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Niche Site Case Study 2: Making a Keyword Plan


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Last update, we set up the backbone of our new niche site. The next step is to get to the nitty gritty – writing a keyword plan for the main article.

A keyword plan is the key to the success of my niche sites. Making sure I use absolutely excellent on-page SEO (read what this means and other terms in the glossary) is how I ensure the maximum amount of traffic to my Amazon link rich, buying guides.

In this update, I am going to discuss how I make a keyword plan for the main article. By main article, I mean the main buying guide for the product you decided on in step 1.

If you haven’t read my other niche site case study updates, you can find them all here. They will help you build your own niche site and follow the progress of my own, new niche sites.

Step 4: Make keyword plan for the main article

amazon affiliate niche site case study 2

Find all keywords related to your main buying keyword

The first step is to find all keywords related to your main buying keyword. Your main buying keyword is the one you found in step 1. Basically, “best <product name>”.

You simply enter this into a keyword research tool (I recommend KeySearch) to find all similar keywords and download them in a CSV file. You then need to go through and remove all keywords that aren’t relevant.

The easiest way to illustrate this is with a video. In this example, I’m going to pretend I am building a keyword plan for “best bread machine”.

Once you have filtered out all the non-relevant keywords, you have your keyword list!

You can read more about using KeySearch to find keywords here.

Click Here to Download a Checklist of all the 7 Steps to Building a Money Making Niche Site!

Write your keyword plan

The next step is to make your plan using this keyword list. This is basically planning the structure of your guide for the product you selected and where you will use the keywords in the article.

First, start by thinking what you will include in your guide. I recommend you look at competing articles to see how they have structured their articles (do this by searching for your main keyword in Google and looking at the top 10 articles).

Generally, I include:

  • A buying guide – what to look for when purchasing the product
  • Comparison chart
  • Short product reviews of top items

I might have other sections depending on what my competitors are doing, my product and my keywords.

I then either use Excel or Word and I write my article sub headings – using words from my keyword list where possible. I also work out which product reviews I am going to include in the article and write subheadings for these too.

I work out which products to review based on two things:

  • My keyword list. I am more likely to include products that are on here.
  • Their popularity on Amazon. I like to use products that are rated 4+ on Amazon and have been reviewed by many people.

I then add keywords from my keyword list into each of the sections of the article ensuring I use every single one. I also write a meta-description and the title of the article using my very best keywords – basically buying keywords with large number of searches.

This is a straight forward process but it is not as quick as it might sound – at least not if your keyword list is long.

Our niche sites

It’s now been about a month and a half since we finished our niche sites and started link building. We are still link building using our new PBN sites.

So how are they going? All information below is about the last month. The numbers in brackets are their figures from my last update, a fortnight ago.

Site 1

Ranking for: 247 keywords (145 )
Main keyword is ranking: 30 on average (45), currently 27.
Sessions from organic search: 105 (51)

Site 2

Ranking for: 80 keywords (25)
Main keyword is ranking: 105 on average (155), currently 95.
Sessions from organic search: 47 (25)

Site 1 was finished about two weeks before Site 2 and has also had more links built to it.

First sale and problems with Amazon affiliate account

We had our first sale on Site 1 which we were very excited about. Unfortunately, this excitement was short lived when our Amazon affiliate account was closed.

It is a new account and they do a manual check of the site once the first sale goes through. Their reason was “Your web site includes the unapproved use of Amazon.com trademarked words, images, or reviews”. It does not, so I am confused. Still, I made some changes to images and ratings and re-opened the account.

There has been another sale now so we are holding our breath, hoping the account is approved this time.

This seems to be a common problem. Many people are writing about it online. I am sure we will be approved eventually and the silver lining is that I will tell you how!

Time and money spent on step 4

Time Spent: 3-4 hours per site
Money: US$0

Our recommended keyword research tool, KeySearch, costs $17 for a month. I already have a lifetime membership for this so it did not cost me anything.

Don’t be disheartened if this step takes longer for you – that just means you have lots of great keywords which hopefully means you have more chance of success!

Find all niche site case study 2 updates here.

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Read step 5: Writing your main article here.

I would love to hear your thoughts below about writing a keyword plan! Any questions?

Find more posts on my case studies and niche sites here.

Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links to NameSilo. I love this domain registrar! If you puchase a domain with my link, I will receive a small credit towards my own domain renewals. Thank you for supporting this site and ensuring I continue to add valuable content about how to build a niche site.

About the Author

Sharon is passionate about working online and helping others to follow in her footsteps. She started blogging in 2005, but became serious about it when she left Australia with her young family at the end of 2014 determined to grow an online business. She succeeded by becoming a SEO and affiliate marketing expert and now supports her family of 5 to live their dream lifestyle. She has a degree in web development, a graduate diploma of education (secondary teaching) and consumes everything SEO. She loves putting her teaching diploma to good use by teaching other bloggers how to have the same success that she has had.

Leave a Reply 14 comments

Anne Sutherland-Smith - Nov 29, 2016 Reply

Sharon, this phase so far has been really interesting. While you have been talking about secondary keywords and how to write articles to maximise them, I do not think I really understood what you really meant until I went through the keyword sorting process in my spreadsheet.

Now that I have done my first pass for both of my new sites I think I finally get it, and also how to apply it back to my travel blog to generate some really good results. In the past I have focused on my main keywords and done manual keyword research and structured my article to suit, but now that I have purchased Keysearch I can see what I have missed in the past! So now I have another task to go back and improve my top articles on my blog after I have finished the first phase of setting up my niche sites…

Thanks for all of your help, I really appreciate you publishing this series to detail the process you have used.

    Sharon Gourlay - Nov 29, 2016 Reply

    No problem! Building my niche sites was by far the BEST THING I have done in regards to monetising my travel blog. Taking a step back and focusing on something different really showed me where I was going wrong in much the same way as you describe.

    I think that Yoast plugin has a lot to answer for. It’s so hard to convince bloggers to look past that silly green light to forming a real strategy.

      Regina - Nov 30, 2016 Reply

      THIS so much!! Making a keyword plan like this has helped me rank and get search engine traffic for my food blog big time. I am so happy to become less dependent on social media traffic.

        Sharon Gourlay - Nov 30, 2016 Reply

        That’s great Regina 🙂

Jane - Nov 30, 2016 Reply

Hi Sharon, you are doing a great job at keeping the process so clear and easy to follow. Thanks for that. I could not agree more about the Yoast plugin, the green light was such a pain and hard to ignore at times. I have ‘conquered’ it though and it gets little attention when acting like a cranky child!

    Sharon Gourlay - Nov 30, 2016 Reply

    Lol it is like a cranky child

Anne Sutherland-Smith - Nov 30, 2016 Reply

Sharon, after considering my keyword list for my first niche site I have quite a lot of keyword options that I am keen to include, and wanted to ask for your input on whether it is better to have one massive article, or whether it would make sense to split them up into several (still big) articles?

In my case I can see quite a few buying keywords eg. if someone is searching for a pink/black/gold/wooden/etc item (there are about 30 different keyword combos which add up to almost 6000 searches per month just for these terms), that suggests to me that if I can point them in that direction that they are reasonably likely to buy something. The other top 10 articles do not appear to be making efforts to split their sales up like this (apart from one site which has multiple niche articles which each appear to target a main keyword group) but looking at the search numbers I think it would be worthwhile to target these keywords.

If you still think it is better to have it all in one larger article, is it then also worthwhile to include a table of contents at the top so they can quickly jump to their area of interest?

Thanks again! Anne.

    Sharon Gourlay - Dec 1, 2016 Reply

    I definitely think it’s better to have one big article that covers everything. I use a table of contents. The best reason to put everything together is that then when you link build, you can focus on this page and have maximum keywords get maximum link juice if you know what I mean.

      Anne Sutherland-Smith - Dec 2, 2016 Reply

      Thanks Sharon. I was wondering if the main reason to aggregate into a single large article was for the link building phase, so thank you for confirming my understanding. I think it is going to take me quite a few hours to put together my article, but hopefully once done I will be well positioned to start the next phase :).

        Sharon Gourlay - Dec 2, 2016 Reply

        Yes and length also helps with rankings. These types of articles used to take me two solid days to write when I first started writing them!!

Joe - Dec 6, 2016 Reply

Hi Sharon,

Thanks for the doing that useful video.

Do you not check for keyword difficulty when creating your list of keywords?

Thanks,
Joe

    Sharon Gourlay - Dec 7, 2016 Reply

    Hi Joe! I rarely check keyword difficulty for terms other than the main one. The one exception is where there are lots of good buying keywords that I am including in the post and I am trying to prioritise which ones to use in subheadings (which hopefully gives them a boost).

Lonica Rowley - Mar 29, 2017 Reply

Quick question: Some of my highly-ranked key words are an awkward grammatical structure. For example, “juicer kitchenaid best”. How do you go about using these keywords? Do you bend over backwards to include them in your article or do you just skip them if it sounds too awkward?

Thanks in advance!

    Sharon Gourlay - Mar 29, 2017 Reply

    I only add keywords to text that make sense. The only way I would use the keyword you mention is in an image alt tag. This can be a good way to sneak some silly ones in 🙂 I also add prepositions where needed. This happens a lot in travel keywords. For example “best hotel Sydney” becomes “best hotel in Sydney”

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