Niche Surfer Newsletter - Weekly Curated Links for Affiliate Marketing and Niche Sites - Do You Exist?

First...

Ever use This Person Does Not Exist to get persona headshots?

It seems like backlink outreach managers are working overtime. I've received 2-3 emails a day this past week and all the emails that have a headshot are from TPDNE.

Some people don't even take the time to resize the headshot, so it comes huge. Open the email and the headshot takes over the email.

Don't do that. It's so amateurish. Take 5 seconds to resize the photos.

Funny enough, the most egregious one came from someone representing a couple well-established ~DR80+ authority sites.

Besides reading those outreach emails and ogling the TPDNE headshots, I spent most of my time this past week focusing on updating old posts and optimizing new posts from writers. So, I haven't had a chance to write out my April income report. Earnings are down from March though, because Site 1 got hit by the April Product Reviews Update.

There are some great links and deals this week. The Link Whisper deal ends in 3 days, so don't miss out on that.

Let's dive in.

Sponsor

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Head over to the Discount Landing Page
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SEO

Unconfirmed Google Ranking Algorithm Update; Is It Product Reviews Related?

Was there another update on April 30th? Looks like there are still some more updates going on from all the talk out there.

At this point, I can only say, be ready for anything. Just work on your site and focus on quality. Provide a good user experience to your visitors.

And something I find helpful is also to ask someone else to take a look at your site and content objectively. Niche Surfer readers have asked me in the past and I'm always happy to help where I can.

One of the toughest things I learned is that it's hard to analyze your site objectively, so it can be helpful to ask someone else.

The "Steve" Search Engine and Speed as a Ranking Factor

The Google Guys (John, Martin, and Gary) discuss the ranking factors of their hypothetical search engine - STEVE. They specifically look at the question: What if Speed was a ranking factor in the STEVE search engine?

They talk their way through the process of how to look at ranking factors and how to apply weight to each one.

The tl;dr version is Pagespeed is a small ranking factor and will more likely act as a tiebreaker, similar to https.

Technical SEO Audit for Niche Site Project with Olga Zarzeczna of seosly.com

This is a good site audit of Doug Cunnington's site, Niche Site Project, by SEO Olga Zarzeczna. See how she analyzes Google Search Console, links, images, schema, etc. from a SEO point-of-view.

Olga has a number of useful articles and templates on her site. She has a free SEO audit template that you can download.

A recent article is her list of 17 Tools to Measure Core Web Vitals.

Doug talks to Olga Zarzeczna regarding the complete audit she performed on NSP. Get the checklist free: https://seosly.com/technical-seo-audit/Seosly👉 https...

Tools and Resources

Depositphotos | Exclusive Offer from AppSumo

Some good tools and deals out there right now.

Depositphotos, $39 for 100 stock photos/vectors, no expiration - I always buy a bunch of credits when this lands on Appsumo (~once a year). I'm not able to find good photos for my niche sites on the free stock photo sites, so need to go to Depositphotos or elsewhere. Visitors (and Google) also don't see the same rehashed free stock photos that other sites use.
NeuralText, Lifetime Deal - They aim to be an all-in-one content generation tool. From keyword research to clustering to briefs to AI content generation to content optimization. I got this for their keyword research and clustering tool. I'm not that impressed with the briefs, AI writing, and content optimization. Clustering seems to be comparable to ClusterAI, so NeuralText's lifetime deal is better value. If their other tools get better, extra bonus.
My Brand New Logo, $39 for 250 logos - This is easily the fastest I've been able to create a logo and all the social media image files for one of my niche sites. You give it the inputs in their step-by-step workflow and it'll give you many logo options. It beats the $20 I paid each time for similar quality Fiverr logos. Canva's logo designer isn't as flexible as this and also doesn't give me all the social media ones, only a 500x500 square logo.

Content

How to Write a Great Listicle Post in 10 Steps

It’s perfectly possible to write a great listicle about… well, pretty much anything. In this Ahrefs post, you’ll learn how to do just that.

I don't write enough listicles myself. This article got me motivated to publish more listicles.

The Battle of Intro Paragraphs - Diggity vs Geek

Matt Diggity and Morten Storgaard go Head-to-Head with their videos on how to write introductory paragraphs!

Matt publishes his video. Morten publishes his the next day. Coincidence?

Most likely hah. I'm sure they publish on regular schedules (like Niche Surfer every Saturday at 9am EST), so there's bound to be situations like this.

To the actual content of the videos. They both make good points and crossover with many of their tips as well. They have different presentation styles, but get their thoughts across and both are good to watch.

Share them with your writers as well, because teaching writers to write good intro paragraphs is one of the toughest things to do. One tip I give them is to write the intro paragraph last, after writing the rest of the article. You know the whole article now, so you'll be able to write a better intro.

Matt Diggity's Video VS Morten Storgaard's Video

Education

Google Answers Question About Limits on Title Tag Length

Yes or No - There is a title tag limit of 60 characters? Or 50? 70?

The answer is "No, there's no limit on title length."

60-70 characters is usually the recommendation I've seen in the past. Rank Math shows 60 characters in their plugin.

Google's Gary Illyes says that industry standards on title tag lengths are not recommended by Google and are externally created. Gary Illyes shared if there are any hard limits to how long title tags can be during a Google Off the Record podcast. He then explained what the best title tag is.

Wirecutter Debuts New Sections to Capitalize on Ecommerce

Wirecutter is getting into Styles and Trends, so if you're in the retail and fashion niche, you have some competition.

This article does get into how they structure their teams. Some interesting info in there about their processes. Possibly some takeaways as you scale up.

E.g., Styles is more in-line with the teams for the other industries, while Trends will be different. The nature of Trends is to stay up to date with the trends, so they're going to publish more and faster.

Google's Tools for publishers (and understanding their benefits)

The Google Team gives an overview of all the Google tools for content creators and their monetized websites.

How to Create a Child Theme in WordPress and Deleted Unnecessary Scripts and Code

For those who want to take another step to customizing themes, Ezoic has a 2.5 minute video on how to create a WordPress child theme with a plugin.

They also give some PHP code to strip out unnecessary Woocommerce and Jetpack code that slows down sites. You can add your own code and strip out other things you don't want as well with child themes, while still being able to update the parent themes without any issues.

I used to create child themes manually and this plugin makes it so much easier! If you don't know what a child theme is, it's basically a copy (child) of the theme (parent) you're already using. It gives you the ability to make changes to your child theme, like PHP and CSS code, without affecting the parent theme.

When you update your parent theme, you won't lose the custom changes you made. If you ever made PHP or CSS changes on the parent theme and you updated the parent theme, you'd lose all those changes, because they'd be written over by the latest theme update.

How to Create a Content Calendar That Works For You

Ahrefs discusses the importance of using a content calendar, how to create one, examples, and tips.

If you don't have a calendar or to-do list for content organization, take a look at this article for inspiration.

I use Nifty to manage everything. It's a nice combination of what I was getting out of Asana and Trello.

Case Study

1300% Increase in Organic Visitors in an Affiliate Marketing JV

Here's an interesting approach to starting a new site. Instead of building from scratch, Mico Martinez a head start by JV'ing (Joint Venture-ing) with an influencer in your niche.

This isn't so much a how to work with influencers, as much as it is about taking a website from its stale state and growing it. If you were to purchase a site and wondering what to do, this article is helpful. If you're looking for the details on how to partner with influencers, this post won't get you there.

What I like about this post is he shares how he audited the site and then improved it.

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Have a great week with taking your niche sites to another level!