Question for experienced Amazon (or other physical product) promoters re: keywords/conversion

by Matt Ward

Posted: 13 years ago 6 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Simple question: is it worth putting forth an SEO effort to rank for the general name of the type of product you're promoting? Say you have a website for laptop reviews; is "laptop" too broad of a keyword as far as conversions go, compared to something like "buy laptop"?

I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience in ranking for the general product type keyword and wondering if that was worth the time and money. These are generally far more competitive keywords than multi-word buyer type keywords, although they generally get far more searches.

The high number of searches is obviously tempting, but the question is whether or not this is worth the the effort pursuing. Obviously, it's better than something like "free laptop" but I don't know how much better.

#amazon #experienced #keywords or conversion #physical #product #promoters #question

Jill Carpenter 13 years ago

Originally Posted by mattward

The high number of searches is obviously tempting, but the question is whether or not this is worth the the effort pursuing.

Only you can answer that question.

You can always work on the harder word in the background and rank quicker for easier stuff.

You can always drive traffic to a site and make sales without even ranking.
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madmmd 13 years ago

well.. generic keywords have very high search volumes.. and even if the conversion is very low compared to long tail keywords, it is always profitable to rank for the bigggies..

you can target the long tail keywords in the begining, and go for the big ones later in the process.. in any case you should try to rank for both.. create ten websites and rob all the traffic..
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Matt Ward 13 years ago

Yeah, I have websites that are making money through longer keywords, but I noticed one of them has a good opportunity to rank for the generic product type keyword with some money/effort.

I realize that it depends on the niche, but I just thought maybe someone had some general wisdom on the subject.
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Sojourn 13 years ago

I have several sites that rank well for generic keywords. These sites first ranked well for specific product names which converted really well. When the sites started hitting #1 for the generic review phrases, I did not see an increase in sales until I did a better job of leading visitors through my site by way of the navigation menu, by showing lists of popular articles/reviews, and with better use of the top of my sidebar.

The higher ranking certainly led to more traffic and more opportunities for sales, it just meant tweaking my site to cater to visitors who showed up without an idea in mind for a specific make and model.

As for another example of whether or not it's worth ranking for such a term, Chris Guthrie ranked a site for a generic review term in the electronics niche and then sold the site for an undisclosed six figures. While he did more than just rank well (great content, video reviews, list building and more) he did figure out how to leverage the generic ranking into a good deal of money.
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PPC-Coach 13 years ago

Exactly like Erica says. If your site leds down the right path through clear navigation then having MORE traffic will only benefit you.
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- davehva 13 years ago
  
  IMHO this is very niche dependent. I have a couple sites that rank well for general product kw, and they create the bulk of my income.
  
  In terms of the kw that seem to convert the best, I find that the more specific ones do better, i.e. Makita ks20 power drill vs. Makita drill.
  
  We balance our efforts between the two. The more specific you get,the smaller the search numbers are.
  
  If you have some historical data, it is fairly easy to calculate where you are getting the most bang for your buck. Some caveats:
  
  1) If you are selling physical product, you cannot just pull numbers out of analytics. For ex, it is fairly easy to see which kw are driving the most e-commerce sales in G Analytics. But you have to take that data as a starting point only, and calculate the gross margin for the products sold. Then you can determine if your spend on that kw is profitable.
  
  2) It's important not to be blinded by simple numbers. You have to remember that a site is like a big ship that is being re-built while it sails. If you are concentrating on Amazon affiliate sales, you will want some big ticket items for sure, but you also want to sell a lot of little things as well, because they tend to move easier, and the volume drives up your commission. Your efforts and promotional budget should adjust to reflect this fact.
  
  2) a. If you are running a straight up e-commerce site, Google may tell you what to sell! We have found ourselves ranking for kw that we did not even shoot for, and upon checking GA see that they are driving sales - of course this changed out promotional efforts as well as which products we featured on the home page and as specials.
  
  2) b. General kw can help in some surprising ways. For ex. we have this great general kw for an item - it could be a big one that is for use in a factory, or a small one for home use. It is very expensive to do PPC for this kw. We started out hoping for the bigger units to sell, so as to get the most profit from it. To our surprise, even though the landing page for the ad was a general category page, most of the orders were for low cost home units.
  
  After calculating the margin on those sales, we saw only a small profit. But upon reflection, we realized that those multiple sales kept our order clerk busy, and allowed us to buy shipping materials in greater volume. It takes just as much time to process and ship a 100.00 order as it does a 2000.00 order, and the small orders keep him busy in between the ones that make the lions share of our profits.
  
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