The latest updates on information selling and running an online infoproduct business

There is a little-known benefit of using Amazon to help your web page rankings. Amazon is a highly ranked web site by Google and therefore gets lots of revisits by Googlebot (the automatic system which ranks the pages). If your web site is listed in Amazon, it automatically gets bonus points in terms of page rank, because an important site is linking to you. Hence if you could get your web site address listed in Amazon, you would get better ranking for your own site. If only there was a way of doing it. Well, there is!

Firstly, you need to visit Amazon.com (not Amazon.co.uk) and you need to set up your own account. If you do not already have an account, simply click the 'start here' link. Once you have set up your account you need to make sure that you click on the tab marked 'About You Area'. Once inside the next page you need to enter a description of About You - and here's the important thing. In the first 12 words make sure you include your web site address. For instance, in my 'About You' section it says: "I run WebInfoSelling.com, the web site dedicated to helping you sell your knowledge online."

All very well. Now the bit that gets your web site linked by Amazon. What you need to do is review books. Simple as that. Every time you review a book, your profile is included. And if you have included your web site address in your profile, you get a link from Amazon to your site. This is an external link from a highly ranked Google site, giving you extra ranking points for your own site. This will increase your rankings within Google.

However, you will need to start reviewing plenty of books. Also, be aware that Amazon has human editors which check all reviews. They will not publish any reviews which clearly do not come from the readers of books. Also, any attempts at spamming by writing 'non reviews' will be halted. So you have to write real reviews, not just say anything to get your web address used. But if you can do this, your web site will gain higher rankings in Google. Hence it is worthwhile.