Best Link Building Strategies for Amazon Niche Websites

After you start an Amazon affiliate niche website, you are going to need to rank it high on Google Search to get people to come over read your content and click your affiliate links. And one way of steadily climbing search rankings is to do link building for your niche site.

There are many ways people go about this. Below I present to you some of the best link building strategies used by Amazon Associates, the people who use the Amazon affiliate program to monetize their sites.

White Hat Links via Outreach

White hat links, this is what most see as the holy grail when it comes to link building. Some just publish content and wait for other sites to link to them naturally.

But as someone in this to start making money from your niche site as soon as possible, you don’t have to wait for people to start linking to you.

You don’t have to sit and wait for things to happen naturally. This is where email outreach comes in. It’s how you take things a step further; speed things up a little bit.

First it starts by you publishing a great resource on your site then you go out there to find people who can link to it.

Publish an in-depth informational post on your niche website, then go out there to find sites to link to you. Often these are blogs in your niche.

Draft emails and send them to other webmasters with the view to get them to check your resource and link to it.

Here is a template you can use in your outreach. It is a variation of a template Chris shared on his post. Change its content depending on the topic covered in your post, the one you wish to gain links to.

Hey,

My name’s John, and I run the website over at https://examplesite.com /.

I just stumbled upon your site, and I’ve been enjoying your articles. Great stuff!

It’s nice to meet another blogger sharing their knowledge and experiences on blogging with others 🙂

Anyways, I have written a huge and in-depth blog post about the reasons why one would want to start a blog.

I saw that you had a guide about it yourself (URL-to-their-post), and was wondering if you would be interested in taking a look.

Would really appreciate some feedback on it from you.

Let me know if you’d like to see it, and I’ll send you over the link right away!

P.S. What was your main reason for starting your blog?

Thanks,

John

Use the template above if you are running an Amazon niche site that promotes blogging resources sold on Amazon.

In the example above, the blogger John, writes an in-depth guide on the ‘reasons to start a blog’ then goes out to hustle for links from other sites.

How does he find the sites and webmasters to email? Via Google, searching sites publishing content on similar content.

Note that in this email, John doesn’t ask for links. He just asks the other webmaster if they’d like to check out their post and give them some feedback on it.

At this point, he is not asking for a link. Just for a few minutes of the webmaster’s time to check their post.

If they say yes, that they’d like to take a look, then that is John’s cue to send them a second email containing a link to their in-depth guide.

Here’s the email.

Sweet!

Here’s the link: https://examplesite.com/reasons-start-a-blog/.

BTW, I think it would make a great resource for your already awesome guide:

URL.

If you could share it with your readers, it would make my day 🙂

Thanks,

John

Suppose the webmaster checks out the post and likes it, they are likely to share their feedback with John. And also likely to share the post with their readers. For example tweet it, share it on Facebook or mention it in an email to their subscribers. After all that is what John is asking for.

But also note how, indirectly, John suggests his post to the webmaster as an additional resource. How subtly he’s asking for a link. Do you see that? That is how Amazon affiliates use outreach to get powerful white hat links from different sites.

Of course there are rejections. Most webmasters won’t even bother with such requests. But of all the outreach emails one sends, there will be people who will say yes. Yes to sharing their content. And a smaller percentage of people saying yes to linking out to them.

Outreach is a great way to gain links because all you have to do is publish something awesome on your site then reach out using variations of the templates above. Chris of RankXL has used emails like these to get quality white hat links from more authoritative sites. You can too. But you also have to remember that it is a numbers game.

There are also places where you can purchase quality outreach links, if you don’t want to spend time doing the manual work all by yourself.

These service providers do all the outreach work for you: finding prospect, emailing them and getting links for you.

For a fee, you can use a service like LoveToLink, which Shawna of Skipblast recommends as one of the best places to get outreach links in 2018.

Guest Posting

Writing content for other sites and adding a link back to your site is also a popular method Amazon affiliates use to build links. Normally you can find sites with a Write for Us page, send them your idea for a post, write it and have your post published.

To find sites to write for, go to Google and search for:

Your keyword + a combination of any of the following (submit content/guest post/write for us/guest article).

Doug Cunnington of NicheSiteProject, a successful Amazon Associate himself, recommends starting your relationship with other bloggers by commenting on their articles before asking to guest post on their site.

You can simply comment on their posts and develop a relationship over time. Then later on propose ideas for a guest post contribution.

Here is a great template from BloggersPassion.com that you can use for your guest post email outreach.

Hey [NAME]

I am a long time reader of [Blog Name]. You may have noticed my comment on your post on X (awesome article by the way).

I’m writing to you because I am interested in contributing a guest post to [Blog Name].

I’ve been brainstorming some post ideas that I think your readers would get a ton of value from:

Post idea #1

Post idea #2

Post idea #3

I’ll make sure the piece overflows with information that can’t be found anywhere else.

To give you an idea of the quality I’ll bring to your site, here’s a link to a guest post that I recently published on Example.com.

If you have any post idea on your mind, feel free to share it.

Cheers,

[Name]

You can use the template above to get things rolling.

Or even do something Doug did once: Hiring a team to help with guest posting for his Amazon site, which he (and his business partner) eventually sold for more than $200,000.

PBN Links

If you got a big appetite for risk, PBN links is a great strategy for ranking your Amazon niche website. PBNs are considered grey hat, and frowned upon by Google. But a lot of affiliate marketers still use them to power their sites up search rankings. Why? Because they work. And in some cases work incredibly well.

How you implement your PBN though affects whether Google slaps your site with a penalty and send your page one rankings down into oblivion. Or not. Or whether your site gets entirely deindexed from Google Search results pages.

That is why more marketers are moving away from public PBNs to more private PBNs comprised of real-looking sites (hosted on decent web hosting companies) with original content and few outgoing links.

If you can’t build your own PBN and use it to rank your niche site, you have the option to buy links from more reliable and quality sources.

Human Proof Designs, not only sells content and done-for-you Amazon niche sites, they also sell PBN links. And they do their best to ensure buyers get value for their money. They sell links that help their clients sites climb up the rankings.

Same thing with Niche Site Azon, through their Rank Guardian service.

Also Shawna of SkipBlast does sell links.

Many other places also sell quality PBN links. Places like PeoplePerHour. But you have to be careful where you source your links from.

A guy making $5000 per month with his sites was interviewed by Dom Wells and he gave some insights on building links to Amazon affiliate sites.

His name is Glen. So, in the post he shares that when it comes to link building, PBNs have always worked well for him.

And he recommends building 10 to 15 links for the first 2 to 3 months then going nuts with link-building once a site starts ranking.

He says once your site has around ten posts of 1500+ words, it is time to focus on building more links instead of creating more content.

Shawna implements a mixture of web 2.0s, PBNs, outreach links and guest post links to rank her sites. The mixture diversifies her sites link profile.

But she too sees the power in using PBNs (her own and from other quality sellers) to rank her niche sites. For example she recommends getting PBN links from a seller such as Matt of Diggity Links. Instead of building ones own PBN, you can rent links from such a seller.

Web 2.0 Links

The people building and earning from Amazon niche sites that use web 2.0 links to boost their rankings include Shawna of SkipBlast, Dom Wells of Human Proof Designs and Al-Amin of Marketever.

Dom Wells sometimes orders the HOTH web 2.0 package instead of building the web 2.0 sites himself.

These are the links you get from free sites such as Blogger.com, Weebly.com, Wix.com, Tumblr.com and WordPress.com.

These links don’t have that much ranking power. But they can be used as foundational links. To give a little boost in rankings. To provide variety and to diversify your link profile.

Building web 2.0 links for Amazon niche sites can be risky, as Google considers this strategy to be gray hat. To build a proper web 2.0 though, you are going to have to add original content (some even advocate adding 3 to 5 posts initially with more posts dripped down the road).

Then add the required legal pages, links to resources on other sites and then one or two links to your own niche site.

Of course, you also have to use the Google URL submit tool to index the content you publish on the web 2.0 sites you create for link building.

Shawna of Skipblast in one of her posts shows the power of using web 2.0 links to rank Amazon niche sites.

She created 2 web 2.0s for linking and week after week her site’s rankings increased. Note that it can take up to 2 months or even more to see the effect of such links.

The niche you are in also determines how big of a boost you get from the web 2.0 links. Keywords with high competition will obviously get a little boost compared to the ones with medium to low competition.

Al-Amin of Marketever also, on a $2000 per month Amazon niche site, did the bulk of his link building using web 2.0 sites.

He did get a boost from the links he built.

In this post where he shares a little bit about the process, he says that you should use the blog style theme, publish original content – basically build web 2.0 sites whose content add value to readers. Add multimedia content to your posts. And pay attention to on-page SEO.

Then add links to your money site naturally. For each web 2.0, use a separate email and save login details in an Excel file.

Round up Posts

Here you can create a list post containing any of the following:

• a list of influencers in your niche
• a list of top websites in your niche
• a list of the top blogs in your niche
• a list of answers from the top influencers in your niche

For example, you can send one interview question to influencers in your niche then compile their answers into a list post.

Or compile a list of the 51 best websites in your niche.

Or top 21 Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest infuencers in your niche to follow.

You can do this with authors, service providers, companies, manufacturers, experts and other professionals in your industry.

It’s all about compiling a list, the result of which is a valuable piece of content that adds value to the lives of readers of your site.

But then this piece of content also serves another purpose. Ego boosting and baiting.

People like to be recognized; to be mentioned; to be applauded for the great work they are doing. So, in essence, your post taps into this phenomenon.

Once you publish the post, you email all the people mentioned in it and ask them to share the piece of content with their audience.

Most likely, many of them will share your content. Some will link to it from their own sites. The result? More quality backlinks to your site.

The shares can also draw in more readers who run their own blogs increasing the likelihood of some of them linking to your site later down the road.

Tung Tran of Cloud Living mentions that this is a great way to get links from influencers in your niche. This can be taken even a step further by interviewing individual influencers on a text-based post or via an audio podcast episode or a YouTube video.

For every person you interview, ask them to share the post with their followers. If you ask the right questions and attract valuable answers, your bet is the influencer you interview will also link to the post, sending more quality links your way.

Conclusion

Both the white hat and gray hat link building strategies above work for Amazon niche sites.

What you deploy depends on how much risk you are willing to take in the short-term and ling-term.

Your budget also comes into play especially if you want to outsource some of the link building work to virtual assistants and freelance writers.

Your willingness to hustle for more links to boost your organic search rankings will also depend on how much time you are willing to set aside just for link building.

The best link building strategy for Amazon niche websites can therefore be argued to be that which works best for you – because people have used all these different strategies to rank and make money from their sites.

Chris Lee, someone who I respect a lot when it comes to building links, though advocates people to go the whitehat route; to not pay attention to tactics such as web 2.0s; but to spend more time gaining more quality links via email outreach.

That is his style. To create pillar content on his site then email other webmasters to link to it.

See his outreach template here. I have personally used a variation of it to get other sites to link to me.

Make it your target to get your first 100 links. That is what Spencer Haws and Jon Dykstra recommend when building your niche site. Work on getting your first hundred links.

Once you have published some content on your site begin gradually working on attaining links from other sites over the months that follow.

As you go about hunting for links, I want you to also remember this one thing Tim of NicheSiteAzon says.

He says to build one epic page and rank it before turning your attention to other keywords or pages you want to rank.

An example he gives is how he built 40 links to 1 URL in a 4 month period.

So, remember this.

You can do it for your buyer’s guides or any other review posts you publish, of course taking care of internal links as well.

So keep writing detailed posts, product reviews and buying guides. Publish a variety of posts: reviews, informational posts and articles with lots of stats concerning your niche. Then get more links via outreach, round up posts and guest posting.