eCommerce News Stat of the Week

“While total apparel sales declined 19% last year, sales of ‘comfy cozy categories’ were up: sweatpants sales rose 17%, sleepwear 6%, and sports bras 10%,” according to a report from the NPD Group.

Obligatory Seinfeld Reference

More Stats

Advertising Statistics You Must Know (No sweatpants were harmed, insulted, or even mentioned in this one.)

Big eCommerce News: Digital Advertising Tax: The Genie Is Out of the Bottle

Maryland Passed A Tax On Digital Advertising. What Happens Next?

Death to Vanity Metrics and Misleading Data!

What Digital Advertising Gets Wrong
There’s a lot of bad digital marketing advice out there. And the fact that there are so many metrics (sometimes conflicting) doesn’t help. With regard to the article above, we tackled much of what digital advertising gets wrong in our most-attended webinar, 10 eCommerce Metrics That Really Matter (The Rest Is Just Noise), co-presented with our friends at BigCommerce and Klaviyo. Do yourself and your business a solid, watch the replay on demand and get the slides.

Privacy and Tracking

How to Revamp Your Business Digital Marketing Before New Tech Blocks It from Your Best Customers
The End of the Third-Party Cookie: Why the Online Advertising Industry Urgently Needs to Raise Awareness
The death of the third-party cookie is confusing stuff all around. Prepare yourself for the cookie-less future and 22 more trends and topics we see coming this year and worthy of your attention: 23 eCommerce Trends & Topics That Should Be on Your Radar in 2021.

Speaking of eCommerce Trends . . .

EXCLUSIVE CONTENT: eBook: 2021 eCommerce Strategy Report (23 recommendations offered by industry experts from top digital providers!)
How the Pandemic Transformed Mobile Apps into the New Storefront
What’s on the Minds of Digital Marketers in China Heading into 2021?
The Future of Digital Advertising Is Personal
How the Great Migration to eCommerce Is Reshaping Retail

Amazon

UPCOMING WEBINAR on Wednesday, February 24 at 2PM ET: Amazon Guide 2021: New Strategies for Substantial and Sustained Growth. Don’t wait to book your spot.
EXCLUSIVE Content: Amazon SEO: Creating the Optimal Product Listing for Findability in 2021
Websites Are Selling Fake Reviews “In Bulk” to Amazon Merchants, a Report Found. One Site Offered 1,000 Reviews for $11,000. (A story that never goes away no matter how we wish it would.)
What’s Amazon’s Secret?
Amazon Acquires Small Digital Commerce Platform to Challenge Shopify

Google

Google Dark Mode Makes Ads Listings Look More Like Organic Listings
The Google Interstitial Penalty: How it Impacts Brands (This is really interesting and the effects are potentially expansive.)
Responsive Search Ads Are Now Default Type for Google Ads
Google Brings Display Ads to Attribution Reports as an Open Beta
How are your Google Ads performing? Find out with the free EXCLUSIVE Google Ads Scorecard.

Core Web Vitals

Ad Platform News and Changes

Organic and Paid Search

6 Tips to Win Local with Paid Search
2020 Blogging Statistics: Survey Data, Trends, and Insights from 1000+ Bloggers
It turns out that Google and shoppers really like ample long-form quality content. How does the content on your website rate? Find out free with our Content Scorecard for SEO.

Too Soon? Yes, Too Soon.

How Retailers Can Start Planning for the 2021 Holiday Season

About Always Be Growing: Your Weekly eCommerce News Drop

So much happens in eCommerce news in any given week. It can feel overwhelming, even impossible, to keep up with the news and the changes that affect your business. But keeping up is a must for two reasons:

You need to make sound decisions based on fresh (and reliable) information.

If you miss a story, plenty of your competitors will have picked it up and left you behind.

The way to keep up and to make those sound decisions in a fast-paced noisy world is to get curated information delivered to you consistently. That’s why EXCLUSIVE provides “Always Be Growing,” our weekly Friday blog feature all about eCommerce.

Why Always Be Growing? Because the EXCLUSIVE team is driven by 5 core values, the first of which is “Always Be Growing: Continuously strive to learn, share, and grow as individuals and professionals.” And that’s what this weekly Friday round-up is our way of sharing the learning in order to help you grow.

Amazon is unquestionably the go-to place for online shopping. If you’re selling on Amazon, you know that you need to get your product rankings as high as possible on the website’s search engine results pages (SERPs) to nab those click-throughs and conversions.

But how do you do that? This post breaks down the definition of Amazon SEO, the key elements, and best practices for optimization on the Amazon platform. It also delivers resources and strategies for making the most of your Amazon marketing plan.

What is Amazon SEO?

Most online sellers are familiar with optimizing online content for the Google algorithm to get good SERPs for their products or services. Amazon SEO is a similar process in that it seeks to optimize your Amazon listings to rank higher on searches on Amazon.com. The big difference is that Google is about serving up the best match for information and Amazon is about serving up the products that the shopper is most likely to buy.

Amazon SEO involves six major components:

Amazon keyword optimization
Product title optimization
Product image optimization
Backend keywords
Pricing strategy
The Amazon A10 Algorithm

If you want to make it easier for Amazon to find your listings and show them to potential buyers who are shopping for the types of products you sell, you need to dig into Amazon SEO best practices. Read on for the strategies that can help improve your Amazon SEO by maximizing click-throughs, conversions, and overall sales.

Keywords Are the Key: Speaking the A10 Algorithm Language

The Amazon A10 Algorithm is the ranking system that influences where listings appear on an Amazon SERP. The first element this algorithm looks to are keywords in a searcher’s query (user search terms), making keyword optimization of primary importance to every Amazon SEO strategy.

If all the keywords in a search query are not in your product listing — including specifics like size and color — your listing will not appear at the top of the search. Identifying and optimizing for keywords is the starting point for driving Amazon sales. It’s also a never-ending process that requires consistent fine-tuning and finding opportunities your competitors miss.

Build Your Brand on Amazon

Another solid method for taking control of your Amazon listings is to enroll in the Amazon Brand Registry. By submitting your trademark documents, you prove ownership of your brand and unlock protections as well as deeper content and advertising tools, including:

Sponsored Brands Ads
Sponsored Display Ads
Amazon Stores (formerly Amazon Storefronts)
A+ Content (formerly Enhanced Brand Content)
Brand Analytics

Beyond protecting your brand from listing hijackers and counterfeiters, the most-important perks of Amazon Brand Registry are Amazon Stores and A+ Content. Your Amazon Store is basically your custom Amazon landing page that showcases everything your brand has to offer, from product descriptions to videos — which are increasingly necessary to enhance the all-important user experience. Showcase additional value, product comparisons, and other valuable details with A+ Content that can capture more conversions and better tell your brand story.

Amazon Product Listing SEO Best Practices

Use these guidelines to launch your foray into A+ Content by adding optimized titles, richer visuals, and effective product descriptions:

Required: Titles and Images

- Optimized Titles: 60 to 250 characters that include as many of these as possible:
  - Brand
  - Product Line/Collection
  - Material/Key Feature
  - Product Type
  - Color
  - Size
  - Packaging/Quantity

- Effective Images: Five to nine recognizable images that match the product’s color, size, and other features, and are well-lit and include the entire product on a clean white background.
  - Conversion-drivers include these extras:
    - 1000×1000 size that can be zoomed
    - Images of products from different angles and in use
    - Infographic or overlay text that highlights product features

Recommended: Bullets and Descriptions

- Bullet points are not required but are highly recommended on Amazon listings. Bullets are stand-out listed descriptors. Do not use them for promotions or pricing info. Best practices for Amazon bullet points:
  - Use up to five points, each with a maximum of 100 characters
  - Highlight key product features like age appropriateness, skill level, country of origin, etc.
  - Begin each bullet with a capital letter
  - Write in sentence fragments without final punctuation
  - Order consistently across product pages (e.g., if material is the first bullet, make it first for all of your products)

- Product Descriptions are the last place shoppers look for product information, but they can add valuable details left out of the title and bullet points. The best product descriptions:
  - Contain 2,000 characters or fewer
  - Expand on product features or uses
  - Include additional relevant keywords that will help shoppers and the A10 Algorithm recognize relevance

Hey, Exclusive Concepts! How Will You Improve My Amazon SEO?

Amazon is the first (and last) stop for many consumers who are searching, researching, and purchasing. If you want your products to show up strong in those searches, you’ve got to do more than rely on automation to see the success you want. As in any business venture, you’ll only get out of Amazon SEO what you put into it.

Rather than burning through resources and trying to manually optimize each of your product listings, developing a focused SEO strategy that maximizes your brand’s unique assets can put you in a winning position.

The team at EXCLUSIVE is committed to helping merchants optimize their entire eCommerce funnel to grow faster and maximize profits. Improving your Amazon performance is an important part of our holistic approach to integrated solutions for attracting traffic to your Amazon Store, converting shoppers to buyers, and retaining customers for exponential sustained growth.

Reach out today to get your free eCommerce analysis so we can find you profitable growth-focused strategic opportunities on Amazon and additional channels. And grab your free copy of 8 Easy Ways to Maximize ROI on Amazon.