Week 2
Let's build the site.
At this stage, you should have chosen your niche, domain name and have at least 3 review posts ready to add to the site. So in this second week, we're going to get our site online.
We're going to:
Install WordPress
Install The Standard Plugins
Choose Our Theme
Find Additional Keywords To Add To Our Reviews
Add Our First Reviews
Insert Amazon Affiliate Links
Upcoming Training
New training will appear here weekly. So be sure to sign up to the update list at the top of the members home page and we'll email you the moment it is live.
Support
If you have any problems or questions, just use our help desk.
Install WordPress
WordPress is the content platform that our site will be running on. It's really easy to use and super simple to install.
This video shows how to do it:
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Once installed, there are some basic initial settings to do.
This video shows how to do it:
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Install The Standard Plugins
Now that we've installed WordPress, we need to install some basic plugins. This only takes a few minutes and all plugins are free.
This video shows how to install and set them up:
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Initial Plugins to install:
Google XML Sitemaps
Guerrilla's Legal Pages
All In One SEO
iThemes Security
Contact Form 7 - (not shown in the video but you can use this form on your Contact Us page. Alternatively, just create a Contact Us page and add something like "To contact us, just email you@youremail.com") This page is only for SEO purposes to look more natural.
Choose Our Theme
WordPress has thousands of themes available for free and also paid ones. The good news is that a free theme is fine for these sites. It just needs to look clean with no distractions and be mobile optimized (responsive).
This video shows the style I find works well:
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Paid theme & builder I use is called Genesis and Dynamik skin builder. (These are 100% NOT essential or required to be successful with these types of sites.)
Logo - We want the site to look authentic, so having a logo is important. You can create one yourself, use a free online logo maker, use logo software or hire someone on Fiverr.com to make you one for $5. When you get one, just add it to your site using the WordPress theme customizer section (if your theme allows a logo to be used).
IMPORTANT - Things To Keep Amazon Happy
Before adding any reviews to the site, it is vital we are following Amazon's affiliate guidelines. Whilst most of the guidelines are straightforward, here are some of the main things that can have your account closed down:
Not Adding Your Site Into Your Amazon Account
You must add the domain name for your site into your Amazon affiliate account.
Not Using A Disclaimer
It is crucial you have a paragraph of text on every page of the site that has Amazon affiliate links on it that declares you are an Amazon affiliate. I always add this in the footer of the WordPress theme or you can use a text widget and put it in the sidebar if you can't find how to add it in the footer. Here's what to add:
TheDomainName.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Amazon, the Amazon logo, are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc.
Just replace TheDomainName.com with your own domain name.
Adding Prices
You are not allowed to add prices onto your reviews unless you use a real time updating Amazon plugin (and even then you need to be careful). I never add prices on my sites.
Using Reviews
You are also not allowed to copy reviews from Amazon, state the number of reviews or take screenshots of reviews and add them to your website. You can however write from a third party angle and say things like "we have read all the reviews about this product and it seems that one popular feature is...." or "some reviewers have said they really like it because...".
Really important you don't break these rules.
Adding Our Content
Find Additional Keywords To Add To Our Reviews
For all our reviews, we are going to want to rank for 'best product line' and 'product line reviews' (where product line is the type of products you are targeting on the page). But we also want to add other keywords that we can rank for too.
Once you find them, just add them once within your article.
This video shows what to look for:
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Here's the useful keyword tool used in the video.
Adding Our First Reviews
Now it's time to add our first reviews on to the site. There are certain important optimization steps to make sure our SEO is set up correctly.
This video shows what to do:
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Adding Our Affiliate Links
To make money from the site, we need to add Amazon affiliate links. I mainly use two types, the Native Shopping Ad and standard text links.
This video shows how to get them and add them into the review:
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Pinging
Once your site is live with all legal pages and initial review posts, you should use a site like PingFarm to ping the site. Just enter in your domain name and click 'Mass Ping'. That should then get Google to come and crawl the site and speed up indexing.
Back Up Your Site
Security is always going to be a concern, so it's important at this stage to take a full back up of your site. Then continously keep backing it up on a regular occassion just in case something were to go wrong.
There are 2 options:
#1 - The Manual Way
This is the way I personally do it because it's what I'm used to and it's the way I have always done it. But it's a bit technical. You have to:
- Download all the WordPress files using an FTP client.
To do this, you use an FTP client like FileZilla to login to your website and download all the files in the Public_HTML folder.
- Download your database from cPanel
When logged into Cpanel, click on the PHPMyAdmin icon and navigate to your database. You then click 'Export' and save it to your computer.
#2 - The Easier Way
If you're not comfortable with FTP programs or databases, then you're probably wanting to use a plugin to do the back up for you. There are many available, some free which don't provide support or there are paid ones with more options and support. WP Twin is a popular one which will solve your back up problems.
Example Site Status
Our example site - https://kitchenreviewshq.com - is now live with 3 initial review posts. I've added the URL into my Amazon account and added affiliate links into the reviews.
It has been pinged and waiting to be indexed in Google.
Your Tasks For This Second Week
Here are the tasks you should try and get done this week:
- Install WordPress
- Add the plugins
- Choose a nice theme to use
- Order or create a logo
- Add your first initial review posts
- Back up your site
- Order or write a minimum of ANOTHER 3 review articles
I'll send out an email when Week 3 training is added, so be sure to sign up to the update list at the top of the main membership page.