Amazon.com is one of the oldest, most powerful, most trusted sites on the web. The domain was first registered in 1994 and it has 300 million+ inbound links – Google & Yahoo! generally seem to love it.
Amazon also gives you multiple options to create user-generated profile and content pages; therefore, it’s a great site to participate on you are interested in online reputation management.
Beware: Amazon has grown into a very complex “jungle” of a site and it can be usability nightmare at first. Hopefully this guide will help makes things a little easier for you.
A Real Identity is Required
Amazon takes precautions to know the real identity of the person’s content or reviews.
They have a “real name” feature where you can select from list of names and initials for your profiles and reviews, based on your credit card info. This protects people from anonymous defamation and impersonation. They also have an option for a “pen name” where you can post reviews and lists under a pseudonym in public (that is clearly marked as a “pen name”), but it is privately linked to your credit card so the admins know who you are. Note: if you enter in a pen name, your profiles and lists will automatically be switched over to it.
Working with your Amazon Profile
Click on the link that says “Your_Username‘s Amazon” in the upper left of the screen, and then click on the link in the upper right of the screen that says “Your Profile.”
Your profile page has your name in the title tag and also in a nice, big H1 header – but URL customization is not available. You can upload a picture, add a followed link to any website of your choice, and also add content about yourself. Mention your full name once or twice in the text and it will be fairly well optimized or you name. The more reviews and lists you create – and the more friends you add – the more internal links you will create pointing back to your profile and the higher it will rank in the search results.
Creating a Listmania List
Amazon allows you to make a pages with lists of the products you like and recommend.
Go to your profile page, find the red “Listmania Lists” subheader, and click on “Create a Listmania List.” It will ask you to name your list and you should put your name at the beginning of the list name – because it will show up in the URL and in the title tag of the list. Then add your name to the description of the list (“Hi, My name is Brett Borders and these are my favorite books…”) to make the page better optimized. Then add some tags to make your list more findable. Finally, you can recommend any products in the Amazon catalog by clicking on the yellow “Add A Product” button and writing you reviews. When you’re done, click the “Publish List” button at the bottom. You’ll end up with a nice, optimized page on a powerful domain:
Working with “Key Phrase” Pages
Another page that can rank in the search engines are the “Key Phrase” pages.
These pages list all the books (out of those that are scanned and searchable online) that contain a given name or phrase. To see if there is a key phrase page for your name or brand, go to http:// www.amazon.com/phrase/ and then append your name or phrase to the end of it, separate by hyphens (ex. http://www.amazon.com/phrase/bob-smith/).
These key phrases pages can rank well with some external links pointing to them – but they can’t accrue internal links as easily as your Listmania pages or profile page can.
As a general rule, if you don’t participate much or add external links, the page is likely to get thrown into the supplemental index and not be visible in the search results.
A Few Useful Help Pages
Your Profile Help Page – http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=16465241
About Listmania Lists – http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=14279651&qid=1212272973&sr=1-1
About Key Phrase Pages – http://www.amazon.com/gp/phrase/help/help.html/ref=sib_pdp_hlp
Participation Guidelines – http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=14279631
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