Amazon hints at keyword traffic

Amazon is on the money already buying more domains to lift their direct typed-in traffic, so what are you missing out on?

Black Friday DealsThe crew over at Domain Name Wire have picked up on an interesting registration by Amazon of several Christmas and Black Friday related generic exact match domains. These .com domains enable Amazon to benefit globally but a number of the terms are very American retail specific such as “black friday” and “holiday toy list”.  The purchase of the domains signals that Amazon is trying to increase the number of direct visitors that they are attracting and trying to cut the reliance on Google to deliver these visitors.  The strategy can be very effective but also can start an arms race with competitors to register every variation of domain that Amazon has failed to register first, and also search engines may adjust their algorithm further to reduce the benefit of exact match domains.

What are their exact match domain keywords?

  • black friday deals clothing
  • black friday deals movies
  • black friday deals tools
  • black friday deals watches
  • amazon holiday toy list
  • gift ideas books
  • gift ideas cameras
  • gift ideas games
  • gift ideas kitchen
  • gift ideas movies
  • gift ideas music
  • gift ideas toys
  • holiday toy list electronics
  • holiday toy list games
  • holiday toy list movies
  • holiday toy list music
  • holiday toy list sports
  • holiday toy list toys
  • holiday toy list videos

What is the value of this typed-in traffic?

If amazon wanted to buy this traffic via Google AdWords it would be costing them around $0.56-0.80 per click so it’s going to be a lot cheaper to try and capture visitors via type-in traffic.  When a visitor types the keyphrase directly into the web browser’s address bar, Google will often see it as direct navigation and send the visitor directly to your website.  This is a very effective way for Amazon to capture traffic for a number of these long tail terms but benefits them as it also skips the entire process of them seeing Google results and possibly clicking on your competitors links.

What is the traffic trends around the “Gift Ideas” terms?

It’s perfect timing as the biggest area of traffic that spikes in the 2nd week of November each year according to Google Insights for search.  The related search terms around “Gift Ideas” also show that this area is larger than just the holiday season with search variations of gift ideas including: birthday, christmas, wedding, anniversary, diwali, baptism.  This might also hint that some of the low hanging fruit for SEO or PPC might be focusing around the same terms as the new Amazon domains, that may now deliver them several thousand extra visitors every month.

What is the traffic trends around the “Black Friday” terms?

The generic term of “black friday” outperforms “gift ideas” by around 30 to 1 according to Google Insights for Search.  The purchase of the domains also support Amazon’s new Black Friday Deals website which is counting down to the start of the Christmas shopping season and one of the busiest shopping day for US retailers.  Being how Cyber Monday is the online version of of Black Friday it’s interesting to see that Amazon is focusing on the offline retail channels.

What is the traffic trends around the “Holiday Toy List” terms?

The potential traffic that these terms will drive is much lower that “gift ideas” and “black friday” but it’s likely that many of these terms are keywords used during the research phrase before a decision is made what toy they should buy.  If Amazon has multiple touch points and manages to get an item added to their wish list or shopping basket the chance they will purchase from Amazon greatly increases.  Even if the visitor doesn’t purchase this year, Amazon is also able to tag the visitor with a cookie to better understand consumer behaviour in time for 2012 Christmas shopping season.  You will also notice that Amazon is not focused on “toys” or “lists” but the singular version of the keyword.  They are focused on the plural version of the actual item as they understand the shoppers mentality and also want shoppers who are going to purchase more than one item.

What is the Top Toys for 2011?
While we are talking holiday toys, the Guardian has already outlined what presents parents must ensure they purchase for their kids, based on the Toy Retailers Association “Dream Toys” list.

So if Amazon is on the money already, so have you started planning your Christmas campaigns yet?

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