BUILDING

AN AFFILIATE
NICHE
BUILDING
AN AFFILIATE
SITE
NICHE SITE
Building affiliate sites
requires a combination
of research, SEO,
content creation,
marketing and website
development,
Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................. 03

Planning and Research ............................................................................................ 05

Keyword research........................................................................................................................ 06

Free Keyword, Competitive and Suggestion Tools .............................................. 08

Premium SEO Tools ................................................................................................................... 10

Domain Name ............................................................................................................................... 11

Site concept .................................................................................................................................... 12

Start Networking ......................................................................................................................... 14

Setting up social and analytic accounts .................................................................... 15

Social Media Registration ..................................................................................................... 16

Hosting Setup ............................................................................................................... 18

Choosing a Hosting Company ........................................................................................... 19

FTP ........................................................................................................................................................ 21

Email .................................................................................................................................................... 21

Installing WordPress ................................................................................................................. 22

Backups and Performance .................................................................................................. 23

Performance Enhancements .............................................................................................. 23

Wordpress Setup ........................................................................................................ 25

Setup WordPress ........................................................................................................................ 26

Plugins and theme ..................................................................................................................... 27

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Free Plugins for Niche Marketers ..................................................................................... 28

Categories and silos .................................................................................................................. 33

Content ............................................................................................................................ 35
Content Marketing ...................................................................................................................... 36
Types of Articles ........................................................................................................................... 38
Images ................................................................................................................................................ 40
Engage ................................................................................................................................................ 41
Final Checks .................................................................................................................................... 41
Sign up for Accounts ................................................................................................................. 43
Email List ........................................................................................................................................... 46
Press Release ................................................................................................................................. 46
Affiliate Registrations ................................................................................................................ 48

Search and Backlinks ................................................................................................ 50

Technical SEO ................................................................................................................................ 51
Tracking visitors ............................................................................................................................ 52
Launch Amplification ................................................................................................................ 55
Backlink Outreach ...................................................................................................................... 56
Press Releases ............................................................................................................................... 57
Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 58

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Introduction

Niche marketing is a simple concept. Create an audience around a

niche that has sufficient organic traffic to profitably promote products.
But like many simple concepts, it can be tricky to execute. The most
important step is to settle on your niche and develop your audience.
The best website, products, reviews, and offers are useless without an
audience to present them too.

For authority sites, during the earliest days, just focus on great content
that is valuable to your target audience – don’t sell anything. If you
provide content that helps people and makes a difference you will
develop trust. Once you have trust, offers are then more likely to
convert. This guide is a detailed look at the building of a niche site with
WordPress and how to get organic traffic via search and your content.
We break down the affiliate site creation into five functional areas:

1. Initial research and niche selection — establishes your focus

and audience.

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2. Hosting setup — your performance and reliability

foundation

3. WordPress setup — the stage for your content and

marketing

4. Content Creation — your customer value proposition

5. Marketing and technical SEO — lets Google and

visitors understand and find you

At Rapisite we explore these areas in more detail in our

Knowledge Center. We have an extensive video library and
tutorials to help you build your affiliate business. Let’s get
started on your affiliate journey!

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PLANNING
& RESEARCH
Start

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Keyword research

Building a niche website starts with researching your potential niche topics.
This first step is key, it sets the course of your website. Niche sites typically
get most of their traffic from Google search. The commission per transaction
from Amazon, eBay and other product-focused affiliates are too low for
paid ad campaigns. You need a good volume of visitors, with buying intent
from search, to succeed. Since niche sites depend on search results for
traffic, your niche selection research focuses on keywords. These keywords
will help guide your content creation efforts. It is also important that the
keywords you are targeting are searched by visitors with buying intent.

It makes sense to choose a niche you are

interested in. It is easier to stay engaged
with a topic that you enjoy. You want to
develop deep knowledge and expertise to
be a trusted leader in your niche. If you are
an authority in a popular niche, you will be
able to develop an audience.

But you must find just the right size niche. You need to find that Goldilocks
niche. A general niche, like electronics, is too broad. You would be
competing with established national and international companies. These
broad niches will also have competition from the bigger affiliates with high

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domain authority. It would be difficult to rank in the first few search result pages
without an ad budget or aggressive black hat SEO techniques.

On the other hand, if you choose a super-narrow niche you may get in the top 5 of
the Google SERPS, but so few search for the niche that there is not enough traffic
to monetize. Most people start too broad, don’t be afraid to niche down. Generally,
3000-8000 Google searches a month, from the main keyword, is a good range.
There are lots of tools out there to do your keyword research

Commercial Intent Keywords

Discount Deal Coupon Affordable

Research and
use keywords
Shipping
Sale Top Comparison
Cost with buying or
Free
commercial intent.
Best Review Cheapest
Shipping

You can get lost in all the data and become paralyzed and not take action. There
is no reason to have more than 1 or 2 paid keyword research tools and you can
likely get by with free tools and trials to start. Though not as good as Ahref or
SEMRush, Moz offers 30 day free trials. They have a solid database and you can
back that up with a low-cost, one-week trial from Ahref. A good strategy would
be to start with free tools, create a short list of niche targets and then start up your
trial period with Moz. Finally, research your shortlist items with a one-week Ahref

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$7 trial. Keyword research will validate your niche, assess your competition and
help guide your ongoing content marketing strategy.

Free Keyword, Competitive and Suggestion Tools

There are a number of free tools that can help you refine your keyword strategy.
Some limit the number of results or eliminate the statistical info.

Free SEO
Description Price
Tools

Soovle is a great keyword research tool for beginners. Soovle

Soovle provides autocomplete suggestions from the major search Free
engines: Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Ebay, Youtube, Bing, Amazon.

UberSuggest Ubersuggest is a free keyword suggestion tool. Free

LSI keywords are keywords related to the searched term that are
LSI Graphs semantically linked. used in your SEO strategy, then LSI keywords Free
can increase organic traffic and improve rankings.

Consider Google Trends as your inspiration for finding the next hot
topic. By simply entering the keyword in the search bar, Google
Google Trends Trends provides over five years of data for that keyword and helps Free
in identifying if that particular search term is still relevant for the
consumer/reader.

To use Google Suggest, simply start typing keywords in the

Google search box, and Google Suggest will autofill the search
Google
box with keywords that other people are looking for or they are Free
Suggest
related to your search query. It’s perfect for generating insights on
popular search queries relating to your search term.

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Adwords
The Adwords keyword planner can be a useful tool to see what
Keyword Free
keywords are being bid on.
Planner

The Keywords Everywhere extension is a free keyword tool that

Keywords can be easily installed in either Chrome or Firefox. Keywords
Free
Everywhere Everywhere shows Google keyword search volume, cost per click,
and competition data of keywords on multiple websites.

SERPs is a fast and simple to use tool that is great for the
SERPs beginners and experts. It provides related keywords for the Free
searched term, volume, CPC, and value.

Answer The Public is a unique keyword research tool that provides

questions containing the searched keyword. It can be very helpful
Answer The
for those looking to understand what people are asking for, what Free
Public
they are looking for, and what questions they have about that
searched term.

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Premium SEO Tools

Premium SEO tools can get expensive. The better tools like Ahref and SEM Rush
start at $99/mo. If you are building your first site it may be best to start with free
tools and contract someone to do some research for you. You have the added
benefit of another set of more experienced eyes to validate your findings.

Premium
Description Trial Cost
Tools

Number one for data depth. The broadest mix of

$99 –
ahrefs competitive, keyword and content research. If you $7/7-day
$399
had only one this would be it.

Searches audiences for specific markets: Google, Free

Keyword $68-$88
Ebay, Amazon, Bing etc., and makes keyword for 750
Tool month
suggestions. Results

Competitive analytics, Keyword difficulty, domain

comparisons. Goes head to head with ahrefs in
SEMrush none $99/mo
some areas but has unique features. Many SEO pros
will have ahref and semrush as their core tools.

Another large SEO toolkit in the $100/mo range.

Great free trial for new site builders. Many SEO $99 –
Moz 30 day
professionals like the free moz chrome extension $249
but prefer ahref and semrush for paid tools.

Keyword research, competitive analytics, rank 30 $19/mo –

SerpStat
tracking. Searches $299/mo

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$40 – $80
SEO Cockpit Keyword research and analysis. High speed none
/mo

LongTail keyword research. Large dataset

Wordtracker including, YouTube, Amazon and Wordtrackers and 7 Day $27-$99
Google.

Keyword difficulty and suggestions with

Longtail Pro 7 Day $25-$45
competitive domain strength, page strength.

Keyword Discover hidden long tail keywords including Free Lite

$29-$39
Finder Google Suggest as a source Version

A number of keyword tools: Negative, generator.

WordStream Free Keyword search but greyed data. An 7 day $244
advertising dashboard.

Domain Name

You have selected your niche after thorough

research, now time for a domain name. In the
past, having an exact match domain (EMD) like
thebestcordlessdrills.com would have been
desirable. There was strong SEO value. Now,
long EMD names are more likely to get you
penalized than rewarded. Since Google no
longer values these long EMDs, it is best to look for a brandable name. Often a
name uses one of the head keywords from your niche and a descriptor. This is a
partial match domain. It will always evoke your niche because of the keyword and

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your descriptor can make it memorable. The single keyword in the domain
name stills adds some SEO value. In this case, zippydrills.com for example
would be a better name than thebestcordlessdrills.com. Best to go with a
.com domain rather than .net or .io etc. Google does not care, but domains
other than .com looks less professional to some consumers. Every little bit
you can do to be perceived as a resource vs. an affiliate marketer is helpful.
When choosing a domain registrar, check their reputation for name server
changes and general administrative responsiveness. A good benchmark
is Namecheap who has good pricing and an easy to use dashboard for
nameserver and other updates. A new domain at Namecheap is under $10,
with a year of free private registration.

Site concept

After you have selected a niche, you need to

determine how you will present information
and value to your audience. You are in the
content marketing business, so you need to
organize your site around these concepts.
Some affiliate marketers build multiple
product sites, others are monetizing health
and fitness blogs. Editorial formats include
Top 10 sites, review sites, niche expert blogs? Perhaps a storefront in a larger
association’s site. After you decide this editorial format, you can design the

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site and start creating content. There are a few tried and true formats that convert
for product niche marketers. Among them are:

Top 10 site – Everyone loves lists. People looking at Top 10 lists also are showing
buying intent. Visitor Benefit: You have researched the marketplace, curated and
compiled a list of the best in class.

Niche Authority Site – These sites aim to have the deepest, most complete set of
information available for the niche. Even to the point of obscure. You want visitors
and Google to perceive you as the industry expert. Visitor benefit: The go-to site
for this niches detail.

Comparison Site – Much like the top 10 site. These sites compare multiple related
or competitive products within a niche.Visitor Benefit: You have researched the
marketplace, curated and compiled a list of the best in class.

Review Site – In depth reviews of typically a small set of products. This type of
site needs to pay very close attention to product selection. You need products
that are fairly feature rich to give you points of differentiation. You want products
that are fairly high-priced and in the high-end of Amazon’s commission schedule.
Trending products work best. Visitor Benefit: You have researched the details
about a multi-featured product. Visitors can have tables comparing features side-
by-side.

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Storefront or Catalog – These sites have lots of products. Some may curate
the best products of a certain niche, others offer best deals for Black Friday,
Cyber Monday, etc. These are the hardest to convert. You will have a lot
of thin content if you use the images and descriptions from Amazon and
Ebay. It is best to rewrite the descriptions. Some marketers would spin
them, some would just not index them and let the site rank on the basis
of the non-product information. You need to be careful to have plenty of
additional content or risk a de-authorization from Amazon for thin content
TOS violation. You will definitely need to be on top of your social game as
getting a viral social following is the best way to succeed with these sites.
Visitor Benefit: You have researched the marketplace, curated and compiled
a large list of niche specific products organized in a store or catalog format.
They also can work well for organizations and other communities.

Start Networking

When building an authority site, you

need to start networking while you are
in the planning stage. You don’t want to
show up on a Facebook group the day
you launch. Join the groups relevant to
your niche and be helpful. Then down
the road, you can lightly promote your
new site. Be active, be helpful, don’t

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sell anything. Get a feel for the tone of the group before posting. Also, find
Sub-reddits for your niche. The same as the Facebook groups; be active, be
helpful, don’t sell anything. In fact, Reddit users are particularly sensitive to
sales pitches in their groups.

Setting up social and analytic

accounts

You are also going to want to leverage

social media and Web 2.0 for both traffic
to your site and the signals it sends to
Google about your authoritative value.
You should register and post regularly
from your niche site to the big players:
Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Instagram,
Google+. Also, establish accounts for SEO
value now or down the road at sites like WordPress.com, Wix, Weebly, Vine,
Ask, Tumblr and Flickr.
You also should register for: Google Analytics, Google Webmaster,
BingWebMaster, FaceBook pixel, and others. Keeping up with postings for
multiple social channels can be time-consuming. There are automation tools
like Buffer to manage your posting will save time. Save time managing your
social media, Buffer is a simpler and easier way to schedule posts, track the
performance of your content, and manage all your accounts in one place.

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Social Media Registration

Social
Networking Description
Sites

You likely have a Facebook account so you should add a business page
Facebook there for your Niche site (Facebook requires all Business Pages to be linked
to a personal account so that they can administrate the Page.

Pintrest is a big social network and particularly strong in women’s, events,

Pintrest
gifts etc.

Twitter Twitter is for instant communication, particularly new and hot thoughts.

Google+ Your Google+ account will be tied to your Gmail or other Google account

LinkedIn
First get a Linkedin Account then …
LinkedIn
Create a Linkedin business page
Business

YouTube You can easily create a business YouTube Channel for all of your video
Channel content.

Pintrest is a big social network and particularly strong in women’s, events,

Reddit
gifts etc.

Reddit is a perfect fit for affiliates with subreddits on every imaginable

Twitter topic. Go very light on the offers here or other Reddit users will respond
negatively.

Vine Sign up only available on mobile (IOS or Android)

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Ask Go ahead and ask

Tumblr Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website

Flickr Your Flickr account will be tied to your Yahoo account

Instagram Best to do from mobile (IOS or Android)

Help a reporter out is a site to link reporters and news sources (you). Setup a
HARO
free account and pitch your best news story

WordPress. WordPress.com as a web 2.0 site to send backlinks from. Not the strongest
com link juice but still worth doing.

Wix Another free website-building product that you can use for link-building

Managing social content can be a chore. Buffer is a service to automate your

Buffer
social posting. Free version available

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Lala..

HOSTING
SETUP
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Choosing a Hosting Company

There are 3 broad choices for hosting as an

affiliate:
1. Shared Hosting
2. Virtual Private Server (VPS)
3. Hosted WordPress
You can certainly start with shared hosting.
Most people do. Be careful to not purchase the
lowest cost provider or package. Performance
is a ranking characteristic for Google so you
don’t want a sluggish site. Shared hosting
performance is largely dependent on the
number of other sites on your server. This can
range from <100, at high-performance focused company like Rapisite, to
thousands of sites at entry-level providers.

A managed VPS is a virtual machine within a large server with support from
your hosting provider. This means you have own dedicated slice of a server
that you have total configuration control over. Closely related is cloud-
hosting which allows flexible changes by using cloud-based resources In
both cases you will have cPanel access with full control of ftp, email etc..

Finally, a Hosted WordPress server is tuned for WordPress. Rather cPanel,

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a dedicated user interface for management is used. Managed WordPress

often comes with a staging site – a nice option if your budget allows. Hosted
WordPress is typically priced by the number of sites per account. With a VPS
generally, you can add as many new domains as you want.

Skimping on hosting will lead to frustration for you and your visitors. But a
hosting package doesn’t need to be a permanent decision. You can easily
upgrade at your existing host or move hosts. Always provide the best
performance for your visitors. You will have better on-site visit times, more
conversions and better ranking from Google.

Setting up domain

Your hosting company will typically setup

The aggravation
your domain. If you plan to have multiple of cheap hosting
sites, it is good to know how to make new remains long after
accounts on your host. To set up a new the sweetness of low
domain you first go to WHM and add an
price is forgotten.

account. The account name will be the new

cPanel name. After you add the account, you need to create a DNS Zone for
that new domain. This will vary a bit from host to host. Add your new Domain
name and assign the ip address given in whm. The final step is to visit your
domain registrar and set your nameserver value to point at your host’s
nameserver. Your new domain will be online as soon as the DNS information

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is updated across the Internet. DNS propagation is usually quick but you can
check if you got everything correct at DNS Propagation

FTP

You will want to upload files to your host. To do this

have an ftp account. This will allow you to quickly
add files to your server and also allow you to let
developers add files without giving out your cPanel
credentials. New ftp accounts are created in your
cPanel or by your host. You will want an ftp client like
FileZilla on your computer. If you have cPanel access
you can also manage files with File Manager.

Email

Setup email accounts so that you are not using

yahoo, gmail etc. Setup emails ending in yourdomain.
com for info@, newsletter@, yourname@ and any
others needed. You can set this up in your cPanel. I
find Google’s G-Suite to a great way to have domain
specific email and a modern cloud experience. For
$5-$10 per month, you will have email, a cloud-based
toolkit, storage and more.

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Content Delivery Network (CDN) & SSL

A CDN stores a copy of your content at

locations on the edge of the Internet.
These content servers are distributed
to be closer to your visitors. A New York
visitor and a Los Angeles visitor will
receive your pages from different servers.
CloudFlare is a large CDN company
that services global websites. They also
have a free CDN product. SSL is the
encrypted version of http. Google wants all sites to beSSL, using https and
have advised existing sites to migrate. CloudFlare provides free SSL along
with distributed content caching. Though it is only from the CDN copy to
customer that is ssl encrypted, that is all Google sees. You will show as an
SSL site in visitor’s browsers with the free CloudFlare option.

Installing WordPress

Installing WordPress is easy if your host does not do this. Most hosts will
provide Sofacalous in your cPanel for installing common applications like
WordPress. Run the Sofacalous WordPress installer adding your desired
admin username and password. Remove the default wp path and leave it
blank. Now your new installation will be at https://yourdomain.com.

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Backups and Performance

Right after your WordPress install is a good time to check server

performance. You have no extra plugins or complex pages on the site so
you are checking the server configuration with a basic WordPress install. You
can use Pingdom or Google Speed Test which will also give suggestions to
improve performance. Best practice is to have both a server backup from the
hosting company and a WordPress backup to a cloud storage provider like
AWS or DropBox. There are free options like updraftplus as well as premium
licensed and monthly services.

Performance Enhancements

Choosing a solid host running PHP 7 is your first and most critical step. You
can only optimize your site within the performance window of your server.
If this is a business for you then you should invest in great hosting.There
are many tuning tasks that will make additional improvements in your site’s
performance:

w3 super cache
The standard bearer for WordPress caching software. It is also integrated
with Cloudflare for a great combination of server caching and CDN.

Smush Image Compression

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Images for web display can often be reduced with no quality impact by
compressing better and reducing files size. Smush will do this automatically.

Cloudflare CDN
Cloudlare is a content delivery network (CDN). They place your content
closer to your customer and also provide free SSL. A great service – for free.

Optimize WordPress Database

WP-Optimize is an effective tool for automatically cleaning your WordPress
database so that it runs at maximum efficiency.

Autoptimize
You may have many CSS and Javascript files. Load time is reduced by
concatenating them. This plugin also minimizes them by removing the
overhead of spaces etc.

LazyLoad Images
lazy load waits to load images until a user scrolls to them. So below the fold
items are not impacting initial page loading.

LazyLoad Videos
When you embed a YouTube video it will need to load 8 js files, for each
video. This can be eliminated with an image link to the video. Then the video
loads when the user selects it, not when the page loads.

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WORDPRESS
SETUP
Lala..

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Setup WordPress

There are a few WordPress setup items to take care of before you start
adding content.

• Set your Site Title and Tagline in Settings -> General. Your site title and
tagline are important for both SEO and user experience. Often the first
words a visitor reads is your tagline.

• In Settings -> Reading select the page for your

Home Page (front page).

• Add any additional users and create a

second Administrator account in Users.

• Disable pingbacks: You can turn it all off in

Settings -> Discussion. Just deselect Allow
link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks
and trackbacks). This will help you speed up
WordPress some more.

• Set your permalink style to post name in Settings -> Permalinks

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Plugins and theme

Next, you will want to install your theme and core plugins. Many prefer to
use general purpose themes with page builders like DIVI or Thrive. They give
a lot of flexibility for non-CSS and HTML knowledgeable operators. You do
need to be committed to these platforms as your content will have many
shortcodes that will not migrate easily to a new theme or page-builder. You
certainly can use dedicated themes for affiliate marketers as well. Many
themes will work for affiliating marketing; selection has more to do with

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your comfort level with CSS and php templates. You need to make a child
theme after you complete the initial theme install. A child theme provides
a separate copy of theme files that are frequently edited like style.css. If
you do not make a child theme your changes will be overwritten when you
do a theme update. There are plugins available to do this: Child-theme-
configurator

There are many plugins to add functionality to your site. Each plugin,
however, takes some processing/performance time and adds a point of
conflict. Below are our favorites for niche marketers.

Free Plugins for Niche Marketers

Yoast
Leading general purpose SEO tool for WordPress. A must have.

Akismet
Akismet checks your comments and contact form submissions against their
global database of spam to prevent your site from publishing malicious
content. You can review the comment spam it catches on your blog’s
Comments admin screen.

BackupWp
The backup plugin BackWPup can be used to save your complete

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installation including /wp-content/ and push them to an external Backup

Service, like Dropbox, S3, FTP and many more.

upDraftplus
Another great WordPress backup plugin.

Wordfence
WordPress security stops you from getting hacked.

Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize
the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup.

TablePress
TablePress allows you to easily create and manage tables. You can add the
tables to posts, pages, or text widgets with a simple shortcode.

WidgetLogic
This plugin lets your widgets appear on selected pages. It gives every
widget an extra field called “Widget logic” that lets you control the pages
that the widget will appear on.

fast-velocity-minify
This plugin reduces HTTP requests by merging CSS & Javascript files into

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groups of files while attempting to use the least amount of files as possible.
It minifies CSS and JS files.

Lazy Loading
This plugin replaces all your post images, post thumbnails, gravatar images
and content iframes with a placeholder and loads the content as it gets
close to enter the browser window when the visitor scrolls the page.

google-analytics-dashboard-for-wp
This Google Analytics for WordPress plugin lets you to track your site using
the latest Google Analytics tracking code and allows you to view key Google
Analytics stats in your WordPress backend.

broken-link-checker3
This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if
any are found.

wp-smushit
Resize, optimize and compress all of your images with the incredibly
powerful and 100% free WordPress image smusher.

Optimize WordPress Database

WP-Optimize is an effective tool for automatically cleaning your WordPress
database so that it runs at maximum efficiency.

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social-pug
Add highly customizable social share buttons to your website to increase
the interaction on your website. Place the social sharing buttons before and
after the post content or have them follow your readers as they scroll up and
down the page, in the form of a social media floating sidebar.

Content-Views
Content Views helps you to create posts grid, category posts grid, tag posts
grid, author posts grid, and other types of grid for your WordPress site in
minutes, without any line of code!

Insert Headers and Footers

A great simple plugin that lets you insert code like Google Analytics, custom
CSS, Facebook Pixel, and more to your WordPress site header and footer. No
need to edit your theme files!

Ultimate Shortcodes
Shortcodes Ultimate is a collection of various visual and functional elements.
You can easily create tabs, buttons, boxes, sliders and carousels, responsive
videos and more.

Child-theme-configurator
The Analyzer scans the rendered theme and configures your child theme. It
correctly enqueues theme and font stylesheets for optimum performance.

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PrettyLinks
Invaluable for affiliates. cloak links to make short user-friendly urls rather
than long links with affiliate codes. Some affiliate programs like Amazon do
not allow these shortened links.

Optional or Premium Plugins

WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free eCommerce plugin that allows you to sell products
online. There is a huge ecosystem of extensions for; product sliders, search,
wishlists. Affiliate plugins like Prosociate convert Amazon and Ebay products
to WooCommerce products. You then have access to WooCommerce tools
for your affiliate products.

Prosociate
With the Prosociate WordPress plugin, you can build any type of Amazon
affiliate business; authority site, Amazon WooCommerce store, top 10 or
niche review site.

EasyAzon
EasyAzon is an Amazon affiliate plugin. For bloggers, it is the perfect way to
insert Amazon products.

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LinkBuilder
Link Builder is the official free Amazon Associates Program plugin for
WordPress. The plugin enables you to search for products in the Amazon
catalog, access real-time price, and availability information, and easily create
links in your posts to products on Amazon.com.

ReadyTables
Build Amazon aware comparison tables. Comparison tables convert well and
ReadyTables automatically updates pricing and availability.

Categories and silos

Part of the site structure often benefits from silos of content. So if you
were creating a kitchen appliance site, your silos might be toaster ovens,
blenders, mixers etc. It is easier for users to navigate and easier for Google
to determine your site’s intent. It is also easier for you to develop content
around keywords. Create a kitchen appliance category then categories
for toaster ovens, blenders, etc. as having kitchen appliance as the parent
category. Within each silo are reviews, top 100 articles, roundups etc. Think
of it as your content architecture.

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Favicon

Favicons are 16x16 icons in that identifies your site in a visitor’s browser tab.
You can use a product like Favicon generator to build these. You will copy
the files (different browsers need different files) to your root directory and
put the links to them in your page headers. You can use a plugin like insert
headers and footers or your theme may have a place for header content.

404 Page

You also should add a custom 404 page that fits your site’s design and
provides navigation information.

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Lala..

Content
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Content Marketing

The goal of many niche marketers is to become

an authority site. Google wants to link search
results to the most knowledgeable site with
the best information. A good starting point is
to create a best-of-class Skyscraper post of
4000+ words with visuals, comparison tables,
infographics etc. When you did your keyword
research hopefully you looked at competitive
sites and got an idea of the depth of knowledge
in those. Your goal is to go deeper, update the
information and be better than those competitive
sites. Create an infographic or other dedicated
companion objects. Your goal is not to have a long puff piece but to create
the most-inclusive, up-to-date article in your niche. You want to have 5-10
additional articles ready to go. You may want to consider outsourcing some
of this writing. If possible, write the Skyscraper and one article yourself. By
researching and writing the skyscraper, you have gained that knowledge. By
writing a few reviews or other posts, you create a style guide for outsourced
writers. If you want to write everything yourself – great! For many, doing the
writing in advance and scheduling their release is the best approach. Writing
to a deadline can be stressful for many. Missing scheduled items is not good
for business and again stressful. For almost everyone, this will be an, at least

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Best practice partially, outsourced task. Unless you are building

is to have great a churn and burn pbn driven site go for native
content and English writers. Find a writer you like on fiverr or
use your time to upwork, or one of the writing service providers
market it.
such as:

Rapisite | Writer Access

All of your content needs to be relevant to your keywords collected during

the research phase but not written for search. Google is now very smart
about keyword stuffing and other tricks. The content should naturally
engage with topics of these keywords. The actual keywords should be in the
first few sentences and the Tittle, H1. Each H2 can have a unique keyword or
keyword synonym. Remember, do not keyword stuff, it will hurt you. Other
than the keyword locations above the article should be written as naturally
and without repetitive phrase or keywords. Like any quality writing, you look
for synonyms, visuals, etc. rather than repeat your keywords. Look for article
ideas from:
– keyword rankings of your competitor’s articles in Ahref
– Ubersuggest
– AdWords Keyword Planner
– Poll your audience on Social
– SerpStat Keyword Suggestion
– Hubspot’s blog topic generator.

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Types of Articles

There are many kinds of articles that can be used in your niches. By mixing
up different types of content your site will have more interest. Consider
content like:

Document
Description
Type

Detailed post that fully covers a topic. Typically over 4000 words. Rich in
Cornerstone visuals and
Post often with a companion infographic. Variations on this are the Skyscraper
post.

How to guides are popular. Try to focus on How To topics with commercial
How to
intent like “How to
Guides
Select the best Cordless Drill

A Listcicle is a short easily digested, visually rich article. This is a good

Listcle choice for brand building
– not full of affiliate links.

Top 10 People love top 10 posts. Everything is netted out for them

Like the Top 10 these appeal to people in search of net information and to
help organize their
Checklists
projects. If possible make these dynamic with cookies or local storage to
recall checklist state.

Ultimate
One place to find every bit of information about a product or service.
Guides

Beginner For complex products and topics gives readers the sense that they “can do
Guides it”

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Resource
Second level information about a product or service.
Lists

Best of Year Best of 2017 etc. Great SEO value and shows inherent buying intent.

More complex products or services can benefit from grouping the typical
FAQ questions in a
single guide.

Interviews exude authority. Suddenly it is not just the affiliate marketers

Interviews
opinion.

Case Studies Show other peoples experience with a product or service.

Many industries have a unique set of vernacular. This also helps build
Glossary
authority.

Common
Learn from others mishaps.
Mistakes

Myth
Presents facts vs. myths helps build credibility and authority
Debunking

Trouble-
Shooting Complex products sometimes break down or are in need of work.
Guides

Repair Guides How to repair or provide common problems with the product

Maintenance Take care of your product and prevent breakdowns or premature wear with
Guides preventative maintenance

You need to have a visually appealing page. People are skimming your
content and will leave if they see a wall of text. Quotes, tables, screen
captures, and videos should be used throughout. Pay particular attention

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to videos and comparison tables. Video content performs well and also
forms the foundation of a YouTube channel that will further generate traffic
and authority with Google. When including video on a page be aware that
if you embed the video you are embedding the YouTube player when the
page loads. If you have multiple videos on one page it will increase load
time. Comparison tables are another great content type. They are valuable
to readers and convert well from a content marketing standpoint. Some
styles of affiliate sites will have a comparison table per article. TablePress
is a popular plugin for tables including comparison tables. It can be tricky
to style and does not pull Amazon pricing or images etc. There are table
products dedicated to Amazon affiliates that will pull images and update
prices automatically. At ReadyThemes we created ReadyTables, an
Amazon-aware comparison table tool. It automatically pulls product pricing,
descriptions, and images based on an Amazon ASIN. It also keeps the
pricing up to date via wp-cron.

Images

Images should be carefully selected and in the public domain or purchased.

Don’t just copy images from Google or other sites. There are plenty of free
image sites. Look for images that have the CC0 license. This means the
creator has given up the copyright and placed the image in the public
domain:
Pixabay | Public Domain Pictures | New Old Stock

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You can also purchase a low-cost library from many sources, some hosting
platforms like Rapisite provide free premium images.
All images added to your pages should have complete metadata fields such
as alt and description completed for SEO purposes.

Engage

Sites with authority aspirations need to become part of their community. You
need to share content in your social world. It needs
to be a multi-directional flow. People sharing your
content on their Social sites with social buttons,
you sharing content to your niche social
sites.Getting visitors to share your
content while on your site can be
managed with one of the many the
social share plugins.

Final Checks

You should do a final set of checks on your content. Always check outside
writers content for plagiarism. There are free services at, Copyscape and
Plagarism Checker.

Check the readability of your content. You are not writing a business or

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scholarly work. It is being skimmed and quickly

digested. Don’t slow this down with run-on
sentences. No vocabulary that requires a Ph.D.
to understand. In general, the readability should
be 9th grade or so. This is not “dumbing” down
your content to an adolescent level, it is making
it quick to digest. Check it here: Readability
checking.

None of us are perfect writers and it is easy to

miss your own errors. Outsourced documents should be proofed. Grammarly
is a great tool that every writer should be using. Also available as a Chrome
extension

Review calls to actions

These are your money links. The ones that have your affiliate links. They are
your products. Each one should be examined for location, accuracy, visual
appeal. You should a/b test different link styles if you have sufficient traffic

Internal Linking

You need to tie together your website with links. Content should not be
isolated. You should be linking to high authority external sites. Silos are often

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used to compartmentalize content.

External Linking

Who you link to matters. You are recommending these external pages to
your visitors. Google search uses this to understand your “neighborhood”.

Sign up for Accounts

Sign up Amazon Associates

Be sure to accept all terms and conditions.

Sign up Advertising API

The API is how plugins search Amazon and pull images and other content:
Log in to your Associate account.
Go to Tools -> Advertising API
Join then issue new keys

Get Amazon keys

Log in to your Associate account and select tools – Advertising API there you
can manage credentials as an Associate. If you also use S3 or other Amazon
services you should go to AWS

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Amazon Canada
signup for Canada

Amazon UK
signup for Amazon UK

Setup Onelink
OneLink is a quick and easy way to expand your traffic geographically. While
many of the Amazon plugins offer worldwide Geotargeting, smaller sites can
get access to US, Canada, and UK directly from Amazon.

OneLink
Select Link Accounts (easiest if you set up first)
Get the OneLink Code
Insert in pages via insert headers and footers plugin

Sign up for Amazon Bounty Program

Get paid to refer people to Prime, Baby Registry and more
Setup Geotargetting – Larger products like Prosociate, WooZone, and
EZAzon have full geotargeting capabilities. Sign up for affiliates in other
countries and refer traffic based on IP of visitors.There are a few countries
where local bank accounts may be required.

Register for other Affiliate Sites

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Clickbank
Clickbank is the dominant affiliate marketplace for electronically delivered
products. Select carefully some junk mixed in with good products.

ShareASale
ShareASale has lots of products available to affiliates from Hosting
companies to national retailers. Best to have a mature site as many require
preapproval and will check your site and traffic first.

JVZoo
JVZoo has lost a bit of its former luster but still has many good Internet
Marketing and other electronic products. Like Clickbank check that
your offerings to be sure you have the quality that meets your audience
expectations. Most new affiliates will have a 30-day hold on payouts:

Rakuten
The #1 affiliate network. 100 million transactions. Sometimes difficult to get
approved, so have your site in order and a bit of traffic first:eBay
eBay can be a very useful site from a branding standpoint. Like Amazon, they
are a household name that is good to be associated with.
If you are using a premium plugin like Prosociate you will also need to join
the developer program to get API access.

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Email List

Setup an email list form in your contact area (often on your about page) Also
set one up as an exit intent popup. No one is a huge fan of popups but when
the visitor is leaving it is less intrusive than 15 seconds after they arrive on
site and are reading something. On-exit intent is covered by a vulture patent
company and can be difficult to find. Many get their popup technology from
their email list service providers for a plugin solution, Optimonk also works
well.

Press Release

A press release is usually appropriate, It is low cost and gets you some
exposure. You can also use icons such as “seen on NBC” etc. This is best to
farm out to pros rather than invest the time to get the distribution right. You
will provide the key points, a draft to their template etc. The vendor will edit
for media consumption and distribute it. You should get a report of the reach
and exposure. You should email to your list, family & friends, Facebook and
other Social. It is a good Milestone item as well to keep you on track.Human
Proof Designs and The Hoth both provide these services.
There are a number of p[ages every site needs to have: Privacy Page,
Disclaimer Page, About Page

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Privacy Page
A must have page, the privacy page should include cookie statement.

Affiliate disclaimer page

This is the FTC compliance page and may also include the Amazon and any
other specific affiliate disclaimer content to meet their TOS. This does NOT
replace the Amazon disclaimer which should be displayed on every page
with an Amazon link.

About Page
Tell your visitors who you are, why you do this, how to contact the site
management.

You also must include an Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer on the sales pages.
Your Amazon disclosure should be visible at the bottom of any page with
Amazon affiliate links. You can also address most of it again in the affiliate
disclosure page which is generally used as an FTC compliance page.

Test

Make Sure the Site Displays and Functions in All Compatible Browser and
devices. You can use emulation software for mobile devices. Then test
in Opera, Chrome, IE. Firefox on your laptop and desktop. Check If Your
Website Is Mobile Friendly with Google cares Mobility Check.

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Affiliate Registrations

Most affiliates will represent Amazon products. they have products for any
niche and high trust with visitors. But there are affiliate programs beyond
Amazon. Having a rich mix of affiliates that have quality products and
services, is a winning affiliate strategy.

Affiliate
Description
Registrations

Amazon
Amazon affiliate registration
Associate

The API is how plugins search Amazon and pull images and other
content:
Amazon API
Log in to your Associate account. Go to Tools -> Advertising API
Join then issue new keys

Amazon Canada Canada is part of Amazon OneLink

Amazon UK The UK is part of Amazon OneLink

Amazon
Get paid to refer people to Prime, Baby Registry and more
Bounties

Clickbank is the dominant affiliate marketplace for electronically

Clickbank delivered products. Select carefully some junk mixed in with good
products.

JVZoo has lost a bit of its former luster but still has many good Internet
Marketing and other electronic products. Like Clickbank vet your
JV Zoo
offerings to be sure you have the quality that meets your audience
expectations. Most new affiliates will have a 30 day hold on payouts

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ShareaSale has lots of products available to affiliates from Hosting

ShareaSale companies to national retailers. Best to have a mature site as many
require preapproval and will check your site and traffic first.

The #1 affiliate network. 100milion transactions. Sometimes difficult to

Rakuten
get approved so have your site in order and a bit of traffic first:

Ebay can be a very useful site from a branding standpoint. Like Amazon
Ebay
they are a household name that is good to be associated with.

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SEARCH AND
BACKLINKS
Almost
There!

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Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the information you provide to Google to help understand

your content and site depth. This includes structured data and backlinks.
There are a number of technical SEO items to check:

Sitemap

Your sitemap is a tree-like representation of the content you have published.

You should create your sitemap and submit it to Google. You can use Yoast
to create the sitemap. To submit it to Google:

1. Login to Google Search Console.

2. Click Crawl.
3. Click Sitemaps.
4. Click ADD/TEST SITEMAP.
5. Click Submit Sitemap.

PageSpeed
Speed matters. Slow sites have high bounce rates. Google rank is negatively
impacted by slow page load times. Try to have sites load in < 2 secs. You can
test at Pingdom or Google.

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Mobile Optimized
Mobile represents more and more of site visitors. Google rank is affected by
your mobile friendliness. You can check your mobile readiness at Google.

Tracking visitors

Now that all your content is ready you need to be

able to track its performance and reach. You also will
want to tag users with appropriate pixels/cookies
to be able to retarget and analyze your audience.
This involves Google Analytics, Google Webmaster,
FaceBook Pixels, Google Ad Pixel. Most of these will
have codes that need to be put in your header. Use
the Insert Headers and Footers plugin for this.

Google Analytics
You need to know who visited. How long they stayed. Where they came
from etc. You need to be able to measure your marketing efforts. Did that
Press Release bring any new traffic etc? There are a number of Analytics
dashboard plugins available to monitor or you can just visit analytics:

Google Webmasters
You need to check your Google webmaster account regularly. You will see
any page problems like; crawl errors, new backlinks, manual actions. Pay

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attention to the messages from Google. You should check a few things in
Google Search Console. You want to give your content an edge over your
competitor’s. Log into your Google Search Console and do the following:
-Submit Sitemap to Google Search Console in Webmasters
-Check structured data
-check manual actions
-check blocked resources
-check crawl errors
-check robots txt

FaceBook Pixel
The FaceBook pixel is going to set a pixel (cookie or localStorage) in the
visitor’s browser. You can use the pixeled visitors as a Facebook Audience to
send ads and information to when they are on FaceBook.

Google Retargeting
Just like the Facebook cookie, Google Adwords lets you “cookie” your visitor
for future ad campaigns:
Paid ads are generally only used in high ticket, high commission affiliate
products.

Tag Manager
Now is a good time to signup for tag manager. It is a bit more advanced tool
that will let you have more granular analytics.

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Bing Webmaster
Bing Matters just do it. You want every possible visitor, it all adds up.

A) First, go sign up for an account:

B) Then you must add your website. They provide three options to verify
your control over the site:

1) putting a file in your route,

2) Adding a cname or a
3) Meta tag in your head. It is easiest for most to just use the file at root
directory method using ftp or file manager in your cpanel.

C) Now just add your sitemap that Yoast created

Analytics Registration

Analytics
Description
Registrations

You need to know who visited. How long they stayed. Where they came
from etc. You need to be able to measure your marketing efforts. Did that
Google Analytic
Press Release bring any new traffic etc? There are a number of Analytics
dashboard plugins available to monitor or you can just visit analytics

You need to check your Google webmaster account at least weekly. You
Google
will see any page problems like; crawl errors, new backlinks, manual
Webmasters
actions. Pay attention to the messages from Google:

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The FaceBook pixel is going to set a pixel (cookie or localStorage) in

FaceBook Pixel the visitor’s browser. You can use the pixeled visitors as a Facebook
Audience to send ads and information to when they are in FaceBook.

Just like the Facebook cookie, Google Adwords lets you “cookie” your
Google Pixel
visitor for future ad campaigns:

Bing
The Bing webmaster tools
WebMasters

Launch Amplification

When you are launching your site you want to get as much new
exposure as possible. This means having fresh engaging content,
a press release, social media posting of the press release, email
campaign to your list, announcements on related Facebook groups
(best to have joined a few months ago and have made helpful
contributions), any industry associations, clubs, usenet groups, reddit
(again only if you are a member of standing).

Setup Email responder

Setup some free email service. Mailchimp works well. Collect emails as
noted above in the content discussion.
Emails are a great source of leads for your non-Amazon affiliate
campaigns. Check ClickBank, JVZoo etc. for related products to
your niche. Create a lead magnet for emails like a free ebook or

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other valuable content. Then create a drip tool to send a multi-email

campaign to new subscribers. The first few emails are nothing but
valuable content, eventually, after you have helped them you may want
to offer them an affiliate product that you believe in.

Backlink Outreach

Guest posting
Not the spammy kind, written by outsiders and put on low-quality sites
or even pbn sites, but real outreach, to high-quality sites with your
quality content.

Alumni Directories
Universities typically have high DA try to get a link on your alma
matter’s alumni site

Join Associations and get on their directory

There is an Association for almost every imaginable topic. I imagine
there is a screen door association.

Blog comments
This is more a branding exercise (you and/or your site) as few if any
have do-follow links. But it helps establish authority

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Private Blog Network (PBN) links

PBNs are a controversial topic … but no denying they still work. Just look
at EmpireFlippers for people selling successful Amazon affiliate sites
– many use pbns. They are risky and as with any blackhat technique,
you are exposed to a Google de-index. Setting up your own is a huge
time investment. Best to wait until you have a good amount of natural
backlinks and best to use a trusted resource:

Diggity Links

Press Releases

A very useful tool but do use a reputable service or you will have
spammy links that need disavowing. Given that this is done at the
launch of your site these will be some of your earliest backlinks. An
added benefit is that the PR will show on many national sites. These
sites allow you to have links like …”As Seen on …”

Paid social links

There is some indication that these are sending helpful SEO signals
and are a relatively low risk.You can purchase Social links from many
sources. I have had good service from PBN Butler.

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Guest Posting

Outsourced guest posts are currently a grey area. Google has indicated
a desire to reign them in (which means they must still be somewhat
working). Outsourced guest posting on a private blog network (PBN)
should be done with care.

Summary

Creating your online niche business is an exciting, challenging and

rewarding opportunity. There are many tasks to build your affiliate site
but they can all be compartmentalized. The tasks can be grouped into
five functional areas:

1. Initial research and niche selection — establish your audience.

2. Hosting setup — your performance and reliability foundation
3. WordPress setup — the stage for your content and marketing
4. Content Creation — your customer value proposition
5. Marketing and technical SEO — helps Google and visitors find you
6. Many can be outsourced or are provided by affiliate hosting and
resource companies like Rapisite.

Many can be outsourced or are provided by affiliate hosting and

resource companies like Rapisite.

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We have created a dynamic checklist

application at rapisite with hundreds
of detailed steps to choose from it will
guide you through the building of your
affiliate website.

Click Here

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