Publishing content for the Amazon Onsite Publisher (AOP) program

We can now publish content directly to Amazon via their Amazon Onsite Publisher (AOP) program. Creating this content in Keystone requires a separate plugin, which is detailed below.

This plugin is only available on selected sites. If you'd like to use it, please contact us.

Background

The Amazon Onsite Publisher (AOP) programs allows publishers to push content to Amazon. Content can be displayed as a module within search results on Amazon, but the full article will also be published there. We can drive revenue via users transacting for the products we list in the content.

Future have an extensive document covering content requirements. This document can be found here.

How-to

Keystone now has a custom post type (called ‘Best Lists’) which automatically pushes any content published in that post type to Amazon.

Any content created will also be published on your site like any other piece of content. For more advice, see the ‘Site Structure & SEO’ section below.

The fields we make available are listed below. For specific guidelines on language and content scope, please refer back to the Future documentation.

Headline & Intro

These fields are the same as the fields available for a regular Post.

For sites on Simba, the ‘Introduction’ field is displayed underneath the main title. For sites on Classic, this field is surfaced at the start of the body copy.

Body Copy

This field behaves the same as the body copy section for a regular article. You can format it with H2s, H3s, and other elements such as links.

Please note that items such as links will be stripped out when the content is pushed to Amazon due to feed requirements. You can continue to include links for users consuming content on-site, but avoid links where the anchor text doesn’t make sense without the link (e.g. ‘Read More: <link>’).

Country

The ‘Country’ taxonomy defines which Amazon feed the content will be placed within (either UK or US). You must select a value before publishing your content. Each AOP article can only be marked against a single country.

Products

The ‘Products’ field is a repeater, meaning you can add as many or as few products as you’d like.

To add a new Product, click ‘Add Product’:

The big blue button is the one you’re after

When dealing with multiple products, you can add or remove new items by clicking the ‘Plus’ and ‘Minus’ buttons to the right-hand-side:

See the plus and minus symbols to the right-hand-side to add and remove items. Hovering over the number on the left allows you to re-order the list of items.

You can also re-order the list of Products by hovering over the number to the left-hand-side, then dragging and dropping (see above).

Of the fields available for each Product, some are used purely for the AOP version, and some will only be shown on-site. Some are used on both. Here’s a complete mapping, with details of each field underneath:

Field Name Amazon On-Site
Product Name Yes Yes
Image Yes Yes
Product URL Yes No
Affiliate URL No Yes
Review URL No Yes
Price No Yes
Product Award Yes Yes
Product Overview Yes Yes

Product Name – the title of the Product (such as brand, model, version, etc.)

Image – an image of the Product

Product URL – this should be an Amazon URL without any tracking codes. This URL be used by the AOP to show the item when it appears on Amazon.

Affiliate URL – this field is used if you want to put an affiliate URL on the on-site version of the page. It’ll be put behind a ‘Buy Now’ button. You can use Amazon here too if you want – and this one can include tracking codes as it’s on-site.

Review URL – if you’ve separately reviewed this product on your site, you can link to it here. Note that the link will be put behind a ‘Read our Review’ button.

Price – this is shown on-site but not for the AOP version. We’ll prefix it with ‘Price:’ when displayed to endusers.

Product Award – this is a sub-heading, such as ‘Best for budgets’, ‘Most affordable’, ‘Best for experts’, etc. It’s shown on both versions.

Product Overview – this is a section for a paragraph or two of copy talking about the product. It can’t contain links, or any formatting such as lists, subheadings, etc.

Footer Body Copy

This behaves the same way as the main body copy element at the start, but is simply placed after the list of products for copy such as closing thoughts and conclusions.

Site Structure & SEO

Be default, content published via this plugin will be set to ‘index’ for the on-site version. Amazon’s version of the content will not be indexed by Google and lives in isolation on their ecosystem.

If you already have buyer’s guides on your site – and the article you write in this plugin is repurposed from there – you may want to put a Canonical tag to avoid duplicate content issues with Google. Simply place the URL of the original piece in the ‘Canonical’ field in the Yoast settings.

If setting a canonical URL on the article – and the original is indexed by Google – do not set the AOP article to ‘noindex’ as you risk confusing Google and harming the original content.

Guides & Features