How to structure an Amazon affiliate site so the pages support each other.
Four page types, one hierarchy, and a linking rule for each direction. Structure is the cheapest ranking advantage available to a small site, because it costs nothing to get right and is expensive to fix later.
The short version
- Four page types, each with one job: hub, roundup, single review, and informational. Mixing their jobs is the most common structural mistake.
- Nothing should be more than three clicks from the homepage. Depth is the enemy; a flat site is crawled and understood more easily.
- Informational pages link to commercial pages, not the other way round. That is the direction authority should flow.
- Build one cluster completely before starting a second. Ten articles covering one subject beats forty covering ten.
- Noindex the pages WordPress creates for you — tag archives, author archives, date archives, paginated duplicates. They dilute and they never rank.
Most affiliate sites are a pile of posts. They were published in the order the writer thought of them, they link to each other haphazardly or not at all, and the category pages are whatever the theme generated.
That works until roughly thirty articles, at which point the site stops behaving like a collection of pages and starts behaving like a mess. Fixing it later means re-pointing hundreds of links; getting it right at the start costs nothing.
The four page types
Every page on an affiliate site should be exactly one of these. If you cannot tell which one a page is, neither can a search engine.
| Type | Targets | Its one job |
|---|---|---|
| Hub | “espresso machines” | Orient someone new to the subject and route them to the right roundup or review. Broad, low commercial intent, hard to rank — but it holds the cluster together. |
| Roundup | “best espresso machine under $500” | Help someone choose between options. Highest commercial intent, where most affiliate revenue comes from. |
| Single review | “Gaggia Classic Pro review” | Answer “should I buy this specific one”. Low volume, very high intent, and much easier to rank than a roundup. |
| Informational | “how to descale an espresso machine” | Answer a question with no purchase attached. Brings people who do not know you yet, and passes authority to the commercial pages. |
Single reviews are the underused one. New sites reach straight for roundups, because that is where the money looks like it is — and then compete with established publishers for “best espresso machine”. A review of one specific model has a fraction of the search volume and a fraction of the competition, converts better because the reader has already decided what they want, and gives your roundups something to link to. Build reviews first, roundups second.
The shape it should make
The linking rules, by direction
Internal linking is where most of the structural value actually lives, and it is worth being deliberate rather than sprinkling “related posts” everywhere.
Reviews link up
Every single review links to the roundup it belongs in — “this was our budget pick in the best espresso machines under $500”. One link, in context, near the verdict.
Roundups link down
Every product in a roundup links to its full review if one exists. This is the highest-value internal link on the site: the reader is mid-decision and wants more depth.
Informational links inward
A descaling guide mentions that hard water shortens machine life, and links to the roundup. Natural, useful, and it is how a page that earns nothing directly pays for itself.
Hubs link out to everything
The hub is the map. It should reach every page in its cluster, with a sentence of context each rather than a bare list.
- Link from the sentence, not from a box. A contextual link inside a paragraph carries more weight and gets clicked far more than a “related articles” widget the reader has learned to ignore.
- Use descriptive anchor text. “Our full Gaggia Classic Pro review” tells both the reader and the crawler what is there. “Click here” tells nobody anything.
- Three to six internal links per article is plenty. Thirty dilutes each one and reads like a directory.
- Check for orphans. A page with no internal links pointing at it is a page you have hidden from your own site. New posts commonly end up orphaned the moment they scroll off the homepage.
URLs and categories
Keep URLs flat
There is no ranking advantage to a folder structure that mirrors your hierarchy, and there is a real cost: if a page moves category later you either break the URL or accept that it lies.
- Good:
/best-espresso-machines-under-500/ - Also fine:
/espresso/best-machines-under-500/if you are confident the taxonomy will not change - Avoid:
/2026/03/14/best-espresso-machines/— dates in URLs make evergreen content look stale and are a nuisance to remove later - Avoid: deep nesting. Three segments is plenty.
Make category pages worth landing on
The default WordPress category archive — a reverse-chronological list of excerpts — is not a hub. It is a list, it changes every time you publish, and nobody links to it.
A real hub is a written page: an introduction to the subject, the questions a newcomer has, and curated links to the right articles in a sensible order rather than by date. It is more work than a template and it is the page most likely to attract a link from outside.
Noindex what WordPress generates
Left alone, WordPress creates a lot of pages nobody wants:
- Tag archives — usually near-duplicates of category pages. Either use tags deliberately as hubs, or noindex them. Most sites should noindex them.
- Author archives — on a one-author site this duplicates your blog index.
- Date archives — no value on an evergreen site.
- Attachment pages — a page per uploaded image. Disable entirely.
- Paginated archives beyond page one, on most sites.
Why this is worth ten minutes. A 60-article site can easily generate 300 indexable URLs, most of them thin and duplicative. That is not a penalty risk so much as a clarity problem: it makes it harder for a crawler to work out which pages you actually care about. Most SEO plugins let you switch all of the above off in one screen.
Build one cluster at a time
The most common strategic error is breadth. A new site publishes on espresso machines, then air fryers, then standing desks, then dog beds — reasoning that more topics means more chances to rank.
It does the opposite. A site covering one subject in depth is legible: the pages support each other, the internal links are natural, and a reader who arrives on one page has a reason to read another. A site covering ten subjects thinly is ten weak sites sharing a domain.
A complete cluster
One hub, three to five roundups, eight to fifteen single reviews, and five to ten informational articles. Roughly 20–30 pieces covering a subject well enough that a reader has no obvious next question.
Then, and only then
Start the second cluster — ideally one that shares an audience with the first, so the internal links between them make sense to a reader.
How many articles a site needs before it earns is a separate question with a fairly unforgiving answer; the funnel arithmetic is in why affiliate sites do not make money.
Restructuring a site that is already a mess
If you have sixty posts and no structure, do not rebuild everything. Work in this order and stop when the returns flatten.
- List every page and label it one of the four types. The labelling alone usually reveals the problem — typically all roundups and no reviews, or the reverse.
- Find the orphans. Any page with no inbound internal link. Give each one a home in a hub or roundup.
- Write the hubs. One real hub page per subject you cover, replacing the default archive.
- Fix the top twenty pages’ outbound links first — traffic-weighted, like every other audit worth doing.
- Noindex the generated archives. Ten minutes.
- Leave URLs alone unless they are actively harmful. Redirect chains cost more than an imperfect slug, and a URL nobody complains about is not a problem worth solving.
Do this alongside a content refresh rather than as a separate project — you are already editing the page, and the two jobs share most of the work. See refreshing old affiliate content.
Part of The Amazon Affiliate Site Playbook — the whole job in six stages, from choosing a niche to keeping a mature site earning.
Internal links that cannot point at a page that does not exist
Ama Affiliate Pro builds internal links from your own sitemap, so every suggested link resolves — and it finds the published posts with no Amazon link at all, which are usually the same pages that turn out to be orphans.
Start a 14-day trialCommon questions
How should I structure an Amazon affiliate site?
Four page types in a shallow hierarchy: a written hub per subject, roundups beneath it, single reviews beneath those, and informational articles linking inward. Nothing more than three clicks from the homepage. Reviews link up to roundups, roundups link down to reviews, informational content links into both.
Should I write roundups or single reviews first?
Single reviews. They have far less competition than “best X” terms, they convert better because the reader has already chosen a product, and they give your roundups something substantial to link to. Most new sites do the opposite and compete immediately with established publishers.
Should my URLs include the category?
It makes no measurable ranking difference, so choose for maintenance. Flat URLs never become wrong when a page changes category; nested ones do. Avoid dates in URLs entirely — they make evergreen content look stale and are awkward to remove later.
How many internal links should an article have?
Three to six contextual links, placed inside sentences where they genuinely help. Thirty links dilutes each one and reads like a directory. A link from a paragraph carries more weight and gets clicked far more than one in a “related posts” widget.
Should I noindex tag and category pages?
Noindex tags on most sites — they are usually near-duplicates of categories. Categories are worth keeping if you turn them into real written hubs rather than leaving them as reverse-chronological lists. Also noindex author archives, date archives and attachment pages.
How many articles should a cluster have?
Roughly 20 to 30: one hub, three to five roundups, eight to fifteen single reviews and five to ten informational pieces. The real test is whether a reader finishing your content has an obvious unanswered question. Finish one cluster before starting another.
Is it worth restructuring an existing site?
Partly. Adding hubs, fixing orphans and improving internal links on your top twenty pages is high value and low risk. Changing URLs wholesale is not — redirect chains and lost equity usually cost more than the imperfect structure did. Fix links and hubs; leave slugs alone unless they are actively harmful.
Can one site cover several unrelated niches?
It can, but it competes with itself for authority and gives readers no reason to visit a second page. A site covering one subject deeply is legible to both readers and search engines. If you want a second subject, a second site is usually the better answer once the first one earns.