages that cover a topic in-depth. Amazon and many other big brand ecommerce sites use weak descriptions straight from the manufacturer.  You can do better by including more in-depth content about the keyword, use related terms, add instructional content, editorial reviews, etc. Doing this has the result of quickly improving Google rank, often pushing past Amazon.

Going back to the first report that we ran for Pitching Machine Stop we can see how the site is crushing Amazon on Topical Relevancy with scores of 53% vs. 8%.

Topical Relevancy is distinct from keyword relevancy in that it relies upon using a basket of related terms on your page to communicate that your page covers the topic in detail, rather than just repeating the keyword in otherwise irrelevant or low quality text. In other words, address the keyword’s meaning and the underlying searcher intent.

Pitching Machine Stop achieves this by using a number of key related terms in their content, and including those terms in places that help the search engines know they’re important, like titles, headings, image alt tags, and anchor text. Their content includes about half the related terms suggested by CanIRank:

And equally important, they’ve included those related terms in all the right places, earning them an “Ideal” On-Page Optimization score:

4) Deep Coverage

By going in depth on your target topic you can uncover variations that Amazon doesn’t explicitly target.

One way to do this is to use keyword modifiers which add value to the search but are too specific for Amazon to target. Here are some good examples of words you can add to your optimization scheme to create a more in-depth keyword profile:

• best
• cheap
• compare
• top
• personalized

The content you create should be long enough to adequately cover the topic. While we have found that longer content tends to rank better with search engines, you want to match content length to what can be said about the topic. Writing an unnecessarily long discourse on a simple topic will hurt your user engagement.

Another approach is to “think around the keyword“. Finding ways to target potential customers who may be searching in a specific way. Since you know your customer best, you might be able to uncover keyword variations which don’t match specific product names but do capture the thinking behind how your customers are searching.

Ecommerce SEO Expert Case Study: Brandin Santa Marina, MensRingsNow

Since Amazon is so large and offers such an abundance of products, it is virtually impossible for the company to properly optimize every product page for the search engines. A person can outrank an Amazon product page by targeting keywords where Amazon has dropped the ball. – Brandin Santa Marina

In order to compete with Amazon with a newer, less established website, Brandin got creative with the keywords he was targeting, looking for variations that Amazon hasn’t considered, but nonetheless indicate a strong buyer tendency.

CanIRank’s Grow My Content feature helps you find these hidden gems, and give you information on which terms offer the ideal balance between keyword value and difficulty:

To get the same results on your website, consider keywords that people search before they know what product they want:

• “Yoga DVDs for runners”
• “best tires for mud bogging”
• “gift ideas for rock climbers”
• “clothing for tall thin men”

I treat my E-commerce sites the exact same way that I treat any affiliate site that I build with respect to content. I produce a ton of content that’s relevant to my product(s). I only use competition metrics for deciding on the primary KWs. After that, if there is search volume and it’s relevant to my product I’ll write an article on it, competition be damned. — Daniel Thompson (@mylocalseo1)

5) Create An Irresistible Brand

When sites build links they often use the brand name to link back to it. This provides a boost because you’re receiving so many links that contain the word “pencil”. The downside is you’re a little bit limited in terms of how big you can eventually make the site. — Daniel Thompson (@mylocalseo1)

User behavior can be one of the toughest nuts to crack. Users click on brands they recognize, and Google rewards sites that get more clicks with higher rankings. There are a few things you can do to counteract this:

• Become a well-known brand within your niche – No beer connoisseur recommends Bud Light. You may not have the budget to become well-known to everybody, but with superior product / service / etc. you can become the go-to for the most active people in your niche.
• Consider using a descriptive keyword domain name – in addition to clicking on brands they recognize, people click on domains when they contain the keywords they search — many people automatically assume that CarInsurance.com is going to be a great source for car insurance, for example.
• Use an awesome attention-getting title – Make clicking irresistible.

Case Study: Two Wheeling Tots

The niche site Two Wheeling Tots is a great example of a company which has created a really fun brand and their website reflects that. They’ve done a few things really well:

• The domain that they are using is appealing and descriptive
• The site experience matches the fun subject matter
• They use attention getting headlines for their content. Here’s a title from a post which ranks for “bike for 4 year old” – Why You Should Never Buy a 12″ Bike (with two exceptions)

Thanks to an appealing niche brand, Two Wheeling Tots is outranking Amazon for keywords like “scoot balance bike”:

Use These Ecommerce SEO Expert Tips to Outrank Amazon

We’ve shown you 5 specific areas and some real world examples from the best ecommerce SEO experts which prove it can be done. To outrank Amazon you have to be persistent and willing to stick to a plan. Pick one of the 5 areas to focus on and follow the advice of our Ecommerce SEO experts.

Have questions about SEO for ecommerce? Be sure to have a look at our free 27-page Ecommerce SEO Guide.