Build, Rank & Bank an Amazon Affiliate Site

Build, Rank & Bank an Amazon Affiliate SiteI am going to show you how to build, rank & bank an Amazon affiliate site from start to finish.

I am going to build an Amazon affiliate site that will make $100 a month.

How good would it be to add an extra $100 a month to your salary any time you want to?

With small things comes big things, build enough small sites that rake in small amounts you will end up with a decent passive revenue stream.

I am not going to go for a $2000 a month niche site, simply because I would not want to reveal any niche of this quality here.

I am going to show you how to find a niche that will make you money, simply because they are easy to rank in Google search.

I am going to use Amazon.com and rank my Amazon affiliate site no. 1 on Google.com.

What you are going to learn;

  • How to find a profitable niche with easy to rank keywords
  • How to set up your Amazon affiliate site
  • How to write content for your new Amazon affiliate site
  • How to rank your affiliate site no. 1 in Google search

The first part of the process is the most important, it can take days, weeks and sometimes months.

To find this niche it took me 1 week. Of course I was not looking for 8 hours a day, I did some keyword research when I had some spare time.

I would say that I did 1 hour keyword research every day for a week in order to find this niche.

I know this is a great niche because the sites that rank no. 1 for the selected keyword are weak, I can certainly out rank them and make a little money from doing so.

To start off you need to find a profitable niche that has keywords that we can be certain to rank no. 1 for. Then we can start making some money from those lovely Amazon commission cheques.

Do not rush the first step, this will make or break your site. This part will determine if you make some money, or very little money.

If you can’t find a niche in the first few days, do not panic and rush into any niche, this will be your downfall.

The key to making money online through Amazon affiliate sites is preparation and planning.

Follow this guide step by step and you will be making loads of money too.

I also need to make it clear that “relevancy” is very important. Your content has to be relevant to the keyword that you are trying to rank for. This will make sure that you have a low bounce rate, it will help you rank no. 1.

Before we get started you are going to need:

Step 1: Find a Profitable Niche

Do not rush this step, if you do you are doomed to fail.

Take your time here, plan everything down to the last detail and you can be certain that you will develop a money making Amazon affiliate store/review site.

Open Amazon.com in another browser window.

We are looking for high value products, preferably around $50 to $100.

However the amount you make is all relative to how many monthly searches your keyword gets. So a low cost product can still bring in a decent affiliate cheque every month if it gets a lot of monthly Google searches.

When we find one, we are going to quickly analyse the competition of the niche using MozBar within Google search.

If on first glance the niche appears too competitive we will not even go into keyword research, we will move onto another product/niche.

Before we start you want to build a site around buying keywords. We want people to get to our site that are at the end of the sales funnel and are ready to buy.

These are the buying words that I like to look at:

  • Best
  • Reviews
  • Top
  • Rating
  • Guide

Now I will reveal how I find a product to develop a niche site around. I use keyword.io for this. This is a free to use tool, each and every tool that I use in this process is free.

Use Keyword.io to find Amazon buying keywords

Enter one of the “buying words” into the search bar. Make sure that you have “Amazon” selected and your location. I am building a “USA” Amazon affiliate site, so I have selected USA. Now hit the “search” button.

Take a look at your Amazon keyword list

Scroll down to take a look at all those lovely buying keywords that people have been searching for on Amazon. Now we need to find out which ones have a decent product price, are popular and are easy to rank.

Select a keyword from the list and head on over to Amazon.com. I had to do this over and over and over until I found the keyword that I am going to use for my Amazon Affiliate site here today.

This process is the most important part, do not skim over it, or your new niche site will be a waste of time and effort.

Now add you keyword in the search bar at Amazon.com

Enter one of the keywords in the search bar and take note of the best selling product price. The keyword I have chosen “best epilator” has a product value of $28. There are more expensive models which are popular too at around $100. This is a great little niche to look into. Make sure that the products have good reviews.

We also want a product that will sell all year round. Do not go for a season specific product like Christmas jumpers.

We want steady affiliate commission cheques each and every month.

This is going to take some time, I can’t stress this enough. Do not rush this step.

Next I need to know if this buying keyword gets a lot of monthly searches. I always use wordze.com for this, it is quick and easy.

Go to Wordze.com to find out your keyword search volume

Click on “ultimate research” then enter your keyword, choose a name for your project, select the country you are targeting and hit the search for keywords button.

Take a look at your selected keyword search volume

Okay, so my selected keyword has a pretty high product price and a fairly high search volume. This keyword looks promising, now I need to asses the top ranking sites for this selected keyword. Can I out rank them?

Keep this window open, we are going to use Wordze.com again a little later on.

To do this quickly we are going to use MozBar and perform a quick Google search.

Take a look at the competition for your selected keyword

How do I know that this is an easy to rank keyword. Well first of all I am looking at the number of backlinks that each site has. If the majority of the sites have less than 50 backlinks then I know that I can out rank them.

Then I take a look at the “PA”, if most of the sites have PA under 40 then I know I can out rank them. For my selected keyword “best epilator” there are sites ranking in the top 10 with zero backlinks and a PA score of 1. In fact there are 3 sites in the top 10 like this, I know that I can rank no. 1 for this particular keyword.

Just to make sure we are going  to run the keyword through some free keyword competition checker tools. If the score is low, we are going to move onto the next step. I use three keyword competition score tools for this.

The first free seo keyword competition score analyser is over at SpyFu.com.

Analyse the keyword competition over at SpyFu.com

SpyFu.com gives my selected keyword a ranking difficulty score of 29. Anything under 40 has low competition and is worth looking at. So my selected keyword walks through this test.

The next keyword competition tool that I use is at kwfinder.com.

Selected keyword competition score from kwfinder.com

We are looking for a seo competition score below 30. My selected keyword scores 26, and passes my next test.

The final free keyword competition tool that I use is at keywordrevealer.com.

KeywordRevealer.com competition score

Again I look for a competition score below 30. My selected keyword scores just 18. I am super confident now that I can rank no. 1 for my selected keyword.

My next step is to work out how much this keyword is worth. I am looking to build an Amazon affiliate site that will bring me in at least $100, will this keyword do this for me?

We know that my keyword gets 3600 searches a month, the top ranking site will get about 33% of this traffic. So I need to calculate how much traffic this will be.

3600 x 0.33 = 1188

I now know that my site will get at least 1188 visitors for my selected keyword.

Now I need to know what percentage of these people will buy an epilator. My conversion rate is never below 5%, so I will go with that for this calculation.

1188 x 0.05 = 59.4

I now know that around 60 people will buy something on Amazon every month being referred from my niche affiliate site.

Now I need to know how much money I will make from each Amazon sale. We know that the best selling product in my selected niche sells for $28 and that I will get 4% commission on every sale.

28 x 0.04 = 1.12

So I know that I will make $1.12 from every sale and that I will get around 60 sales every month. Now I can calculate how much this keyword is worth to me each and every month.

1.12 x 59.4 = 66.53

I am certain that this keyword will net me at least $66.53 each and every month.

To bump up my monthly earning for this little affiliate site I am going to create 4 more pages based around 4 more keywords. My site will have 5 pages that I am going to rank no. 1 in Google search.

Now I need to find 4 more keywords. We need to drop back over to Wordze.com for this.

Earlier we entered our selected keyword into Wordze.com and we got a whole load of keywords for our niche. We now need to pick 4 more keywords from the list. We will quickly analyse the competition using just SpyFu MozBar in Google search.

Remember we want more buying keyword. Do not forget this. We want keywords where our web site visitors are ready to buy.

I have selected:

So I found more keywords that I actually require, that’s even better. I will build an 8 page site around the selected keywords. I will build backlinks to the five keywords above.

I will use the keywords below to build out the site, I will not build backlinks to these pages. They have such low search volume and are not worth the effort.

I will use the extra keyword for posts on my blog page. I will also add extra posts to the blog based around “how to” keywords. I will use Yahoo Answers to find these.

I am not fussed at how many monthly searches these keywords get for my blog section, they are purely to fill the site out and to drop internal backlinks to my five selected money pages.

Other keywords to build out the site;

I am going to establish how much all the keywords are worth using the same calculation that I did above for my selected keyword “best epilator”.

My 5 keywords have a combined monthly worth of:

$131.57

Of course this is only if I rank each and every keyword no. 1 in Google search. Which is exactly what I am going to show you how to do.

I know I can rank each keyword no. 1 and it is going to take me 3 months to do this. The work will be minimal because I am going to outsource all the link building, for cheap of course.

All I have to do is write 8 blog posts and I will have an extra $100 each and every month in three months time.

The content has to be good and highly relevant to the selected keyword.

Remember, little things add up to big things. Don’t be put off my a low monthly income niche, the more of these that you have, the more you will make.

It’s not really the amount that we are going to make, it is really how easy the keywords are to rank that we are mostly concerned about.

However you do want a decent return on your time investment.

Step 2: Find a Domain Name

Before you buy a brand new domain you can look for an expired domain over at expireddomians.net.

If you can find an expired domain with existing backlinks it will give you a little head start.

Enter your root keyword into the search bar at expireddomains.net

Enter you main keyword into the search bar. Now we need to filter the results.

Filter the number of available domains by backlinks

First of all add a minimum of 10 backlinks and select “only available domains”.

Now apply a domain page authority filter

Now click on the “Adwords & SEO” tab and enter a minimum domain authority and page authority of 10.

Then click the “Apply Filter” button.

You will then have a list of expired domains with fairly decent metrics.

If you like the look of any domain then you can take a look at its backlink profile using SEO SpyGlass. If it has a lot of exact match anchor text backlinks or spam Chinese backlinks then leave the domain alone.

For my selected keyword there are very few domains available with decent metrics, also I do not like the name of them, they are spam domains.

I am going to have to use a brand new domain name for this project. I am now going to head on over to NameCheap.com to get my new domain name. I use NameCheap because they offer free WhoisGuard.

I want a brand domain name, Google loves a brand, so let’s give it what it wants.

I want my main seed keyword at the beginning of the domain. To help you find a branded domain you can use bustaname.com.

Pop your keyword in and find your branded domain name

Enter your seed keyword, select your extension, I am going for a .com because I am ranking on Google .com. Now hit the “Go” button and select a branded domain name that you like.

I like “epilatorly” so I am going to head on over to NameCheap.com and purchase that domain name.

I will use BlueHost.com for hosting this site. So I will change the NameServers at NameCheap.com and point them to BlueHost. Then I will drop WordPress onto the domain and get cracking with the next most important step, writing the content.

If you need help in setting up a WordPress site on your Blue Host hosting take a look at this video;

This is how you do the one click install, it is very easy to do. I always do the manual install, takes a bit longer and you have to set up the database yourself, which you can do, but if you are new I would not.

Most of the time I set up my affiliate sites with my own custom made templates using Dreamweaver using flat html pages. They load up super fast, in this case I will use WordPress so that you can all do the same and follow along with me.

The domain I selected for my epilator Amazon affiliate site is: epilatorly.com

My epilator Amazon affiliate site

Take a look at my affiliate site.

Note how I have set things up and linked the pages together.

If you want to know what WordPress Plugins to use go for these ones:

  1. Ad Inserter (perfect for adding Amazon affiliate code to your site)
  2. Cookie consent (you need to have this)
  3. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (we need this to check our bounce rate and organic traffic)
  4. Social Share Bar (Digg Digg Alternative)
  5. Spam Protection by CleanTalk
  6. UpdraftPlus (to backup your site to DropBox)
  7. Yoast SEO

These are the main ones that you will need. If you only get one then make sure that it is Yoast SEO.

I have other security plugins, which you will not require. The more you have the slower your site will run.

Step 3: Write Your Content

Okay, so we have our easy to rank keywords ready to roll, we have our domain name ready to roll with a fresh install of WordPress on there. Now we need to write the content.

I will write one piece of highly optimised content around each of my selected keywords.

Your content needs to have:

  • 2000 words or more
  • bullet points and numbered lists
  • keyword density of 1% or below (keyword to appear at top, middle and bottom of content)
  • at least 3 images with keyword in at least 1 ALT tag and file name
  • at least 1 related video (does not have to be yours)
  • keyword in main (H1) heading
  • keyword in other headings (H2)
  • exact keyword in URL extension
  • keyword in TITLE TAG at the beginning (use text on Ads on Google search for best CTR)
  • keyword in DESCRIPTION TAG
  • an outbound link to an authority site (not a competitor)
  • internal links to other related content on your site
  • something different to what is already ranking in the top 10
  • highly relevant text related to your keyword

Stick to this strategy for writing the content for your niche Amazon site and it will be highly optimised to rank no. 1 in the SERPs. This is what I go by every time, and sure enough it works every time too.

Do not miss anything out from the check list. We need to make sure that our site is bullet proof. When you add backlinks to content like this there is only one way it can go, that is straight to a number 1 Google ranking.

Step 4: Build Some Backlinks

I am going to show you my 3 month backlink building schedule that I use to rank 5 keywords all at the same time.

Over a 3 month period I am going to rank the selected keyword number 1 in Google search.

It’s actually not a lot of work, it’s just annoying that it takes 3 months to achieve.

Building backlinks slow and steady is the only way to go. Build them too fast and you will not get anywhere, be prepared to wait 3 months before you hit the top spot.

My Backlinks strategy for this project:

  • Social Signals
  • PBN Backlinks
  • Expired Tumblr Backlinks

First of all each of the five pages that I want to rank no. 1 for need social signals. Getting social signals is the first thing that you need to do for every page before you get any backlinks.

For the social signals for each page I am going to use this gig on SEOCLERKs. For just $1 you get 1500 mixed social signals, it is the best package that I have come across.

You get social signals right across the board from:

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Google Plus

I am going to get 60 PBN backlinks from seo clerk to each page each and every month over 3 months. For this I use this gig. $30 for 60 PBN backlinks is very good indeed and definitely worth the money for sure. These are sure to rank these low competition keywords. There is another service you can use too, this one you get 40 PBN backlinks for $5. I will be using this service too.

I am also going to send 10 Tumblr backlinks to each page each month. The Tumblr backlinks will come from expired blogs that I have re-registered, they will have high domain authority and at least 10 backlinks pointing to them.

It is super important to mix up your anchor text. Do not use your exact keyword match anchor for every PBN backlink.

This is the anchor text that I will use for every 30 PBN backlinks that I buy:

  • exact keyword x10
  • URL x10
  • click here x5
  • visit this site x5

I let the Fiverr seller do the content for the backlinks, it isn’t great, but the most important thing is that the backlinks index in Google search. I know that most of them will.

I will index these backlinks slow and steady after delivery, 3 a day at the most. I will simply do a Google search “submit to Google” and simple add each PBN url to Google index. If they are indexed I will see the URL in the Google search results when I pop it into Google search.

This is a super simple backlink strategy with limited work on my side as I am rather busy.

Step 5: Track Your Ranking

You can track your ranking using the free software Rank Tracker.

Social signals delivered for all five posts: September 1st 2016

My Amazon affiliate site keywords and URLs

I will build 30 PBN backlinks to each post throughout September.

I will do a ranking update on the 1st of every month.

Rankings without any backlinks done at the start of September 2016:

Best epilator: 21

Epilator reviews: not in top 50

Best epilator for face: not in top 50

Emjoi epilator reviews: not in top 50

Remington epilator reviews: 39

Watch these rankings rise as the backlinks start to flow. I will also add some blog posts for internal backlinks to really get things pumping good.

October 3rd 2016:

Best epilator: 15

Epilator reviews: 19

Best epilator for face: 24

Emjoi epilator reviews: 15

Remington epilator reviews: 22

After one month of backlink building we have achieved page 2 and page 3 rankings on all keywords. This is exactly where I expected to be, I am on target for number one ranking after three months.

This is exactly what I did for this first month (same for every page):

Each page got 10 Tumblr backlinks from different Tumblr blogs. I used this guy on seo clerks to scrape me some, I just had to register them. He gave me over 70 expired blogs for just $5, bargain.

I got 30 PBN backlinks from the Fiverr gig, however I have found a better gig on seo clerks that I will use in month 2. I would have used it in month 1 too had I seen it earlier. I suggest you use this seo clerks gig for all your PBN backlinks. You get 300 PBN backlinks for $30, which works out cheaper than the Fiverr gig because you can give as many URLs as you wish, so one gig will take care of all 5 pages on my site.

I wanted some interactivity on the posts so I purchased some blog comments from seo clerks.

That’s it, not a lot of work to get page 2 rankings. I will continue to build the backlinks in month 2 and will make sure that the posts hit page one by the end of this month.

November 3rd 2016:

Let’s find out how those backlinks have pushed epilatorly up the SERPs.

Best epilator: 16

Epilator reviews: 19

Best epilator for face: 16

Emjoi epilator reviews: 12

Remington epilator reviews: 16

As you can see we have seen some rank improvement. Not as much as I would have liked, but I have barely done any work to achieve these ranks.

I am going to do some Web 2.0 tiered link building in month 3 to really push the site on, this is what needs to be done to hit the top spot.

I am going to up my game a little in month 3, I will hit the top spot for the main keyword at the very least.

The good news is that all keywords sit on Google page 2 after two months of backlinks. If I spend a little more time with this site I can push it to no. 1.

This is what I did in month 2:

The start of month 2 I did 10 high PA Tumblr backlinks to each of the five pages I am trying to rank.

Each page got another dose of PBN backlinks from these Seo Clerk & Fiverr gigs:

On average I managed to get 15 to 20 of the PBN backlinks indexed for each page.

40 PBN backlinks

30 PBN backlinks

30 PBN links with great metrics

I also got a bunch of Web 2.0 backlinks using this service on seo clerks.

I also got this multi backlinks package from seo clerks for each page, however they have only just been delivered…so none of the backlinks are indexed yet.

That’s all for month 2. I didn’t do any work myself, just spent a few bucks on Fiverr and SEO Clerk services.

December 4th 2016:

Rankings after 3 months backlink building are as follows:

Best epilator: 19

Epilator reviews: 8

Best epilator for face: 9

Emjoi epilator reviews: 15

Remington epilator reviews: 12

As you can see, all keywords are on page 1 or 2 of Google search USA.

I would normally be ranked no. 1 at this stage with any Amazon affiliate site I decide to build.

With this project I took the lazy route, and the rankings have suffered.

I completely took my eye off the ball, way too many exact match anchors indexed naturally, which has really hurt the rank of this site.

Now I have some extra work to do in month 4. My exact match anchor text ratio was well over 30%, which is not good at all.

My calculations suggest that I need a whopping 600 backlinks just to straighten things out. I have already got started on this, I will be using long tail anchors and branded anchors to get the site back on track.

Hopefully at the end of month 4 the site will be ranked no. 1.

I should have built all the backlinks myself using my web 2.0 backlinks strategy, the site would be no. 1 by now if I had taken that route.

Instead I went down the lazy route because I did not have time to go with the web 2.0 backlinks strategy.

In month 3 I got lots of high PA Tumblr backlinks using this service.

You need to be very careful when ordering PBN backlinks, make sure that you do not get too many exact match anchors indexed.

I got lots of exact match anchors indexed without realising that my “click here” “brand” and “URL” anchors were not indexing to counter balance them.

Moving ahead, I will continue to build high PA web 2.0 backlinks indexing 20 a day, which I do not recommend. I am only doing this to correct my exact match anchor text ratio problem.

The site will jump around a lot due to this, however my rankings will settle when I have solved the problem.

January 3rd 2017:

Rankings after 4 months backlink building are as follows:

Best epilator: 23 small rank drop

Epilator reviews: 23 big rank drop

Best epilator for face: 14 small rank drop

Emjoi epilator reviews: 10 small rank improvement

Remington epilator reviews: 20 big rank drop

In month 4 I had to index a hell of a lot of backlinks to bring down my exact match anchors. This in turn has pretty much destroyed the rank of this site.

In month 5 I am not going to build any backlinks to the site. If I have time I am going to add content to the site focused around long tail low competition keywords.

This in turn will start to bring in some traffic and most importantly some sales.

Step 6: Track Earnings

You can track your affiliate earning in your Amazon affiliate account.

There will be no sales throughout September 2016. The site is new and I do not expect anything.

I will do a earnings report on the 3rd October 2016.

3rd October 2016:

As expected, no sales to report at the end on month 1. I will not expect any sales until my posts hit page one. I don’t expect any sales until the start of month 3 of this project.

3rd November 2016:

I did not expect any sales throughout October, but I actually got one, even though the site is not ranking on Google page 1 for any keywords yet. For the month of October I made a whopping $5.78.

October Amazon affiliate site earning report

I will probably see a similar return throughout November until the site hits the first page of Google search at the start of December.

4th December 2016:

I added UK Amazon affiliate links to each post. In November I got 2 sales, one from Amazon.co.uk and one from Amazon.com.

Amazon affiliate site November earnings report

In January I will have a bit more to report to you regarding earnings. In month 4 I will make sure all keywords are on page one of Google search.

3rd January 2017:

Earnings report December 2016

Throughout December the site made me a whopping $12.54. The site did not generate any UK sales.

234 thoughts on “Build, Rank & Bank an Amazon Affiliate Site”

  1. Não é tão simples seguir um roteiro e classificar na primeira página dos mecanismos de pesquisa, exceto se o seu artigo for exclusivo. Mesmo assim algo exclusivo tem um público muito restrito. O google, por exemplo tem uma lista de sites que ele julga ser de “primeira linha” e classifica na primeira posição até uma cópia mal feita de qualquer conteúdo. O que me chama a atenção e dizer que o algoritmo deles desvenda a cópia do original. É irritante, porque eu mesmo já criei alguns artigos originais e eles foram copiados por outros sites e ainda estão com uma classificação melhor que e minha. Pior, estes artigos nem foram editados, apenas copiados e colados. Explica?

    Reply
    • Você verificou os backlinks que apontam para esses sites? Meu palpite é que eles têm mais links do que você. Se eles copiaram seu conteúdo, você não precisa se preocupar. Você pode atualizar e modificar e também certificar-se de que está otimizado para as palavras-chave, o que também pode ser o problema. Certifique-se de que sua palavra-chave não esteja no texto muitas vezes, você pode ter otimizado demais.

      Reply
    • If you send us an email we will take a look for you, we just need your URL’s and main focus keywords for each page.

      Reply
    • The site makes $40 to $60 every month. I have not had time to work on the site to be honest, which is why there has not been an update. I didn’t put a lot of work into the site, the earnings will continue to rise as the site ranks up on its own. I don’t intent to do any more work on the site in the near future.

      Reply
  2. hi nick am kinda new to WordPress can you recommend a video tutorial to customizing the theme you recommended, secondly must i create my site before submitting my application to amazon, Co’s i don’t want to put in the work and never get approved

    Reply
    • The only video I can find for customising the Optimizer there is this one, it’s not the best. Pretty much everything can be done with ease through the Appearance—-Customize section in your WordPress dash. I recommend registering your domain name, dropping WordPress on the site before you add it to your Amazon affiliate application…you do not need to add any content to the site.

      Reply

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