Short answer: Jordan Metzner says to target what people search for, not your brand name. Amazon built list pages like best beach towels, and Prime Video built pages for searches like movies with Tom Cruise.
Watch this answer from Episode 2 (starts at 5:50) · Episode 2 notes and transcript
From Episode 2: We Built an AI SEO Machine That Writes and Publishes Itself, starting at 5:50.
Sam Nadler [5:50]: Yeah. I actually the super exciting. I'm excited to see a demo of the tool. But, very few of us spent time at, Amazon, specifically working on SEO for Amazon Prime in, like, a quick thirty second, one minute. What did you learn specifically there, or do you have any takeaways there that, has influenced how you think about SEO later on?
Jordan Metzner [6:14]: Yeah. So, I think if you take a step back, what is SEO? SEO is kind of optimizing your website so that, Google will deliver your website as a top result and therefore drive traffic into your website. Well, you gotta take one level higher than that and really, like, what is Google? What are people searching for? Why do people search? What is Google trying to accomplish by solving people's search questions? And so when you start to think about those things, you start to think about maybe yourself as a consumer, but just really, like, what are people searching for that would drive traffic into my website? So, if we use the case of Offsiteio, and I'll use Amazon in a second, but, people weren't searching for Offsiteio. It's not a known brand. It's a small business, etcetera. But what people are searching for was off-site planning checklists. And so while we couldn't provide Google you know, while we could provide Google our name or brand name Offsiteio, that's not a high traffic driver because people aren't searching for it. But what people are searching for was off-site planning checklists, and so therefore, we can use our brand authority to create that content and then drive that traffic into the website. I think if you look in the case of Amazon, of course, like, every detail page, is indexed.
Jordan Metzner [7:20]: So, if you're looking for, like, Amazon basics batteries, of course, that's all indexed. And, if you're looking for, like, an anchor charger or even, any Amazon product, of course, those are all indexed. And Amazon has so many pages that they actually do a bunch of different tricks to publish the site maps because they're just so large. But, some of the things that you may not think about would be things that you would might search for that you'd might wanna get to Amazon. So maybe best iPhone case for iPhone fifteen, sixteen, or maybe softest pillow for children, or, best, towels for the beach. And any of those, might not be a detail page. They might be more of a list. Right? And so Amazon's generated tons of additional content pages like, here's all of the pages for best beach towels, and then they've gone through and found, what makes the best beach towel, and then they rank these pages. So in the case of Prime Video, the opportunity we found was kind of searching for content, not the actual direct title because Amazon had, like, the detail page for, let's say, like, man in the sea, but, something more directional.
Jordan Metzner [8:34]: So for example, movies with Tom Cruise or, action movies, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. So as these you know, as users are searching on Google for more dynamic content, ideally, Amazon can create or in the case of Prime Video, can create pages that serve that content and then serve that up to Google, which then can serve those results to drive traffic back into the website. So, I think the takeaway here is just like think about what your business is. Think about what people are searching for that that might be orthogonal to that business. Create content around that, and then constantly monitor that content to see if you can kinda double down to continue to drive that traffic flywheel.
