Product Review Site - Possible to Beat Out "Top Dogs"?

Nice post.
I'd never say never, but this one may take a little work.
What you have in your favour is that their on-site optimization is very weak - They don't have the keyword in all of the big 4 - url, title, description and header. Backlinks aren't a problem by the look of it, but what is against you is their domain age and the number of backlinks they have to other pages.

All in all, in my opinion, backlinks and one-page SEO are more important than domain age and links to other pages, so I'd say you have a shot.
Why don't you go for it and keep us posted. I'd be very interested to see how long it would take you and what is required.

I might do that TB, thanks for your advice.

I'd probably agree that on-page + backlinks > domain age, though when it gets to 10 years, it's hard to argue it's not important. I may consider it more. The commissions seem brilliant, but is it really possible to convert someone to Amazon? The good thing about Amazon is it's generally the cheapest route, so I could show the price, and then they will say - hey, that's cheaper than BestBuy and Amazon is reputable, let me buy it there instead.

I will consider going through with it and keeping everyone updated on it (it'd motivate me as well). Before I do it though, I want some more opinions.

Hi Brad,
On page optimization can account for 25 to 30% of successfully ranking on the top of the SERPs. I would attribute 70% of the success to backlinks.

With on page optimization, you can manipulate your site to your heart's content. But it is not the case with off page optimization because you have to work hard in building backlinks and most importantly, the quality of links matters, not just quantity.

In the screenshot that you have attached, the top sites are CNet, Gizmodo etc which are powerful domains and have been around for ages. IMHO, an exact match domain that is not too mature in age is not going to pass muster.

With sheer prolonged hard work, you can bring your site to Page 1 but for all the efforts you put in, I am not sure if it is worth promoting a product on Amazon which caps your commission rate however expensive the product may be.

Atleast if you are promoting a niche specific customized product where you can get a lion's share of the affiliate commission, it is worth your time and effort. My 2 cents.
Best
Raviv

Thanks for your feedback raviv. Before I go about this, I definitely want to hear feedback from both sides. Also, I'm going to do some research with other popular amazon products to see if anybody succeeded with "productreview.com" and check out what they did before I make a decision.

So I did a quick study on one case that I'll share with you.

The product is the Samsung UN46C6300 which is an LED TV, 46'', 1080p, 120 Hz. It sells for about $1000, so with a 4% commission, he's making $40 ($60 at 6% and so forth).

His site is titled: Samsung UN46C6300 Lowest Price from $983 and he was aiming to rank for the product name (no review). Obviously that's a sort of dumb decision b/c of course Samsung is going to have the top rank - that's a given, though there are more searches than with "review" at the end (3600 [exact] searches/month btw).

On-Page Analysis:

• His backend is definitely Wordpress.
• He is using a simple one column layout.
• He has the All in One SEO plugin installed.
• His home page title interestingly lists the price: "Samsung UN46C6300 Lowest Price from $983". I'm sure the quick-find price attracts people who Google for the item.
• He has 4 pages - Home = Placeholder for Posts / About Us = Quick 4 sentence blurb. Appears copied and VERY slightly edited. Definitely appears to be dupe content though. / Contact Us = Just lists his email and offers the user the chance to contact him. / Site Map = Uses a plugin.
• He has 7 posts - 5 of them are reviews. These appear to be all unique content. The other 2 are manufacturer's notes (dupe content) and a price comparison page. I'm linking to the price comparison page because I think it's a really great page. The colored table lays out all the prices and links visitors to the product directly. It also offers awards/suggestions such as "lowest price, best value, recommended" and shipping information. Just below he has a bar graph visualizing the prices which I think is a really neat feature. He probably used a plugin for it. Definitely something I would try on this site if I go through with it.

And overall - not going to lie, he did VERY well (especially for a site w/ dupe content!). Here's the data I extracted.
Top 10 Results for Samsung UN46C6300


4th position for a term with ~ 120 searches/day. You'd like to think he finds himself getting at least 15-20 uniques a day. All he did was have perfect on-page SEO, get 305 backlinks (which I show below for a PR analysis), and have 55 indexed pages. The site is just over 9 months old.

Backlink PR Analysis

298 of his 305 backlinks are 0 PR. Then the rest are evenly scattered 2-5. It's important to note most of his 0 PR backlinks are from all the indexed pages on his other site - television-price.com or a Thailand SEO Club forum he posts at.

I think you can beat any competitors All you need to do is to grab as much as content you can fill your website and start doing off page marketing try to introduce some new feature

I think I will go for it. A few AMR blasts should get me the needed backlinks, and then I'll add some higher PR links on top of that.

I think I will document the process too, but maybe on the Main Internet Marketers forum. I will likely begin starting this Friday.

I made some major on page changes that took me from page 12 to page 3 immediately for highly competitive keyword. There is a little trick which I learned on this one to target your keyword ranking with on page seo only. I can and does work. Backlinks are big, but must be combined with on page for best results nuking the competition.