Wave Issue 47

First...

Was busy this past week, but it felt good to get a lot of tasks done. I love that feeling of checking off boxes on the To-Do list - especially if I don't know what I did will necessarily pay off!

That's the world that we work in when we work on affiliate sites. We build sites. Publish articles. Then worry if it will be successful.

All that work we put in for Google to index the site - then we hope that Google will rank it on Page 1.

If it ranks well enough and people click through - we hope the content is good enough that people will read it, stay on the page for ad revenue, and maybe click-thru to buy an affiliate product.

So much time is spent waiting and waiting for better rankings, increased traffic, and increased revenues. Refreshing the dashboards of Google Analytics and Amazon Affiliates won't help with those.

I find that I like to keep myself busy when it comes to waiting. Work on a new article. Work on a new site. Or even do something that's non-niche site related.

Take breaks too or you'll get burnout. Find a hobby that gets you away from thinking about your site and content.

Go out for a run or walk around the block. Take in the sun. Or just stay in and watch a movie.

The point is to stop thinking about work and get refreshed before you get back into it.

Have a great weekend!

SEO

19 Ways to Increase Organic SEO Traffic (With Examples and Templates)

Robbie Richards offers up 19 step-by-step "playbooks" to get more short and long term organic traffic wins. He shows working examples and templates. Great list that includes:

Prevent (and remove) keyword cannibalization
Eliminate "organic anchors" with a data-driven content audit
Find quick-win keyword opportunities
Perform subfolder keyword analysis
Target the long tail for faster gains
Use modifiers to find high-value keyword opportunities
Piggyback on existing list posts
Expand your organic footprint with secondary keywords
Boost authority with internal linking
Scale question-based keyword research

Google Does Not Differentiate Between Category, Filter, Tag Or Search Pages

Google's John Mueller said in a video hangout that Google Search does not specifically differentiate and treat differently category pages or filter pages or search pages or tag pages from other pages.

What does this mean for us?

This is more targeted for ecommerce sites as they want to offer multiple ways for users to find products, but it's still relevant for content-based niche sites. It's especially true for those who like using categories and tags with posts.

To avoid duplicate content and cannibalization, I noindex any non-important page, so Google doesn't crawl them. That also focuses the crawl budget on the important pages. When it comes to tags and categories, I only use one general "blog" category to host all posts. Pages are in hard silos.

Cannibalization

In today's episode of Whiteboard Friday, Moz SEO expert Tom Capper walks you through cannibalization: what it is, how to identify it, and how to fix it.

3 questions to ask yourself to see if there might be cannibalization going on:

Do we think we're underperforming?
Do competing pages both appear?
Consolidate or differentiate?

More information on how Google generates titles for web page results

Google shares a blog post that discusses more about how they generate titles for the SERPs. They say that they use the title tags first and then go beyond the title elements when it's helpful. They give some examples of where that occurs:

Half-empty titles
Obsolete titles
Inaccurate titles
Micro-boilerplate titles

Tools and Resources

Great Tools for Niche Site Owners and Content Creators

WP Simple Author Box - Lets you create fully customizable responsive author boxes in WordPress.

Beam.gg - Create your own online community platform to keep your users engaged. Has gamification features like ranks, quests, badges, profile upgrades, and more! Ends in 2 days.

Smart Quiz Builder - Build quiz funnels to generate leads, segment your audience, and recommend the right products and resources to prospects.

VBOUT - All-in-one marketing automation platform with email and SMS. Lots of features and marketing tools here. Ends in 3 days.

KonnectzIT - Zapier alternative. I like their drag-and-drop way to create automation workflows. Check the apps they integrate with and see if they do what you need.

Ezoic Revenue Guarantee – Ezoic Levels

Ezoic introduced Levels depending on how much traffic and money you earn monthly on Ezoic. There are a variety of added benefits depending on what level you're on, as well as grant money.

If you're not on Ezoic and you join Ezoic, they have a Revenue Guarantee where they'll pay you an additional 25% if their ad technology doesn't out-perform your previous revenues.

Content

4 Sites Scaling Content with AI (Probably) - JSVXC

Thoughts on scaling SEO content with AI and real examples of websites generating millions of views.

He doesn't share the actual sites, but shares the Ahrefs stats of them. I wonder how many articles are actually on each of the sites to get the traffic that they have.

How to Build Effective CTAs: 10 Call To Action Tips to Double Your Income - YouTube

Matt Diggity shares how to create CTAs that will engage and convert your visitors. He covers:

Button colors
CTA copy
CTA examples
Split testing
CTA best practices

Link Building

Your Blueprint to Creating Linkable Assets : The Upper Ranks

The UpperRanks goes through 4 examples of linkable assets for outreach campaigns. How many of these are you creating? Are you creating any?

Infographic
101 Guide
Ultimate Guide
Resource Page

Education

Does a website theme matter for SEO? #AskGooglebot

In this episode of AskGooglebot, John Mueller explains how a website’s theme can play a role in search engines understanding your site and content for rankings. The theme you use can affect:

Content display - text, images, videos, headings
Internal links
Page load time
Content options
Structured data use

I like to keep my website design relatively simple. I use GeneratePress across all my sites.

How to Use Google Analytics 4 for Beginners [2021 Guide]

Good detailed guide on how to setup and use Google Analytics 4. Lots of nice step-by-step instructions.

Even if you don't want to use GA4 yet (I don't), at least set it up so the data is already being tracked. That way you'll have the history of the site available if and when Google decides to put GA3 (Universal Analytics) to bed.

Keyword Research for SEO in 2021: How To Do It, Tips & Tools

Matt Diggity shares a big guide on keyword research. Lots of great information in there, including how to go through your current website's keyword visibility.

When looking for potential keywords to target, he shows how answers these questions:

How much traffic potential is there for this keyword? (Traffic Potential)
How tough will it be to rank against my competitors for this keyword? (Keyword Difficulty)
Are people interested in this keyword? (Clicks & Search Volume)
What is the search intent of this keyword? (Search Intent)
What stage of the user’s journey would this keyword fall under? (Search Journey)
What other search terms would relate to this keyword? (Keyword Grouping)

Figure Out EXACTLY What Google Has and Hasn't Indexed From Your Site

Want to know if your blog post from last week has been indexed by Google yet? What about your article from 2 months ago?

Ricky from Income School shows how you can know which content from your site is in Google's index, and which is not.

Ever since Jim Harmon left Income School, Ricky has been putting out lots of videos. If you're newer to building affiliate sites, it's worthwhile to check out their last several videos as they're good beginner videos.

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!