Amazon Affiliate Site Structure: Categories, Silos and Internal Links That Rank
A site with fifty good posts and no structure ranks like a site with fifteen. Each post competes alone, the guide and the review for the same product hold each other down, and Google has no page that tells it what the site is for. Structure is what turns a pile of posts into a site that owns a topic.
This post is the structure that works for affiliate sites: how to organise categories, what a hub page is and why an archive isn't one, which URLs to use, the three links every post needs, and the mistakes that cost sites rankings they'd already earned.
The short answer
One topic per hub page. Under each hub, the buyer guides for that topic, and under each guide, the reviews of its picks and the comparisons between them. Every post links up to its hub and across to its neighbours. URLs are flat and never change.
That's four levels at most, every post within two clicks of the homepage, and a shape Google can read at a glance.
The four page types
Affiliate sites have four kinds of page, and the structure is just the relationship between them.
| Page | Targets | Example | Links to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hub | The broad topic | Cordless drills | Every guide in the topic |
| Buyer guide | A buying search | Best cordless drill under 100 | Hub, reviews of its picks, related guides |
| Review | One product | DeWalt DCD771 review | Hub, the guides it appears in, its comparisons |
| Comparison / info | A pair or a question | DeWalt vs Makita; how to choose drill torque | Hub and the guides it supports |
The hub is the page most sites don't have. Without it, the broad term ("cordless drills") has no page to rank, and the guides have nothing above them passing authority down.
Hub pages: what they are and aren't
A hub is a written page about the topic, not a category archive. It explains what the reader is choosing between, has a short section for each sub-topic, and links to every guide under it with a line on when to read which. Think of it as the guide to the guides.
An archive page that lists post excerpts newest-first is not a hub. It has no text of its own, it changes every time you publish, and it links to posts by date rather than by meaning. Google treats those as navigation, not content. If your platform generates one automatically, either write real content into it or noindex it and build a hub by hand.
A hub for a topic with ten guides is 800 to 1,500 words. It ranks for the broad term over time, which no single guide can, and it's where you send links from other sites.
Categories and how many topics one site can carry
One hub per topic, and a topic is something a person shops for: cordless drills, hydration packs, standing desks. Group topics that share a shopper into a category (power tools, cycling gear, home office), and keep the number of categories small. A new site should have one category with two or three hubs. Adding a category is a decision, not a habit.
The test for a new topic is whether it shares readers and products with the ones you have. Drills and drill bits do. Drills and dog beds don't, and the second topic will drag on the first by making the site harder to define.
URLs
Keep them flat and permanent. yoursite.com/best-cordless-drill-under-100/ is better than yoursite.com/tools/drills/best-cordless-drill-under-100/, because the second one has to change if you ever reorganise, and a changed URL starts from zero.
The hierarchy lives in the links, not the path. A guide is "under" its hub because the hub links to it and it links back, not because the folder says so. Sites with several distinct categories can use one folder per category (/tools/, /cycling/) if they want the grouping visible; anything deeper than that is cost without benefit.
Slugs should be the keyword, without dates, numbers of products or years. "8-best-cordless-drills-2024" is wrong the day you add a ninth or the year turns.
The three links every post needs
- Up: to its hub, in the first few paragraphs, with the topic as the anchor text.
- Across: to at least one related guide or review, where the reader might reasonably want to go next.
- Down: from a guide to the review of each pick that has one, from the product section itself.
Then the return trips. The hub links to every guide. Each review links back to every guide it appears in. That's the part sites skip: they link down from the guide and forget the review has to link up, so the review sits at a dead end.
Anchor text is the page's keyword or a natural phrase containing it, not "click here" and not the same exact phrase every time. Navigation menus and sidebars count for less than links in the body; a link inside the paragraph that's discussing the product is worth more than the same link in a widget.
Stopping guides and reviews from competing
The most common structural fault on affiliate sites is two pages ranking for one query, usually a "best X" guide and an "X review" targeting the same phrase. The structure above prevents it as long as each page keeps to its job: the guide targets the buying search, the review targets the product name, and neither tries to do both.
If you've already got two pages competing, the fix is in the content audit post: pick the stronger, merge the weaker into it, redirect the old URL.
Mistakes that cost rankings
- Reorganising URLs. Moving posts into new folders resets their history. Change links, not addresses.
- Tag pages. Dozens of thin auto-generated pages that dilute the site. Noindex them or don't use tags.
- Orphan posts. A post nothing links to is invisible to Google's crawl and to readers. Every new post gets its three links the day it goes live.
- One-way links. Guides that link to reviews that never link back.
- A homepage that's just the latest posts. The homepage should link to every hub with a line about each; it's the top of the structure, not a feed.
Planning the structure before the posts
The order that works is hub, then guides, then the rest. Write the hub first, even if it's short and links to guides that don't exist yet; it gives every later post something to link up to. Then publish the guides in order of buying-search volume. Then reviews of the picks that keep appearing. Then comparisons and informational posts as the gaps show up in Search Console.
Two AffSERP tools help here. The Competitor Sitemap Explorer shows how a ranking competitor has organised the same topic, which is the fastest way to see which guides a hub needs.
Keyword Grouping clusters your keyword list by intent, so the hub, guide, review and comparison for each buying search are laid out before any are written, and the keyword research post covers building that list.
FAQ
Should affiliate posts live under /blog/ or at the root?
Either works for ranking; what matters is consistency and depth. A flat structure (yoursite.com/best-cordless-drill/) keeps every post one click from the homepage and avoids the URL having to change if you move a post between categories. Sites with several distinct topics often use one folder per topic instead. Pick one and don't change it later.
Do I need category pages, or are they thin content?
You need hub pages, and a bare category archive is not one. A hub is a written page for the topic: what the reader is choosing between, a short section per sub-topic, and a link to every guide in the cluster. That page ranks for the broad term and passes authority to the guides. An auto-generated list of post excerpts does neither.
How many internal links should each post have?
Every post needs at least three: up to its hub, across to one related guide or review, and, for guides, down to the reviews of the picks. Beyond that, link wherever a reader would want to jump. A guide with eight product sections can reasonably link to eight reviews.
Does silo structure still work?
The idea behind it does: keep related posts linked to each other and to a hub, so the topic is easy to see. The strict version, where posts in one silo never link to another, is unnecessary. Link across silos when it helps the reader; just make sure every post is firmly inside one.
AffSERP's Competitor Sitemap Explorer maps a ranking site's guides and reviews; Keyword Grouping plans yours.
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