#338 – Pinterest Traffic, Launching An Off-Amazon Brand, Listing Optimization, And More!

In this episode, Bradley talks with Mark Casey, a marketing and SEO expert who helps e-Commerce brands optimize their listings. We’ll talk about how he was able to scale a brand outside Amazon into making $10,000,000 per year, plus all of his tips and strategies on listing optimization, improving your listing images, A+ content, keyword prioritization, and more!

As a bonus, he also shares his insights on how the main image is “top of the funnel” and a unique tip for getting three times more outside traffic by using Pinterest ads for your Amazon products.

In episode 338 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Mark discuss:

• 01:30 – Mark’s Backstory And How He Got Started On Amazon
• 03:40 – Starting A Marketing And Branding Agency
• 05:00 – Selling His Brands Outside Amazon
• 06:10 – Making 8-Figures In Off-Amazon Products
• 08:20 – How Did Mark Scale His Brand From Scratch?
• 09:20 – What Is The Walmart Opportunity In 2022?
• 10:00 – Specializing In Amazon Marketing And SEO
• 12:00 – Amazon Listing Optimization Tips
• 16:40 – How To Improve Your A+ Content And Listing Images
• 18:00 – Insights In Using Videos For Your Amazon Listings
• 19:40 – Do Not Underestimate The Power Of Spanish Keywords
• 20:20 – Crazy Tip On How To Get Indexed For Your Keywords
• 22:30 – Mistakes Sellers Make On Listing Optimization
• 27:20 – How To Prioritize The Keywords You Put On Your Listing
• 29:20 – Your Main Image Is Top Of The Funnel
• 31:00 – Mark’s Thirty-Second Tips
• 31:15 – Pinterest Ads And Outside Traffic For Amazon Listings
• 36:00 – Meet Mark And His Team At The Sell And Scale Summit
• 36:30 – How To Get In Touch With Mark And His Agency

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we invite a specialist on setting up your listings who’s gonna give us tips ranging from image selection, A+ Content, Pinterest traffic launching an off Amazon brand, and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you know that just because you have a keyword in your listing that does not mean that you are automatically guaranteed to be searchable or as we say indexed for that keyword. Well, how can you know what you are indexed for and not? You can actually use Helium 10’s Index Checker to check any keywords, want for more information, go to h10.me/indexchecker. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS-free unscripted, and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon or Walmart world. We’ve got somebody who helps serious sellers from all over the world. Mark Casey. Mark, how’s it going?

Mark:

Hey, how are you? I’m doing well. Thank you very much.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Now, where are you? Where are you located? You in new New York?

Mark:

Yeah, I’m in New York, currently in New York.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Excellent. So let’s, you know, this is your first time on the show and I actually don’t know too much about your, your backstory your superhero origin story as we call it here. So I’ll learn about it just along with everybody else. So, you know were you born and raised in New York? You go to university college out there

Mark:

For sure. Yeah. So I was born and raised in New York. I went to school at everything here. I have my degree in marketing, so I started off doing like all marketing and branding. That’s like how I originally started in my whole career. Then I was in LA for a bit. And then after, while I was there, I got a job at like a company. They were actually the ones who originally started the whole essential oil like, you know, the diffusers, they were like the first come to kind of launch that. So they brought me into kind of help out with all their marketing and branding. And at that time they were just starting off with Amazon and Amazon at that, like, I would say it was around like 2016 or so it wasn’t a joke, but it wasn’t like serious, you know, it wasn’t like what it is now.

Mark:

So they brought me in, and they asked me if I wanted to take care of the Amazon department of things. So I honestly was laughing at it. I didn’t really see so much potential, but I said, I will. So I started digging deep into the whole Amazon world, not knowing anything about it, actually. And just trying to scale their Amazon fast forward to what they are now, they’re doing over a hundred million on Amazon. They’re huge in their category. And, and they’re also in retail and like Target, Walmart, Ulta, CVS, Rite Aid, you name it, they’re all in the big box stores.

Bradley Sutton:

So you kind of like learned on the job then as you–

Mark:

Yeah, I learned on the job then after a while I’m like, hold on a second. Like, I feel like it’s funny because I started networking with other people and they were just always asking me questions and whatnot. So I just started learning and networking, meeting a whole bunch of different people and on my own, I started learning. So, and then, you know, it was funny. I remember someone asked me once, it’s like, “Hey, like, you know, we’re putting Amazon event together, would you like to speak?” And at that time, I love networking. I wasn’t like gonna get up in front of people and start speaking. So he’s like, “look, there’s only like 40 people come and, you know, we’ll make it a thing”, I’m like, “OK, fine”. So I got up to go speak and like everyone heard I was gonna be speaking by this event, which I thought was like the 40 people, what small crowd ended up being 120 people in this room, all of them like staring at me, like, what’s, I gotta say. And I was just speaking about Amazon, but so from there, that’s kind of how our agency was born, kind of combining all my marketing knowledge and experience and all my Amazon knowledge and experience, and that’s kind of how we create our agency kind of combining the, both and, and using the same, like strategies and techniques

Bradley Sutton:

So when you got started with them, were, did you have like a nine to five job at the time? Or were you, were you working for yourself?

Mark:

It was more of a nine to five job and it was very low pay, honestly. And I’m looking looking back at it, now, what I do is I printed out my first paycheck from them and I frame it on my wall because it humbles me a bit. It’s like, Hey, remember, whenever you used to work for a couple of books over there and now like, thank God. Like I built my whole empire for myself, but whenever I started there, it was, it was more of a basic job. Yeah. But you know.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you ever start yourself selling to Amazon or have you just strictly been just like helping others as a consultant or agency?

Mark:

Yeah. So I started briefly, but just, first of all, I’m way too invested in my agency. That’s a, and B I get all these calls with everyone telling me about all the problems on Amazon. So, I’m like, I’d rather be on the other side to help you, but it’s a lot more, but I, I have built and I do own my own brands off of Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Off of Amazon.

Mark:

Yeah. Off of Amazon which is funny, but–

Bradley Sutton:

Sound like Shopify, are we talking?

Mark:

Like actual brands? Yeah. Like either Shopify or like actual brands that are in stores as well. And also like things that like co-work with like my branding or my marketing, like ideas or techniques

Bradley Sutton:

Now, being somebody who knows about Amazon, what made you say, “you know what, I’m not gonna sell this product on Amazon. I’m just gonna sell it off of Amazon”.

Mark:

Our pros and cons to selling on Amazon. Like for example, one product we made was more of a luxurious product. Right. And even though there are luxurious products on Amazon, in some way, if you look at it, it might cheapen the product to say, “Hey, it’s also sold on Amazon”. Then you could say, “Hey, look, Gucci”. And there are other, you know, brand name and luxurious products or sold on Amazon. Also, a lot of them aren’t. And just in that point of view for that specific brand, it didn’t make sense to sell it on Amazon, besides that there are also a lot of benefits of keeping more of the profits and working directly and having more of like your customer’s data and customer everything database that Amazon doesn’t give you access to.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So what kind of you know, numbers are you doing on these off Amazon brand? Like what’s your gross sales about what have you built it up to?

Mark:

Well, one of them are more of a Luxurious line, so that’s holding around like 10 figures. Which is funny because it–

Bradley Sutton:

10 figures. What do you mean 10 figures?

Mark:

10 figures

Bradley Sutton:

10 figures is in 1 billion dollars?

Mark:

Oh, Sorry. Oh my God. Seven figures. I was thinking–

Bradley Sutton:

What in the world. Okay. Everybody do not reach out to Mark for accounting help because he’s gonna really screw up your numbers.

Mark:

Oh my God.

Bradley Sutton:

He just me just confused 7 figures with 10 figures. I’m like not 1 billion. That was like 1 trillion, actually. I don’t even know what 10 figures are.

Mark:

That’s honestly hilarious. Oh my God.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it.

Mark:

7 figures, meaning around 10 million.

Bradley Sutton:

7 figures is not 10 million either, Mark.

Mark:

Okay. I just messed it up.

Bradley Sutton:

8 figures is 10 million.

Mark:

Okay. Yes. Sorry, sorry about that. Pretty close to 10 million. I have a log date today.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now here’s my point in asking that is like, you know, once you build it up, even way before yeah. 17 figures or 10 figures, or even 7 figures, you know, once you get to a certain point, you’ve got a lot of like brand recognition out there. So like, are you seeing man for your brand on Amazon, like search, have you ever looked at search volume, like in Helium 10 for your actual brand? Are there people trying to find you on Amazon and not being able to find you?

Mark:

No, that’s fine. So one of the projects that we’re working on, I looked it up on Helium 10 to see if the search volume there was a significant amount of search volume, which was a big push. But again, I’m not saying it’s not good to sell on Amazon, it is, but are pros and cons to both. But for example, Amazon’s not giving you a lot of that data, but you could be using that data to get those customers to come back to you and to purchase from you again and retarget them through different ads and whatnot. But Amazon’s not really giving you that option to do that. They don’t really give you their email and that information can bring the–, if you wanna build a brand, and build loyalty and returning customers, you can do that specifically on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Sure. Now, obviously, one of the advantages I’m sure you’d agree with launching a product or brand on Amazon is, you know, you’ve already got the foot traffic there. You don’t have to do too much, as far as trying to bring the eyeballs to your, to your listing, you know, you just gotta know how to optimize. Right. But when you’re launching off of Amazon, like how were you able to scale to what you did? You know, starting pretty much from scratch as far as the traffic goes.

Mark:

So that’s like the question I get asked often in regards to that, like, you know, whenever you wanna launch an Amazon, all you have to do is get your SEO and whatever, right. And Amazon already built database. So you just have to show up on the search results in order to be found and get customers and that foot traffic, like you said, when it comes to onto, off of Amazon, it’s obviously much harder, but the reward in some way is much better. What do we do? We did a lot of PR. We reached out to a lot of different, you know, we did things that were just out of the box, I would say. And that’s what we’re gonna stand out from everyone else. That’s what I would say.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now, switching back to the platforms that we all know and love, just outta curiosity your agency, are you guys helping people get on Walmart at all, or manage that? Or how do you view the Walmart opportunity, you know, in 2022?

Mark:

Sure. So Walmart’s opportunity is actually quite big, it’s growing, but what I always say is I compare to it’s like the thousands of Amazon, I feel like it’s up and coming, but nowhere close to the whole ecosystem that Amazon built for itself. You know what we deal with specifically, Amazon, just through and just your question sorry, Walmart. Oh my God. I think I’m like drunk today. We don’t deal with Walmart, but we deal. Yeah. We deal more focused on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Okay. Now, now not speaking of Amazon, you know, and I know most agencies are like A to Z, like, Hey, you probably know a little bit of everything, but, but do you guys, are you personally, or your company like known to be like, “Hey man, this company really has launches or keyword research or, or PPC.” Like, what would you say your specialty is where you feel that your knowledge and SOPs are kind of like above other companies. Sure.

Mark:

So actually we don’t offer everything. Yeah, no, that’s the thing, because I like to focus on what I’m good at. I break it up into two categories, marketing and SEO where that involves–

Bradley Sutton:

Do you ever say I put the Mark in marketing?

Mark:

Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Sorry with the dad jokes guys, but I can help myself right there.

Mark:

That’s funny. No, so we actually don’t offer everything. And I say, I like to focus what we’re good at. The main thing, what people really like to use us for, and we work with big brands out there. We work with people who are very, very large. And I asked them straightforward. I said, “how come you’re contacting us to help you with your listings? If you have a huge in-house design team.” And they said, “cause our in-house design team knows how to design, but they don’t know how to market specifically for Amazon.” So I would say that’s a, where we stand out is because our mindset is very different. If you want graphics, you go on Fiver, you could get graphics, right. That’s easy, but it doesn’t mean you’re getting the strategy and the science behind it. I would say there’s really a real, a lot of strategies, a lot of science and techniques that I’ve learned and worked over the years that I know. And in many different categories on what works and how to bring out the selling points. So I’d say for listing creation like all that design kind of stuff, and then more of SEO, I’ve studied the algorithm for quite some time. So I understand that.

Bradley Sutton:

So when you say like listing creation, like the initial structure of where to put the right keywords and how to set up the images and things like that, is that what you’re referring to?

Mark:

Yeah. And it’s also like the dirty work. Like we actually go and we do all the market research to Amazon research. We do all the graphics for you, the photo editing, the marketing, the branding, we’re really creating a product. And a lot of people think like, “oh, they just put it on Amazon, and then afterward we’ll just fix up the images and whatever,” but there’s so much more behind it than which is a very big mistake to do on, you know, to do it right from the first part and that way your product could be launched successfully.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, let’s go ahead and start talking about your best listing optimization tips then, you know, we actually just did a, a webinar where we went into all the kind of different things change. And I do this webinar like once every one to two years, and it’s very different. Like the one I just did a couple months ago because of how, you know, different Amazon is now there’s more bullet points. Now, there’s like A+ Content and, and, and how, you know, how that ties in now, you know, a lot of front ends or, you know, you’re not able to put subject matter and some things, and, and, you know, the search terms has gone from like 5,000 characters to 500 to two, you know, like there’s all these different things. So let’s just get some of your best tips now for what you guys feel you do differently as far as listing optimization and you know, don’t, I know you’re not gonna say all right, “Hey, put your top keyword in your title”. I mean, let’s talk about some more in the weeds kind of stuff than just the stuff everybody knows.

Mark:

Yeah, for sure. Well well, just to address whatever you said it’s so true. Amazon’s really changing every single day. And like, you really have to be on top of it. Cause they’re changing so many things that really affect your listing. So when it comes to tips, there’s honestly so many out there I would say is like, okay, well the number one thing I speak about and people, I found a lot of success with it, but it becomes a little bit controversial is whenever I tell people don’t put your brand name and your title, right. Make the first four or five words–

Bradley Sutton:

Don’t put it in at all?

Mark:

Oh, you could either put it at the end or don’t put it at in at all. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

But what do you say then when Amazon sometimes like, if you don’t have your brand, your title, they then sometimes Amazon might go and change it and log it. That hasn’t happened to any of your customers who don’t put it in.

Mark:

So that’s the thing. Whenever I say people bug out, I’m like, no, I’m like, try it on one of your listings that are medium performing. Okay. Don’t try it on your bestseller. Just drop. I said, put your first four or five main keywords or that are about your product. On the beginning of your title, take out your brand name completely. If you really wanna put it on the end of your brand name, people said overnight, they started seeing results. And the reason is because Amazon gives priority to those first four or five keywords. And even besides Amazon shoppers, whenever the shopping, especially on mobile, where it’s cut off the title, you don’t want it to be the main space filled up with your brand name. No one’s looking for your brand name right now. People are really looking for, “Hey, this is an exfoliating face pad” or whatever it is. And that stands out and people understand your product much quicker than having to sift through all the random words and brand names to find your product.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. So that’s, you know, yeah. I mean, definitely, that’s part of the, the Maldives honeymoon strategy we talk about is how it, I dunno, this is just my opinion, but you know, title has always been important, but like I would say in the last two and a half years, or two years, especially like, it just seems like, you know, you change one little thing on the title and you’ll instantly see like the impact. So it just, you know, unless somebody’s trying to backdoor secret information from Amazon, nobody really knows exactly the formula of the algorithm. But just in my opinion, from what I’ve seen that doing things to your title has a bigger impact than it did like three, four years ago.

Mark:

Definitely. You know, I agree. And even with samely when it comes to bullet points, is that people put emojis and just making it a whole long. I’m like, dude, your bullet points are your bullet points, they’re not your description. And even putting that aside, no one’s reading descriptions and bullet points anymore. It’s like before everyone said, no one reads your description and now no one’s even reading the bullet points. People will and obviously, in different categories, it depends. So don’t hold me on that. But my main point is that people are very visual and you need to be able to target and sell your product really quickly within your info for graphics. When people go, they scroll and if they don’t like it, they’re gonna go to someone else that, that, that’s how it is with Amazon. If it’s not you, it’s someone else.

Mark:

It’s not, like, all the products with your competitors are pretty similar. I’m sure yours are better. And somehow, but if it’s, if it’s gonna be, if your product looks outdated or just doesn’t look good, it’s not appealing. People just go out and go to someone else. And then, so I said this before, and then someone came over to me and said, “no, you know, I’m just gonna leave my listing regular, and my A+ Content, I’ll go all out”. I said, “that’s very stupid”. And the reason for that is that, why would you wait for someone, someone barely even going on your listing, right? You’re gonna wait for someone to scroll down, to go learn about your product. You have to be able to catch their within the first 15 to 30 seconds of them being on your, on your listing. If you’re not selling your product on time, if they’re not understanding what it is and why they should buy it, why they’re gonna benefit from it, or why to buy yours rather than someone else’s their attention’s gonna go elsewhere, especially with 110 different ads and pop-ups and newer model available and sponsored and all this display at that’s how it is. That’s why you have to make sure to show why you’re the best and why they should purchase from you rather than someone else.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So what are some of these things that you’re doing to, to make sure that happens?

Mark:

Sure. So whenever it’s by your infographics, people just often just put a picture someone using your product. That’s not out enough. What we like to do is combine a lifestyle image and an infographic together. So showing someone using the product, but putting like clear symbols or, and saying, or like clear icons and saying, “Hey, this is the benefit a, B and C” that stands out. So people understand, “Hey, this is why I like the product”. Or a lot of people just do infographics about the product themselves. And they don’t use someone. They don’t show someone using their product. And even besides Amazon in a marketing perspective, that really hurts your product a lot because by having it there, right, your minds subconsciously already is relating the product to their emotion. So in your mind, even if you’re not thinking about it, your mind is thinking, “Hey, if I get this product, I will be relief from pain”. “I will be happy”. “I will be excited” or whatever it is. Right. So when your mind connects the two dots together and says, “Hey, this product is going to solve my issue through a lifestyle image”. You’re already 10 steps ahead from your competitor or even if just you using infographics alone.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. What are you suggesting as far as videos? Like, are you saying, “Hey, everybody should definitely make one image in your stack a video” or there’s some cases where that doesn’t make sense.

Mark:

Usually, video does really, really good on listings a hundred percent be because it speaks to them. So that’s not even going to the next step. Well, first is making sure you’re infographics. But if you have you wanna go to the next step, video’s important because that’s what speaks to someone. That’s what sets the tone of your product. Cause you think about it at the end of the day, you’re just on a screen. You’re not there to explain your product. There’s no word, there’s no emotions. There’s nothing involved. But once you set, once you put a video, you’re setting a tone, you’re setting an emotion and you have to explain your product much easier than you would with just an infographic. So alone. It catches people’s attention too.

Bradley Sutton:

You have like a time limit or like a target time on how long the videos can be or should be, I should say.

Mark:

Yeah, it shouldn’t be more than 30 seconds. If it’s an explainer video, that’s a whole nother story, but your video shouldn’t be more than 30 seconds. And within the first three seconds, it has to be a hook that will get the customer to stay on your video. And that’s a proven thing that if within the first three seconds, your video’s not exciting enough. They will just go exit out and go on to something else. So you have to make sure the hook is good and not waste the time with your brand, your logo and a whole introduction. You don’t need that. You do that at the end, in the beginning, you catch their attention and now you have them hooked to watch the rest of the 10 to 20 to 30 seconds.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. What else about, on the topic of listing optimization you know, do you have like, you know, as far as tips on how to get index or how to make sure that Amazon algorithm knows you’re relevant, things like that?

Mark:

Yeah. Okay. So, well, first of all, I always say is that people underestimate the power of Spanish keywords. A lot of times people say, “oh, yeah, I just have a listing, and why would I put in Spanish? It’s not in Mexico”, but like, that’s literally the stupidest thing ever that there are many, many people in America who speak Spanish are going on Amazon and typing in the product in Spanish. So now imagine if you just input these in your backend search terms, if just put them there, you’re not, you could even do advertisement on them, but if you’re putting them in there and you’re indexing getting rank, you just got all those sales that your competitor didn’t get because you thought of this. So that’s A, B once it comes to indexing. So this cool trick I found and it really works literally wonders.

Mark:

We had someone who sold KN95 masks during COVID. Okay. And I now imagine, A getting index for the keyword without getting flagged and B just getting index for the keyword period. So I told him, I was like, do A, B, and C, which I’m about to say and see how that goes for you. And he got index right away for crazy amount of keyword. So what we did was he got his friends to ask a question about the product on the listing using those main keywords. So for example, let’s say in this case KN95. So he would get one of his friends or someone to ask, “Hey, is this KN95 mask”, da, da, da. And then the seller answers the question as a seller. “Yes, this KN95 mask is hundred percent” da da with, and just keep inputting the keyword they want index for that is the quickest way you can possibly index your listing. And the reason we is, because let’s say you just put in your title bullet points, that takes time for Amazon to learn. Let’s say you do PPC, that will work, but it also takes time to click and get purchases and for it to learn your, the first day you launch your, your product and or whatever it is first week or whatever. And someone’s already inputting that keyword into the question. Amazon picks it up right away and starts to indexing you for literally, almost automatically.

Bradley Sutton:

So then this would be for like keywords maybe that you’re not even indexed for yet, or maybe they’re forbidden keywords or something that, you know, you couldn’t put into your listing. And so you have to kind of get indexed for it in other ways.

Mark:

Exactly. Yeah. And, and it really works because he couldn’t use KN95 in his, in his listing officially because of like a whole bunch of, I don’t know, stuff when COVID was going on. So he did it through the question and answers and it worked wonders. He really got ranked and, and there was only like maybe 30 sellers in the category that were really approved and he was able to get ranked and was selling, I think for how he told me every day, he’s sending 5,000 containers a day just to refill stock and you know, who knows how many mask in those 5,000 containers. But yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

OK. Now, what are some of the biggest mistakes, as far as listing optimization that you see sellers probably a lot of sellers who I’m sure come to you. It’s not like they’re brand new and this is their first Amazon listing, but they probably have scenes. And then you guys go in or like, “what in the world was this person thinking?” Like, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you think you, you can warn people about

Mark:

Famous misunderstanding or misconception that people think is like, they think that their, A+ Content like replaces their description. So many, many, many people when they approach us we see their, A+ Content is just a design, but they don’t take advantage of the wording and all the keywords you could be putting under. So they’re like flaunting. “Yeah. We have such a nice listing. It’s amazing.” I’m like, “honestly, yeah, your design’s amazing, but where’s your description?” Like, “what do you mean we have a description?” I’m like, “no, you don’t look.” And then you see, like, “what do you mean? I never, you could put keywords there,” like, “yeah, that is your description.” Amazon does give you relevancy and indexing for the keywords you were putting under the images. So now all the images you’re putting on the actual image sorry, all the keywords you’re putting on the image itself are what’s indexing. You Amazon doesn’t really pick that up. Maybe through their algorithm, they’ll pick it up, but not for an indexing purpose, it’s for understanding your product better. But all the keywords you’re putting under the words of the EBC that is what’s going to get you ranked.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So when you say under the image, is that like the alt tests or the–

Mark:

No, the description, there’s an, there’s a box where you could put a straight up description. Just many people don’t utilize it.

Bradley Sutton:

But, well, now whenever I’ve tested that, if you’re talking about the regular, A+ Content, like I’ve almost never had anything get indexed in there it’s like very rare, like stuff in the backend description. I do.

Mark:

No for sure. No, I’m not saying that’s your number one place to put there. I wouldn’t say to put your name of keywords there instead of your title and bullet points, and back in keywords, what I’m saying is that places there are more opportunity for you to be putting other types of keywords in there. Even if people are not reading it specifically or whatever it is, it’s still very important to be putting keywords there and we’ve seen it, we’ve seen results from it.

Bradley Sutton:

I definitely the one thing I do see over there is you almost get indexed immediately on Google, where even if it wasn’t in your listing, and then you put it in there, and maybe you’re not even indexed for that keyword on Amazon, but like in Google, you’ll get indexed right away for the that, that A+ Content.

Mark:

Yeah. I never even paid attention to that. I never– okay.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Do some tests on that. I’d be curious because the reason I was asking about that other thing, and I haven’t been able to duplicate it much myself with people kept saying, oh yeah, even though the description, maybe doesn’t always get you indexed and A+ Content. But if you use that alt text or image, text and put keywords in there. But when I tried it, it didn’t work like all the time. So it looks like a lot of this stuff is hit or miss, but one thing for sure, we tell people is keep your backend old description, even though it doesn’t show anymore, it’ll help you stay indexed. Now you talked about, you know, the Amazon algorithm. So, yes, the listing optimization is more for like, “Hey, making your customers happy and appealing to the customers.” But what kind of SEO things are you doing so that you keep the Amazon algorithm happy?

Mark:

Exactly. Okay. So the number one thing, which another mistake, like you said that people do is like people go and spend like a thousand dollars on a top copywriter to write a listing for them. And they’re so happy about it, but they don’t understand that. Yes. It sounds amazing if it was on a regular website. Sounds amazing if it was on a Shopify site, but when it comes to Amazon, it sounds just about it. It sounding amazing. There’s a lot of keywords in there that you’re missing. So for example, like, you know, we analyzed his listing and we saw that all the keywords combined, he could have had over 20,000, 50,000 search volume on his listing. So we input his listing and we saw that he only had, I think, 5,000 or 10,000 search volume on his listing with the keywords being used.

Mark:

So I went back and asked him, “I was like, is this copywriter like, did they optimize it for Amazon?” He’s like, “I don’t know. It just sounds so good.” I’m like, “yeah, it sounds so good. But you’re missing all the Amazon things” like yet you have to please the customer that’s for sure. You have to make sure it sounds good appealing and, and someone wants to buy it, but you can easily accomplish so many keywords you could be putting so, so many keywords that give you search volume and at the same time for it to sound good, it’s not impossible. People think it’s impossible. So I don’t keyword stuff, but you could still come with a very good copy, but secretly putting in all those Amazon cures, cause at the end of the day, yes, you’re serving the customer, but realistically you need to teach Amazon about your product. You need to teach Amazon the relevancy that this keyword is relevant and makes sense is associated with your product.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. What are some tricks of how you decide which ones are the most important, cuz obviously, you know, you can do your research in Helium 10 and you know, find 5,000 keywords related to the listing? You can’t have 5,000 words in, in phrase form. So, so how do you pick, like, do you have a number of you target like, “Hey, the rest of these ones, I just gotta make sure I have the individual keywords so I can get indexed for it, but these ones, I need to have in phrase form,” like you have a magic number of how many you’re targeting for that.

Mark:

What we do is create the copy and then see for other words that we can swap out with these keywords. So let’s say for example, like we came up with whatever keyword, right. And then we see a similar one that’s available to use with more search volume. So we would swap it out, but make it in the sentence makes sense. So is there a main number that we would target? I don’t have a specific, main number to be honest with you. But I would go after the ones, not only to have more search volume, we would look at like the score that it gives us the search volume and the competition and then whatever we don’t use within the title, bullet points, and description, then we’ll put that in the backend. And same thing with like Spanish keywords would save all the Spanish keywords for the backend, the listing. Cuz I feel if you put in the front is just confusing your customers, but definitely has so much benefit if you put in the back on your listing.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s some real world experiences you can give us, you don’t have to mention the product or the customers or anything where either one of these strategies you’re talking about or maybe something else that you haven’t talked about will where, you know, they were at this level before they were doing maybe this numbers and then boom, they did this and their conversion rate went up or their sales went up by X percent or something like that. Did any like, like cool stories come out stick out in your mind.

Mark:

So there’s this one customer of ours that is in the health and beauty industry and he has a pretty competitive product. But he started around the same time as his competitor. His competitor has, I think, close to 75,000 reviews on his listing. He has around I think, 10,000 reviews on his listing. What did he do? He spent three months and I don’t even know how much money to perfect his main image. And whenever he told me this, I told him straightforward, “I think you’re crazy.” I said, “why are you spending so much time on your main image? Just come up with something good. That stands out enough and you’re fine.” He said, “no, the main image is what starts the funnel. That’s what starts the story. That’s what gets you to click?” So then I was brainstorming with him and I didn’t understand what he was saying, but after three months of him perfecting, he said, look where we started and I looked at, we are now.”

Mark:

Our conversion rate went through the roof after just making these couple of tweaks and adjustments because compared to our competitor when we’re standing right next to him, this little feature of the bottle of whatever shade or whatever we did made us stand out much more. And we, we, we started selling much more of, of this specific product that he was working on. So whenever it comes to the main image, then that’s what I start to say now, too, because I’ve seen it time after time is that your main image is very important. That’s like the top of the funnel I would say. And that same thing with off of Amazon too, but more specifically on Amazon, on is that the top of the funnel is the main image cuz that’s where you get your initial click, but it doesn’t just stop there that, so that’s another mistake that’ll make is like, yeah, lemme have an amazing main image where infographics are crap you know, but so, so let’s see, you worked hard on the SEO. You’re ranked now fine. Now you have amazing main image and you got that click, but now your conversion rate is suck because if you finally got that click and you finally got everything, I mean, let’s say your price point is good, but when they don’t understand your product and you’re not gonna purchase it, your conversion rate is gonna drop like crazy.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Okay. Now, what are some just like quick hitting tips? Let’s close that episode with a few of your top strategies. You’ve been giving us strategies throughout this episode, but what are some, maybe 30-second ones you can give us like that you think that, that sets you guys apart or that your customers are implementing, that you probably assume that the majority of our listeners might not be– might not know about or might not be doing

Mark:

Sure. So on the regularly, I mean, we don’t even deal with it, but it’s just a very good strategy. We’ve seen to time after time is Pinterest and Pinterest ad. Like first of all, outside traffic, we could speak about an hour about it. Outside traffic is so important on Amazon. I’m sure everyone knows, but that doesn’t mean running Facebook ads. Cause Amazon sees what Facebook is and they have different priority levels for each traffic that comes in. So in Amazon’s eyes, Pinterest is a very high priority and people are not tapping into that. I’ve seen so many good results. Obviously, TikTok is great and all these things are great, but when it comes to Pinterest, what’s the main difference, right? Just to break it down real quick. When you, whenever you’re doing a Facebook ad, you put a hundred dollars ad spend after the hundred dollars is spent, your ad is in the air, it’s not existing anymore.

Mark:

A Pinterest ad or whenever you’re making a pin on Pinterest, it’s like a blog, but it stays there almost forever. So it’s a blog for your product more specifically, but you get these influencers to make pins about your product and you get articles written about your product, that just agents stay there forever. And then if you wanna take it up to the next notch, whenever you link it, if you, you know, obviously linking through a good URL, through Amazon URL, you can also get all that Amazon rank too. So you’re getting the organic sales and you’re getting a lot of, you know, attribution with different keywords too.

Bradley Sutton:

So what’s your strategy as far as deciding what kind of image to use and then how you’re describing it and does everyone definitely have a link that goes to the Amazon listener? How do you get discovered on Pinterest? How do you do SEO for Pinterest? Because yeah, sure. You can pin anything, but if you’re on page 75 of the results, it doesn’t really matter.

Mark:

No, for sure. So that plays into the second thing. So once it’s on Pinterest, there, there is Pinterest SEO and obviously very different than Amazon, very different than Google. You would want– that’s where the influencers are very important, cuz they already have like these pins and I’m not a hundred percent familiar on how it works to the fact that I can speak so much about it. I just know the general idea, but once these influencers are the ones pinning, your whatever, your product or article and they’re making, they’re making articles on your behalf, I would say, and then linking it to your product. Then that gets you SEO on.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, it’s not necessarily you as the brand posting your own product. You’re getting other people to–

Mark:

Meaning for the pins, but you could do ads, the Pinterest ads you could do as a brand, but then I’m gonna take it to the next step. Now, now imagine getting those articles ranked on Google. So now you have double the amount of SEO, meaning you have the Pinterest SEO for the platform itself and those Pinterest articles, I’m sure, you know, when you research a recipe or something, a solution to something you always see like the Pinterest things come up. So now imagine your article is part of a solution or a part of a blog that solves issue. But now that’s showing up on Google. So now you’re getting a threeway funnel, meaning you’re getting the Google SEO for the Pinterest and then you’re getting the Pinterest SEO. And then ultimately you’re getting the Amazon SEO through everything coming in through meaning whatever through the whole entire funnel that you, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. What are that that’s in Pinterest. What else can you give us that you think that people might not be utilizing enough?

Mark:

So we did this for one of our clients. So what they did was well, first of all, the newer model available feature is super underrated and very, very powerful and people underestimate how you can even get everyone’s like, no, you can’t get it unless you do it through this way, a blackhat way, but no Amazon gives you the option to do a newer model available. Obviously whenever it’s related to the product. But we use this part of, our launching strategies whenever someone’s launching a similar product, whatnot we ask Amazon for them to be the one to input the newer model available for their product. And it helps with so many different ways. In regards to traffic, we did a whole case study on this in regards to traffic. I was with all the keyword indexing because Amazon gives all the traffic, let’s say someone typed in plastic water bottle. Right. and then they clicked on listing a and then it went to newer model available through that funnel. Amazon still gives the ranking juice so to say from plastic water bottle on, from listing A to the finalized listing of them per clicking and purchasing it.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. What’s you’re you know, at your company, what do you think is the team’s favorite tool of Helium 10 and how do you guys use it?

Mark:

The Magnet tool is super, super useful especially if you really learn to how to use the filters and whatnot, and it really shows you down, like to the end of the day, like the down path numbers, very easy to find keywords. Also the Keyword Tracker. I really, really like, and we play kind of hand in hand together.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool, cool. I believe you guys are one of the sponsors, right? For our upcoming conference that’s coming up at the end of the year.

Mark:

Exactly. Yeah. We have a booth there and sponsoring one of the after-parties.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. So guys, if you haven’t got tickets yet for our Sell and Scale Summit, go to h10.me/s3. You guys are in our director two. So if you wanna reach out to Mark and his team you can either go to directory.helium10.com or how else can people find you on the interwebs out there?

Mark:

So houseofamz.com and then I know this one’s a little bit controversial, but amazonseo.com.

Bradley Sutton:

amazonseo.com, nobody’s ever come after you for having that domain.

Mark:

That’s not like scared, but I mean, it’s there for now and it’s very easy to remember. So amazonseo.com.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. I love it. Love it. All right. Well, mark, thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience with us. And we’ll be seeing you in September In Vegas and keep it with the good work. Talk to you later.

Mark:

Thank you.

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