A mistake I’ve seen so many authors make when linking to their book sales page is linking to the Amazon Super URL.
A lot of authors share, email, tweet the Amazon Super URL without even realizing it. One of my authors, who had been selling several hundreds of copies a day almost accidentally promoted his wrong link.
How do you generate an Amazon Super URL?
So, how do you get the wrong Amazon link? Go to Amazon.com and type in the name of a book.
Sample search term:
“Dessert guide nyc miral”
Would lead to this link
BUT, That actually results in generating an Amazon Super URL.
SO, what is an Amazon Super URL? It’s a link that was created by going to Amazon and searching for a book using a series of keywords, and then copying and pasted the link in the address field of your browser.
Amazon sees this link and thinks that you used keywords to potentially game their algorithm. If they see a number of people who leave a review coming from that particular link, they might remove it. If they see that you used a keyword in order to potentially game their algorithm system and saw a high percentage of users leave a review from that link, your book will be penalized.
Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneuer has a pretty great explanation here on Amazon Super URLs.
How to Share the Correct Amazon Link
So how do authors make sure they always share the correct link? Make sure you use the base URL.
The base url usually begins with http://www.amazon.com/ [name of book]/ebook/dp/[10 Digit ASIN Number]
If the link is potentially both an ebook and print book a search like ‘Howard Kaplan’ would result in the following url:
You want to make sure the anatomy of the link is
http://www.amazon.com/ [name of book]/dp/[10 Digital ASIN]
That will list all the print and ebook options.
And that’s it! No extra stuff. You won’t be penalized by Amazon.
More resources:
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