The Key Differences Between Amazon SEO and Google SEO

One thing that surprises a lot of companies who first get into SEO is the fact that they need to tailor their efforts based on the service they want to improve upon. While the differences between sites like Google and Bing won’t be too extreme, the ones between Google and Amazon will.

There are quite a few reasons for that, which we’ll get into in this guide on the key differences between Amazon and Google SEO. If you plan to focus on both of these sites, you’ll need to know how to modify your efforts for each one.

Varying Website Focuses

When you stop to think about it, the differences between the way these two sites handle SEO make a lot of sense on the surface. One is an e-commerce platform, while the other is a search engine. They have totally different goals for their users.

Of course, the deeper you look into it, the more you can understand why they need different SEO systems. On Google, users are looking for information more than anything. That means Google prioritizes click-through rates (CTRs) and bounce rates. If a site doesn’t have what a person is looking for, they won’t click it. If they do and discover the page is no good, they’ll quickly leave.

While Amazon definitely pays attention to CTRs for similar reasons, they’re more focused on conversions. Amazon doesn’t make as much money if a product doesn’t sell well, so they’ll want to prioritize items with higher sales margins.

Differing Algorithms

All of this leads to differing algorithms. Google’s algorithm will raise you through the ranks if people keep visiting your web pages and staying for a while. If this eventually leads to a sale, it will still help you rise higher, but the sale isn’t the focus. You’ll need to focus on bringing in more users to keep moving toward the top of the rankings.

On Amazon’s site, you need to make sales to continue to rise through their search results. If you do well enough, their algorithm can even put you on a user’s home page because they’ve bought similar products to yours before.

Of course, both algorithms differ in terms of how they operate as well, but this kind of information isn’t public knowledge. This isn’t only so that companies can’t find ways to game the system but also so that competing businesses don’t steal their techniques. That doesn’t mean there aren’t well-known ways to increase your search engine visibility. You’ll just need to adjust things according to your goals and the sites you use.

Utilization of Keywords

An important thing to remember, though, is that these sites also need to know what your web page or product page is about to rank you properly. This is where keywords come into play. Since Amazon is all about selling products, your keywords need to focus more on the item you’re selling. That means you need to have them emphasize the product’s benefits, design, and special features. Fortunately, you only have to include each one on the page once for Amazon to recognize it.

As for Google, keyword reuse is much more important. Since most web pages have more content than Amazon product pages, multiple keyword uses will stand out more and help with your rankings. However, you don’t want to keyword stuff your pages because Google will penalize that. On top of that, the keywords you use here will vary a bit. They need to answer people’s questions or describe something they might be looking for.

The Tools They Give You

Due to all the differences between Amazon and Google SEO, it makes sense that the tools you use to track your results will vary quite a bit as well. Fortunately, both companies offer built-in tools to do so. Google’s tools are quite in-depth between the Google Search Console and Google Analytics programs.

Between both of these, you can track data, such as site visits, CTR, URL performance, bounce rates, mobile usage, and even location-based demographics. With this kind of information, it’ll be much easier to tailor your future SEO plans to increase these stats.

The official Amazon SEO tools aren’t quite as in-depth, but their site doesn’t need to track as much data in the first place. Despite that, they’ve slowly been improving their tools over the years. Fortunately, third-party programs and outside SEO agencies can help fill in the gaps in the meantime.