Amazon and Google are very different search engines. But you need to pay attention to them both. This presentation covers the basics.

1. AMAZON & GOOGLE
SEO PRIORITIES
2017 EDITION

2. ASK ME QUESTIONS
seriously, i’m ok with it
@portentint
facebook.com/ian.lurie
portent.com/blog

3. hi. i do seo.

4. NO

5. Buy our running shoes. They’re the
best running shoes you’ll find. We
have pink running shoes, brown
running shoes and running shoes
that help you run. They’re shoes. For
running.
SEO…?

10. WE’RE MORE LIKE THIS
LET’S TAKE THIS A
STEP AT A TIME,
SHALL WE?

11. GETTING INSIDE A
SEARCH ENGINE’S HEAD

12. I READ PATENTS
I READ PATENTS

13. WE, ER, COLLECT RESULTS
nothing to see
here. Move the
$#@! along.

15. AMAZON INDEXES
ITS OWN DATA

16. Things that are the same

17. Delivers results based
on relevance and behavior

18. Scarcity
Single-factor search

19. Critical Strategy
Optimize products with fewest sellers

20. Relevance
Does this make sense?

21. Amazon provides no query data

22. So dig for it

23. EBAY: Terapeak Keywords

24. Search suggest

25. Search suggest

26. Search suggest

27. Google Insights for Search

28. Keyword Prioritization
Title
Keywords
Product description
Bullets

29. Many sellers = Weak correlation

30. Fewer sellers = Strong correlation

31. Ideal Product Title
Brand + Line + Material + Attributes

32. Ideal Product Title
Keyword close to start

33. Ideal Product Title
Sockmakers Zombie Socks Blue SM 4 Pack

34. How about in the content and bullets?

35. Aim for persuasive, not keyword-rich

36. In the keywords?...

37. Unknown: No data
(but common sense)

38. Build product “freshness”
Poke around with updates

39. I wrote a book

40. Less relevant than a camel

41. 20 minutes after title change

42. 20 minutes later

43. Questions

44. AnswerThePublic.com

45. Answerthepublic.com

46. “This airbrush is designed for miniatures”

47. Update description to answer questions

48. Rely on Amazon’s query segmentation

49. RC Cars

50. RC Cars

51. RC Cars
Radio Controlled Toys

52. RC Cars
Radio Controlled Toys
Remote Controlled Vehicles

53. Don’t repeat product name or other keywords
(Doesn’t help them sell more stuff)

55. EXCEPT…

56. What’s Changed

57. “Remote Controlled Moose Call” 2016

58. “Remote Controlled Moose Call”

59. “Remote Controlled Moose Call” 2017

60. “miniature terrain”

61. More weight to keyword field?
Less weight to titles?
Magic?

62. Word vectors…?
Word Vectors…?

63. REDUCED CORRELATION W/ REVIEWS

64. REDUCED CORRELATION W/ REVIEWS

65. Quality + Count + Velocity + Votes
- Simplicity– Patterns – Trends

66. Cough.

67. Behavior
Did the customer click?
Did the customer buy?
Did they like it?
Did they like who they bought from?

68. Product performance for key phrases
determine rankings

69. For this, I paid and got up early?
for this, i
paid?

70. Rank well so you can perform
well so that you can rank well

71. Provide evidence that you’ll
sell more stuff

72. Try some phrase targeting

73. “To buy my book, search
‘one trick consulting’ on Amazon”

74. One Trick Consulting

75. That proves you can
sell more stuff for “consulting”

76. Where Amazon’s Going

77. Voice

78. Oy.

79. Oy vey.

80. Scarcity
Single-factor search

81. Focus on what Amazon wants

82. HISTORY MAJOR

83. GOOGLE INDEXES
OTHERS’ DATA

84. Google is indexing massive, ridiculous, mind-
numbing amounts of unstructured data

85. They want to sell more ads
Which means they need more page views

86. For that, they need to give the right answers

87. Delivers results based
on relevance, behavior and authority

88. Multi-factor search

89. What’s Changed

90. i will kick
your @#!$
Google Panda
is now part of the algorithm

91. i will kick
your @#!$
Google Panda
Measures site quality
That
panda? He’s a
wimp.
Google Penguin is now
part of the algorithm

92. Don’t Get Cute

93. Nope

94. Hell no

95. Tell ‘em Ian Said To

96. The Coming SSL Apocalypse
Get on HTTPS by November, 2017

99. The Mobile-First Index

100. Costs you “crawl budget”
The Big Change: Rankbrain

101. Old way
My Dog
My dog’s name is Alfred. He’s a great dog. Some small
dog breeds are yappy. Not Alfred. He’s a total prince.
Except when he pees everywhere. And chases the cats.
And wakes me up at 3am. Actually, sometimes I seriously
consider jamming him in the microwave. But that dog is
so damned adorable I just can't wedge him in there.

102. New way
My Dog
My dog’s name is Alfred. He’s a great pup. Some small
breeds are yappy. Not Alfred. He’s a total prince. Except
when he pees everywhere. And chases the cats. And
wakes me up at 3am. Actually, sometimes I seriously
consider jamming the mutt in the microwave. But he's so
damned adorable I just can't wedge him in there.

103. Things that are the same

104. Your first job: Visibility
aka “hygiene”

105. Google provides some insight into site health

106. Set up Search Console

107. All this lovely data…

108. All this lovely data…

109. But herein lies madness

110. Get a crawler, or a “health check” toolset

111. Screaming Frog

112. Moz

113. I-N-F-R-A-S-T-R-U-C-T-U-R-E

114. Avoid duplicate content

115. May be duplication

116. /purplepeopleeaters
/purplepeopleeaters?p=1

117. www.mysite.com
www.mysite.com/index.html
mysite.com
whoa say
what now?

118. Costs you “crawl budget”
i’m outta
here

119. Don’t remove out-of-stock products
that will be back

120. Product

121. Links

122. Poof

123. Your customers

124. “Sorry, this isn’t in stock right now.
Here are some other options.
Or, we can notify you when it’s back.”

125. Preserves authority
Avoids redirects and broken links

126. Your second job: Quality
(impacts behavior)

127. Google looks at dwell time,
bounce rate and clickthru rate

128. Compress images
(for a faster site)

129. 700kb png 64kb jpg

130. IMAGEOPTIM/CAESIUM

131. 1.1 megabytes

132. 227kb

133. Google search console

134. More quality signals:
Responsive design
Writing quality
Server response

135. Your third job: Relevance

136. Use the right words

137. Google is Trying To Structure Data:
The Answer Box

139. “I sell athletic footwear! Not running shoes!”
“Philistine!”

140. AUDIENCE
Google Insights for Search

141. Adwords keyword planner

142. Onsite search data

143. Moz Keyword Explorer
SEMRush
AlchemyAPI

144. Answer the right questions

145. Google Suggest

146. Google Suggest

147. Google Suggest

148. AnswerThePublic.com

149. Target these in product descriptions
“[Model name] is best for overpronators”

150. Put words where they should be

151. Title tags
The most influential on-page ranking factor

156. Titles must pass the blank sheet of paper test

157. Will this, written on a blank sheet of
paper, make sense to a stranger?

158. Deer kill 10,000

159. Supreme Court Tries Sodomy

160. Description tags
No direct ranking impact

161. Keywords Tag: No

162. Update existing content

163. Find older product descriptions & other content

164. This is an old answer. Write a new one:

165. Update product language
to answer new questions

166. Update language to better describe features

167. Strong Relevance Signal: Descriptive Navigation

168. Do you sell “products?” Or “shoes?”

169. Blank Sheet of Paper Test, 2.0

171. More relevance signals:
Structured markup
On-page links
ALT attributes

172. And then authority

173. Links

174. Links are votes

175. Fix broken links, first

176. Opensiteexplorer.org

177. Easiest link acquisition ever
Opensiteexplorer.org

178. Google Search Console

179. Google Search Console

180. Consolidate?

181. Nofollow: No

182. Yes, there is lots more
Response codes
Canonicalization
…
This is a starting point

183. Show Google you have the right answers

184. HISTORY MAJOR

185. QUICK TIPS FOR HIRING AN SEO

186. HIRE US.

187. NEVER hire if they say

188. “It’s a secret”

189. “We have connections at Google”

190. “We guarantee results!!!”

191. DO hire if

192. They don’t make you feel dirty

193. They explain what they’ll do and how

194. Amazon and Google
Nothing in Common

195. Except we need them

196. Next steps

197. First, do no harm

198. Work through these tips

199. Remember what they want

200. ian@portent.com
@portentint
Slides & links
www.portent.co/amazonseo
I regret nothing