E-commerce does rely a lot on sales, and industry leaders got huge for three reasons. What are they? Well, read on to find out.

The first is to focus on catalog size and the third-party sellers. Amazon dominates because of this and the extensive nature of it allows for third-party sellers to sell here, making up over half the sales on Amazon. By offering a massive selection, people can pick and choose, and it’s always been a part of Amazon’s strategy. Third-party sellers are critical because they allow for more selection, and to reduce prices, and allows for companies to grow to massive sizes. From an SEO look, this offers a massive selection, targets more search queries, allows for more brands, and they will rank.  By making product selection a core part, Amazon has come to dominate online sales.  Now, not everyone should do this, because it may fundamentally compromise other business goals, but the catalog size plays a major part in the growth of all e-commerce sites, and you should be mindful of this.  But, it can help grow a business, since it allows for more opportunities to make money.

The second is earning links off self-interest, and this is a big part of eBay’s success.  Because it takes the Amazon concept of the third-party seller further. it’s built on third-party sellers, where people can buy stuff, and it allows for bid-free purchases for top sellers.  Ebay is beating Amazon in backlinks, and while Amazon has more domains, they aren’t having enough backlinks. The backlinks are made by linking pages to the auctions, and then updating this regularly, which allows for more inbound links and anchor text.  Again though, not every e-commerce site needs a third party backlink, but you should consider backlinks if you want to get your listing promoted, since it will allow for more engagement, and it will benefit you.

Finally, there is a clearly defined niche, which neither eBay or Amazon do. Etsy is essentially a great one because they focus on a niche, whereas Amazon and eBay are places for anything.  Etsy is focused on creative goods and made goods.  You can’t mass-produce goods there, so everything is unique.  You actually will see that they have a lot of keywords, and they’re definitely a major part of the search engine landscape.

And while the other e-commerce giants have no issues with ranking, the reason for Etsy’s success is because of how niche their keywords get.  B defining a niche that is narrower, they can outrank a more authoritative site, and it will allow for it to place in search results despite the position.  You should consider the unique nature of selling if you’re going to do this, and by identifying the categories you want to be in, you’ll be able to market there, optimize these, and promote them, and it will help you outrank others on different sites, which allows for more engagement and revenue as a result.