Wave Issue 103

First...

To Go or Not To Go ... That is the Question

I'm seeing lots of people tweet about the Brighton SEO event. It's always a big event.

Are you there now as you're reading this? Or are you sitting at home wondering if you're missing out on some great talks?

If you feel like you're missing out, don't worry. Luckily, there's a spreadsheet of BrightonSEO slides for download!

No matter what industry you're in, conferences and events are all about networking. The value with these events is in the people you meet with. They are your future partners, investors, or clients.

You might get some value walking around the floors to the various booths to learn about new products and features. But that's not where the real value is...

It's all about the parties...I mean, networking.

Well, the fresh-faced ones entering the industry are more likely to go to the talks and workshops. The ones who have been in the industry for a long time rarely go to the talks.

I don't know how many events, festivals, and conferences I've justified to my bosses by saying it was important to go for this talk, that talk, or these meetings. Just so I could expense the whole trip.

But they also knew what was up. They're not the CEOs for nothing. They've been to enough events to know what's going on.

They know that these big events are the one time each year that so many people in the industry are together in one place. Face-to-face meetings are where you build those relationships that turn into deals.

That's why these events grow every year. Don't think for one second it's for this talk or that talk 😉

And if you didn't think networking is important, these are the slides for a Networking for SEOs presentation.

Sponsor

LowFruits 10% Off Discount - Ends Today!

LowFruits is offering an Exclusive 10% Off for all Niche Surfer readers!

Deal ends at end of day Saturday, Oct. 8th!

I've been told by Paul at LowFruits that the subscription credits will get used first. Once that's exhausted, the pay-as-you-go credits will start to be used. This will prevent wasting the extra credits you purchase.

Here are the prices for the credits after you take the 10% discount:

Niche Creators

Niche Creators - Q&A Interviews

This week's Niche Creator is Yoyao!

You read it correctly, it's me!

I've been asked by some to interview myself and since I couldn't get another niche creator to do an interview this week, there was no better time than now:

Yoyao Hsueh

Income Reports

September 2022 Income Reports

Anne Yeys - $180K+
Ron Stefanski - $43,807
Mike Donovan - $41,837
Keith Donovan - $2,316
Mushfiq, The Website Flip - $248,785 for Jan-Sept 2022
Shaun Marrs, Case Study - $248

SEO

12 SEO KPIs You Should (And Shouldn't) Track

SEO KPIs (key performance indicators) are the most important SEO metrics that are closely tied to business growth. They determine the actions you take, so you should choose the KPIs wisely. Michael Pecánek at Ahrefs covers 12 common SEO KPIs and discuss if and how you should track them. KPIs include:

Search visibility
Conversions from organic traffic
SEO ROI
New backlinks
Keyword rankings
Organic traffic

Google Multisearch - Exploring how “Searching outside the box” using Lens and multisearch is being tracked in Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA)

At Search I/O 2022 in May, Google announced Multisearch near me, which will enable you to use Lens to snap a photo, enter “near me” via multisearch, and then Google will help you find local businesses that can provide that product. Definitely a cool feature.

But how can you track if people are coming to your site through multisearch. Glenn Gabe explores how Google multisearch is being tracked in Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

What happens if Google picks the wrong canonical URL?

What happens if Google incorrectly associates one URL with an irrelevant canonical URL? Canonical URLs exist to save your website from the problems that arise with ‘duplicate content.’ But, often, they can turn into an SEO nightmare if Google picks the wrong canonical URL.

Deepak Sharma at Oncrawl discusses reasons and fixes for the wrong canonical.

Will Google Penalize Sites That Look The Same?

Thought about creating 2 sites that are almost identical in hopes of getting 2 sites ranking for every keyword?

John Mueller answers tells us what happens and what to do if this is your goal. He says a good amount, starting with:

“First off, there’s no penalty or web spam manual action for having two almost identical websites.”

“That said, if the URLs and the page content is the same across these two websites, then what can happen for identical pages is that our systems may pick one of the pages as a canonical page."

Content

Steve Toth Mastermind Mansion presentation

Great presentation from Steve Toth on how to take the keyword "invoice template" and turn it into 121 pages. It's a common technique for programmatic SEO. It's a technique that I've used for years and works really well. If you follow Mike Donovan (Niche Creator Q&A), you'll know the technique as "brand swapping."

How to Format Your Blog Post: 7 Effective Tips for 2023

It's already 2023 and Margarita Loktionova has the 7 tips on formatting your blog post. With good formatting, you can increase the odds:

Readers engaging with your content and staying longer on the page
Increasing on-blog conversions
Improving your website ranking

Link Building

19 Link Building Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs

Many people (me included) will make costly and ineffective link-building mistakes that harm their search engine rankings without even realizing it. The most common mistakes people make can be so expensive. This is a good list of 19 mistakes to consider avoiding if you want better results.

1.Buying links 2. Building Links From No-Index Pages Or Domains 3. Getting Site-Wide Links Or Footer Section Links 4. Irrelevant Link Building 5. Ignoring User Intent 6. Disregarding On-Page SEO 7. Overusing Exact Anchor Text

Link Building Tactics No One is Talking About

Good video for 4 lesser known link building tactics:

Guest posts update
Redirect link building
Product feedback technique
Use Google ads to earn links to link-bait pages

Education

The COMPLETE SEO Checklist for 2022 + Free Download

Matt Diggity shares a list of checklists to follow to improve the SEO and content on your site overall.

Site Setup Checklist
Keyword Research Checklist
Content Creation Checklist
Keyword Optimization Checklist
Internal Linking Checklist
Link Building Checklist
Technical SEO Checklist
Advanced Checklist

How to Rank Higher on Google (10 Steps)

Ahrefs' 10-step process for more visibility on the SERPs:

Choose a keyword
Match search intent
Cover the topic in full
Update the page
Improve on-page SEO
Add internal links
Merge similar pages
Build more backlinks
Track rankings
Repeat the process

There's also a nice flowchart that you can print out to have it handy and use as a checklist for what to do with content.

Headless SEO 101: Everything You Need to Get Started

Lidia Infante at Sanity talks about headless SEO, which is SEO for sites that use a headless CMS. The headless CMS market is forecasted to grow from $605 million to $3.8 billion by 2032. They are also seen as more developer-friendly than traditional, monolithic CMSes.

What is semantic search: A deep dive into entity-based search

Since 2013, Google has been gradually developing into a 100% semantic search engine. A semantic search engine considers the semantic context of search queries and content to better understand meaning. Semantic search engines also consider the relationships between entities for returning search results. In contrast, purely keyword-based search systems only work on the basis of a keyword-text match.

Learn about more about the history of Google and how it's become the semantic search engine it is today.

News

The 2023 Digital Marketing Salary Guide

If you're interested, here's Conductor's 2023 Digital Marketing Salary Guide & Hiring Trends Report that includes:

Exclusive salary range benchmark data
In-depth hiring trend research
Additional recruiting trends and retention strategies

You'll need to enter your email and information to get it. They email it to you.

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