How to Build Your Own Free Amazon Organic Search Rank Tracker

August 19th, 2014 - Posted by Nathan Grimm to Analytics, Tools and E-Commerce

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Do you want a free tool that tracks your organic search rankings in Amazon? Yes? You're in luck.

I am going to show you how to build your own organic search rank tracking tool using Kimono Labs and Excel.

This is a follow-up to my last post about how to rank well in Amazon, which covered the basic inputs to Amazon's ranking algorithm. It received a lot of comments about my rank-tracking prototype in Google Docs; the Moz community is overflowing with smart people who immediately saw the need for a tool to track their progress. As luck would have it, something in Google Sheets broke the day after I published, so I had to replicate the rank tracking tool in Excel using the SEOTools for Excel plugin. The Excel tool is a low-setup way to record your progress, but if you want to track more than a few terms, it is very laborious. I've since built a more (but not completely) automated, scalable way to track rankings using Kimono Labs to scrape the data and Excel to run the reports.

(Shout out to Benjamin Spiegel for turning me on to Kimono Labs through an excellent Moz post.)

Pros and cons of rank tracking

The death of Google rank tracking has been widely reported, so I feel compelled to review why Amazon rank tracking is both useful and a terrible KPI.

Amazon rank tracking is great because

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How to Improve Your Local SEO: An Interview With Greg Gifford by @johnrampton

As part of our SEJ interview series, I recently caught up with Greg Gifford of AutoRevo to discuss local SEO.

In the video below, Greg explains some things local SEOs are doing wrong and how they could be doing better.

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3 Super-Actionable Keyword Research Tips to Try Right Now by @egabbert

Larry Kim and Will Critchlow from Distilled recently did a great webinar revealing all their personal keyword research strategies. It went pretty in-depth, so if you’re in the mood for digging in, scroll to the bottom to see the slides and video.

Today, I just want to share three quick tips inspired by the webinar. If you’re looking to accomplish something beyond just dumping a seed term into a keyword tool, these clever tricks should jump-start your next keyword research session.

#1: Spark Content Ideas With Google Suggest Wild Cards

In the webinar, Will mentions picking this tip up from Tom Anthony at Distilled. You’ve probably used Google Suggest as a means of keyword research before, but I love this trick because it allows you to mine suggestions that don’t just come at the end of the phrase you’re typing.

Here’s what I mean: normally, when you start typing a search query, Google offers suggestions to complete the phrase:

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4 Ways Social Media is Utilized for Social Good by @kristelcuenta

Over the last few years, social media has had a huge impact in our everyday lives. It has completely changed the way we engage the world, both locally and internationally.

However, much of what is showcased focuses on the negative aspects of social media, such as people using it as a place to vent or rant or as place for cyberbullying. Despite our nature to focus on the more negative moments in social media, there are still many people using social media outlets to do great things in our world.

From the nonprofit, for-profit, and even ordinary individuals, here are four examples of how social media is being utilized for social good. 

Groups For Revolutionary Action

In 2011, social media played a very significant role during the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt, where people came together and found support in their common desire for change. After 18 days of protest, the president of Egypt, who was disfavored for rising commodity prices and suppressing freedom and media, gave up his long-time presidency.

Social media sped up the process by helping organize the revolution’s efforts.  Facebook in particular played an important role by helping pro-democrats to organize protests. One example is a Facebook community ran by activist Whel Ghonim, who delivered protest messages through Facebook updates, images, photos, and even through Facebook notes. The community has grown to more than 1 million followers to date. 

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A 1,000 Word Post vs. A 2,000 Word Post: Which Has Better ROI? by @searchlabs

The argument over long-form content and short-form content is one which has been debated from behind keyboards since the advent of the Internet, and one which will doubtless carry on for the foreseeable future.

How Do You Measure ROI on Content?

There is no definitive method of measuring ROI on content, as each company/brand/site will be looking for something different. Whether you’re writing to bring more people to the site, increase conversions, establish credibility in your sector, or are just writing because you enjoy it, you’ll measure ROI differently.

There are often long lead times on seeing a direct conversion from content marketing (except perhaps in the retail and fashion sectors where this is probably less true) but there are some easier short-term ways to measure ROI if direct sales are not forthcoming. To measure ROI, consider using the following:

Organic search positions and SERP visibility (and backlink analysis)Traffic to siteTime spent on site and/or bounce rateSocial shares and engagement metrics

Now, let’s take a deeper look at each of these metrics and consider when using them to measure ROI would be most appropriate.

Organic Search Position

Getting higher positions in the SERPs will benefit any company, and having high-quality content is the best way to do this. It’s no secret that Google prefers content that answers a question, and will rank this content higher. A higher search position will inevitably have an impact on your online ROI (as long as it’s for a relevant key phrase). That is why many people engage in content marketing and why SEO, online PR, and content marketing are essentially one and the same in 2014.

Good visibility in the SERPs will get your site in front of more new users and increases your opportunity to increase ROI from content. Publishing two posts means you have the opportunity to rank for more terms, but only if these are relevant, worth reading, and good quality.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean they will rank well long-term. In a study conducted by SerpIQ, blog post pages with over 2,000 words ranked higher than shorter blog posts, which makes sense. If you’re looking for an answer to a question, it’s likely a 500-word post may not have enough useful phrases users are searching for.

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Conversational Search Comes To Bing by @mattsouthern

Bing recently announced they are now offer conversational search, and it works very much the same way as Google’s conversational search. You can ask a natural language question, and then follow up with another question about the same subject and Bing will remember what you were asking about.

Here’s an example of me testing out Bing’s new search functions by asking it questions about Google.

First question: “who are the founders of Google?”

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Google Ends Exact and Phrase Keyword Match Ability in AdWords; Now Applying Close Variant Keyword Matching by @mattsouthern

At least 7% of Google searches contain a misspelling, according to a new post on Google’s Inside AdWords blog. However, people still want to find what they’re looking for even if they haven’t spelled it correctly.

That’s why Google has announced that they’re applying close variant keyword matching to all exact and phrase match keywords starting in September.

Close variant keyword matching is an intuitive way to return the correct results that users are searching for. It was introduced in 2012, and Google says advertisers have seen strong results. “Advertisers are receiving an average of 7% more exact and phrase match clicks with comparable clickthrough and conversion rates.”

These incremental increases in clicks help advertisers seize opportunities to convert customers that are otherwise missed by “Low search volume” keywords that are common for misspellings and abbreviations.

Google’s announcement contains testimonials from three advertisers. Here’s one from Stitch America:

“In matching common stemming variants such as “custom hats” for “customized hats”, we’ve seen five times as many clicks for exact and phrase match keywords. What’s more impressive is that this additional traffic costs half as much.”

Close variant matching was already the default setting for campaigns, which means most advertisers won’t see a change in keyword matching behavior. The option to disable close variants will be removed in September.

Advertisers will no longer be able to build extensive lists of misspelled, abbreviated, and other close variations of your keywords. Instead, Google recommends to focus on adding negative keywords–including close variants you don’t want to match for–to shape traffic and reduce cost.

In addition to improving your campaigns’ ROI with an improved click-through rate and lower cost per click, with this update Google also wants to help deliver a better ad experience for your customers.

To learn more about keyword matching options, please see Google’s Help Center article.

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