SEO Help

[Kurt]

Kurt I once read an email that suggested the same sites as sort of like new fangled search engine doorway pages.  I was so intrequed by that.  Now who sent me that  hummmm.  What a great idea. Literally it got me thinking of all kinds of ways I could do the same thing.

Thanks...for some that may not know...I think of listing pages on sites like Etsy, eBay, Amazon/Amazon Merch in a lot of ways as old-school "doorway pages". Doorway pages were popular 15-20 years ago and their only purpose was to rank in the search engines for a particular keyword phrase.

If you're selling print on demand mugs on Amazon, your main goal shouldn't be what's the "best" keyword, but rather how can I create products (pages!!!) for as many keywords of some vaule as possible?

Product listing pages are a lot like old doorway pages. The page title (item name) is most important. The tags are like the old meta keyword tags. The description tag is a combo of SEO for ranking and copywriting for getting clicks and sales.

The differences are:

You have to create products (actually only product thumbnails in many cases) in order to have listing pages. I actually think this is a positive because this is a built-in revenue stream. Old doorway pages didn't have this.

These platforms are ranking more and more using engagement factors. Doorway pages used to rank using keyword relevancy only. Now sites like Etsy and Amazon use keywords for relevancy in their results, then they start using engagement stats like clicks, how quickly your respond to messages and most importantly sales. Remember, these sites make commisions and fees when you sell something. Selling something is also a better indicator of "relevancy" to users than keywords in many cases.

Listing products on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc doesn't let you build a list of buyers. This isn't good at all.

On the other hand these sites all have a double dose of SEO benefits. First is these platforms all have their own internal search engines with a lot of BUYER TRAFFIC. You can get traffic to your product listing pages directly from these sites.

Google tends to love pages on Amazon, eBay and Etsy and gives these sites lots of authority. It's probably a lot easier rank a page on Amazon with your product than on your own site with fewer links.

Take it for what it's worth, but I've "heard" they way people now rank on Amazon is by sending paid traffic to their listings when they're new to mess with Amazon's engagement ranking factors. I can't remember the exact method, just be aware that things aren't always as they seem.