Wave Issue 19

First...

My February 2021 Income Report is out, so do check it out when you can.

I have something weird going on with Site 2's Google Analytics that I'd love to see if anyone else has experienced - spike in Bounce Rate and drop in Average Session Duration all of a sudden. Ezoic's Analytics don't show the same spike and drop, so don't know what might've caused it.

As you might already know, I was on the Niche Pursuits podcast hosted by Spencer Haws. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet:

Niche Pursuits Episode YouTube Link

Interesting fact: I actually recorded this before the Niche Website Builders Podcast Episode, but it was put out after.

I've been getting many emails from people who've watched or listened to the shows. Nice to hear from so many people in different situations. If you sent me an email, I'm a little backed up, but will reply as soon as I can.

I'll help as many as I can, but if it's a question that's easily Google-able or just too broad because you don't want to put in the work to learn, I probably won't get to your email. I've shared a lot of guides here and past issues, so do check those out. If you have specific questions after, I'll do my best to answer.

SEO

How to Get Backlinks Like an SEO Pro

This is a good, in-depth guide on Backlinks. You may want to bookmark this and save it for reference later. Pay more attention to a couple sections:

7 Characteristics of Quality:

Relevance
Traffic
Authority
Link Quality
Editorial Standards
Outbound Link Quality
Indexation

3 Types of Backlinks to Avoid in 2021

Public Blog Networks (Yes, Public)
DoFolllow Blog Comments
Web 2.0s

Your four-step playbook for diagnosing and improving Core Web Vitals - AdThrive

As May 2021 gets ever closer, AdThrive has put out their own series of articles on Core Web Vitals. Not too bad, easy to read.

Intro to Google's Core Web Vitals - Start Here
How to measure your Core Web Vitals performance - Measure Link
What is First Input Delay (FID)? - FID Link
What is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)? - CLS Link
What is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)? - LCP Link
Your four-step playbook for diagnosing and improving Core Web Vitals - Diagnose Link

One of the articles also referenced a Chrome extension that measures CWV for sites. Handy little extension to add. Appropriately called Web Vitals.

Google Recommends Pyramid Navigation Structures For Larger Sites

This is from an older Office Hours that I've shared, but good to reiterate now that SE Roundtable found it again.

John Mueller is talking about site architecture and suggested large sites with over 1,000 links should use a Pyramid or top-down navigation structure vs a flat structure.

It's all about organizing your content in a way that Google can crawl and easily understand your site. Make sure your internal linking and content silos are well-structured, so they tell Google how your articles are related to each other.

How Google's December 2020 Core Update Affected Affiliate Sites

Matt Diggity shares his data analysis with Surfer SEO on Google's December 2020 Core Update on 600 affiliate sites.

SEO Basics: What is SEO and Why is it Important? [SEO Course by Ahrefs]

Ahrefs is in the midst of uploading their SEO Fundamentals Course for Beginners on YouTube. They're putting out a video every day, so be sure to Subscribe to Ahrefs to stay up to day.

They have 4 Modules with each Module having multiple short videos. They're still on Module 1 with 4 videos so far. The 4 Modules:

Keyword Research
On-Page SEO
Link Building
The Basics of Technical SEO

They're obviously pushing their own tools, but you can still reverse-engineer the process to work with other tools.

Content

7 Easy Ways to Get More Traffic from Evergreen Content

We talked about the Evergreen Content Myth in the last issue, but this article has good tips on refreshing your content.

Revisit your keywords
Add (or remove) information
Check your visuals
Diversify your format
Tweak your titles
Change up your meta description
Edit your links

How to Resolve Duplicate Content

Moz and Meghan Pahinui have a fun little video and blog article on Duplicate Content.

To help explain solutions, she uses examples like VHS tapes, sugar and chocolate chip cookies, and cupcakes.

Duplicate content is something that we should all look at. It's one of the easiest mistakes to make when building affiliate websites.

It's a Moz article, so they do push their tools. I've never actually used their tools, other than the free Moz bar. Here are some Free tools to help find duplicate content:

Screaming Frog SEO Spider (desktop software) - website
Siteliner (web app) - website

How to Use Smaller Topics to Write Longer Articles

Morten Storgaard at Passive Income Geek put out a video a few weeks ago about his Army Ants Method of combining small questions into a full article. Here's a written explanation in a guest post for Ezoic.

I've done this in the past and it does work. In doing keyword research, you'll always come across these questions that can be answered in a couple sentences. It can be hard to know what to do with them.

In addition to Morten's Army Ants method, you can also use the questions in a couple of other ways:

FAQs in related articles
Headers (H2, H3) in related articles

FAQs are something that not enough people are using. It's so easy too with RankMath and Yoast both offering FAQ Schema blocks in WordPress.

In the Ants method, he uses the questions as headers to make up one article. Look for opportunities to enrich your current/new articles with questions you find. Not enough people do this either. If you have a current article that's already ranking, keeping the content fresh will only help that current article move up. Beats trying to rank a new article.

News

Semrush plans to go public after posting big 2020 growth

Big news with Semrush filing to go public on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol SEMR.

Few interesting stats:

Almost $125M in 2020 Revenues
67,000 paying customers in 2020

See more of the numbers in the article.

How Yoyao Hsueh Bought and Quickly Grew a Content Website from $20 to $6,800 a Month in 6 Months - Niche Pursuits

I'm of course going to share my talk with Spencer Haws on the Niche Pursuits Podcast. Fun times!

Be sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel and Podcast for lots of great interviews and tips.

If you're just starting out on your affiliate marketing journey, listen to his Coaching Calls for Niche Site Project 3.0 where he coaches one student from start to finish of building an affiliate website. Starts from picking niches, setting goals, all the way to branding and monetizing.