Hello and welcome back to the External Traffic For Amazon Sellers Podcast, the ONLY Amazon Podcast dedicated to the topic of traffic.
My name is Ashley Pearce and I’m here to help you discover your unfair advantage over the competition, that is External Traffic.
In these initial episodes we’ve been covering some of the foundational topics and concepts – not simple, but essential foundations for the understanding of a rounded and effective external traffic strategy for Amazon and in fact, a future proof traffic strategy for eCommerce.
Far too much “General” advice is provided out there without context – that makes it difficult to make strategic decisions about your business without feeling like you’re doing a lot of guesswork and wasting a lot of money “learning” in the process.
So today we’re going to take another leap forward in our grasp of the world of External Traffic for Amazon FBA and we’re going to take a look at Organic Search Traffic, what is it and how does it work for Amazon sellers?
So let’s get into the episode
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Organic Search Traffic For Amazon – Podcast Episode
What is Organic Search Traffic (Google Traffic!)
I’ll start by Defining organic search traffic – you’ll be most conceptually familiar with Google traffic and more specifically, I’m talking about the “organic” results, i.e. not the “Paid Results” or “sponsored placements” you see all over Google and it’s web properties like YouTube
So organic search traffic is “earned” traffic – you’ve created a web page that has been deemed by the Google Algorithm (or Bing Algorithm) as worthy of ranking in a position that will result in users clicking through to your website. We’re largely talking about page 1 here!
Types of Keywords & Search Queries To Focus On
I introduced the idea of ranking for market focused keywords, not just product focused keywords (your product) like bringing people in for one product and then giving them an “Ad” for another product – your product
Introduce idea of ranking for “purchase journey” keywords not just “purchase intent” keywords to expand repertoire of keywords you could target
Focusing on KGR Keywords – find out more about the Keyword Golden Ratio by Doug Cunnington at nichesiteproject.com/keyword-golden-ratio/
Introduced concept that new keywords are popping up as new questions get asked in product categories all the time.
Introduced concept of “SEO’ing limited no. of pages” vs producing volumes of content
It IS a case of build it and they will come with this approach – if you’re JUST focused on a small number of pages, yes distribution and link building is more important. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. If you’re ranking specific pages then Yes – spend 25% of time on content and 75% on distribution (with aim of link building)
A word on using Social Media for traffic or SEO
I’m paying lip service to Social Media – placing the seed that you don’t use Social for reliable cumulative organic traffic, you use it for collaboration and website authority building / asset building.
The Costs Of Organic Traffic For Amazon Sellers
Let’s say 1,000,000 website visitors brought in on market focused topics – but let’s just assume that only 20% have the same purchase intent as someone coming from Facebook Ads (not true, but Paid Ads need a big head start to even come close to Organic Traffic)
We’ve shown that (and through some studies) that above a certain content level you can expect 1-2000 visitors for every 1,000 words published. So at 1,000,000 visitors, we’d need to publish between 500,000 words of 1,000,000 words of content. Coming in at somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000.
Affiliate sites then typically get a 10% conversion rate of those visitors into buyers. So in this case, we end up with 20,000 buyers.
(If you want to see the conversion rates used to budget for affiliate sites that are focused on bringing in Organic Search traffic, check out the “details” sheets on the list of sites currently available from Human Proof Designs www.humanproofdesigns.com/affiliate-websites/#sites )
That’s $2.5-$5.0 per sale if we’re being REALLY brutal. And that number will half again, when next year you also get another 1,000,000 visitors without buying the content again – and if you’ve done your job right, you can bank on that number being cut into a 3rd of the first year costs as you roll into year 3 without needing to produce any more content to deliver your 1,000,000 visitors.
(Among other circles, particularly publishers who monetise with display ads, there’s also a strong case for budgeting for content to deliver over a 5 year period. But hey, at $0.80-$1.65 per sale by the 3 year mark, why the hell would we need to squeeze much more out of the system?
The Cost Of Off Amazon Paid Ads – Comparison with Organic Traffic
So let’s just assume we’re only going after the 20% of the 1,000,000 with Facebook Ads, as we can maybe be a little more “direct” with our direct marketing. So we’re looking to deliver 200,000 visitors to a page
Overall average CPC for FB Ads in 2019 was analysed at $1.86 across a range of industries – but hey let’s give Ads a leg up and take the general retail figure of $0.70
CPC figure Source: Wordstream Blog www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2019/11/12/facebook-ad-benchmarks
So for 200,000 visitors we’d need to spend $140,000 on Ads – this year, next year, and the year after (and take into account the fact that Ad costs are increasing by somewhere in the teens percentage wise year on year. Let’s take a 15% cost increase year on year as a benchmark.
Year 1 140,000
Year 2 $161,000
Year 3 $185,000
Total $486,000 over 3 years
Assuming the conversion rate of your Ads is equivalent to the 10% I mentioned for organic traffic, that would deliver 20,000 sales a year, 60,000 sales overall
Giving you $8.1 per sale – a number that’s increasing year on year.
That’s ignoring the fact that if you’re spending that cash on Ads you’ll need to dedicate a chunk of time to managing refining, coming up with the Ad content – videos etc. that aren’t cheap.
BUT the real conversion rate, again as analysed by Wordstream for Retail was actually 3.26% for Facebook Ads.
Average Conversion Rate figure Source: Wordstream Blog www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2019/11/12/facebook-ad-benchmarks
So actually, to get 20,000 sales per year, you actually need 3 x the traffic. Not 200,000 but 600,000 so the cost is actually 3 X
It’s 600,000 x $0.70 per click across 3 years with the percentage increase year on year also.
So it’s not $8.10 per sale, it’s over $25 per sale!
And where was organic? $2.50-5.00 per sale inside 1 year down to $0.80 per sale over 3 years.
It’s not just a little cheaper – it’s a different world of cost.
People Complicate SEO
People complicate the wrong parts of this strategy, getting blown away by “technical SEO”
The reality is that the bit people DON’T appreciate is the technical demands on the content structure and research.
The website ISN’T the difficult bit
The plugins AREN’T the difficult bit – after all, it’s set it up once and move on.
The systematic process of finding low competition keywords, researching the content structure to create a solid outline, editing and publishing again and again with CONSISTENCY following a plan is the tough bit.
When you do things this way around you don’t “do SEO to your website or business” – your website or business is search engine ready and more importantly, user ready every time you create a new post.
The “Own The Ads” Strategy is just 1 of 3 External Traffic Strategies for Amazon Sellers
Although this is a significant strategy, this is still only 1 strategy out of 3 that we deploy. This is the “own the ads” strategy – as when people land on your website to read your search engine optimised content, you get to put YOUR ads in front of them to drive sales. Whether that’s actual ads, or built in product placement within the content the principle is the same.
There are other organic traffic strategies that we have developed and utilise and in the most part, they build off the back of a solid “own the ads” approach.
There are many ways to drive traffic to your Amazon product listing, but as demonstrated here Organic Search Traffic is a VERY profitable way to deliver sales from External To Amazon Traffic.
I hope you took something, or many things from today’s episode.
It’s been a big one with lots to take on board, so if you want a closer look at those numbers just head on over to Future State Media .com where you can check out the show notes and drop me a comment if you’ve got any questions
Until next time, this has been the External Traffic For Amazon Sellers Podcast brought to you by Future State Media .com the External Traffic For Amazon Specialists
