In this lesson, you’ll learn the content strategy you should use to create a successful affiliate marketing website.
- 0:00 | Hey, it’s Sam Oh and in this lesson, I’m going
to walk you through a simple affiliate marketing - 0:04 | content strategy.
- 0:06 | More specifically, we’ll be taking the list
of topics from your keyword research and - 0:10 | organizing them into logical structures
that’ll help grow your SEO traffic to your - 0:15 | affiliate site.
- 0:16 | Now, as I mentioned in lesson 3.1., we want
to create a massive web of related content, - 0:22 | covering all of the important
topics in our niche. - 0:25 | And the main benefit here is that all of
these relevant pages will be connected - 0:30 | and essentially work together to build
what SEOs loosely call “topical authority.” - 0:36 | And if we had to define topical authority, it’s
when a website becomes an authoritative - 0:40 | source on a given topic in the eyes
of visitors and search engines. - 0:45 | Now, the two parts that make up so-called
“topical authority” are topical coverage, - 0:50 | meaning content, and backlinks.
- 0:53 | We’ll talk about the latter a bit
later because I want to illustrate - 0:56 | the importance of topical coverage.
- 0:59 | Let’s say you have a site in the golf niche.
- 1:01 | If you publish a post on the best
golf clubs, no one’s going to think: - 1:05 | “Oh yeah…they’re the authority” in
golf or golf clubs or golf equipment. - 1:09 | To become the go to place for information
on golf, you’d need to cover topics like “best - 1:15 | golf balls,” “best putters,” “best golf shoes,” “how
to hit a driver 300 yards,” “what is a handicap in - 1:21 | golf,” and I could go on for hours.
- 1:24 | Plus, the content would actually
need to be good. - 1:28 | Now, even this example hardly illustrates
becoming an authority in the golf niche - 1:33 | because there’s just so many things you’d
need to cover because golf is a huge topic. - 1:38 | This is why focusing on a sub-niche
is a much better approach to building - 1:43 | topical authority.
- 1:44 | And this is the way we chose
a niche in module 2. - 1:48 | So you’d cover topics like: “best
golf balls,” “pro v1 golf ball review,” - 1:52 | “pro v1x golf ball review,” “taylormade
tp5 review,” “how many dimples are on - 1:57 | a golf ball,” “how to properly clean golf balls,”
“which golf ball generates the most spin,” - 2:02 | “best golf balls for high handicappers,”
and add another hundred or so topics. - 2:07 | Assuming your content is of high quality,
over time, people will begin to see you as - 2:11 | an expert in your niche and because of that,
they’ll more likely link to your web pages - 2:17 | because it’s well-trusted.
- 2:18 | Again, I’m barely scratching the surface, but my
point should be clear: building so-called topical - 2:24 | authority a) requires extensive topical
coverage; b) is much more achievable - 2:31 | in a sub niche because of a); and c) building it
is a win-win for visitors and website owners. - 2:38 | For visitors, they’ll find a plethora of
resources to dig through on your site. - 2:43 | And for website owners, you’ll likely have better
potential to rank for topically related keywords, - 2:48 | assuming your content gets linked to.
- 2:50 | And I’ll expand on why topical authority may
help your rankings later in this lesson. - 2:55 | Now, if you’ve been building your site
with me throughout this course, then - 2:58 | you should have narrowed in on
a sub-niche and done all your - 3:01 | keyword research for that sub-niche.
- 3:03 | I chose baby products as my main
niche and car seats as my sub-niche. - 3:08 | And in total, I generated a list of 239 car-seat
related keywords that I also categorized into - 3:15 | the four different “types” of affiliate keywords.
- 3:18 | General comparisons; Branded comparisons;
Product reviews; and T&A keywords. - 3:24 | The only major thing that’s left to do
in this planning stage is to map related - 3:29 | topics together so we can start
building our web of related content. - 3:33 | And we’ll be using our keyword lists to do this.
- 3:36 | Now, if you get no clue what I’m talking
about, then I highly recommend going - 3:40 | back to lesson 3.2. where I walked you
through how to do keyword research for - 3:44 | affiliate marketing sites.
- 3:46 | But if you’re all caught up, then let’s
talk about perhaps the most efficient - 3:50 | way to map affiliate topics.
- 3:52 | And that’s by creating product clusters.
- 3:55 | A product cluster is a simple content structure
that connects a general comparison post - 4:00 | with multiple product review posts.
- 4:02 | Let’s look at what this might
look like for my car seat site. - 4:05 | So first, I’ll choose a general comparison
topic from my list like “best car seat for - 4:10 | 3-year olds.”
- 4:12 | This topic will sit at the top of our pyramid.
- 4:14 | Now, because general comparison topics
will require product comparisons and - 4:18 | recommendations, we’ll need to choose
some car seats to compare in our post. - 4:23 | And in my opinion, the best place to start
is to draw from real-life experiences. - 4:28 | For example, I actually own nine car seats –
so it’s fair to say that I’ve done my share of - 4:34 | research and real-life testing.
- 4:36 | Now, I also have a couple kids that are
now older than three and so I know that - 4:40 | the types of car seats we’ll be
covering are “convertible car seats.” - 4:45 | One of our car seats is the Diono Radian
3RXT which I really like so I’ll definitely include - 4:51 | it in my round-up.
- 4:52 | Now, visually speaking, we would just
add a branch under our main topic: - 4:56 | “best car seat for 3-year olds” and
call it “Diono Radian 3RXT review.” - 5:02 | Now, another car seat we have is the
Britax Marathon which I also like and - 5:07 | would recommend.
- 5:08 | So let’s add another branch.
- 5:10 | Now, I’m not particularly happy with some
of the other convertible car seats I’ve bought, - 5:14 | so let’s look at our product review keywords to see
which other car seats we could potentially add. - 5:20 | Now, I’ve already gone ahead and
looked at product specs, reviews, - 5:23 | and installation videos for 14
different convertible car seats. - 5:27 | And after researching, I’ve narrowed
down our list of “best car seats for - 5:31 | 3-year olds” to a total of six car seats.
- 5:35 | The two that I have hands-on experience
with, the Britax one4life, Graco Extend2fit, - 5:40 | Graco 4ever dlx, and the Safety 1st Go and Grow.
- 5:44 | So let’s add branches to our flow
chart for each of these models. - 5:48 | So to review, we know we’re going to create
a post on the best car seats for 3-year olds - 5:52 | plus, we’re going to write six different
product reviews for each model in our - 5:56 | general comparison post like “Britax one4life
review”, “Graco extend2fit review” and so on. - 6:03 | Now, from an on-page perspective, we can simply
“connect” these pages by using an internal link - 6:09 | from our general comparison
post to our product reviews. - 6:14 | And it would also make sense to link from our
product reviews to our general comparison post. - 6:19 | We now have a product cluster.
- 6:22 | Now, the reason why I call product clusters
efficient is because as your library of product - 6:27 | reviews gets bigger, creating content for
general comparisons gets faster and easier. - 6:33 | For example, when we go to create a post on
let’s say… “the best convertible car seats for - 6:38 | small cars,” we’ve already covered the Diono
Radian 3RXT review in our best car seat for - 6:44 | 3-year olds post.
- 6:45 | And that model just happens to be
the go-to car seat for small cars. - 6:50 | Now, branded comparisons also fit
seamlessly into product clusters. - 6:55 | Looking at our list of branded comparison
keywords, you’ll see that there’s this topic - 6:59 | “graco extend2fit vs 4ever”.
- 7:02 | Well, we just wrote two product reviews
for these so writing a branded comparison - 7:07 | post would be super-easy.
- 7:09 | And of course, we could easily add
internal links to the product reviews - 7:14 | whether they’re one-way or
reciprocal in a very organic way. - 7:18 | Alright, the last type of keywords on
our list are T&A keywords which again - 7:22 | stands for trust and authority.
- 7:24 | And these are mostly informational topics.
- 7:27 | Now, these topics may not directly
impact your revenue but they serve - 7:31 | important purposes: they can help you
earn more backlinks, reach larger audiences, - 7:36 | and build trust and authority.
- 7:39 | Now, unlike product clusters, informational
posts on affiliate sites typically have less of - 7:45 | a pyramid-type structure to them.
- 7:47 | For example, if you have four pages on
T&A topics, they won’t necessarily link - 7:52 | together creating a perfect pyramid.
- 7:54 | Internal linking on these pages will mostly come
down to “do it if and when it makes sense.” - 8:01 | For example, let’s say we’re
a writing post on car seat safety. - 8:05 | It would be perfectly natural to link to
another page on “when car seats expire”, - 8:10 | “when you should turn the car seat
around from rear to forward facing” - 8:14 | and “requirements to change
to a booster seat.” - 8:17 | These are all related to car seat
safety and they all happen to be - 8:21 | topics on our T&A keyword list.
- 8:23 | Now, it would also make perfect sense to link
from our post on “when do car seats expire” - 8:29 | to our commercial page on “best car seats”
because people reading that post may need - 8:35 | to buy a new one and could probably
use some help narrowing their search - 8:39 | to an appropriate product.
- 8:41 | As you can see, creating these structures
and mapping content isn’t so much about - 8:46 | strict adherence as it is about creating
a strong foundation for your content SEO. - 8:51 | When you have a big list of topics and you
prioritize based on search volumes or keyword - 8:57 | difficulty scores, it’s tough to visualize
the relationships between your content. - 9:02 | And what happens more often than not,
is that you haphazardly do internal linking - 9:07 | creating poor structure, which just makes
ranking your pages harder than it has to be. - 9:13 | But by having a solid internal linking plan,
you’re going to do yourself a couple favors - 9:17 | that should ultimately help you rank higher in
Google and get more free traffic to your pages. - 9:23 | #1. You’ll create a better user experience for
your visitors by providing them with relevant - 9:29 | resources that may be helpful to them.
- 9:31 | And #2. You’ll facilitate the flow of
PageRank which will help your pages - 9:36 | rank higher in Google.
- 9:38 | And without getting too technical, that just
means that when one of your pages gets - 9:41 | backlinks, the pages that it links to
will also benefit from that backlink – - 9:46 | although to a lesser degree.
- 9:49 | Alright, so now that we’ve mapped out our
content, we’ll need to actually build out our site. - 9:53 | And I won’t go into how to create a WordPress
blog or suggest specific themes because a lot - 9:58 | of that is entirely up to your preferences.
- 10:01 | But I do want to talk about two super-
important things related to site creation. - 10:06 | And these are your homepage’s content
and your website’s navigation menu. - 10:11 | And that’s coming up in the next lesson.
- 10:13 | I’ll see you there.
