Setting up the website

setting up the websites

This week, I’ve been busy with the basic set-up of the website. I’ve come up with a brandable domain name that was free to registere. I’ve bought the .nl tld domain name as well as the .be tld.

Of course, I also bought webhosting with these domain names.

I’ve installed a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate and installed WordPress as well. I installed Google Analytics, Yoast SEO and a Thrive Theme. Next to that I also installed Thrive Archtict, Thrive Quiz building and a hreflang tag plugin in case I want to copy the website to the .be tld in the future.

Next to these things, I’ve made the first briefings for content. While this will be written, I can tweak some lay-out things and try to gather some images I’ll definitely need. For the images I use product shots from suppliers and iStockphoto for more generic stock photos.

Once the content has been written, I’ll publish the articles asap. I’ve noticed that the domain name is already indexed in Google. Probably because of the Google Analytics account. Which is great as now all the website needs is a lot of content and some decent links.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been thinking a little more about my niche. And the possibilities are endless. This website really has the possibility to become big. In the long run I’ll try to target even really broad keywords for which no other affiliate websites are ranking. Broad keywords for which only webshops rank (buy + “product”).

I’ll try to do this by adding a Woocommerce webshop but use affiliate links instead of Buy now buttons. I do believe it should be possible to rank with the category pages of the products for “buy + product” or even just “product” keywords.

As this is the first time I’ll try adding a Woocommerce webshop on an affiliate website, I think I’ll need at least a few hours to figure out how to make things work best.

I’m a big fan of content silo’s to let the incoming link juice spread over the content silo. Having product category pages, product pages,… can make the site structure and content silo’s a little more complex.

I’ll have to figure out a good site structure before publishing any content. Nothing is more annoying than having to redirect pages, edit internal links, … because you didn’t think through the site structure properly in the first place.

In the meanwhile I’ve been looking into the search volume of some of the keywords I’ll go after with Project Alpha.

Keep in mind that the Netherlands and dutch speaking community in Belgium are quite small. Despite the relative low search volumes, I still think it’s worth going after this niche. The commissions on the products can be really high so that makes it worth it.