Amazon Link Anatomy and Why We Need to Understand It

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When marketing your book online, it’s important to send potential readers to the correct link. You may have heard from so-called book marketing gurus about ways to tweak the URL you send out so you’ll rank higher for certain keywords. But this practice is frowned upon by Amazon, and could cause you to lose reviews from anyone who has clicked on that link to leave one.

Amazon has ways of tracking the link people get for your book, including putting a series of numbers in the URL (called a QID) that correspond with the exact time the link was generated. Using this link to send people to your book may mean their review is removed by Amazon. This isn’t the only reason a review might be removed, but it could be Amazon’s way of tracking how the review was attained.

The bare URL is the most important link to send to people. This is the URL that is simply Amazon.com/[your book’s ASIN] or Amazon’s shortened version. Anything after that is just a waste and shouldn’t be used. But there are other links that can be used that can make selling your book on Amazon easier for those in foreign markets, since every country has a different Amazon store URL.

So, if your link is:
https://www.amazon.com/China-Bound-Relocate-Rebuild-Reinvent-ebook/dp/B07JDCHHWH/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540383148&sr=8-1&keywords=B07JDCHHWH

It should just be:
https://www.amazon.com/China-Bound-Relocate-Rebuild-Reinvent-ebook/dp/B07JDCHHWH/

Or this works too (amazon.com/dp/ASIN):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JDCHHWH/

Redirect with universal links

Jesse Lakes is the co-founder of Geniuslink, which allows users to create a universal link that will redirect somebody to the Amazon store of their country. When you send people to Amazon.com, that directs them to the U.S. store, meaning someone in the United Kingdom would have to search for your book instead in their own country’s Amazon website, Amazon.co.uk.

Jesse advises authors to make sure they’re using the shortened Amazon URL, as well as making sure they’re testing their links once they are created. Another thing to note is if you are an Amazon Associates member, meaning you are using Amazon’s affiliate program, you can make an affiliate link to your own book (and Geniuslink also works with this link).

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Mailing list metrics

Another marketing thing Jesse brings up is to look at your metrics for your mailing list to see which countries are opening your emails the most, which can give you an idea of where your readers are based. This means you can cater your marketing efforts to those countries for a better conversion rate.

As you can see, there are a lot of potential problems that can arise when you try to game the system by trying to tweak a link of if you’ve been simply copying and pasting links directly from the address bar in your browser. So even a little thing like the URL can make a big difference with your book.

Bio of the Author in the Case Study:

Jesse Lakes is the co-founder and CEO of Geniuslink, which creates a single link that routes users to the Amazon, iTunes, or Microsoft store of their country.

Before he co-founded Geniuslink, he was the first Global Manager at Apple for the iTunes Affiliate Program.

Jesse enjoys taking his family on adventures and believes that “time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”