Wave Issue 50

First...

I'm going to go on a little staycation with the family for the weekend. It'll be nice to get away, even if it's still in the city.

It's a different mindset when you have little kids with you, at least for me. When it was just me, I wouldn't think twice about traveling. But now that I have the kids and family to think about, I'm more cautious.

For those of you with kids, do you ever feel that way? How about with your niche sites? Do your niche sites feel like your babies?

There are a lot of parallels for me with raising kids and building out niche sites.

When starting out with a site, I put a lot of thought into the foundation of the site and what I hope it'll grow to be. I look at the potential by looking at the successful sites that I want to emulate. Then I put a plan together on how to build out the content and site.

As the site increases in traffic and revenue, it becomes affected by the outside world (Google and visitors), and I need to adjust my plans depending on what the site is telling me.

The sites begin to have a mind of its own and you need to listen to what it's telling you. I will need to take that information and after some analysis, I will adjust my plans.

I still want to grow the sites, but I also don't want to lose the good things that I already have in the site. I want to add on to the site and not replace what's already working.

You may see other kids that you think are amazing and prodigies, so you want to do whatever they did to raise them that way. Same with building sites, you try to emulate someone else's plan.

That's fine when you start out a site, but at some point, the site will grow and start talking back to you. It'll tell you what's working for the site and what's not working. Just like kids will tell you what they like and don't like.

The tip this week is to learn how to listen to what your site is telling you and adjust based on that.

Understand the SEO metrics and know what's important and not important. Use your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other SEO tools.

Income Reports

September 2021 Income Reports

The September Income Reports that I've found:

If you'd like to be included in this each month, feel free to email me whenever you have it up!

Tools and Resources

Great Deals Out There for Niche Site and Content Creators

AISEO - AISEO.ai's writing assistant let you also optimize, improve, rewrite and summarize blog posts all in one place. Looks similar to Frase.

Postpace - Postpace is an AI-powered content workspace that automates topic research and helps you optimize content faster & better with workflow automation.

PublishDrive - PublishDrive allows you to publish and sell in 400+ bookstores and 240K+ libraries worldwide in formats like ebook, audiobook, and print-on-demand

Top 13 SEO Tools to Help You Rank Higher in Google - YouTube

Matt Diggity shares his 13 favorite SEO tools to increase earnings and Google rankings.

Content

The 36 Best Call to Action Phrases Ever (Real Examples +Tips!)

Calls to action are the keys to conversion, whether you are selling something, getting people to click a button or entering in their email for your lead magnet. There are lots of ways for the CTA copy and Kristen McCormick at WordStream provides her favorite 36 CTAs in seven categories:

Blunt
Relatable
Bold
Subtle but smart
Reverse psychology
Funny
Different

How to Leverage Industry Expert Interviews to Write Quality SEO Content

Making your site's content credible is important for your visitors, but also for Google. One way to make Google trust your site more is to utilize industry experts in your content. Bruce Clay gives great tips on:

How to Identify Industry Experts
How to Find Industry Experts
How to Reach out to Experts
Tips on Conducting Interviews
Tips on How to Maintain Relationships

Does Sarcasm Still Confuse Google?

My friends and I are very sarcastic with each other...but when it comes to my niche sites, it's all about being clear and precise. John Mueller confirms that in one of the open office hour sessions.

Education

7 Proven Tactics on How To Boost Your Domain Rating

DR, Domain Rating, may not be a Google ranking factor, but domain rating still matters to SEO. Tamas Mihaly gives his 7 tactics to boost DR. Here are the first few of seven ways:

Tactic 1: Write High-Quality Content That Others Would Love To Share and Link To
Tactic 2: Pitch Your Topic to Authoritative Websites
Tactic 3: Make Sure Your Website Is Responsive
Tactic 4: Strengthen Your UR Profile Through Internal Linking

10 SEO Metrics That Actually Matter (And 4 That Don't)

Ahrefs goes through SEO metrics and whether they are good indicators to let you know how your site is working. Some can be really useful and some are just vanity numbers.

These are the 10 SEO metrics they say are worth tracking:

Organic traffic
Keyword rankings
Search visibility
Traffic value
Organic traffic conversions
Referring domains
Indexed pages
Index coverage errors
Core Web Vitals
Website health

These are the 4 metrics they say don’t actually matter:

Bounce rate
Exit rate
Avg. session duration
Pages per visit or session

Google Search Console Vs Google Analytics in 2021

Nice look at the differences between Google Search Console and Google Analytics, and the different data that they give you.

Google Analytics and Google Search Console are invaluable tools for running any website, and especially an online business. For new website owners, a comparison of GSC vs GA is important to understand what each tool is good for, when you should use them, and how to set the two tools up.

Make MORE Money With Your Site: 4 Sites Analyzed

The Authority Hacker guys are back with reviewing 4 more sites and how to improve them. These guys know what they're talking about, so be sure to take a look.

What happens in Google Search with an outage like Facebook recently had

John Mueller created a Twitter thread on how Google treats site errors with deindexing pages and less crawling.

If you're curious about what happens in Google Search with an outage like Facebook recently had, it's generally a 2-part reaction: when we can't reach a site for network / DNS reasons, we see it like a 5xx HTTP server error. This means we reduce crawling:

And if you're active on Twitter, do follow me on Twitter. I'm trying to be more active on Twitter myself, so let's connect there too!

The Worst Affiliate Site I've Ever Seen

Matt Giovanisci has been vlogging every day lately. He recently posted this review of a site. Some other videos also review sites, so check out his daily 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.

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