AMZTracker Review and my Amazon FBA Product Launch Process

With the start of my new Amazon FBA business back in September I needed to add new tools into my toolkit and systems to my business.

In this post I am going to show you how I use of one of these tools to help run my FBA business.

This will be a review (and I am an affiliate) but more important I will share exactly how I have worked this tool into my business systems!

My unique FBA strategy includes driving traffic to my listing from my authority site and the tool AMZ Tracker has become an integral part of my overall Amazon FBA Business strategy.

My Amazon Product Launch Process & How I Use AMZ Tracker in my FBA Business

amztracker
  1. When sourcing a product add competitors to AMZ Sales Tracker
    • This can be done while you are researching products and if you want very accurate sales tracking (assuming they have < 1,000 units in inventory).
    • Or the way I have done it is as soon as I decide I am going into a niche and start ordering samples I add the competitors I have identified into AMZTracker to get a historical graph of sales rank etc. This historical view will help me see how often people use promotions in this niche etc.
  2. As soon as listing is live add it to AMZ Tracker
    • As soon as you have created your listing add it to AMZTracker. Even if you don’t have any inventory in yet you can still add it in.
  3. Add keywords (I limit my focus to ONLY 10 keywords)
    • TIP – Although you can enter a TON of keywords I highly recommend you add only ~10 or so per listing so that you can optimize and focus your listing and other efforts around these. I learned this lesson the hard way bye adding in dozens and dozens of keywords for a listing and as a result spread my efforts too thin. I don’t know what the “right” number is to focus on but for me an initial focus on 10 seems to be the right manageable number to both optimize around and focus on.
    • One of the tools AMZTracker has that I am not a huge fan of is its keywords research tool. It simply doesn’t give me the data I want in the way I want it. Maybe I am too used to using Google Keyword Planner or LongTailPro to have given it a fair shot.
  4. Create a SuperURL that rotates through the 10 target keywords
    • One super URL link for my website that has my Affiliate ID
    • One link for promotions, emails, advertising that does not have my Affiliate ID
  5. Launch a ReviewClub promotion
    • Typically I do a 95% off 20 code promotion
    • Like everyone has told you a 100 times! DO NOT use a general Claim Code.
    • I do look at each reviewer and pick reviewers that seem to be in my buying demographic to both get a better review and ideally get a more genuine review.
  6. Track movement on 10 target keywords for one month
  7. Optimize listing to focus on the 5 leading keywords
    1. After 1 month I will see what I am ranking decently for and will focus my efforts on those keywords. I believe it is better to rank in the top few positions for a few keywords and let. To select these keywords I have essentially let Amazon tell me what they want to rank my listing for out of the 10 initial keywords I was targeting and then
      • Adjust my SuperURL that is driving traffic from my website to only focus on the 5 leading keywords
      • Adjust my listing based on the On Page Analyzer
    2. Ongoing Monitoring (daily or weekly)
      • Monitor Negative Reviews
      • Monitor Keyword Ranking
      • Monitor Sales Rank
        • My Listings
        • Competitor Listings

Review of AMZ Tracker Features

  • Amazon Keyword Rank Tracking – The keyword tracking tool is pretty straightforward and provides enough detail to show you how your keywords are performing.
Amazon FBA Keyword Tracker
  • Amazon FBA Sales Rank Tracking – I find this tool VERY useful. By adding in competitors you can really see how much they are doing promotions (high sales in 1-2 days) to determine the cost of buying the same organic sales they are experiencing. I don’t care much about the total inventory number shown but care more about the total sales. Again the best part of this tool is the ability to see on competitors if they are heavily using promotions to drive up their sales rank. This then gives a rough idea of how much you need to be prepared to drive to get equivalent sales rank.
Amazon Sales Rank Tracker
  • FBA Listing Negative Review Alerts – The negative review alerts is not overly helpful. Maybe I am missing the point but there is not a huge benefit I realize with this tool compared to simply logging into my Amazon Seller dashboard and reviewing all feedback both positive and negative to be able to make adjustments to the product.
  • Amazon Listing Search Optimizer – This tool is very handy especially when just starting out to get your listing decently set up. I have continued to use it as a double check to make sure I have my listing optimized. IMPORTAN – Although this tool is useful make sure that your first priority is creating a listing that flows well and converts a human. You can have a perfectly optimized listing according to this tool but if it is terribly written keyword stuffed garbage it won’t be helping you make sales. So first priority should be the “real” people visiting your listing and then you should also ensure you have done a sufficient job of including the components required for Amazons Search Algorithms and this tool is a great check for that second priority.
  • Amazon FBA Keyword Research - This feature I don’t find very useful, unless I am using it wrong it simply generates a TON of suggestions but gives no indication of volume or competition.
  • Super URLs - ONLY use super URLs with your affiliate ID on YOUR website. Do not email super URLs (with your affiliate ID),
  • AMZ Tracker Review Club – This was one of the main selling features for me. Having a review club tied in directly to a tool I already planned on using was a huge bonus. It allows me, as I showed above, to incorporate a large amount of the monitoring and promotions within 1 tool!

AMZ Shark vs AMZ Tracker

Features

AMZ Shark

AMZ Tracker

Listing Keyword Tracking

150 keyword tracking

500 keyword tracking

FBA Sales Rank Tracking

300 listings for sales rank tracking

Unlimited keywords for rank tracking

Negative Review Alerts

300 products monitored for negative reviews

100 products monitored for negative reviews

Listing Optimizer

N/A

Yes – Useful one off optimizer to help especially new sellers create a well-optimized listing.

Amazon Keyword Research

Unlimited keyword explorer

Unlimited keyword explorer

Super URL Generator

Included

Included

Review Club

Not Included

Unlimited – Big differentiation for me!

Niche Research

Included – NicheScout

Not included but AMZTracker has a free stand-alone chrome extension “Unicorn-Smasher”

Price

$100/month (with only more expensive options)

$100/month (with both less & more expensive options)

Free Trial

Yes

Yes

The reason why I went with AMZTracker (although I have only heard good things about AMZShark from experts like Scott from TheAmazingSeller and his detailed resources page) is because of the higher limits for the price as well as the review club.

The edge for AMZ Shark seems to be the niche research but I have been using JungleScout for that and very happy with it.

If you are already using another review club like SnagShout or similar and aren’t using JungleScout than potentially AMZShark would be the right solution to try.

If you don’t already have JungleScout (also highly recommend) than using AMZ Tracker and their Jungle Scout Alternative (Unicorn Smasher) would be a good “

If you would want to think AMZShark is a better fit but want to find an alternative to their review club you can checkout SnagShout.

Does AMZTracker Have a Discount or Free Trial?

I do not have a discount code for AMZ Tracker but as mentioned above there is a free trial for AMZ Tracker.

AMZ Tracker Free Trial

Final Comments

I don’t know about you but typical review articles which are re-hashes of a sales page frustrate me. What AuthorityWebsiteIncome and I stand for is providing useful/actionable/systematized information to help you build your successful online business. My hope is this article although a review of a tool that I am an affiliate for has achieved that…however, I always welcome feedback and if you didn’t find this useful/actionable please let me know!

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How to Make Money Online – The Formula for Success!

I can guess that like me when you first started your journey to making money online you came across ebooks/courses/gurus who promised fast money with little effort!

Hopefuly you quickly moved past those without wasting much money and realized they were all bull shit!

So is there really a “secret” or “blueprint” or “formula” to succeeding at making money online?

I do believe there is a formula for online success and it is NOT a secret!

In this post I am going to share…

  1. My journey to discover this “formula”
  2. The Formula for Online Business Success
  3. Testing the formula against several hypothetical people and predicting their eventual success.

My journey to discover this “formula”

I have shared a lot of details about my LONG journey from 2007 to now with my online business.

When I first got started there was many very high ticket courses that seemed to be promoted everywhere and promised to have the secret to making millions online. Butterfly Marketing, Product Launch Formula, Mass Control to just name a few of these blockbuster internet marketing course releases.

On top of these there were thousands of EBooks and smaller courses which made similar promises.

Fast forward 9 years and not a lot has changed in the world of selling high ticket courses online and questionable eBooks. However, I do believe today there are a lot more people sharing free useful actionable information!

My journey to finding what I believe is the formula for online success was not direct. In hindsight even though I never purchased any course/ebook I was guilty of chasing shiny objects and believing people when they talked about how easy strategy (blank) was.

The formula, like most things in life, is a little messier than the often quoted motivational sayings.

These statements although partially true are WAY to simple...

  • Content is king
  • The money is in the list
  • You just need 1 great idea
  • Work hard and the rest will take care of itself
  • Always add value
  • Its not what you know but who you know
  • It takes money to make money
  • Recurring revenue is the only way to build a profitable business
  • You need to build funnels
  • Focus on your mindset and everything else will take care of itself
  • Just follow your passion

Many of these have some truth but their simplicity is dangerously misleading and induce a mild gag reflux!

So what is the formula to build a successful online business?

The formula for online success as I like to think about it is the following…

This is the way I like to think about my online business.

If I am improving my knowledge and skills using the resources(money/team) I have with the connection I have built up and working my ass off on an important/substantial problem/good idea I will achieve success!

What Does This Formula Mean for You? Will You Succeed Building an Online Business?

When you thinking through your online business how are you doing at maximizing your rate of achieving success?

  • Knowledge - Do you have knowledge that you can bring to your business that puts you in a unique situation? For example are you a sourcing agent and looking to move into the FBA business model? There are a ton of possibilities of what knowledge you can bring to your online business.
  • Skills - Do you have or are you gaining a skill that you can be one of the best at in the world? Are you an expert or becoming an expert at SEO, conversion rate optimization, Facebook advertising, driving traffic from pinterest, guest posting etc (thousands of possibilities)
  • Resources - Are you bringing resources to your business? Whether that is capital, a team or something else. 
  • Work Effort - Are you busting your ass? Are you pushing through the pain and working on your business consistently?
  • Size of Problem / Quality of the Idea - Do you have a good idea for solving a meaningful problem for a large number of people. The bigger the problem you are solving the fewer people you need to reach and vice-versa... the smaller the problem you are solving for people the more you will need to reach. 

Examples?

Will Carl Succeed?

Meet fictional person Carl… Carl is an experienced corporate manager who is looking to exit his corporate job and pursue an online business to spend more time with his family.

Will Carl achieve his goals? Is he achieving success?

(Knowledge (little relevant knowledge) + Skills (very capable manager) + Resources (has funds to deploy) + Connections (building connections to leverage))

x

(Work Effort (working everyday on his business))

x

(Size of Problem/Idea (tackling businesses with a large potential))

=

Rate of Achieving Success

Based on this assessment he is deploying his captial in a well managed way working on his business everday and tackling a large potential business. I would be confident that his rate of success will result in him achieving his goals of replacing his day job income!

Will Steve Succeed?

Steve works in an office and is very interested in online business. Has been reading and gaining a lot of knowledge. His goal is to quit his day job, travel the world and work from his laptop.

So will Steve succeed?

(Knowledge (very knowledgeable about all facets of internet marketing) + Skills (has not focused the development of any skill to a world class level) + Resources (does not have any capital to deploy) + Connections (friends with others online but no strategic connections))

x

(Work Effort (does not work consistently, works for a few nights and then takes a weak off))

x

(Size of Problem/Idea (focusing on “passive income” sites and micro niche sitesl))

=

Rate of Achieving Success

Based on this I am confident that UNLESS Steve does a few things he will NOT achieve success!

  1. Steve doesn’t have connections or resources so he NEEDS to develop a Skill to a world class level!
  2. Spotty and inconsistent work effort is a guaranteed way to not succeed!
  3. Trying to nibble on small problems/ideas without truly helping anyone is a guaranteed way to ensure the rate of business success will remain small.

The key takeaways I wish I had known when I was getting started…

  1. It is ok if you don’t have resources but you need to bring something to the table. If you don’t have connections, money or knowledge than you better develop a skill to a world class level!
  2. Nothing happens without hard work. All the knowledge/skills/resources and connections mean nothing if you don’t work hard.
  3. Your idea doesn’t have to be “great” it just can’t be terrible. Especially if you are getting started the opportunity cost of not getting started while you wait for a “great” idea is a bad decision. Everyone shifts direction as they go through their business and getting started is the only way to know which direction to shift. If you have a decent idea just get started.

If you liked this post than the post about an idea being a multiplier of success is great and the book The Millionaire Fastlane(shady sounding title but awesome book) would interest you.

I talk a lot about developing a skill, the only way to do this is with deliberate practise. A great book about the importance of deliberate practise is Talent is Overrated.

Tackling big project with massive effort can be daunting… a great book to get people in the right mindset for this kind of effort is 10X rule by Grant Cardone (his style is not for everyone and took me a bit but I really like the message)

My Final Thoughts

This post was written out of frustration for the massive discrepancy I see out of people who contact me. Some very obviously are setting themselves up to be successful and it is just a matter of time, while other are violating so many parts of this formula that I simply know unless they change they will fail!

Making a business successful online is not complicated but it is HARD!

I encourage you to honestly test where you are at on this formula and identify which blocks you can increase to increase the rate you are achieving success.

You may have noticed that I wrote “rate” of success multiple times in this post. I don’t believe success is a static point in time. Someone who has been wildly successful but is now falling apart (drugs/selling out etc) is no longer a “success” while someone who is achieving success at a rapid rate but is early on their journey is a “success”.

This is paraphrased from Earl Nightengale...

Earl Nightingale

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal. 

If you are on the journey to being successful and you based on the formula above you are checking most of the boxes congrats! 

If you don't think you are checking enough of the boxes in the formula that it may be time to really consider why you are building an online business and if the sacrificies necessary to be able to check enough of the boxes is worth it! 

I would be very interested to hear what you guys think of this formula both the good and the bad!​


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How To Conduct Keyword Research For FBA Sellers Website

Today we have the next post in the series on How to Build an Authority Website for an Amazon FBA Business. This monster post is a complete A-Z on how to complete Keyword research specifically for your brand

Dont have a website for your brand - Checkout BrandBuilders.io!​

In the previous article in this series, we talked about the importance of developing an authority website to compliment and drive your FBA seller private label campaign.

An authority website gives you more control over your brand, products, and ultimately your sales. Amazon gives you insane reach, and access to its huge marketplace, but your own website based around your brand can drive high value sales that make all of the difference.

If you want to enhance your passive income stream, building a website is the next step.

Keyword research is the important first stage of your website. It will shape the content of your site, and dictate the words, phrases, and content themes that you will use to target customers who are most likely to convert into buyers.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

Keyword research is considered the foundation of SEO and web development. This is due to search engines, and the phrases that potential customers enter when looking for something. A search engine's job is to provide highly relevant SERPs (search engine results pages) for user queries, and your job is to clearly stand out as a relevant match.

Google alone deals with 100 billion searches a month globally. Keyword research allows you to tap into the market, create content based on responding to search queries, and appear higher on results that are most relevant for your product or niche.

Keyword research helps you to gain valuable information. You can find out how popular a certain search term, gauge the interests and user intents of your niche, and respond to them. You can also find out the competition for keywords, and get an idea of how valuable they are to target in terms of both traffic and conversion.

The overall aim is to target the right audience using the right search terms.

A Quick Overview

The process of keyword research is, in itself, not too difficult. There are three major steps:

  1. Create a seed list of potential keywords, based on knowledge, research, and brainstorming
  2. Expand the list using keyword research tools
  3. Refine the list using keyword analysis tools, and by theming your keywords and content

You will create a small sample list of terms related to your product, based on what you expect people to search. You will then expand using tools that analyze search data and competitors. Then you will refine the list to leave you with your best keyword an keyphrase options, which we will group together.

You can these target the most profitable keywords, by grouping them into into themed content silo, according to their meaning.

Software and applications, many of which are free or inexpensive, allow you to make light work of your keyword research, and leave you with nothing much to “do” in terms of expansion and analysis.

Soon, I will walk you step-by-step through the entire process of building a keyword list. First, you need to know a bit more background information so that you can produce keyword lists that are meaningful and valuable, and know how to utilize them to get the best results.

What's Changed?

Keyword research, and the world of SEO in general, has changed dramatically since the early days of keyword-stuffing. Back then, websites could simply place huge volumes of popular keywords anywhere on their site; in the text, html, wherever, and would quickly move up the ranks.

Then came “keyword density”, where keywords were used a certain number of times to try and mimic natural text. What a load of nonsense.

Thankfully for all internet users, search engines now use more sophisticated algorithms to create more relevant and high quality SERPs. Keyword stuffing isn't just useless – it will now get you penalized really quickly. Your site will be seen as spam.

Now, it is all about using keywords and phrases in a natural way. Content should respond to search queries, and keywords should remain relevant to themes and topics. Google understands much more about the meaning of search enquiries, and tries to give the most relevant results to match the user's request.

The implication is that you (or your writer) should now be creating content primarily for readers. There is no doubt about it. Keywords should never be used at the detriment of the quality or relevance of your content and your website.

This does not mean that the use of keywords should be abandoned. They are still very important. Keywords tell search engine algorithms what your website is all about – the themes and intentions of your site, and help to match your content with a relevant audience.

One of the tricks (if you can call it that) you can still use, is to integrate well researched keywords naturally into your content, as well as into other key areas like the content title, headings, image alt tags, page title, and URL.

Never look spammy!

Overall, the aim will be to use keywords and phrases to facilitate a highly relevant and top quality website structure and content plan.

Long Tail Keyphrases – The Low Hanging Fruit

You can't stuff keywords anymore and expect to get away with it, so you will have to choose your keywords and phrases wisely, and try to gain authority in your niche.

When you conduct your research, you will choose keywords according to the volume of the search term, and also according to the level of competition. These stats will help you to determine what is worth targeting, and what it is possible to rank well for.

It is extremely difficult to become an authority for primary keyword like “swimming goggles”, or “goggles”. Difficult, but not impossible. If I type “swimming goggles” into google, the top results are from brands such as speedostore, proswimwear, zoggs and other companies that have pretty much dominated the top spots.

This doesn't mean you can't try to rank for major short keywords within your product niche, but it is likely that you will remain invisible for some time if you don't mix up your strategy. It's going to take a while before search engines recognizes you as being an authority worthy of ranking for the most popular short terms.

In the meantime, you will want to pull in some traffic and sales.


So, how do you use keyword research to compete?

As an FBA seller, it is likely that your product research came first. You found a product that qualified as a best seller, and that you could source from a supplier to turn a profit. (To find out the exact method of becoming an Amazon FBA Seller, see this article.)

Because you already have your product, let's say swimming goggles, you have no choice but to work with the keywords available in your niche.

The answer to this dilemma is long-tail keyphrases, known affectionately as the 'low hanging fruit' of the SEO world. Ripe for the picking, these keyphrases usually have a much lower search volume than major keywords, but also have much less competition, and are easier to rank for.

With well researched long-tail phrases, you can attract an instant audience, and you might even pull in some sales early on. As an added bonus, long tail terms are usually more specific. The user is looking for something specific, and by working with longer phrases you can create content that will match their enquiry closely.

Long-tail keywords collectively make up 70% of search volume. So, while it might seem pointless to target a single low volume long-tail phrase, a content plan which targets multiple long-tails will yield some pretty good results.

All the while, as you rank for more low volume long-tail phrases, the overall authority of your site will improve, and the search engines will begin to recognize you as a valuable source in your niche.

LSI & User Intent

A huge advancement in Google's algorithm over recent years, is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

Google updates such as Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird, have offered increasing sophistication when it comes to knowing the meaning of words and phrases, and matching this with the meaning of a search enquiry.

The bots can understand, through a complex mathematical process, that “swimming glasses” and “swimming goggles”, pretty much equates to the same search.

They understand that “purchase swimming goggles” and “buy swimming goggles” imply the same user intent. “Best swimming glasses for the sea” and “what swimming goggles are best for the ocean” are understand to have pretty much the same meaning.

As another example, the search engines know that when the words “Apple” and the word “laptop” are seen together, the user is nearly always looking for a brand of computer. It will not give you results for anything related to fruit.

The overall goal of LSI, is for search engines to understand what exactly the user is asking for when they search, and to match the enquiry with the most relevant web results. It is the next step in giving accurate and relevant SERPs.

Clever, eh? But what does all this have to do with your approach to keyword and content strategies?

Well, for a start it means that targeting single keywords and phrases is not as important for your rankings. It is now more important that your website be recognized for its main themes or silos.

It also means that you can use related keywords and phrases pretty much interchangeably, as long as they have the same meaning, and respond to the same user intent. It is therefore now best practice to group keywords according to meaning and search intent, and to focus on targeting these groups with an effective content strategy.

In effect, the semantic abilities of search engines have greatly improved. Google now indexes your website according to themes and overall meanings, as well as looking at individual keywords and phrases.

This means that you can gain authority by:

  • Making sure Google can recognize the main theme of your website, via primary keywords that are relevant to your product.
  • Grouping together keywords to create a structure of content around a certain topic or search intent (known as a content silo, which is covered in detail later in this article).
  • Using related long tail and short keywords naturally and interchangeably in content, targeting one theme per silo.
  • Providing peripheral content which is relevant to your overall content theme and product.

The aim is to become an authority in your niche. Eventually, by targeting longtail phrases, you can start to rank for a whole bunch of related terms without even having to target them individually – all due to the LTI of the search engines. You will also eventually begin to see higher rankings for your main keyword.

So, how do you theme your keywords and develop a content plan?

Interest, Intent, and Grouping Keywords

For FBA sellers, the best way to understand and group your keywords and content, is in response to audience interest and search intent.

This allows search engines to recognize the relevancy and authority of your site, and match it with search terms related to various stages of the buying process, which yields maximum impact for sales.

Pretty much all web searches can be broken down into four intentions, which make up a sales funnel: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. The further down the funnel the searcher, the more commercial their intent.

Awareness/Informational – These searches are purely informational. The user wants to be informed, inspired, or educated. Searches are often based on the “who, what, where, when, and why.” For example, “Who won the gold medal for swimming”, “What is lavender oil?”, “Can lavender oil be beneficial for skin”. Usually, the searcher has no commercial intent, though they can sometimes be directed down the sales funnel or towards a sale.

  • Keyword Value: Search terms at the awareness level have a medium value. They make up around 80% of all searches, and although they don't often have direct commercial impact, they do help you to gain brand awareness, attract links, gain SEO authority on keywords, and therefore increase your chance of future sales. You can also use your content at a purely informational level, with informational keywords, but drive soft sales calls to action or sign-ups.

Interest/Navigational – This is the search intention that you should be least concerned about for your keyword strategy. If anything you should actually eliminate any keywords that target this intention from your list. Navigational searches involve the user typing a destination into the search engine, out of laziness, or because they do not know the full URL of a business. Although they may have commercial intent, they are have already chosen their destination, and are just trying to get there. Search examples include “BrandBuilders”, “SEMRush”.

  • Keyword Value: Usually very low keyword value. There is a slight chance that you can hijack traffic from its expected destination, but this chance is low, bounce rates high, and in terms of your keyword strategy, navigational searches are not worth targeting.

Desire/Commercial – Here we start to get closer to the money. The search engine user has a commercial desire for something. They know what they want, but they don't know which one they want. Searches on this level of intention often involve phrases like “best”, “comparison of”, “benefits of”. Searches are often problem-based. For example, “what is the best type of essential oil for sensitive skin”, “what are the best swimming goggles in 2016”. “where can I find hotels in Manchester.” The user is trying to gauge more information about the product or service that they are looking for, and if their problem can be answered, they might just get their wallet out.

  • Keyword Value: High. Using keywords at this level of intention will result in more conversions. Your product sales landing pages should aim to solve user's problems, and provide a solution to their search. The solution should nearly always be your product or service. Commercial and informational content overlaps to some extent, and together should form the core of your keyword groups and content plans.

Action/Transactional: In the case of transactional searches, the user pretty much has their hand in their pocket ready to buy. They know what they want, have addressed any problems they needed to solve before buying, and are now they want to make a purchase (or sign up to a newsletter, or use a free service – money doesn't necessarily have to be involved). Search terms may include “buy X online”, “cheap/discount lavender oil”, “meat restaurant in New Jersey”, and so on.

  • Keyword Value: Transactional search terms have a very high keyword value, but are often the most competitive, and involve keyword terms that are tough to rank for. However, you should still aim to target these keywords as part of a long term SEO strategy, and doing so can dramatically increase conversions. Look out for long tail terms that have low competition. They are gold! Always make direct purchase of your item possible on this page, to respond to the user's desire to buy.

Once you have your expanded list of keywords (don't worry, we're getting to the actual method soon), you will group them into the categories of intent mentioned above. You will:

  • Disregard transactional keywords, at least for the moment.
  • Group informational keywords and searches into themes and topics.
  • Identify potentially valuable keywords and phrases on the commercial and transactional level.

You can see here that this creates a structural framework for your keywords and content. Here's how it translates:

  • In general, long-tail search terms tend to be found further up the funnel, especially for informational searches. You can usually find terms with relatively little competition, and use them to quickly rank and gain an audience. Your content can also be tailored to pull readers down the sales funnel with soft calls to action, or lead them to more commercial intent and content.
  • The closer towards the sale the user's intent, the more valuable the keywords tend to be. These keywords usually have more competition and are harder to rank for, but make up an integral part of your long term strategy. If you find a low competition commercial keyword, use it!
  • Use commercial and transactional keywords on your main sales pages. They should make up the “main theme” of your page. They yield a higher conversion rate, and therefore more profits. You will receive backup authority via the web of informational content and related long-tail keywords used in your informational silos, as search engines begin to recognize the peripherals around your main theme.

(So if you are an FBA seller who has a water filter bottle, you want search engines to understand that your main theme is selling the bottles, and that you also offer informational topics related to it. You want to rank for terms related to commercial intent, but have backup from easy to rank awareness searches).

Let's recap. So far we have learnt that:

  • Keyword research is very important for your website page rankings. The search engines need to know what your site is about, and to do this they take a look at the keywords that your site includes.
  • Search engine algorithms are more sophisticated than they used to be, and there are more factors at play. You can no longer stuff keywords and get results. You need to integrate keywords naturally, and refine a strategy around valuable words and phrases that the user will engage, share, and enjoy.
  • Long tail keywords are the 'low hanging fruit' of SEO. They may have less search volume, but they often have far less competition, so you can rank for them much more easily, and start to gain views and engagements on your FBA site.
  • Search engines now analyze the meaning of keywords and phrases on your website, and match them with the user's search intent. They will try to understand what the user is searching for, and match this with relevant websites. This means that you can gain overall authority by ranking for long-tail key phrases related to your product, and will rank for more difficult related terms as you gain this recognition.
  • You should be looking to organize your keywords and content by user intent, and targeting customers at various points in the sales funnel (disregarding the transactional stage). Creating content silos with grouped keywords will help you to theme your website according to search term categories.
  • Each stage of the sales funnel should aim to carry the reader down towards a sale. So, the informational content should link to commercial content, the commercial content to the transactional content, and the transactional to the sale.

The Tools For Keyword Research

It's time to get acquainted with the practical aspects of keyword research, of which the most important is the tools. There are hundreds of keyword research and SEO tools available online, and you might have your own preferences, but for your convenience here are some of the latest and greatest:

LongtailPro: My personal favorite! Enter a seed term, and watch as this software generates 800 more, giving you access to longtail keywords, which you can then analyze search volume, PPC costs, competitor data.

SEMRush: This is one of your main ally’s in keyword analysis. It will give you rich data about search volume, cost-per-click, the number of competitors for keywords, and shows you a whole bunch of related keywords and key phrases. With it, you can gauge the overall difficulty of ranking for a particular keyword, as well as keep track of how well you are doing in the SERPs. It also makes a great tool for analyzing your competitors. It tells you thousands of keywords that they rank for, what keywords you share, what they rank for that you don't, and more. This is one of our main recommendations for your research.

Google Ads Keyword Planner: This tool is an excellent resource for keyword research. Switch it over to 'keyword ideas' and it can suggest keywords for you based on seeds. Afterwards, you can enter a list of potential keywords and receive data about search volume, along with the cost of running a paid advertising campaign – the higher the cost to advertise, the more valuable a keyword is likely to be to rank for. The 'Planner' replaced Google's old keyword tool, and is now much more orientated towards Adwords, but is still useful for keyword research and analysis.

Keywordtool.io: With long-tail keywords proving to be a highly effective approach to modern content keyword optimization, this is a fantastic tool. Enter a topic or seed keyword, and keywordtool.io will generate hundreds of related long-tail terms based on Google Autocomplete. You can export these phrases into other tools to see how they stack up for search volume and competition.

Buzzsumo: Buzzsumo gives you amazing insights into the social media world. Enter a topic idea to get a list of the most shared content across all major platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn. Alternatively, enter a competitor's domain to see which topics went viral for them. This gives you unique insights into what your audience wants, and remember, shares and engagement also help you to rank. It's another tool in your arsenal that can help you to find hot topics and themes.

MerchantWords: Merchant Words is one of the only ecommerce/Amazon specific keywords. Even if you don't use Amazon getting an idea of what people search for on Amazon helps narrow your content focus. 

There are many tools for keyword planning and research, but the six mentioned above will yield more than enough data to provide you with all of the keywords and phrases that you need to formulate your content plan.

With them, you can take a simple seed keyword related to your FBA product or website, and conjure up hundreds more, analyze them, and start to assign them some sort of value.

Step-By-Step Guide To Keyword Research

It's time. Armed with the background knowledge to know why keywords are important, and what purpose they serve in today's SEO landscape, it is time to develop a keyword list.

Create Your Seed List

  • The first job, is to build a temporary seed list of keywords. To start, you can simply brainstorm your ideas. Think of search terms relevant to your FBA product, or the service you provide. Come up with some primary keywords, like “swimming goggles”. Try to come up with terms that capture what your product does, and what problems it solves.
  • Work with the Awareness – Desire – Action model of search intent, and choose seed keywords for each category – informational keywords, commercial keywords, and transactional.
  • Try to include long-tail keywords at seed level. This isn't crucial, as you can gather more later, but they are such an important part of your ranking strategy, that they should be built in from the early stages.
  • If you already have a website up and running, you can use Google Analytics or a similar tool, in order to see what search terms people already find your site with. This can give you some useful seed words to expand on.
  • Use Google Autocomplete to find popular suggestions based on major keywords and topics, or use software such as Keywordtool.io to do the work for you. Beware though, scraping with software at this stage may create overly-elaborate lists.
  • Be aware of the sphere of information and social sharing that exists for your product and niche. Keep up-to-date with news and relevant blogs to keep up with trends, and familiarize yourself with your audience. Use Buzzsumo to gain a deeper understanding of the social landscape, and find topics that you can use for keyword generation and content siloing.
  • See what terms competitors are already ranking with, using tools such as SEMRush to enter their domain.

The overall aim, is to create a list of relevant keywords for various user intentions and topics. The approach doesn't have to be overly analytical. You just need a starting point to expand from.

Build A Keyword List

  • Use your favorite keyword research tool to expand your list, and gain relevant data that will help you to know which keywords and phrases are worth targeting. We use SEMRush, but other tools work fine.
  • Type one or more of your seed keywords into your keyword tool, and set the results to “exact match”. You can enter a few seed words at once, but make sure you keep them grouped and themed together by intent and/or topic.
  • Check out options and filters to choose the market you are interested in. For example, it can be useful to set locations and languages if you only sell your product within one nation.
  • Select your data columns, so that the keyword tool shows monthly search volume, competition, and perhaps other stats like CPC. These stats can help you to quickly understand the value of keywords.
  • You can export the results to a spreadsheet to build your list. Select results that seem interesting, and get rid of keywords and phrases that are irrelevant to your product or purpose, as well as ones which have obviously unfavorable stats.
  • Repeat the process with other seed keywords, expanding and copying interesting results into your spreadsheet. Remember keep seeds in categories to make life easier in the next stage.

Refine Your List

  • You should end up with a list of keywords which are all relevant to your product, and which target user searches at the levels of information, commercial, and transactional. If you kept your seed keywords grouped, then you can now easily categorize them. Create a new column, and note the search intent for each.
  • Create another new column, and call this “semantic groups”. These are topics and themes within your search intent groupings, and serve to further categorize your keywords to make content planning easier. You don't have to try too hard to find semantic groups, but use it if it helps. For example, if you have a swimming goggle product, you might have all of your informational search keywords grouped together, but within this you could have the semantic group that covers “benefits of swimming goggles” specifically.
  • Identify key target words and phrases. This should include some high-volume, high-competition commercial and transactional words, as well as long-tail keyphrases that have low volume but low competition – to gain an immediate audience and gather authority. If you do find any untapped gems, where volume is high and competition low, then target them immediately. Remember that the main goal is profit, so commercial and transactional keywords with good stats are an absolute goldmine.
  • Eliminate useless or irrelevant keywords that have slipped through the net, as well as any keywords that have unbearably bad statistics, or that cannot be reasonably grouped or themed.
  • Remember, because of search engines LSI, you can use grouped keywords interchangeably, and they will be recognized as addressing the same user query. This means that there is less emphasis overall on finding the exact keyword to use, and more on finding the user queries and topics to address. Try to think about the accessibility (search volume vs competition) of a group of keywords, as well as opportunities to rank for single phrases.
  • Based on the research and data that you have cultivated, decide on a balanced bunch of keywords that you think will gain traffic (informational), and which will result in sales (commercial and transactional). Highlight them in green for easy reference. You can also transfer your green listed keywords to another spreadsheet, to use in the first stage of your campaign.

You want to be left with dozens or a few hundred keywords, conveniently grouped, which are all relevant to your product, and which intercept search inquires at every stage of the sales funnel.

Creating Content Silos

With your list of keywords, you can build a truly beautiful content plan based on the fruits of your labor. The keyword groups on your spreadsheet are all based around responding to user intent, and answering search queries at every level. This is perfect for ranking your product.

The actual terms and topics that you use in your content silos should be based on the data and analysis from your keyword lists.

Your next job is to translate these keyword groups into a content structure for your website. Each keyword group will make a theme. Your main theme, if you are an FBA seller, should be commercial and transactional. You want to sell products. You want the search engines and the customers to know this, and so you will use commercial keywords to build relevant web content pages.

For example, if you are selling essential oils on your FBA store, you will have product pages which use the most profitable transactional keywords, e.g. “buy essential oils”, and commercial keywords, e.g. “best essential oils” from your refined keyword list. Ranking for commercial and transactional keywords will eventually result in high conversion rates, and maximum profits.

To integrate the other keyword themes into your page, you might want to introduce a blog. This will allow you to delve into topics around the peripheral of your product. You can describe more about what it is and what it does, the problems that it solves, and other informational topics that are of interest to your audience.

You might cover topics such as “uses of essential oils”, “benefits of X oil”, “essential oils for skin care” and so on.

Your blog will pull in an audience via long-tail keywords, and will also rank for related search terms due to LSI. This can result in improved brand awareness, and also increases search engine authority for your sales pages. In time, ranking for peripheral topics will increase your rank for major commercial keywords too.

You can also use blog posts to funnel the audience towards a sale by internally linking informational content to commercial content, and then to transactional content, taking them deeper into the sales process.

When you come to write your website, or when you hire a writer, you should be able to hand them a content brief containing the target themes for each page that you ask them to write. Each identified theme or topic will have a list of keywords which can be naturally integrated into the text. You can also make the writer aware of the most important keywords and phrases to use for a particular theme – those that are likely to yield the best traffic and profits.

Creating Your Website

A content silo doesn't only refer to the writing and the keywords, but also to the way in which the content themes are structured on the website.

You don't want all of your themes muddled together in one mess of web pages. You want to try to create definition and distinction in the way that your page is setup.

The overall structure of your website contributes immensely to your rankings. How you develop and design your website really does make an impact – search engine bots need to be able to “crawl” through your website, and understand the themes contained within. An easy-to-navigate structure facilitates this.

In the next article, I am going to show you how to register your website, and begin your web design.

Keyword Research – The Final Words

Keyword research and SEO change all of the time. As algorithms become increasingly sophisticated, it has become much more important to add value to your reader, and to respond to search inquires with quality information and services.

Keywords will always have a role in your website, and remain an important foundation that will help you to gain traffic and sales. Analyzing, and grouping profitable and relevant keywords together to form contextual groups and themes, is the way to go.

If this all sounds like a lot of hard work, BrandBuilders.io offer keyword research and ongoing analysis of keyword success as part of their brand building services. They can help you to achieve your goals of increasing your FBA (or affiliate) sales, and developing your passive income.

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February Income Report – New Opportunities

I have big goals for 2016 and planned on coming out of the gate quick this year.

My usual busy online work schedule has been even busier with me finding a little more time in my day to do some work. Even a few 5-10 minute times during the day can add up!

Certainly February was not without its challenges and I am happy to share everything including both the good and the bad!

My new monthly report format will focus on my 4 main business “divisions”…

  1. Passive Income Website Portfolio
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
  3. SEO &Expired Domain Services:
  4. Amazon FBA Business

Key Successes

  1. Six Figure Website SaleClosed a creative deal which made the size of the pie larger for everyone. Initially it looked like a deal was not going to be able to happen but then we looked at some creative options which resulted in this great deal for everyone involved.
  2. Pushing Through Failures – February through a few punches as listed below but the business was able to respond well to all of them and quickly get over them. Problems = Progress!
  3. Interesting Opportunities – As is always the case ideas/opportunities seem to come at times of highest action. February brought a few unique ideas/opportunities my way in addition to the sale mentioned above. I am looking forward to sharing more!
  4. Diversified Income – I do believe if my goal was to maximize my total income/net worth I have my hand in too many pots. However, my goal which is subtly but significantly different is to provide financial freedom/security to my family which means stable/robust sources of online income are key. The last few months have showed the benefit of this approach with income staying reasonably stable while each individual part of the business experiencing its own seasonal swings.

Key Failures

  1. Family Sick – We had a couple bugs churn through our entire family for 2 weeks. My priority is always taking care of my family and as a result I had less time/energy to put towards the business for a couple weeks. I talk like I was helping take care of my family but I am much worse at being sick than my wife who had to take on even more work than normal.
  2. Sale of FBA Business is Complex – I was hoping to be able to quickly and cleanly sell my FBA business but have realized that this sale will need to be a little more creative than a simple sale of an online business.

2016 Business Goals

Below is my businesses main goals for 2016

2

Download This Easy to Edit and Printable Goals Template – FREE

 

Part 1 – Passive Authority& Niche Website IncomeProfit/Loss

part 1

3 Goals in 2016 for my Website Portfolio Business

1. Systematize Top 20 Sites in Portfolio

Feb Update – Lots of room for improvement on the monetization side. I am contemplating what the right structure is for my team and sites. Right now I generate $10k/month+ and considering if I should bring in some higher level dedicated help to really work on improving these sites with them getting a % of the upside. Right now I am simply wrestling with how to best structure a team to manage the higher level monetization testing questions. My team can execute the content and backlinks simply but based on the success of the new owners of my Six Figure Website Sale I clearly have a lot of room for improvement!

2. Buy 1 Site Per Month

Feb Update – My plan is to add 1 site a month to my portfolio and I did that in Feb with a little site.

  • GOAL = 1 Website
  • ACTUAL = 1 Website Purchased in February

post

If any readers are looking to sell their profitable site(s) VERY QUICKLY let me know by emailing me. I can let you know in 12hrs if I am interested and complete the purchase in 24-48hrs – Contact Me Here

I have found the right sellers are those…

  • Looking to sell FAST (under 24hrs has been accomplished!) (shorter time for due diligence on my end increases risk for me)
  • Not wanting to spend a lot of time on the sales process (analytics and income proof is all I need)
  • Sites are medium-questionable quality (questionable SEO, non-native English articles are OK)
  • High quality sites making over $500/month often make sense to sell via other channels (EmpireFlippers is a great marketplace)
  • Understand that the benefits of the bullet points above means the sales multiple will be lower

If you have an Amazon Affiliate site you are looking to sell fast please let me know – Looking to buy fast at market value!!

3. Sell Websites Strategically for $100k Total

Feb Update – SUCCESS (kinda)! Very happy to have a success on this front early in the year! Well kinda… the sale includes the option to buy for $100k but for now it includes a “rental” option plus up-side consideration. More details about the creative structure here.

PRIMARY GOAL – OVERALL INCOME FOR WEBSITE PORTFOLIO

portfolio

Feb Update – Strong continued performance for a shorter month after the seasonal bump is over! A $10k/month passive income portfolio is ideal!

 

Part 2 – Authority Website Income Blog Profit/Loss

part 2

 

3 Goals in 2015 for AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

1. Post Once PerWeek

Jan Update – Never missing a week will be a challenge for me but I am committed again to making this happen!

  • Plan = 4
  • Actual = 4

post published

2. 10x my Outreach

Feb Update –1 podcast interview completed and participated in several outreach round-ups. Not the level of effort I need here!

3. Site Redesign – Completed!

Feb Update – Continuing to tweak but I can call this one complete!

 

PRIMARY GOAL – GROW TO 30k VISITORS PER MONTH

Feb Update – 30% year over year increase and traffic solid but not amazing yet! Need to continue publishing VERY useful content every single week.

audience

Part 3 – Services Business Profit/Loss

3

4. Systems Overhaul/Refresh – This one hasn’t started yet but I have a plan for it mapped out. We need to better establish auditing of our existing procedures and over time some of the procedures have gotten stale. This is unbelievably boring but incredibly important work!

5. Improve email marking and sales automation – In January I started down this road moving all contacts over to ActiveCampaign but have not fully fleshed out the sales automation yet!

6. BrandBuilders.io Becomes The Go-To Resource for Done 4 You Amazon FBA Private Label Websites – Great progress on this one in January with a podcast interview at TheAmazingSeller.com and several VERY happy customers.

PRIMARY GOAL – STAND ALONE SYSTEMATIZED SERVICES BUSINESS IN 2016

Part 4 – Amazon FBA Business

4

  1. Sell FBA Business for 30x with 3+ SolidMonths – Progress in February has been hit and miss. Based on the age of the site it is clear that a clean sale is going to be tricky, however, some creative options are definitely on the table.
  2. Launch Brand #2 – For my next FBA Brand February was a slow month for getting it moving. Samples that arrived were not ideal.
  3. Launch Brand #3 –An opportunity for Brand #3 is moving quickly and I am excited about its options! This brand is where I will be investing the majority of my FBA time in March getting it up and running!

FBA Business Results

February FBA income numbers

chart2

Overall Income Update

Original Monthly Net Income Target (original goal $15k/month reliable income by age 35)

  • Target Net Income = $8,475
  • Actual net Income = $28,899.66
  • 2016 Average Monthly Net Income = $28,763.75 (stretch goal is 30k average for the year)

Gross revenue is a vanity number for my business and not shared

(note Amazon FBA Income May Be Off By A Little Here – FBA Affiliate Site Income Counted in Passive Income Portfolio)

(note Amazon FBA Income May Be Off By A Little Here – FBA Affiliate Site Income Counted in Passive Income Portfolio)

goal

Final Comments

Continued strong results for the business! It is time to work harder/push the team more and ensure all gains are not fleating!

Look for the launch of an exciting new idea in March/April! Jumping into a business model that I have always wanted to but never had the right solution/team… I have both of those now and very excited to see where we can take the newest venture!

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Are Private Blog Networks (PBNs) Effective in 2016? – $8 Million Dollar Case Study

This is a question always worth asking! In this post I will share why I believe using PBNs is right for my business and use data to show if PBNs are working in 2016 and their risk.

Why Do I Use PBNs?

I believe that those of us with limited time can systematically build useful websites that rank in Google and support the lives we want in less time than the average person watches TV in a day.

PBN's are one tool in my toolbox to help rank websites without me needing to invest a ton of my own limited time.

Jon Gillham

Why share this? Well I know there is a stigma around using PBNs and I understand that but my view is that I need to either not be in the game of making websites or find a way to leverage my skills of systems/processes to help rank my websites.

If I had unlimited time than certainly a pure white-hat approach would be ideal. However, day job, family commitments and other online businesses force the reality that pure white hat techniques executed by me is not an option.

So PBNs for me is a way to systematically continue to build my passive income portfolio to the over $10k/month I now enjoy.

[yop_poll id=”2″]

The key question for a lot of you, like it is for me as well, is how well are they working now in 2016 and what is their risk?

Using data I will try and answer some key questions…

  1. How Well Do PBNs Work in 2016
  2. How Risky Are PBNs
  3. How to Build a PBN in 2016

How Well Do PBN Work in 2016 – An $8,000,000 Case Study – WHAT??

Getting data on how many successful sites are using PBNs is obviously not easy. However, one location for collecting amazing data on this topic is the EmpireFlippers Marketplace where $8,000,000 worth of sites are currently listed.

I have done this analysis before and by using that snapshot in time at the start of 2015 vs this one I can answer the following questions…

Questions to Be Answered:

  1. What % of people building and selling profitable websites at EmpireFlippers use PBNs to rank their sites?
  2. Has the % of people using PBNs changed from 2015 to 2016?
  3. Are PBN’s used only on small sites?
  4. How much does the use of a PBN drop the value of a site bye?

Big Pile of Data to Answer These Questions...

  • 48 Active Listings
  • $287,757.77 worth of monthly net earnings
  • $7,894,504.01 worth of sites included in the data

Method:

  • Collect all the data
  • Remove websites that don’t use organic traffic at all (some ecommerce, most FBA etc)
  • Compare to previous results and answer questions

Results:

  • Question 1 - What % of people building and selling profitable content websites at EmpireFlippers use PBNs to rank their sites now?
  • Answer 1 – 55% of content websites for sale (excluding FBA & ecommerce) use a PBN to help drive organic traffic to their website.
  • Question 2 - Has the % of people using PBNs changed from 2015 to 2016?
  • Answer 2 – Those of us using PBNs to help their content websites rank has increased from 42% in 2015 to 55% in 2016.
  • Question 3 - Are PBN’s used only on small sites?
  • Answer 3 – PBNs rightly or wrongly often get associated with lower quality sites and not associated with the larger earnings sites. This turns to not the case with PBN sites earnings only a little less than sites that don’t use PBNs showing PBNs are used on larger sites as well. The graph below shows the average income for a site using a PBN vs the average income for a site not using a PBN.
  • Question 4 - How much does the use of a PBN drop the value of the site?
  • Answer 4 – No questions on this one a site that uses a PBN to get its rankings does sell for a discount. The average listing multiple for sites with a PBN was 25.8 vs 27.5 for sites with no PBN.

Conclusion:

Based on this data there are a few clean conclusions…

  1. Use of PBNs in 2016 is widespread (over 50%) and increasing!
  2. PBNs are not typically used on the largest of sites and when they are used the site sells for a small discount compared to a site built without a PBN to help it rank.

Risk of a PBN

No discussion of using a PBN to help you rank your website is complete without an honest discussion around the risks with using a PBN.

Let me stress that my belief is that for those of us with limited time that want to rank a useful website building a niche relevant high quality PBN is a systematic method we can use help us achieve our goals if used correctly.

However, a PBN should not be the only strategy deployed!

De-Indexation Risk By the Data

My team has built close to 3,000 niche relevant PBNs with less than a 10% de-indexation rate. This is very low and the key is for each site to be a “real” site capable of standing on its own.

PBN Risk Priced By the Marketplace

Marketplaces, when efficient, price in the risk of businesses. Based on the EmpireFlippers marketplace and the 6% discount sites using a PBN are listed at we can interprupt that right now the "marketplace" prices in that risk at 6% of the value of the site.

If you have a site that is making a lot of money but has never used a PBN be aware that as soon as it is labelled as using a PBN you should assume you will lose 6% of its value. However, if the ranking improvement outweighs the 6% than it still may make sense.

I hope this discussion is fair/balanced, not everyone should use a PBN and this post was meant to help show people when/why I make the choice to use them. Like everything online there are risks with the decision to use (or not use) a PBN, this data I hope will help you make the decision that makes sense for you and your business.​

How to Use a PBN in 2016 to Rank

If the risk/reward for using a PBN as apart of your SEO strategy makes sense to you here are 3 options for using a PBN in 2016…

Build Your Own PBN Right Way

(100% Free EPIC Guide!)

Save Time - Use My PBN!

(Extremely Powerful & Exclusive PBN)

Done For You PBN Service

(Want my team to build you a relevant PBN?)

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