A9 Search Engine Optimization: Navigating The Amazon
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Amazon.com has made a major entry into streaming the flow of Internet search into its main traffic river. That entry goes by the brief and slightly puzzling name of A9. With the new A9 Search, combined with already owned Alexa, online retail giant Amazon is considering a move into the big leagues of search.
As a website owner, you might want to consider picking up some traffic from what might become a large player in the search engine market. While the level of search traffic between A9 and Alexa remains small compared to the big names, no one can be certain if the status quo will continue.
With Google experiencing some user dissatisfaction, and Yahoo! and MSN Search still feeling their way to new algorithms, some shortfall may become more than a trickle into Amazon’s A9 entry. In the meantime, it won’t hurt a webmaster to be sure their site swims well with the Amazon current, and not against it.
At first glance, many webmasters will be tempted to think that their Google optimization efforts will already work with A9. Since A9 is “enhanced by Google results,” that might be partially true. The part that throws an anchor into the water is that A9 is also loaded with results favoring Amazon and Alexa listings. In particular, products offered by Amazon.com are heavily featured in the A9 search engine results pages (SERPs).
The additional Amazon based search results are especially discouraging to businesses who offer similar products as the giant Amazon. With those products being well positioned in the SERPs by Amazon the average online retailer might feel overwhelmed by the competition.
Faced with a huge marketing budget and an almost unlimited product line, that concerned-webmaster response to Amazon is entirely understandable. Fortunately, there are some workable solutions for successfully competing with those Amazon-laden results.
An additional optimization problem also presents itself as part of the elaborate technology on the A9 page in the form of thumbnail images. Taken from the Google images collection, it becomes increasingly important to have website photos and graphics properly indexed. In the regular Google SERPs, the importance of images is more or less for the main search rankings. In the A9 SERPs, having those images properly indexed becomes doubly important.
While the navigation through the rocks and shoals of the Amazon might appear impossible at first glance, that is not completely and permanently a barrier. With some careful enhancements to optimization techniques that are proven to work in Google, safe passage to good search rankings in A9 can be achieved. All that has to be remembered is those Amazon results are there in Google search results too.
By charting a course through the A9 Amazon dominated waters, safe passage can be found. Any online retailer and webmaster finding Amazon results dominating their keyword searches will not only do better in A9, but in Google itself.
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