Affiliate Site Content Calendar: How to Plan 90 Days of Posts From One Keyword Cluster
Most affiliate sites don't have a content plan. They have a keyword list and a feeling about which one to write next, and the feeling usually picks whatever looked interesting that morning. Ninety days later there are thirty posts spread across four topics, none of which Google sees as covered, and nothing ranks.
A content calendar fixes the order, not the amount. This post takes one keyword cluster and turns it into a twelve-week publishing sequence: what goes first and why, the weekly cadence, how to slot in reviews and questions around the guides, and where refreshes go once there's something to refresh.
It builds on the how-many-articles post, which covers how much; this one is when.
The short answer
Take one cluster of thirty to forty keywords. Week 1: the hub page and the two easiest buyer guides. Weeks 2 to 6: two guides and one review a week.
Weeks 7 to 10: one guide, one comparison and one question post a week, linking into the guides. Weeks 11 and 12: the remaining reviews, the hub rewritten with everything linked, and the first refresh pass on week-1 guides. Three posts a week, thirty-six posts, one topic covered.
Start with one cluster, not a list
A cluster is one topic's worth of keywords: a hub term, ten to twelve buyer-guide keywords, the products those guides will pick, and the questions people ask on the way. The site-structure post describes the shape; the calendar is that shape laid out in time.
If your keyword list isn't grouped yet, group it first. A calendar built from an ungrouped list is the spread-across-four-topics problem with dates on it.
For the first 90 days, one cluster. The temptation to start a second when the first gets boring is how sites end up half-covering everything.
The publishing order and why
| Weeks | Publish | Why now |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hub page (short), 2 easiest guides | The hub exists to be linked to from day one; the easy guides can rank while the site is new |
| 2 to 6 | 2 guides + 1 review per week | Guides earn; the review of each guide's top pick gives it a link target and catches "[model] review" searches |
| 7 to 10 | 1 guide + 1 comparison + 1 question post per week | Comparisons and questions link into the guides that now exist and fill out the topic for Google |
| 11 to 12 | Remaining reviews, hub rewrite, first refresh of week-1 guides | Everything links; the hub becomes a real page; the earliest guides get re-checked |
That's twelve guides, eight reviews, four comparisons, four question posts, one hub and a rewrite: thirty-six posts and one topic Google can see edge to edge.
Why guides first
Buyer guides are the pages that earn. They're also the pages everything else links to, so they need to exist before the reviews and questions that point at them. Publishing them first means the supporting posts have somewhere to send readers from the day they go up, and the guides start accumulating age while the rest is written.
Why the easiest guides in week 1
A new site has no authority, so the first pages should be the ones that can rank without it: the two-modifier keywords with the weakest results pages. Early rankings, even small ones, give you Search Console data to steer the rest of the quarter by.
Why reviews follow their guide
A review of a product nobody's reading about on your site is an orphan. A review of the top pick in last week's guide gets a link from that guide the day it's published, and catches the "[model] review" searches of people who read the guide and went looking for more.
Why questions come late
"How to choose", "what size", "is it worth it" posts rank more easily than guides and convert less. Their job is to send readers into the guides and to show Google the topic is covered, which only works once the guides exist. In weeks 7 to 10 they have twelve guides to link to.
The weekly cadence
Three posts a week is the pace a solo site owner can hold for a quarter with a generator producing the drafts; two by hand. Fix the days (Monday guide, Wednesday guide or comparison, Friday review or question) so the calendar is a habit rather than a decision.
Google doesn't reward frequency as such, but a site that publishes on one topic every week for twelve weeks looks different from one that posted thirty times in a fortnight and stopped.
If a week slips, drop the question post, not the guide. The guide is the one that earns.
Filling the calendar
- Sort the guide keywords by competition, easiest first. The two easiest are week 1; the rest fill the guide slots in order.
- Pencil each guide's top pick into the review slot for the following week. You won't know the pick until the guide is written, so leave the slot as "review of [guide]'s #1".
- List the "A vs B" pairs from the guides' picks: top pick vs runner-up, top pick vs the famous brand. Four of those fill weeks 7 to 10.
- List the questions from People Also Ask for the hub term. Four of those fill the remaining slots.
- Block weeks 11 and 12 for the leftover reviews, the hub rewrite and the refresh pass. Don't let new guide ideas take those slots.
Refresh slots
Nothing on a new site needs refreshing in the first ten weeks. From week 11, and one slot a week from the second quarter on, re-check a guide's products: dead listings, picks that have been superseded, a comparison table with a product that's been replaced.
Start with the guides Search Console shows impressions for but falling clicks, since those are the ones Google is still testing. The refresh post covers what to change and what to leave.
The second quarter
Day 91: the first cluster has a hub, twelve guides, eight reviews and eight supporting posts, all linked.
The second quarter is either a second cluster on the same schedule, or the first cluster deepened (the guides that ranked get their long-tail siblings; the ones that didn't get re-scored). Which one depends on what Search Console says about the first ninety days, which is the point of writing it in an order that produces data early.
Doing it with AffSERP
The calendar above assumes the keywords are already clustered, and that's what AffSERP's Keyword Grouping tool does: it sorts a keyword list into guide, review and question groups by intent, which is the raw material for the table.
Each guide keyword has a Write button that sends it to the X Best Review tool, each question to the Informational Article tool, so a three-post week is three clicks and an editing pass rather than three days of drafting.
The week-11 refresh slot is the Refresh option on a published guide, which re-checks the products against Amazon and replaces dead picks. The order, the cadence and the decision about what to drop when a week slips are still yours.
FAQ
How many posts a week should an affiliate site publish?
Three a week is a cadence one person can keep up for a quarter with a tool doing the drafts; two by hand. Consistency beats bursts: thirty-six posts over twelve weeks outperform thirty-six in the first fortnight and nothing after, because Google sees a site that keeps publishing on one topic.
What order should I publish affiliate content in?
Hub page first (thin is fine), then the buyer guides with the weakest competition, then reviews of the products those guides picked, then the comparisons and questions that link into the guides. Guides earn soonest; everything else supports them.
Should I plan more than one cluster at a time?
Not for the first 90 days. One cluster covered properly ranks; two half-covered clusters don't. Start the second cluster in the next quarter, once the first has its hub, ten guides and the reviews around them.
When should refreshes go on the calendar?
From the second quarter. In the first 90 days nothing is old enough. After that, reserve one slot a week for re-checking a guide's products and picks, starting with the guides that have impressions in Search Console but a falling click rate.
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