With one crazy election season behind us, it’s now time to focus our attention on another whirlwind: the holiday shopping season! The numbers keep growing every year: this year’s annual Black Friday shopping blitz is expected to bring in nearly 137.4 million shoppers online, according to a survey done by NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics. This is 1.6 million more people than 2015. Experts also anticipate that there will be more online shoppers than brick and mortar shoppers, a first.
So where are most of these shoppers headed to on their desktop and tablets this holiday season? You guessed it, the granddaddy of all online retailers — Amazon! It’s hard to beat Amazon. Experts say the online giant receives about 50% of initial e-commerce searches. With an inventory of over 200 million products, Amazon obviously has a very powerful search engine — but what makes it even more powerful is the fact that when someone goes to Amazon to search for a product, more likely than not they are there to make a purchase. This is unlike Google, where many people go just to do some research or fact-finding before making a purchase. The algorithms between each of these major search engines are vastly different.
However, despite the differences, Amazon still heeds some basic rules about SEO and copywriting for the web that we all must master as businesses with an online presence. SEO copywriting is a bit of an art and a science, so it takes some practice and skill to strike the right balance. Here are a few areas that one must pay attention to when getting started writing content for an e-commerce site (whether you are selling on Amazon or for your own e-commerce website):
- Optimizing the Product Title: be as complete and descriptive as possible. Amazon allows for longer product titles, so take advantage of that real estate and be as descriptive as possible with your keywords!
- Description/Meta Description Section: Keywords are critical in this all-important section.
Because it describes your product, you must be as comprehensive in your description. This is also where other search engines grab and crawl information about your product. Get your keywords in about 2-3 times within the 300 word product description.
- Engaging Sales Copy: Always remember you want to draw in your customers. Include benefits and call-to-actions throughout your sales copy.
Write succinctly when filling in copy in the bullet point areas, and be sure to use your keywords in a way that makes it readable. It should include information about the features of your product, in a logical readable way. But just make sure you don’t reiterate the same phrases in the free form description section. You will be missing an opportunity to influence your SEO rankings and engage your customer to buy.
Interested in learning more about SEO copywriting and writing content for the web? Please contact us today for more information or give us a call at (818) 488-1543.