The Convergence of Google SEO & Amazon - with Scott Walldren - Episode 273
INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT WALLDREN
DESCRIPTION
In today’s podcast, we are speaking once again with Scott Walldren, the Director of SEO for Acadia.
Make sure you tune in to find out more!
Scott Walldren is the Director of SEO for Acadia since October 2022. Previously, he spent 8 years developing and eventually heading up the SEO practice at 360i for Dentsu international. In addition to SEO, Scott has managed millions in paid search spend for national brands at Digitas and Razorfish and as a consultant inside and outside of startups. He lives in the far north Atlanta suburbs (close to Lake Lanier) with his wife, 3 kids, and 3 cats.
Incidentally, he has some hands-on experience (albeit about 10 years old) setting up a store, product feeds and running ads on Amazon when he was at Case-Mate.
This is part two of the previous episode.
“The reason why Amazon reviews are going to be ranking at the top of the list when you do a brand search is that Amazon’s already got the content and it’s been indexed and it has such a high authority as a domain. Google is going to view an Amazon review as a trusted source. Your presence and engagement with customers on the marketplace as an extension of your brand and your website.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Kiri and Scott discuss whether a Strong Amazon presence = strong Google SERP presence is true or false. Google is the dominant platform for search. Amazon is the dominant platform for ecommerce.
Google featured snippets are now showing Amazon product reviews when a "brand + reviews" query is used - All the more reason to consider your site as just one of your many assets in discoverability through search engines. Your reputation matters across the crawlable web.
Is it worth trying to outrank Amazon? Or accept a new business model? We’ll do everything we can do to find a way to make that happen but it’s going to involve a lot of experimentation and may not yield results.
As a former in-house ecommerce worker and consultant, I think it's worth taking a long and hard look at the pros and cons of Amazon as your primary distributor. It will totally depend on what you’re selling, but I’ve been inside a few times and the volume we could drive with distributors meant we ran a much softer direct game. The goal was still to maximize coverage, but not at the expense of losing the volume we were getting. nIt’s become more than “frenemies” for many - more of a marriage of convenience in which both parties benefit. But we all have our limits…
What does this mean for brands that don't invest in Amazon content?
That’s just the thing. Amazon is the vanilla, the default choice for where people “start” shopping. But it’s not the only place by any means. Yes, your customers are probably on Amazon. But they may also be on other platforms too. Find where those conversations are happening and come up with a plan for how to engage.
To learn more, listen to the full episode!
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Connect with Kiri Masters
Learn more about Bobsled Marketing, an Acadia Company
Connect with Scott Walldren
Learn more about Acadia
