UPDATED January 2020
Sometimes it's hard to remember just how difficult it is being a newcomer, and I know that one of the hardest things for you all is visualizing the bigger picture and understanding what steps lie ahead.
I have to tip the hat to Mike at nichesiteazon.com as well, because he released a similar post a few weeks after I decided I was due to write my own, and he reminded me of a few things I'd forgotten.
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“What should I do next?” is probably the question I receive the most often, and this post is going to address your first 6 months after launching an amazon affiliate website.
Why Six Months?
Well, if I did any longer, the post would be a million words long! But I chose 6 months because this is typically the time that people start to see some movement with their sites. Six months is the unofficial ending period for the sandbox (more on this later), and it's a time when page one rankings and income start to become more consistent.
Once you've reached this point, you basically just have to scale.
What is the Google Sandbox?
The ‘sandbox' is a phrase used to describe the period in a new site's life when it doesn't get a lot of joy ranking in Google. It's no secret that Google doesn't tend to “trust” new sites, and as a result, it can be difficult for young sites to get themselves to page one, even if they have great content and a fair amount of backlinks and other metrics.
Imagine the sandbox to be a kind of handbrake put on your site, which is slowly released between 4-6 months after your site is first indexed.
You CAN still get traffic and rankings during this period, but it's a lot easier once your site has aged. However, the days of building a site and ranking it in 1-2 months are long gone.
There is also a mini-sandbox in the first month of a site's life, where it seems almost impossible to get anywhere and content takes a long time to get indexed.
This is fair enough, given how many people start a site and then abandon it, Google wants you to prove that you're serious about your site.
To be honest… you'll be so busy getting your site up, creating content, and adding links that you may not even notice the sandbox.
The General Strategy for an Amazon Affiliate Website
I've often said that you need to work hard to succeed with a niche site, but the work you need to do isn't actually that hard. The general strategy most niche marketers follow falls into two main categories; adding content, and link building.
There are offshoots of course, things like social media marketing, paid advertising, email marketing, and all the rest, but in terms of getting Google rankings, let's just focus on content and links.
Build Content that's Relevant
Adding content works on several levels. First of all, you're increasing the number of keywords that you can rank for. The more keywords you can rank for, the more traffic you get. Simple stuff.
On top of that though, you're also keeping your site fresh and alive. It's not the most important ranking factor, but it's well documented that Google prefers sites with fresh content to those that are static (local businesses or service-websites might be an exception to this rule, but not niche websites).
There's no hard and fast rule of how often you should post or how long your posts should be, as long as you're keeping the site fresh. Generally when a site is newer you'll want to post more often.
We recommend publishing content right away; don't worry about a schedule unless you have an active email list that expects a post per week. If you have an article ready, publish it right away to help Google find it faster, and help you climb the ranks sooner.
Google does NOT prefer a set publishing schedule.
Thirdly is something a lot of people don't think about, and that's topical relevance. Google doesn't just look at an individual post, it looks at a site as a whole.
If you've written a post about a particular subject, but the rest of your site doesn't mention it much, or at all, then you'll have a hard time ranking that post, no matter how many links you have pointing to it.
When you have four, five, or even more posts on a given subject though, and they're all interlinking and organized nicely, that creates topical relevance which helps Google determine your site to be an authority on the subject. Google likes authorities.
One thing I've found even here at HPD is that if I want a particular post to rank, I often need to add relevant supplementary content that points to the post. This isn't the case so much anymore, because Google has already established my topic and how relevant the site is.
When your site is new though? You definitely want to build relevance.
To learn more about getting content for your site, either check out our content service, or read this post on outsourcing.
Follow a Link Building Strategy
Say what you want about link building, nothing moves the dial in Google rankings like quality, relevant backlinks. Most niche marketers are aware of this and the ones that have the most success tend to follow a link building strategy. Whether that's purely outreach based, a little more grey hat, or plain spammy depends on the marketer and their risk aversion.
As with content, there's no hard and fast rule to how many links you'll need. Google rankings are relative. You can rank for some terms with NO links, but the more popular a term is, the more likely it is that you'll need links.
The general rule here is to build links in a smart way until you get the rankings you desire. Don't go overboard though.
Just because I say you might need more links than your competitors, doesn't mean I'm telling you to start building a thousand low-quality links from fiverr. Don't do that!!
Quality is definitely more important than quantity.
We now have a Link Building Service to help anyone from beginner to advanced. Check us out here.
What About Social Signals?
It's true that social signals can increase rankings to some extent, and it's equally advisable to build social signals to your site as a way of diversifying your “trust” profile and making your site look popular.
However, I tend to favor just sharing your content on social networks and growing social signals naturally.
You really don't need many, and if you're earning them organically, it means people are visiting your site.
Remember, visitors are the people who buy stuff, not Google search bots.
The Six Month Strategy
I'm going to split this into three general periods; month 1, months 2-3, and months 4-6. As you may have guessed by now, these are not hard and fast periods and your mileage may vary!
Month 1
In this month you'll want to make sure all the basic things are taken care of. Things like getting your site indexed, added to Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, and getting some social pages set up (Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter etc).
You can also start a content strategy and build some foundation links towards the end of the month.
Create Your Content Strategy
When a customer receives a niche site from us, it has 4,500 or 10,000 words of product reviews, “best of” posts, and some additional pages (privacy, about, contact etc). This is a good starting point for your site too.
Once you've got these core “money pages” up, you can start slowly adding informative and supplementary content. This is things like “How to” posts or other related articles.
For example, let's say your first few posts were something along the lines of “Best straight razor”, “Best safety razor” and “Electric razor reviews”.
These are core “money” pages and you'll want to rank them. So in month 1 (and for months 2-4 as well) you can add content that complements them well. In this case it might be keywords like “How to shave with a straight razor” or “The benefits of using electric razors” and so on.
Remember to link them to the key pages to add that topical relevance and build their importance in Google's eyes!
For frequency, I'd say to aim for a minimum of 1 new article a week, but 2 or 3 is fine too. If you CAN'T do this many, then you should probably look into outsourcing the content. You really do want to get the bulk of your content added during the first few months.
50,000 words is a good goal; 100,000 words is a solid site, and 200,000 words of quality content is going to be a solid player in many niches.
Don't be afraid to broaden out a bit either. If you're running out of content ideas for your site, don't be afraid to go into a related niche. For example, if you bought the Safety Razor site, cover Beard Oil, Shaving Brushes, Electric Razors, and so on.
One thing I'd like to point out is that it really doesn't matter if your posting schedule misses a beat or occasionally lapses. It's not going to kill your site if you post three weeks in a row then miss the fourth. Don't post too erratically, but don't stress yourself either.
For the first month, aim for a minimum of 10 new pieces of content.
To determine content length, google the keyword you're targeting and get an average word count from the articles that are already ranking on page 1; then try to beat that average by 300-500 words – or even more if the topic is broad enough.
Link Building Begins
The links I'd recommend building first are “foundation” links from your social media accounts. Sign up to Twitter (if folks interested in your niche hang out there) and put a link in your profile, and do the same for Pinterest and Facebook.
You can join others as well, such as Tumblr, Pinterest or LinkedIn. Don't over think things like adding a logo or background image at this stage, just get the accounts set up with naked urls pointing to your home page (this means no anchor text, just the pure url like https://humanproofdesigns.com)
Here's an example:
You could also start doing some of the following foundation link building, but don't go overboard:
- Blog commenting on relevant blogs (Again, just use your site name, not a keyword)
- Social bookmarking (Digg.com, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc)
- Sharing your content on your social accounts (FB, Twitter, Pinterest etc)
Extra Tasks
Start figuring out where your audience hangs out online. Are there popular forums, Facebook groups? Reddit threads? Which other blogs are popular in the niche?
You don't necessarily need to start contacting these people yet, but make a note and start reading. You'll learn a lot about your niche and its audience, and you'll get good outreach opportunities later.
Months 2-3
These are the months where you lay the foundations. Think of them as the seeds you sow in the spring, that you'll reap later when the sandbox is gone.
You should ultimately be continuing your content strategy, and ramping up your link building efforts during this period. You can also start outreaching to other bloggers and posting some link bait content.
Supplement Your Commercial Content
I would continue to build out supplementary content and “how to” content at this stage. 1-2 posts a week is ideal.
In addition, I suggest starting to build out link bait posts. This is things like:
- Lists of good bloggers/websites/forums/facebook groups in your niche
- Resource pages
- Expert roundup posts
The idea is that you start mentioning other bloggers in your posts and letting them know about it, and they might well link to you in turn. It will get you on their radar at the very least.
We've got some extensive training in the customer area on these posts as well, so I won't go into much more detail today.
Do you only need to publish content based on keywords?
No, definitely not, but if you still have keywords to use up, then it's a very good use of time; the more words you have out there, the more keywords Google can find!
Link Building – Connect, Pay, Promote
At this stage you can start to build some quality links to build upon the foundation ones you built in month 1.
I would suggest picking up our Guest Post links first, before getting anything else.
Don't make every single link have the same anchor text. Mix up “brand links” (your domain name or naked URL) and keyword links “Best straight razor”.
Again, the more aggressive you are, the more likely you will to get your site penalized, so bear that in mind. Don't go for links from somewhere like fiverr either.
Towards month 3 and 4 you may start making good connections with other bloggers, especially if your link bait posts are going down well.
Why not approach a few of them for a guest post opportunity?
You may even have landed a few links as a thank you for mentioning them previously, or a share to their social media audience.
Once more, there are a few videos on getting guest posts in the customer area, so I won't go into much detail here. What I will do is point you to a few good resources here and here.
I would say that if you could build 5-10 quality links a month during this period, then your site should start to look good by the end of month 3.
After you have one or two Guest Post links, go ahead and use our PBN links as they are more powerful and it looks more natural to graduate your link strength.
Other Tasks
Keep reading other blogs in your niche and interacting with their communities. If you're active in forums and Facebook groups, people will start to trust you and you'll be able to drop some links to your informative articles in there too.
Obviously use common sense here though, since dropping too many links can get you banned. Self promotion isn't super popular. Try to follow a 6 -1 ratio – 6 very helpful posts to 1 that includes a link to your site.
If someone is asking a question in a forum/group and you've got an article that answers it, give them the answer and link them to your post to learn more.
Additionally, use tools like semrush to see how you compare with your competitors and use something like serprobot.com to track your rankings.
Months 4-6
In these months, you really want to start working more on promoting your site, outreach, and link building. You can start to be a bit more aggressive with your link building efforts, but keep it within reasonable limits.
Content That's Balanced
At this stage I'd say it's fine to slow down slightly and post once or twice a month unless you want to post more. You could also start having guest bloggers of your own posting on your site. Host blogging is a good way of becoming an authority (since the experts are writing on YOUR site), and getting influencers to share your content.
By this stage you should have a fair amount of content on your site, a mixture of which are keyword targeted, link bait, and money pages.
Start adding more product reviews and “best of” posts as well. You'll find that you're getting a lot more love from Google at this stage, and you might even be earning relatively consistently too.
Link Building for Organic Search
I would definitely recommend adding PBN links at this stage, but I know some people prefer to avoid the risk. That's your call, and something that people have to decide for themselves.
The good thing about PBN links is that you get to fully control the link, make sure it is from a quality, authoritative source, and you can add them as you please. This is why they work so well.
I would add 5-10 links to a mixture of your homepage and inner pages (with a mixture of anchor text) per month during this stage.
As well as these links, you'll want to focus on outreach efforts. While PBNs can give you a great boost, getting proper white-hat links from legitimate sites is golden.
If you can secure 1- 2 guest post spots a month, then you're going to be doing good things for your rankings too. At this point, you should have been interacting with other bloggers for at least three months, so you should be making connections.
Read this post to learn more about how outreach worked for me.
Read this post to learn about guest posting.
What's also important to consider is that if you've been mentioning other bloggers, are active in groups and forums, and have been consistently adding content, you'll be naturally attracting links too, and that's something that will start to happen organically.
The Social Strategy
Without wanting to make your brain overload from too much information, I'd like to suggest you should also be somewhat active on your main social accounts (FB, Twitter, G+). We've found Facebook Groups (that you control) and Pinterest to be very automated ways of doing one-to-many content promotion.
At the very least, you should share all your new posts on these accounts, and if you can invest more time, then you should be interacting with other bloggers too. Share their content, follow them and follow their followers, and you'll slowly start to notice a bit of traction with social.
This is something you can start in week 1 and continue right through to month 6.
Moving Forward From Month 6
At this point, I would say you should have some good rankings, starting to get earnings, and thinking about how to scale. Here are some things for you to try at this point:
- Repeat the previous 6 months and scale it up more!
- Learn how to tweak conversions to increase income (read this)
- Build more links and make more connections.
- Think about outsourcing a lot of these things.
- Deciding whether to scale, or start another site to double up!
Closing Thoughts
As I said before, the work you need to do isn't particularly difficult, you just have to work hard at it. The above guide is a decent strategy and will make sure you're covering the basics. Feel free to ask any questions below.
One thing I'd like to add is that if you have more time and want to post more, outreach more, build more links, or add in an additional strategy, that should be fine. This is a great base to build on, but more things can help too.
Generally the best thing to do is follow the guide, learn from what works and what doesn't, and then rinse and repeat.
This is such an extensive article. What a gem! It’s true, when people first start off with their niche site, they’re quite confused about how to progress. This article will be extremely useful for them. Another thing we’ve noticed is how people give up with it comes to link building, which is probably one of the most important aspects of Off-Page Seo.
Thanks for sharing!
Klever Marketeers
This post is like an SOP for removing a website from sandbox and also at the same time ranking it. Worth sharing and highly informative, thanks for this post.
I think selecting niche is the very critical part of starting a website. How much traffic you will get each month really depends on your niche selection.
Excellent step by step guide, Bryon. Agree with you on social signals. Lots of people tend to believe that getting as many social signals can boost their ranking. While it helps to some extent, this is not a direct ranking factor, I believe. Thanks for the amazing work. Cheers!
I have also felt the sandbox effect on my website. Thanks for clarifying my doubts. Amazing Article.
Hi, just read this. Thanks for the great info. I noticed the “Learn how to tweak conversions to increase income (read this)” link is broken. Can you share a good link for that content? Thanks!
Yes social signals are important these days. What are your thoughts on facebook ads? Im getting a significantly higher bounce rate with them compared to google ads.
Nice thanks a Lot Humanproofdesigns for Providing this Content . I am regular reader of your blog i am also a blogger keep it up and dhanyawad Dubara se .
Thanks Bryon, Your all article is very helpful for me.
Hey Bryon,
It’s Daniyal from Pakistan. People like you are doing great jobs and keeping us motivated. I don’t think that I am going to abandon my site after reading this masterpiece. Keep up the good work. Thumbs up.
Appreciate the awesome guide Bryon! I am on month 2 with my affiliate site I got from Human Proof Designs, and will definitely be using some of the benchmarks and strategies you mentioned for months 2-6.
Hi Bryon.
Thank you and these are very helpful info.
I have 1 question. Recently purchased a website that focuses on depression. I went did some research and there are very low quality products on both Amazon and Clickbank. I have found other sites that I can earn a much more higher and better commission. In the beginning do you think I should promote these or should I stay with clickbank first?
Thank you once again.
Clickbank and Amazon are great for beginners, but I wouldn’t say you should stay away from other products/affiliate networks.
You just want to be sure that the products you promote have a good affiliate tracking system. Something you can log into and actually see metrics and updates on your work.
Thanks Bryon, I like how you broke it down to bite size chunks.
Hey Bryon,
Two thumbs up for the awesome post.
I am starting a new website in the sensory deprivation niche right now and that comes in handy!
Thanks!
Bryon,
Excellent useful topic.. I appreciate the depth of your post. I found this extremely illumination:
“Do you only need to publish content based on keywords? No, definitely not, but if you still have keywords to use up, then absolutely!”
I have not seen much discussion on this non-keyword effort. Any other references?
Thanks for the post.
Dino
Your posts is really helpful for me.Thanks for your wonderful post. I am very happy to read your post.
Thank you for this niche site battle strategy plan, Bryon!
… will practice to the letter!
God bless you!
Amos
Wow… This is a great content. I have a niche site that I had to abandon because it wasn’t doing well. I love your strategy and will try to use it.
Thanks for the detailed plan. I will do my best to follow that as religiously as I can.
Thank you for the post. Much appreciated!
Can you please clarify what you mean by ” Resource pages and Expert Roundup pages” under Month 2-3 (Supplement your Commercial Content) heading, maybe I will understand better with an example?
I talk about expert roundup posts and I think resource pages in the training videos.
Hi Bryon.
You mention ( adding PBN’s ).. i am at month 7 now, getting more love from google and ranking close to page 1, i ordered a hoth mini, and a GP from the hoth, i am planning to ramp up GuestPosting even more in the coming months but i was wondering how does ( PBNs ) affect the site later on if i want to sell it down the road? Will i be able to find buyers?
As of yet i haven’t used any pbns yet.
Or is the trick to use a mixture of white and grey hat?
Most site buyers are Savvy enough to understand the use of PBNs and if you look on Empire Flippers, a large number of sites they list had a PBN used, so it’s a non-issue.
Excellent post– and thanks for making it prominent that the information was updated this month (Dec 2016.)
I am puzzled by the phrase, “if you still have keywords to use up”. It seems to hint at something important, but I don’t understand. Could you clarify?
New sites come with a keyword pack, and they might not have “used them all up” yet by writing articles for them.
Thank you for the clarification, Bryon.
WOW!
Great article!
So informative and come at the right time for me in the sense that it was the major pieces in the puzzle I was looking for to give me a clear and direct strategy I could follow with clarity. I still have much more to follow up on just from this post alone, for example the ask the experts in regards to link building which I though was amazing and a priceless insight from a group of juganourts in the industry I though was priceless! plus so much more!
Amazing site and very informative and helpful I can’t wait to progress in this learning process even more here at humanproofdesigns.com.
Thank you Bryon,
Regarding the links our source service – I’m afraid I missed the bottom line- which one would you recommend for a 3 months old site? The Hoth?
The Hoth or Rank Guardian
Awesome post!! Does it still working in 2016? I see almost 5 website for each amazon niches as whatever I searched.
Well that should answer your question that it still works then 😉
I tend to come to this post a lot Bryon . Your articles tend to be to the point which I love as they don’t contain much filler. I been trying to learn more about PBN but lightning rank seems legit.
Thanks for providing us with this very clear and succinct guide Bryon, this stuff is so important. Will definitely be referring to this in due course!
I feel lost most days and not sure I am doing anything right. I just want to write about what I like. I am so lost 🙁
There’s nothing wrong with that Tammy, just keep writing! One top of that though, think about doing some guest posts for other blogs or building some backlinks. Your content will do that much better.
Wow, this is an excellent guide! You make it so clear cut and easy to understand, just what I needed. I’m starting on month 3 of my site, just did my first expert roundup post so perfect timing! 🙂 Thanks for the valuable info, and the sandbox tip – now I understand why Google is not giving me much love despite all the link building & such, I’m not even going to start on the Google dance. Great read, so glad I subscribed!
Great post, it’s really hard in month 2 after lots of work and not seeing much happen other than up and down ranks. That’s where i’m at, glad to see this post and put my thoughts into more of perspective outlook. Can’t wait for month six!
Excellent guide Bryon! One thing is for sure when you’re starting out it’s so easy to get overwhelmed with all the things you need to know and do. This is a super effective and actionable strategy. Look forward to reading around your blog a bit more.There’s some REALLY getting started guides out there I wish we had when we started. Like this one https://marketever.com/make-money-amazon-affiliate-niche-site/ from Al-Amin (how I found you today!).
Thanks Jesse & Alyssa, Let me know if you get that roundup done.
I’ll make a note! Are you in Skype or Twitter?
Great article, thanks very much
Hi Bryon,
I dig your point about hard work. This is more about smart, effective, relaxed work than anything else. Fab post.
Ryan
Excellent Post Dom
I’m just starting my outreach and link building strategy to try to get some more traffic to my site so this post was perfect timing for me.
Thanks! 🙂
Ah excellent, let me know how it goes!
You’re right, Bryon! This is great information even if your site is older! I’ll be referring back to this post. Thanks!
Yeah I think this can be applied to any site in any stage.
Wow, such a great post. My website is less than 2 months old, so I’m looking for how to plan ‘better strategies’ to grow my website. Your article got it covered. Many thanks
Glad it helped 🙂
Hey Bryon,
Great post! Where is the customer area login though?
Emailed you
Great article Bryon, I like it!
Quite a good plan and strategy! 🙂
Hope my new niche sites make it big.
Last month I reached my first goal online and that was 500$. I was really happy! It was also the peak month in my niche…
Wow great stuff Tomaz!
Hi Bryon – another great article that really helps to clearly map out a path for people that may just be wondering, what next?
All the best, Mark
Thanks Mark!