The Business of Digital Podcast

Robyn Johnson joins to talk about Amazon SEO and how to do it properly. If you are in ecom and not yet on Amazon this is the episode for you.

For a quick primer on some Amazon marketing (SEO and PPC) you can go check out the episode What is Amazon SEO and Amazon Advertising? which we did with Ginny Marvin in the past.

There is also a video primer from Robyn that she did for SEMRush that can give you some quick bits too.

Still with us? On to the show!

Ways to Sell on Amazon

Amazon Merch SellerAmazon Seller CentralAmazon Vendor CentralKindle Platform

Amazon & Rules

One of the big points that Robyn talks about is how you really need to follow the rules. Whether you intend to have your mom or family review your products, that can get your product removed. If you "optimize" your backend to target some copyrighted terms can also get you in trouble.

In short, you need to keep a positive experience for users and Amazon or they will kick you off the platform.

Additional Resources

If after this you still have questions you can visit Robyn's profile or go join her FB group.

AZListingSupport

Full Transcript:

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited. You'd have everybody join us on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes, and we're just going to jump right into it today, Dave. We have special guest Robin Johnson with us, um, founder, CEO of marketplace blueprint, and besides being an Amazon expert and a listing optimization expert.

Central and all that good stuff. If I missed anything, uh, Robin, please feel free to jump in and correct me, but, uh, welcome, uh, to the, to the show. And thank you so much for joining

Robyn Johnson: [00:00:42] us today. Well, thank you for having me. I always love getting to like nerd out about marketing stuff and sharing a little bit about Amazon because it's this backwards, upside down crazy place, but it's a fun place to play

Matt Siltala: [00:00:54] indeed.

And, and yes, and I I'm actually, you know, I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say. Um, you know, this is, this is stuff, obviously that's super interesting. So I'm glad that our listeners are going to get a chance to, uh, to listen. And so again, thank you for joining us now, Dave, I'm just going to go ahead and let you, uh, uh, kick it off with, uh, where you want this to start and we'll just, uh, we'll go from there.

So

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:17] gracias. I think we decided we actually planned this time, which is. Um, shocking for us way to organize today. The, I think Robin, just the, what did you see in the last year, year and a half from just before COVID we were just talking about it to today. Like has Amazon and just what you've been seeing, gone crazy.

Is it finally settling down? Is it dealing even crazier now? Like what have you kind of seen from the number of people coming on? Yeah. You know, in general on Amazon.

Robyn Johnson: [00:01:51] Well, you know, COVID was a really good time to be an Amazon seller to be having your products on Amazon. We, of course, you know, as an agency that specializes in that we got really busy.

Uh, you know, there was a definite increase in the amount of people who were on Amazon, just because people were trying to get products. People were, you know, locked down for awhile. Uh, but we also saw. Team the way that brands were looking at Amazon. Um, before in fact there were several brands that we had talked to before and they said, uh, before COVID, they said, it's just not a priority for us.

Amazon is not where we're really focused. It's not really important to us. We don't really care what happens on there. And then just a couple months later, Amazon was for some company. Only real distribution channel, depending on what kinds of stores. So especially products that were made primarily in like specialty gift stores or, you know, me stores that weren't deemed essential.

Uh, we kind of became their only a distribution point for a

Get some insights into what roles, if companies are hiring, if they are hiring for remote team members and much more from our Survey of Digital Marketing Job Trends.

The following data you see is from 53 responses captured via a survey that we promoted the last week of June 2021. We had hoped to get 100 responses but a late start to getting it out there and the fact that lots of people were out of office or working towards the holiday weekend was just bad timing on our part.

That said we DID get just above the minimum we required and we know the data is still interesting to see for us - and hopefully you as well.

Please also note that when we recorded we had 50 responses but between then and 24 hours later when Dave started putting the write-up and files together a few more had trickled in (there were 53 in final count).

What type of company are you responding for? In-house or Agency?

The breakout was 60/40 for the most part with 60% of those responding working or leading agencies.

What type of marketing roles are you hiring for? Full-Time or Part-Time?

The final number came in with almost 75% hiring all full-time employees. If we split the rest that puts it around 85-87% of the roles hired or that companies are looking to hire for are FTE and not part-time roles. The one question we would have liked to ask was around contractors vs employee but we were trying to keep the survey short!

Where are these roles going to work? Will they be Remote or In-Office?

The result here did shock us a bit. While not 50/50 we didn't expect more people to be hiring for Remote than In-Office. As not all states/countries are 100% open maybe some of these remote roles will move to in-office later this year or next year. Maybe we really are seeing a move to full time remote roles. What do you think?

What is the size of the company you are representing? 1-3 (startup), 4-7 (small business), 8-10, 11-25, 26-50, 50-100 (midsize business), 101-500, 501-1000 (large business), 1000+ (enterprise)?

Almost 1/4 of those that responded are at Enterprise (1000+) type companies. When we combine that with the number of full-time roles that are remote that is interesting (to us at least). Another great question would have been to look into the industries that these companies in but alas we will have to let one of you do your own survey!

Looking at even more of the data we have some 45% of the respondents working for companies with 500+ employees. On the flip side we had just 4% (2) that work at companies of 1-3 and when we combine all the responses from 1-10 employees we got 25% of the respondents. We were actually happy as even with just our 53 responses we had a nice mix of company sizes represented.

How many roles have you filled or are you looking to fill this year? 0, 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-10 or 11+?

Just under 50% are looking to fill or have filled 1-2 roles, 23% are looking to or have filled 3-4 and 15% are looking at 7-10 roles. The high percentage of companies with so many roles did shock us as we really didn't expect companies to be adding so much headcount so quickly this year. That said, we are really happy to see it!

What marketing type teams are you hiring for or hired for this year? Paid Team, Social Media Team, PR Team, Events Team, SEO Team, Analytics Team, Dev Ops Team or Other?

For those looking for a job or if you are looking to fill roles this chart is all about the competition. There are lots of new hires for SEO and Paid Teams which is good for those looking to move or find new roles. If you are hiring for SEO or Paid know that it is going to be a fight for talent!

Once past those a good number of roles for Social and Analytics are out there with PR and Dev Ops close behind.

We also had some interesting write-ins that could fall under some of the breakouts we had but gives some additional detail into jobs: Marketing Automation, Demand Gen, Editorial, eCommerce, and Email.

As Dave looks back he realizes that roles around eCommerce, Email, CRM and Demand Gen could have also been added! In the end it is tough because everyone calls things someth

Join the guys as they walk through the mistakes they see most often when it comes to Analytics and Google Analytics.

Dave has participated in panels on this topic and the guys have hinted or talked about data, analytics and even Google Analytics but never done something like this. So join them as they walk through 7 of the more often mistakes they see when it comes to Analytics and Google Analytics.

Past Episodes About Analytics

All our shows that have touched on the topic of Analytics aka Analytics Podcast which goes well beyond just Google AnalyticsWeb Analytics Basics For Every BusinessThe Digital Marketing Checklist for 2019 & BeyondWhy your Analytics Conversion Data is TrashSigns That You Need to Audit Your Lead ProcessWhy Your Marketing Team Needs Documentation and Processes

#1 - Redundancy

We just talked about it the other day in our Redundant Redundancy episode. Does more than one person have access and skills to navigate and use your Analytics solution?

Do you have more than one person that knows how to use Google Analytics, Tag Manager and any and all of your important Analytics solutions.

#2 - Lack of Attention

We all get busy with work, life, kids, friends, broke down car, errands, etc. Do you ever look at your analytics? Does anyone? What insights are you missing out on? Could your content be better? Could you be getting more conversions?

If you are the owner/boss and simply do not have time to ever look at your web analytics you need to appoint or hire someone to do so!

Would you know if someone wiped your analytics tracking code from the site? How long could it be off the site before you would notice? What if your site is down for hours/days - how long would it take for you to notice?

#3 - Goals

Look at goals and event tracking but at the very least look at the Goals that are setup in your Google Analytics. Are they setup? Are they still relevant now from when you set them up years ago? If your site is focused on generating leads or calls, review what you are tracking with Goals and ask the questions about your website.

Do you watch your Google My Business account? Do you respond to reviews on Yelp and Google? Do you look at the data of visits and conversions from those and other places?

#4 - IP Filters

Do you have an office with lots of people often visiting your site? Do you have consultants/contractors or a number of people remote somewhere often hitting the site? Do you have their IP addresses filtered? DO IT!

If you don't have that traffic filtered out it could be making you think you have more traffic from certain cities, metros or states/countries that really you don't.

#5 - Proper Installation of Google Analytics

If you use Google Tag Manager, Tealium or some other tag manger to add Google Analytics to your site you DO NOT need to also add Google Analytics in your site's code. This most often happens when a site is on WordPress and someone installs the GA code into the WP theme but then someone else installs Google Tag Manager and adds the code there.

When you move a site from Dev -> Staging -> Production or Dev -> Production you can wipe out your GA or Google Tag Manager code. If you update the Theme or don't realize that the GA code was in a theme and you get a new one or update it - often the site's GA code gets wiped and no one notices. This often impacts Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster as well.

#6 - Most Often Missed Settings

Exclude Robots/Spam and Track Site Searches - these two settings in Google Analytics are the ones Dave most often sees missed by sites. Check your settings now if you aren't sure if they are both configured.

#7 - Set Time on Calendar

This is a bit of a solution to #2 but even if you hire someone or have someone that is looking at your Google Analytics, you should too. If you are listening to this episode or reading this write up you likely care enough about the business that you should dedicate 30 minutes a week to dig into your data and Google Analytics. At the start of each block of time ask yourself a

An outage for a mission critical service has the guys digging into why Redundancy for skills and services is critical for any business.

This episode was not planned but after a run-in on our own mission critical solution (online podcast recording solution) we thought it was a perfect time to dig into how companies need to think about having redundancy of skills and solutions that are mission critical to them.

Tool Finding & Selection

If you missed our episode with Kevin Mullett go listen to Tool Discovery and Selection Tips W/ Kevin Mullett as we really dig into how he goes about finding options for X online and keeps a long list. Now you don't need 10 alternatives for something but having 1-2 that you have already tested, vetted and shortlisted may not be a bad idea.

Transcriptions

For this podcast we use a few hardware and software tools. One that we talk about is Trycast and Zencaster but there is also the transcription service we use.

While again we love the one we use what if it went away? What if there is something better for us we just didn't know about? So for an episode but also for our knowledge we did What is the Best Transcription Service?.

Keep Short Lists

Keep aware of what solutions are still active, winning awards, adding features, and just staying updated. Maybe every X months or once a year take a look at your shorts lists and just quickly check on them. Over time that "short list" may evolve or change and you need to make sure that when the time comes that you need to use a service/solution from that list if it is outdated it might be useless. Companies are sold and close so keeping a loose list of updated services for mission critical services for your business is paramount to you staying in business.

Redundant Skills aka Cross Train

No matter if you are an agency or in-house you also need to cross train. It is likely that you have one person that owns X where X could be a vendor relationship, knowledge of tools or services or just the keys and logins to something. What happens if they leave, something bad happens and they are out of work for awhile or maybe they just go on vacation. If they are on vacation and you need access to X RIGHT NOW, what is your plan?

Think about cross training and creating internal backups. Have Suzie train John on how to use a tool. If there are webinars or new feature meetings with that vendor, have them join and just listen. Maybe even assign them a small task every now and then just so they can stay updated on how things work. They don't need to be experts on it but should have a basic understanding of how to log in or fire it up and do some of the basics. This way you are also having your staff and skills shared and not locked into one key person.

Mission Critical = Find Backups

If something is mission critical to your business make a backup. Whatever the skill, service or whatever - make sure you have a short list of backups for it so that your business is NOT crippled by one thing going down or closing.

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt scintilla and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have everyone join us on another one of these businesses, digital podcast episodes as always Dave, how's

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:17] it going, bud? It is. It is. Yes. Hey,

Matt Siltala: [00:00:26] as of right now, there's none. There's no noises in my background anymore. So I probably shouldn't have said that. I just changed it, but you did. Um, so funny enough when, uh, Dave and I had planned to record this episode, um, or the series that we're doing right now, um, I get a little ping from Dave saying, Hey, our normal.

Uh, service that we used is down. And so I'd sit in there for a while and he didn't say anything else. And then pretty soon an alternative way to record these episodes popped up. And Dave and I started chatting about it and we said, Hey, you know what? This would make a great idea for an episode about making sure that you have redundancies.

And so that's k

It started with a simple question and in the end we dug deep into What's Eating Duane Grape?! Learn how to move up in your career with the help of our great guest Duane Forrester.

A special thanks to Duane for hopping on and talking with the guys and sharing his wisdom. The episode digs into the growth of digital marketing, carving out your path, avoiding getting stuck in your career and much more.

What's Eating Duane Grape?

The alternative title was coined by Duane and really is how this episode came to be. The guys had planned to cover this in the coming months but when Duane went on a FB messenger rant to Dave it was easy for the guys to think - WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THIS NOW!

And that is what we did.

What Does Growth Look Like?

If you only know SEO, you can and will be stuck. Are you a T shaped marketer? If not you need to think beyond just Social, just Paid, just Email, just Technical SEO, just Organic Social, etc.

Are you worried about Core Web Vitals? Why are you suddenly caring now when you had a year? Why did you wait years to suddenly care about how fast your site is?

So you solve Site Speed. Do you think you will get a promotion? Will you get more head count? More budget? Did conversions increase? Did you drive more sales?

So you have something Deep for that T - now expand. Learn how the other teams work, the other marketing departments, the other departments and learn to work better with them and help them. If you want to move up, move beyond where you are - avoid Silos and get out there.

Leadership & Shout-outs

Some special shout-outs from the team during the show go to:

Cam BalzerSteve KrullRae HoffmanPJ FuscoBill Hartzer

Do You Know the ROI?

Pay attention to what is driving leads, sales, and revenue. You have to be focused on UX, bounce rate, revenue, sales, all things money.

As Duane says (paraphrased) - you can't throw that over the fence, you need to know what the impact of what you do is.

Intent & The User

If you take nothing else away from the episode take these things to do to help you move up in your career:

Worry about the user experienceWorry about the cost/revenue associated with projectsWorry about intent

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes. And today we definitely have a fun one for you deli Dave. Yes. So without further ado, I'm going to make you wait anymore.

We have a good friend of both of ours, Dwayne Forester. He is the vice president. Uh, industry insights with Yext and Dwayne, thank you so much for

Duane: [00:00:32] joining us. My friend, a gentlemen, always a pleasure to be here with you guys. Thank you. So

Matt Siltala: [00:00:38] we decided it happens every time we do something like this, but we decided we should probably start recording because like the last 30 minutes that we've been talking about, we're like, Hey.

You know, most of that stuff would be good to have on our recording stuff. I want to jump into it. But, uh, before, before we do, uh, you know, I know I said that the whole VP of industry insights expert, if there's anything else that you want people to know about you, Dwayne, um, feel free to jump in and just let us know.

And then we'll just go from there.

Duane: [00:01:09] Okay. So look, I, you know, I, I'm not going to assume that that, uh, anyone recognizes my name. So I'll give you guys a quick rundown. Um, hopefully this will give you a bit of a backstory and some of the, what I'm about to talk about or rant about might have a little bit context.

Um, I, uh, uh, started my career in gambling way back when, uh, worked for a gambling site in Canada. Um, ended up with Microsoft after that wrote a couple of books. Um, I, uh, launched webmaster tools when I was with Microsoft at being, um, you know, help the team with schema.org, that kind of stuff. Um, you know, conference speaker, all of that background, um, ended up running an agency for a little while,