AmaLinks Pro® SiteStripe Migration

Build a High-Performance Amazon Affiliate Website

[Step-by-Step Tutorial]

Chapter 3

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

hi-performance-amazon-affiliate-website-tutorial-chapter-3Chapter 3 – Creating Content for your Amazon Affiliate Website

Adding content to your website will be one of your main tasks for a long time, probably almost as long as you want to keep the website.

Creating content does not have to be hard. Sure mastering keyword research, online user psychology, and a whole other set of skills can help – but you can learn and apply all of that later.

This guide will help you get some high-quality content up quickly.

A Note About Content Quality

Highest. Quality. Content. Only. Would you spend time reading and interacting with your own content? Be truthful with yourself. Only create content that is up to your own standards or even better.

People these days have a lot of high-quality options, you need to do your best. Trust me, mediocre content gets less than mediocre results. It takes great content to get great results.

Mediocre content gets less than mediocre results.

I’ve tried lower-quality content many times on many websites. Even when it works, it only works for a while. When you spend your most valuable resource, your time creating content – you want it to be around as long as possible!

Your content must be valuable and well presented or your visitors won’t click your affiliate links very often and Google won’t send you traffic. It’s that simple.

* This tutorial includes some affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and make a purchase we will receive a commission at no extra cost to you. We personally use and recommend every product and service we link to.

Adding your Basic Pages and Content

We’re going to start off by adding some basic pages that all websites should have. These are basic pages that people are familiar with. Having these pages will give Google and your visitors a sense of trust and legitimacy.

Starter Sitemap

There are a handful of standard pages that an Amazon Affiliate website needs. These pages are pages that visitors expect, Google wants to see, and help instill trust with your readers, which equates to them clicking on your affiliate links.

Here is a basic sitemap to follow. Add these pages to your website

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Blog
    • Archives
      • Category: General
      • Category: Reviews
      • Author Page
    • Posts
      • Informational
      • Product Review
      • Top Ten Recommendations

Writing Content for your Basic Pages

If you need a beginner tutorial on how to create a page in WordPress, use this tutorial. You will be using the WordPress Block Editor, and if you need instructions for using the block editor with Genesis Blocks, you can access some tutorials here and here.

 


webpage-iconCreating your Homepage

Your homepage should not be a list of all your posts, we are going to make it a static page with at least 500 – 1000 words. Here is an easy template that you can follow to build a simple effective homepage.

We will be using the Block Editor & Genesis Blocks to build a great-looking and effective homepage. Your homepage will be an overview of what your website offers and will have many gateways into deeper content for your visitors to get lost in until they click your Amazon affiliate links.

Section 1

* Try not to get hung up on using the advanced block editor settings, keeping it simple and basic Headings, images, paragraphs, and links is completely acceptable. You can update your content at a later time after it is up and running.

Use a nice background image, your website name, a tagline, & a Call-to-Action button leading to one of your best articles. (which you will create later)

Section 2

A 200 – 400 word intro about what your site is about and how it will be valuable for the reader.

Section 3

Use a three-column layout, and each column will have an image, title, description sentence, and a link. We will link these later to some of your articles and other pages.

Setting your Home Page in the WordPress Reading Settings

Now that you have a homepage created, you have to go into the WordPress Settings under “Settings > Reading” and set your homepage to be a static page, and choose your homepage. Here is a tutorial.


webpage-iconCreating your About Page

Your if anybody reads your about page at all, they will want to know about how your website will help them. A high-performance about us page informs the reader how we will help them with our valuable content.

Make this page 300 – 500 words long. Talk about how your content will help them. This will suffice for now, you don’t want to spend too much time on the about page because we have more important content to create! You can always come back later when you have more time and make the page better or more comprehensive.


webpage-iconCreating your Contact Page

Your website needs to have a contact page because Google likes to rank “real” businesses, and a contact page is a sign that you are a real person or entity.

All you need is a very simple contact page. Add a page with an intro paragraph that says something like “Thank you for visiting our website. If you have any questions or comments or just want to say hi, fill out our short form!”

Then you will add a simple contact form with Ninja Forms. This tutorial teaches you how o create a form and add it to your contact page.


webpage-iconCreating your Privacy Policy Page

A privacy policy page is another important ‘trust factor’ for Google and your visitors. Many locations have laws requiring you to have a privacy policy, but even if you do not have to your readers will appreciate it if you take their privacy seriously and are transparent about how you treat their data.

Don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it might sound. You can use a privacy policy generator such as https://getterms.io/policy/website-free or use one of the choices at https://digital.com/privacy-policy-generators/


Creating your Blog Page

Create a new page called Blog. Next, just like the homepage, go into the WordPress settings under “Settings > Reading” and set your Posts page to your new blog page. Here is a tutorial.


Creating your Categories

We are going to be creating 3 blog categories to start with to keep it simple. Here is a tutorial on setting up blog categories in WordPress.

Create these 3 categories:

  1. General
  2. Product Reviews
  3. Top Ten Recommendations

Action Steps 3.A – Adding your Basic Pages and their Content

  • Create a page called Homepage and set it to be your homepage using this tutorial
    • Add content to your homepage

  • Create a page called About
    • Add content to your About page.

  • Create a page called Contact
    • Add an intro paragraph telling people to fill out the form to contact you.
    • Add form using Ninja Forms using this tutorial.

  • Create a page called Privacy Policy
  • Create a page called Blog and set it to be your posts page using this tutorial

  • Create your Categories using this tutorial
    • General
    • Product Review
    • Top Ten Recommendations

SEO Considerations

Now that you have your basic pages and blog structure set up, it’s time to talk a little about Search Engine Optimization. Commonly referred to as SEO.

Search Engine Optimization is important so Google and the other search engines rank your websites high in the results.

In order for your pages and posts to attract traffic naturally through Google and other search engines, they have to be optimized to stand the best chance of ranking well and getting your organic traffic.

Here is where the RankMath plugin comes in.

rankmath-screenshot

RankMath is great because it is very easy to use when writing your posts in the WordPress admin.

Here is a tutorial on How to use RankMath to Optimize your posts. Read over that whole tutorial before you proceed to the next section, writing your blog posts which is where most of your website content will be.

* Don’t worry about SEO and using RankMath on the basic pages you already created, you can go back and edit those later. Those pages won’t attract a lot of search engine traffic, but the posts we are about to write will, so SEO is important moving forward from this point on in creating your content.

TIP: Don’t get hung up using RankMath to optimize while you write your posts. You can go back making edits if it is easier.

Internally Linking from Page to Page

Another aspect of Search Engine Optimization I want to mention, for now, is internal linking. It helps your users and the search engines when you link relevant text and keywords to related posts and pages. It helps them find related content.

For example, if you have a product review on camping tents, you should link to it from an informational article that mentions camping tents.

For now, when you write your blog content, keep internal linking in mind, link to another post when appropriate, and we’ll come back to this after you have a few posts. At that point, we will use the Link Whisper plugin to review and edit our internal links.

linkwhisper-screenshot

Action Steps 3.B – Search Engine Optimizations (SEO) & Using Rankmath

  • Review the Rankmath Tutorial so you can use it while you are writing your content in the WordPress editor

    or

  • Write your content without using Rankmath, just writing naturally. Then go back when you are done making edits and optimizations using RankMath. This is a good option if using RankMath is difficult and holding up your writing.

Writing Content for your Information Article

This will be your first blog article. Google loves websites that provide valuable useful content, not just affiliate links and product reviews.

It’s important that a large percentage of your website is informational posts instead of product reviews. This keeps your website more valuable to your readers, which Google likes and rewards you for.

You will be adding Amazon affiliate links to your informational pages as well.

Informational articles will make up a large part of your website.

Long articles filled with detailed information are great to attract organic traffic through Google, and often get visitors years after they are created.

Informational articles are very easy to monetize as well. Product placements using your Amazon affiliate links are easy to mix in naturally. People click naturally placed Amazon affiliate links within informational articles a lot.

If you remember, one of our requirements for our website topic was that there are a lot of sub-topics that you can write articles about.

Here is where that applies!

high-performance-thinkingCome up with a topic & title for your first informational article.

It should be easy to come up with your first topic, and instead of doing time-consuming complex keyword research, you are simply going to view a few other successful websites in your topic (a requirement for the topic!) and choose a topic that is commonly written about.

Example: If my topic was ‘camping’, I would visit some camping blogs and browse the blog titles for ideas. I see a few articles about ‘tips for camping with kids’ – so that would make a great topic. Or maybe ‘camping with pets’. Or ‘Learn about the different types of camping’.

These are all topics I see other camping blogs writing about.

Basic Content Creation

Now that we have a topic and a title in mind, it’ time to create the page and add some content.


Create a “post” in WordPress

For those who need it, here are instructions on how to create and add to a ‘post’ in WordPress. Once you complete that, here are a set of guidelines to follow to make sure your content is robust, scannable, and well presented for the internet.


Summarize your article quickly in the first paragraph.

This gives the readers an easy way to know if this article will match their expectations. Summarize what your article topic is about in 2 – 4 sentences as an article intro.


Use at least 1000 words of content

The best way to get visitors to your Amazon Affiliate website is by writing content that Google ranks well in the search results. Content length has been studied a lot, and the bottom line is Google loves long useful content.

1,000 words is the bare minimum your informational article needs to be. Anywhere from 2,000 – 3,000 words would be ideal.

Writing a longer word count without accidentally plagiarizing can be a bit of a challenge. You could also use a paragraph rewriter to rephrase things to ensure you’re good to go.


Use at least two subsections using the “Heading 2” heading

When writing an article for online consumption, you have to keep in mind that people visually ‘scan’ a web page looking for what they expect to find – way more than actually ‘reading’ it all.

One way to make your content more scannable is by adding plentiful headings. A 2,000-word article could easily have four Heading 2, each of those having 2-4 heading 3, and maybe a few Heading 4 sprinkled in where appropriate.


Add at least one bulleted or numbered list

Adding a bulleted or numbered list is another great way to make your article scannable. You can even add a quick list of your article’s main points at the bottom if there are no lists you could make about your topic.


Link to 1 or 2 outside websites or resources

Linking to outside resources shows Google that you are a part of the wider internet community, and builds trust with your users as well. Also, there is a ton of great resources out there to share with your readers!


Add 3 images within your content using free stock image websites

At the very least, images break up the article visually and make it more pleasant & interesting for your visitors. Images can also convey very important information or set a mood. Don’t underestimate the power of great images on a web page.

Here are a few free stock image websites to find images at:

  1. Pixabay
  2. Unsplash
  3. More Free Stock Images

Add a featured image

Make sure to upload a featured image. This image is used within the archives and templates, and remember that great images are very powerful to have on your website to create the mood that gets people clicking your affiliate links. Here is a tutorial if you don’t know how to add a featured image to your posts.


Advanced Content Creation

Use SEO Surfer to write your content. I personally use and love this option. Every established older piece of content I optimized using it saw improved rankings right away, and my new content written using SEO Surfer’s Content Planner ranked well right from the start.

SEO-surfer-screenshot-2

I found out that SEO Surfer does not work for every single article I tried it for, it depends on the search results returning good results. It did work great for most articles and especially for new articles, I was writing.

NOTE* SEO Surfer is a paid service.

Here is a tutorial on how to use SEO Surfer on their own blog: https://surferseo.com/blog/how-to-use-content-editor/#toc-write-in-content-editor

Matthew Woodward also has a great tutorial on how to use SEO Surfer: https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/reviews/surfer-seo/

Action Steps 3.C – Writing your Informational Post

  • Browse websites similar to what you are building and look for a topic you can write your own informational article about.
  • Come up with a topic for your first informational article
    • Basic Content Creation
      • Create a “post” in WordPress
      • Add a title about your topic
      • Use at least 1,000 – 1,500 words of content
      • Use at least two subsections using the “Heading 2” heading
      • Add at least one bulleted or numbered list
      • Link to 1 or 2 outside websites
      • Add three images using free stock image websites such as Pixabay, Unsplash, or one of these.
      • Add a featured image. Here is a tutorial. 
  • Advanced Content Creation – Optional

Writing Content for your Product Review

amazon-affiliate-product-review-example-templateNow let’s take a look at writing a product review. This is another great type of content for an Amazon affiliate website. First, a product review is great for funneling your website visitors to from your informational articles.

Second, product reviews attract people to your website that are close to buying the product, so giving them as much information as possible and encouraging them to click your links can work great.

Your job is to give them all of the information they could possibly need before making that buying decision. If you do it right – they won’t need to leave your site and search other sites for more information. They’ll get the info and data they need from you and then click on one of your affiliate links to make the purchase!

Two Types of Product Reviews

You will often see two main types of product reviews online.

Reviewing products you actually buy & try/use

This is the preferred way to create a product review. Buy and try each product you review to give an honest real review. The main benefit of this method is that your visitors will trust your recommendation more because you have actually used the product.

This is your angle to get visitors clicking your affiliate links: trust in your honest real-life recommendation.

Reviewing products you have never used

So how do you write a product review for products you have never used? Can you even write a trustworthy review if you have not used it? You sure can!

You just have to come from a different angle. Instead of earning your visitor’s trust with your recommendation – you provide them with enough gathered information to save them time in researching the product.

This is your angle to get visitors clicking your affiliate links: providing thorough valuable researched content to save them time.

DO NOT PRETEND to have used products you haven’t. Visitors are savvy and can tell bullshit when they see it. All this will do is dissuade them from clicking your links. Just don’t do it – there is no need to.

amazon-affiliate-product-review-templateInstead, use this product review template to offer as much value as possible. This product review template works great for reviewing products you have never used.

It provides every last bit of information a potential buyer could possibly want and it offers MANY opportunities to insert well-placed Amazon affiliate links. I’m telling you – it would be nearly impossible for a reader to not click on at least one of the Amazon affiliate links and get that 24-hour Amazon affiliate cookie set for you.

Amazon Product Review Article Outline

* IMPORTANT! Do not copy/paste any content when writing your review. Rewrite or paraphrase everything in your own words. The review has to be original and high-quality for Google and your visitors to pay attention.

Title: [Product Name] Review

  • Use a Heading 1 tag to tell Google and your visitors exactly what this page is about.
  • Keep the title simple

Intro Paragraph – Start with a sentence or two about your overall topic and how this product fits into the picture. This goes right underneath the Heading 1 title.

Here’s a rundown of what we’ll provide in this [product name] review. (Heading 2)

  • Add a bulleted list briefly mentioning the sections of your review – like a brief table of contents

Features and Benefits of [product name] (Heading 2)

  • Add a bulleted list of the features and benefits of this product.
  • You can find features and benefits directly from the product listings on Amazon or any other website. The manufacturer website is a great place to find them
  • Look in the Questions section of the Amazon listing for ideas

Special Features (Pros) of [product name] (Heading 2)

  • Choose two to three features that are important to this product
  • Write a full paragraph about each feature and how it helps the reader

Drawbacks (Cons) for [product name] (Heading 2)

  • Try your hardest to find 2-3 drawbacks or downsides to the product.
  • Write a sentence or two about each drawback.
    • Don’t worry, this won’t cause your visitor to leave your page.
    • Learning any downsides is important to the visitor.
    • Remember, your goal is not to “sell” the product but rather provide complete information so the visitor clicks your link instead of seeking more information elsewhere.

Video: [product name] (Heading 2)

  • Search YouTube, Vimeo, or any other public video website for a video of your product
  • Embed the video into your webpage.
  • Add a text credit below the video:Credit: [YouTube Channel] via YouTube – click here to watch directly on YouTube (open link in new tab)
  • Disregard this section if you can not find a video.

About the [product] Company (Heading 2)

  • Add a sentence or two about the company. People are very aware of the companies behind products because of social media and the internet in general – so give them a little information about the company.
    • You can find information on the company website, about page, and social media profiles and posts.

[product name] Reviews (Heading 2)

Independent Reviews and Recommendations (H3)

  • Find 2 other websites that review this product
  • Write a 2 or 3 sentence summary of that review’s top points.
    • Use the WordPress Quote Button in the text editor
  • Link to each review to give credit to the reviewer.
    • Make sure to set your credit links to open in a new tab
    • This also gives your visitors a chance to click on the link if they want, and it opens in another tab leaving your website still open. By offering this link in a new tab you are successfully keeping your page in their browser.
    • Ideally, your summary of the third part review satisfies their curiosity and they just stay on your page.

What Amazon Customers Have to Say About [product name] (H3)

  • Browse the user reviews and choose 3-5 that you can summarize.
  • Add each one to your page
    • Use the WordPress quote button
    • DO NOT Copy & Paste! Rewrite (in your own words) pertinent information found in Amazon reviews
    • Start each one with something like “One verified reviewer on Amazon said that … … …”.

The Bottom Line (H2)

  • Say some final words about the product.
    • Remind the user about what special features the product has.
    • Tell the reader that they should check out the product on Amazon
    • Link to the product on Amazon using the product name for the link text.
      • We will swap this with an affiliate link in the next chapter

Example Product Review Post

Check out this real product review example post on the AmaLinks Pro® site. Keep in mind that this example is already monetized with AmaLinks Pro®. Your product reviews will not have any of the Amazon affiliate links and product displays until we monetize your product review in the next chapter.

View the Classic Propane Stove Review

Action Steps 3.D – Writing your Product Review Post

  • Choose a product to review relevant to your topic, and you can link to it from your informational article.
  • Demo Product Review: Classic Propane Stove Review
  • Use as many of these sections in your product review as possible. Use the tutorial chapter 3 for more details.
    • Product Title Review (Heading 1)
    • Intro Paragraph
    • Features and Benefits
    • Special Features
    • Drawbacks
    • Video (optional)
    • About the Company
    • Independent Product Reviews
    • Amazon Product Reviews
    • The Bottom Line

Writing Content for your Top Ten Recommendations Post

Writing his content will be easy and is a great way to cover a lot of products on your website, and it’s easy to write just a little about each one. Choose ten products on Amazon that you will write about. Make a list and write them down.

Here is our basic template.

Create a Title: See our Top Ten 4-Person Camping Tents

Create an Introduction: Explain that you will be taking a quick look at ten different 4-person tents

(Product Comparison Table: We will be adding this later when we monetize the post)

Add Custom Product Descriptions: Add the product name and 100-150 words about each product you have chosen, and a regular link to the product on Amazon. (We’ll be monetizing it in the next chapter and will replace this link.)

Here are a few examples of Top Ten posts for inspiration. Don’t worry if they are a bit complex, you will be creating simple top ten lists at first.

Action Steps 3.E – Writing your Top Ten Recommendations Post

  • Choose a specific type of product that has at least ten different options available on Amazon.
  • Create a ‘post’ in your admin with a title stating this is a top ten list of YOUR PRODUCT HERE.
  • Add each product name as a Heading 2
  • Add a paragraph or two about each product, 100-150 words each is enough, but longer is fine too.
  • Add a link for your visitors to view the product on Amazon. Don’t worry about using Amazon affiliate links yet, and you’ll be monetizing your posts in Chapter 4
  • Tag the post with your “Top ten Recommendations” category

Some Final Thoughts

This chapter doesn’t end here.

Adding content to your website whether you write it or somebody else does is one of the main activities you will be doing for the rest of your Amazon affiliate website’s life. Google only likes up-to-date relevant content, so you have to keep the content faucet flowing.

This chapter covered three types of content, an informational article, a product review, and a top ten style list. There are many other types of content you can create, and even many ways to alter these three types.

Although you will be completing 2 more chapters to complete your high-performance Amazon affiliate website – you should be creating more of these content posts and other types on a regular basis.

The content creation never ends! That’s the bulk of your work for a website that earns a lot of money.

Questions?