Amazon Niche Site Not in Top 300

[bgp90]

I've built a Amazon niche site with a Silo architecture. The site is a few weeks(2 months) online and still not visible in the top 300 from G. This is what I've done:

- Site has a silo architecture.
- The site is added to Google Webmaster Tools + site map. Webmaster tools shows that there are no problems with link or spam links.
- The site can be found in Google with site:mysite.com
- I've added every week new and unique content, professional written 1500 words+ good onpage SEO according to Yoast SEO plugin.
- Easy kw's from Ardley, here on bhw.
- Build various social media accounts that give social signals.
- PDF submission, Profile links, image submission and various web 2.0 sites.
- Did not create spammy links or heavily usage of links on backlinks.
- Added Google Analytics to the site.
- didn't do heavily internal linking on the site.
- Domain is never been registered before so not penalized.
- Did speed optimization for the site.

I'm actually not sure why my site is not in the top 300. I think that by now the site actually should appear somewhere in the top 300.
The following is the only why I think I'm not in the top 300:

- Instantly added my amazon affiliate links to the content.
- I've been hit by a algorithm update but not sure why and how.

Does anybody has an idea why my site is not in the top 300?

 

[Natty]

Reasons you may not be top 300:

- Algorithm google update
- High competition keyword
- Silly overlooked mistake that you didn't realise

If I was you, I would remove all the Amazon affiliate links and try and see if that affects the ranking. You are not making any money from it at position 34,565 and so you won't lose any income and that way you can get a better understanding of why your site is not ranking.

Things to try:

- Build social media accounts for the website
- Slowly build some manual backlinks on relevant authority sites
- Bulk out your site with some articles on long-tail keywords with less affiliate links

 

[bgp90]

Reasons you may not be top 300:

- Algorithm google update
- High competition keyword
- Silly overlooked mistake that you didn't realise

If I was you, I would remove all the Amazon affiliate links and try and see if that affects the ranking. You are not making any money from it at position 34,565 and so you won't lose any income and that way you can get a better understanding of why your site is not ranking.

Things to try:

- Build social media accounts for the website
- Slowly build some manual backlinks on relevant authority sites
- Bulk out your site with some articles on long-tail keywords with less affiliate links

ok, I'm going to remove the amazon affiliate links and see how that works.

 

[michaelr1988]

ok, I'm going to remove the amazon affiliate links and see how that works.

Something to check is your keyword density too. Too high and you won't find yourself anywhere. Swap some of your main keywords with LSI. I don't go over 1% personally.

 

[bgp90]

Something to check is your keyword density too. Too high and you won't find yourself anywhere. Swap some of your main keywords with LSI. I don't go over 1% personally.

All my articles have around 1% kw density, so I guess that is good. I use the Yoast SEO plugin for onpage SEO.

 

[TurnedToTheDarkSide]

All my articles have around 1% kw density

That's a big red flag to me. You want the keyword density to be no more than about 0.5%. 1% is far too much these days. That will get you nailed by Google. I aim for about 0.3% and it works well for me.
If you think about it, 1% is using a keyword every 100 words, which is not usually a natural thing for a writer to do, especially if they are long tail keywords.
For your 1500 word articles, put the keyword once in the title, once in the first paragraph, then about 4 more times in the article body.

You say you had the content written for you. I'd recommend copying a sentence out of one of the articles, and posting it into Google search. See if it has been plagiarized, or put through an article spinner.

With regards to backlinks, what percentage of them have keywords in them, and what percentage are just the URL?

If you are using Amazon Native Ads, remove it. My personal experience is that I get penalized by Google for using it. I suspect because Google detects it as duplicate code, but that's just my guess.

 

[bgp90]

I think I've found the problem. My keyword density is still too high! But I'm quite confused at the moment. Yoast SEO plugin says that I have a kw density of 0.1% (after removing some kw's) but when I use a keyword density tool it says that I still have a kw density of 2.31%?? KW density tool : http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/
I guess the keyword density tool is also counting the keywords in the meta description etc.

When I go to that particular page and search for that kw if shows me 4 results for the page ( title, 1 x in body and 2 links for other pages) so that can never be 2,31%.

Should I check for the kw density of the whole page(Titles, links etc.) or only for the body text?

 

[bgp90]

That's a big red flag to me. You want the keyword density to be no more than about 0.5%. 1% is far too much these days. That will get you nailed by Google. I aim for about 0.3% and it works well for me.
If you think about it, 1% is using a keyword every 100 words, which is not usually a natural thing for a writer to do, especially if they are long tail keywords.
For your 1500 word articles, put the keyword once in the title, once in the first paragraph, then about 4 more times in the article body.

You say you had the content written for you. I'd recommend copying a sentence out of one of the articles, and posting it into Google search. See if it has been plagiarized, or put through an article spinner.

With regards to backlinks, what percentage of them have keywords in them, and what percentage are just the URL?

If you are using Amazon Native Ads, remove it. My personal experience is that I get penalized by Google for using it. I suspect because Google detects it as duplicate code, but that's just my guess.

But you're talking about 0,5 % density only in the body text right? or for the whole page?

 

[TurnedToTheDarkSide]

I was referring to the article, but it shouldn't be that different for the entire page. Just do whatever looks natural. That will keep you on the right tracks 95% of the time.

I saw a video last year with Matt Cutts saying "just produce whatever content gives a good user experience, and that is best for ranking well". At the time I thought he might have been talking BS, but when I tried it, I found my sites were ranking much better. Google is getting really smart. They moved on from being straight-forward keyword based long ago. They now use things like topic-modelling and intent analysis.

 

[bgp90]

I was referring to the article, but it shouldn't be that different for the entire page. Just do whatever looks natural. That will keep you on the right tracks 95% of the time.

I saw a video last year with Matt Cutts saying "just produce whatever content gives a good user experience, and that is best for ranking well". At the time I thought he might have been talking BS, but when I tried it, I found my sites were ranking much better. Google is getting really smart. They moved on from being straight-forward keyword based long ago. They now use things like topic-modelling and intent analysis.

Ok, I have a kw density off 0.4% for the body text. I'm guess that should be ok.

 

[Google Prince]

Lol at kW density.

I never worried about it and ranked plenty of sites ;-)

 

[bgp90]

Lol at kW density.

I never worried about it and ranked plenty of sites ;-)

Yes, first I also never worried about it. But at this moment my site is not ranking so there must be something why the site is not ranking...

 

[kittykut]

your backlinks probably suck or aren't indexed yet

 

[LoftPower]

Let us know once you get the kw figured out if that is what was making you rank so low.

 

[magneticwp]

1. Recehck the Silo structure.

Go One main landing page < three or four supporting product review pages < relevant how to guide for those pages < if possible add additional tips or guides for those products.

 

[zigzag]

How competitive are your keywords? Hopefully your not trying to rank for something like "4K TV" when you should be trying to rank for "best 4K TV"

 

[kahuna74]

Yoast is decent for a general seo checkup for your on page stuff, but don't take what suggestions Yoast gives you as hard rules. For example, google knows what you mean when you add in keyword phrases that are directly related, but yoast will knock off points if you don't have your EXACT keyword in the text.

Having the exact keyword is important but you don't need to unnaturally pepper your content with that exact keyword as Yoast will have you believe. 5 years ago that would have mattered Google is smart enough enough now to know what your focus is.

This is more a rant against Yoast, sorry... Google has changed and Yoast used to be pretty awesome but it hasn't kept up with the times in it's conent/keyword analysis.

Back to your problem:

Unless your comp analysis was way off, there's definitely something wrong with your site. Is there a penalty on the domain name? You mentioned that your keyword density was way off? How many aff. links per page?

I'm running an Amazon affiliate site on a brand new domain, have good content and have been putting aff. links in the content since day 1. Medium - Difficult niche, and I've been in the top 100 since my site was indexed. Your experience sounds like google has a penalty on you or something.

 

[bgp90]

your backlinks probably suck or aren't indexed yet

Well I don't have used spammy backlinks. 80 % of the backlinks are indexed.

Let us know once you get the kw figured out if that is what was making you rank so low.

Will do that

1. Recehck the Silo structure.

Go One main landing page < three or four supporting product review pages < relevant how to guide for those pages < if possible add additional tips or guides for those products.

Have done that, everything looks ok. But I can't imagine that the silo structure blocks my ranking in Google.

How competitive are your keywords? Hopefully your not trying to rank for something like "4K TV" when you should be trying to rank for "best 4K TV"

No the kw are really easy, the most of the kw has actually almost no comp. I've bought them from Ardley from BHW.

Yoast is decent for a general seo checkup for your on page stuff, but don't take what suggestions Yoast gives you as hard rules. For example, google knows what you mean when you add in keyword phrases that are directly related, but yoast will knock off points if you don't have your EXACT keyword in the text.

Having the exact keyword is important but you don't need to unnaturally pepper your content with that exact keyword as Yoast will have you believe. 5 years ago that would have mattered Google is smart enough enough now to know what your focus is.

This is more a rant against Yoast, sorry... Google has changed and Yoast used to be pretty awesome but it hasn't kept up with the times in it's conent/keyword analysis.

Back to your problem:

Unless your comp analysis was way off, there's definitely something wrong with your site. Is there a penalty on the domain name? You mentioned that your keyword density was way off? How many aff. links per page?

I'm running an Amazon affiliate site on a brand new domain, have good content and have been putting aff. links in the content since day 1. Medium - Difficult niche, and I've been in the top 100 since my site was indexed. Your experience sounds like google has a penalty on you or something.

Well I don't believe it has anything to do with the kw analysis. This domain has never been registered before and as far as I could see, there is nothing wrong with the domain.

The kw density is something I really don't get. Like I said I've been using the Yoast tool for that. This tool gives me kw density of 0.4% for a particular body text on a page. However when I use http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/ I see that the kw density for the whole page 2,32% is. And I'm not sure why. Apart from the body text I mention the kw one time in the Title and 2 times in menu links(These are the titles from other pages). So I'm not kw stuffing outside the body of the page.

All the kw I try to rank exist out of multiple words( ex. best plasma tv and best plasma tv 2014). Yoast plugin counst "best plasma tv " as 1 complete kw. The seo tool on the url, counts "best plasma tv" as three separate words. At least that is what I could make out of that.

I use on a 1500 word review article 15 amazon urls( 5 products, each product has 3 urls ).

I still don't have a clue what is actually wrong...

 

[bgp90]

Update:

Yesterday I've added some of the articles. And on one of the articles I've removed every affiliate url. That was an article of 1500 words with 15 urls. I just checked the page and it is now on rank 36 in Google.
So maybe I've put too much affiliate links on every article... But when would it then safe to add the affiliate links to the article? I guess I should wait with that for a while now. My prediction is that the pages are going to rank even further.

 

[kahuna74]

Update:

Yesterday I've added some of the articles. And on one of the articles I've removed every affiliate url. That was an article of 1500 words with 15 urls. I just checked the page and it is now on rank 36 in Google.
So maybe I've put too much affiliate links on every article... But when would it then safe to add the affiliate links to the article? I guess I should wait with that for a while now. My prediction is that the pages are going to rank even further.

How many per article? I try to keep mine around 5 per 1k words of text. Not counting sidebar links, etc. But I don't go crazy on those either.