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Kindle Backlinking

by mjessimy
14 replies
Hi all, I have been backlinking to my kindle books for a while now, but am yet to be hit with the full potential of this practice. I just hit with bulk links, as I've read that there is no penalty on Amazon for doing so. However, I suspect something is wrong with this strategy as I'm not seeing good improvements to my rank on an amazon search.Can any of you who have experience with linkbuilding for kindle books please offer your two cents? Appreciate all responses, let's make this into a discussion!
Michael
#backlinking #kindle
  • Profile picture of the author joseph7384
    Amazons algorithm does not work like Google or any of the search engine algorithms. The way it works is by increasing books sales, good customer reviews and a few other factors are what gets you in the best sellers.
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    • Profile picture of the author JoeMack
      Originally Posted by joseph7384 View Post

      Amazons algorithm does not work like Google or any of the search engine algorithms. The way it works is by increasing books sales, good customer reviews and a few other factors are what gets you in the best sellers.
      I believe that the OP is backlinking not to improve his ranking on Amazon directly. What he is trying to do is get his Kindle books to show up better in the search engines themselves.

      Increasing SERP ranking => More Sales => Increasing Amazon ranking => Additional Sales


      JoeMack
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  • Profile picture of the author LilaJade
    Why are you backlinking to your Kindle books? What do you hope to achieve? Amazon doesn't care in the slightest about backlinks, so it won't improve your Amazon ranking.

    Also, just by putting your book up on Amazon, you'll get hundreds of free backlinks from all the thousands of sites out there that promote Amazon books.

    You can only increase your rankings on Amazon searches by:
    1. Making more sales. The more sales you make, the better your rankings for search terms will be.
    2. Keywords. Using important keywords as the first words in your title can get you really high in Amazon rankings for THOSE keywords, even if your book isn't selling all that great yet. What keywords do you want to rank high for? Make those keywords the very first words in your book title and you'll see instantly high rankings for searches using those keywords.

    Of course, ranking high for certain keywords will only increase your sales by so much, there are tons of factors that create sales on Amazon.
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    • Profile picture of the author mjessimy
      But from my limited experience, backlinking does play a role in ranking. For example, I had a relatively obscure book, and after building backlinks to that book, with the keyword as anchor text, it rose through the results page- what I don't get is what approach I should use to build these links. And, a lot of the WSOs being sold these days swear by the backlinking method, as they say the way to rank on amazon is via seo, just in a slightly different manner.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by mjessimy View Post

        But from my limited experience, backlinking does play a role in ranking. For example, I had a relatively obscure book, and after building backlinks to that book, with the keyword as anchor text, it rose through the results page- what I don't get is what approach I should use to build these links. And, a lot of the WSOs being sold these days swear by the backlinking method, as they say the way to rank on amazon is via seo, just in a slightly different manner.
        By any chance were the people swearing by that backlinking method selling backlinking services, tools or advice?

        Fortunately, you can't gimmick Amazon like you sometimes can the various search engines, even if only for a short time.

        I have a hunch your limited experience is mixing coincidence with causation...
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      • Profile picture of the author Dana Forsythe
        Originally Posted by mjessimy View Post

        But from my limited experience, backlinking does play a role in ranking. For example, I had a relatively obscure book, and after building backlinks to that book, with the keyword as anchor text, it rose through the results page- what I don't get is what approach I should use to build these links. And, a lot of the WSOs being sold these days swear by the backlinking method, as they say the way to rank on amazon is via seo, just in a slightly different manner.
        Chances are, it rose due to sales. Backlinks CAN raise your ranking but only if people are clicking on those links to view your book. However, you do have to link in a certain way to accomplish this and it isn't necessarily directly to your book.
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  • Profile picture of the author travlinguy
    Lila's got it. Concentrate on keywords in your blurb and especially title. And do a search on your topic and carefully pick the tags you want to use.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    Driving backlinks to Amazon.

    Now I've seen it all.
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  • Profile picture of the author mervp
    Amazon's internal system does not use or need backlinks to rank books, yes, BUT one may want to drive ADDITIONAL traffic to a book from the search engine universe. If you choose keywords that are good from a SEO point of view in composing the Kindle title, they can be used to get SE visitors to the sales pages, thus complementing the traffic from Amazon.
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    • Profile picture of the author Garyg
      Originally Posted by mervp View Post

      Amazon's internal system does not use or need backlinks to rank books, yes, BUT one may want to drive ADDITIONAL traffic to a book from the search engine universe. If you choose keywords that are good from a SEO point of view in composing the Kindle title, they can be used to get SE visitors to the sales pages, thus complementing the traffic from Amazon.
      Agreed.
      It's not going to do you any harm by having your book pages appear in the serps for their keywords.
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  • Profile picture of the author TycoonRob
    I would try to drive backlinks to my author website where I have a dedicated page for the book. This is better for a lot of reasons: I can capture them in my autoresponder with a free book, I can give them a better description (>4000 words if necessary) and be free to get a lot more creative with the book description. Plus they can see my other books that I have for sale and they might end up buying several.
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  • Profile picture of the author seobro
    Hi John:
    Back links to amazon. Oh yes, it works and I am for my keyword in position one. This is a major plus if selling is important to you.

    OTHER FACTORS
    total sales
    wish list
    reviews
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    • Profile picture of the author mjessimy
      as the last reply stated, it has worked for him, and btw the sellers of the WSOs suggesting backlinking do not offer the services nor do they recommend any. I would have expected more persons to have experience with this, I'm rather surprised that no one has... I have just ordered a link pyramid from a vendor on fiverr, going to give it a week and deliver the verdict. If I see no change after 2 weeks, I will give up on that strategy. But- I believe it will give me results
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Gram
    Your time would be MUCH better spent in promoting your book and building an author brand than trying to build a few links. You need a much more complete strategy than that if you want to make it big on the Kindle.
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