Wave Issue 40

First...

This week turned out to be one of those good ones where I was able to get a lot of tasks done. I was able to put a dent into the to-do list.

If only this was every week!

Ever since I got since a few months ago and then lockdowns started happening here, the daily routines I had before went out the window. I just wasn't as productive as I used to be.

I'm a creature of habit. Routines help me stay on-point and get things accomplished.

Maybe it stems from when I was playing lots of sports growing up. My routines got me into the mindset to compete. Disruptions into that could throw me off my game.

I'm trying to get back into a routine. It's not the same one as before because the environment has changed around me, but a routine helps a lot with getting things done.

It could even be a location or time of day that you feel most productive? Think about what makes you more productive. Once you realize what it is, it'll help you get more done.

Do you have a routine, location, and/or time of day that helps you become more productive? What is it?

Find out what it is and have a great, productive week!

SEO

What Are Sitelinks? Best Practices for Google Sitelinks

Sitelinks give you more real estate on Google's search results page while driving more clicks to your website.

Building your sites and content well will help get additional real estate space in the SERPs.

How to Use SERP Features to Inform Your Content Strategy

With a little digging, you can now mimic the keyword topics, style, and format of the SERP features for your target keywords, creating content that engages your audience exactly where they are in the buyer’s journey.

Google's always testing and changing the way they display search results to get users to stay on the SERPs without clicking through to other sites. They do that with SERP features, so it's good to understand how the SERP features work.

Tools and Resources

Great Tools for Niche Site and Content Creators

TopicMojo - This is an AnswerThePublic competitor that starts at $49/one-time for a lifetime deal and not the $99/month that AnswerThePublic charges. Find keywords and questions with these tools. These tools are also a part of BrandOverflow's toolset (Keyword Generator and Question Explorer), so if you have BrandOverflow, these are the same.

WPVivid Pro - Lifetime deals for a limited time. I have the Freelancer deal myself and I've already made the money back with its backup and migration features. You also get image optimization, user roles, and staging/development tools. The lifetime price is basically 2x their annual prices, so if you plan on staying in the game for a couple years, this is a good deal. Few Hours Left on Deal.

Pictory - Create short videos easily for your niche site's YouTube channel to load on sites and use for video ads. Turn text content into summary videos and use Shutterstock's media assets, text-to-speech, and music.

Crello Pro - Great Canva alternative to create graphic designs for you affiliate sites. Includes the premium images, so you don't have to pay extra to use them. Deal Ending Soon.

Content

Postpace vs Frase vs Otranking vs Marketmuse vs Blogely vs Writerzen For Content Research

Alston Antony compares Postpace vs Frase vs Otranking vs Marketmuse vs Blogely vs Writerzen for content research and outlining.

This is a good showcase of all these different tools that are available using the keyword: how to do keyword research.

Skip around to various tools that you're interested in and see what you think of them. See if your workflow can be improved with any of these tools.

Interesting he doesn't compare SurferSEO, but he says these are the ones that people asked for comparison. Most likely because they all had a lifetime deal at one point, SurferSEO never did.

I would say Frase and SurferSEO are the best ones still, at least for my workflow.

WriterZen has potential and their lifetime deal is still live. Here's a workflow walkthrough webinar they did recently to show how they use it for keyword research to content creator. I've been testing their keyword research and clustering tools, and am impressed by their initial launch.

Frase AI - Public beta

Frase has released a public beta of their Frase AI and it's the best AI content generator that I've seen yet. Watch the video intro of Frase AI. These AI Writing tools are part of their SEO Add-On that's $35/month.

Their AI is generating the best content that I've seen yet with any AI Writer. It's not the GPT-3 that the majority of AI content generators are using either. Their prices are reasonable too.

Their lowest Basic plan at $44.99 gets you 30 Document Credits. a month If you add the "SEO Add-On" that's $35, that's a total of $79.99/month for Frase and unlimited use of its AI tools. The Basic Plan does say "AI Writing Assistant (Limited)." In their Facebook group, they said right now it's limited to 5 clicks of "Write for me" per session. So it seems like you can sign up for Basic and get the AI Writer with some limits for $44.99.

Jarvis AI (previously known as Conversion AI) and its comparable Boss Mode is $119/month for unlimited words. The only other plan that gives you long-form writing capabilities is $109/month. Frase is better value and better content. Jarvis also has a free 7-day trial, so you should try both out.

Frase's Free Trial that you can use for 5 Frase Content documents credits per month. I'm not sure if the trial allows a Limited version of their AI Writing is included though. Sign up and give it a try to see if you're able to.

Link Building

20 POPULAR Blogs In 2021 And How They Are Successful

This is your homework for this week.

Take a look at each of these 20 affiliate sites to see what you can learn from each one.

Even better, what are some opportunities for improvement for each of the sites? What changes would you make?

That's one of the tips that I use to start looking at my own sites objectively. It can be hard to look at your own sites objectively, but this exercise helps me see the same opportunities for improvements on my sites.

How to Get your First 100 Backlinks

Nice Ahrefs video on how to get the first 100 backlinks using these tactics:

Communities
HARO
Guest Posting
Podcast Interviews
Email Outreach for your best content

Education

SEO Audit Tools: A List Of 65 Tools For SEO Auditing

Olga Zarzeczna created a great list of 65 SEO Tools - Free and Paid.

I use a number of these and tried even more. Lots of great tools to audit your sites.

Keyword Search Volume: Things you didn’t know you don’t know

A well-reasoned explanation for what stands behind the keyword search volume in various tools and why you should not blindly rely on this number.

FIND CHRIS - NICHE SAFARI'S YOUTUBE VIDEO

9 Important SEO Metrics to Track (+ How to Improve Them)

WordStream has a good overview article on 9 SEO metrics and what the numbers tell you in Google Analytics, Search Console, and SEO tools like Ahrefs/SEMrush.

Organic traffic
Click-through rate
Exit rate
Pages per session
Average page load time
Core Web Vitals
Backlinks and referring domains
Keyword rankings
Pages crawled per day

News

A reminder on qualifying links and our link spam update

Google reminds us to make affiliate links nofollow. Technically, they say to use rel="sponsored", but John Mueller's said before that rel="nofollow" has the same effect.

Google's guidelines on qualifying outbound links has a noted on the rel="sponsored" value:

Note: The nofollow attribute was previously recommended for these types of links and is still an acceptable way to flag them, though sponsored is preferred.

Does the 'preferred' mean that you have to change everything to sponsored? Not for me. I don't think it's going to make any difference.

Like Niche Surfer?

Let me know! Reply or email me at [email protected] I’d love to know what you think and if you have any ideas.

I’d also appreciate it if you shared it with fellow niche surfers.

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