Wave Issue 52

First...

I can't believe it! It's already been 1 year since I started the Niche Surfer Newsletter!

Time has just flown by. I knew it was coming up and I wanted to plan something for it, but then next thing I know, it's already issue 52!

I'll rally and plan something for the next newsletter. Maybe a giveaway of something useful?

I want to do some marketing and grow the subscriber base too. The newsletter and audience have grown organically thus far. Thank you to those who have shared Niche Surfer with others!

Other than doing a couple podcast interviews with Spencer Haws at Niche Pursuits and Adam Smith at Niche Website Builders, I haven't done any marketing or promotions.

This year has been a tough one, but this newsletter is something that's brought me some joy each week. I enjoy curating and sharing the links with all of you each week.

And I really enjoy reading the emails from you even more! It motivates me to keep going because I see that this newsletter is useful.

I have some ideas about how to expand the newsletter and engage the community more, so I'll be planning for that too.

I want to hear your thoughts too on what could be useful. Feel free to share any ideas you may have.

And for those of you who have been around since the early days - THANK YOU!

SEO

Indented Results Roll Out at 40% of SERPs - Moz

Dr. Pete from Moz discusses Google's roll-out of Indented Results and what to do about them.

It may feel like you should just write multiple articles to rank for the main keywords to get more space in the SERPs. It's an interesting idea and may work, but I'd also suggest you keep an eye on keyword cannibalization.

Google's Quality Raters Guidelines Demystified for SEOs

Vince Nero breaks down Google's Quality Rater Guidelines, the document it gives its quality raters to assess the quality of site content. Instead of you reading the 172 pages yourself, this is a good summary of what's in there and the adjustments to make on sites.

What are Google quality raters?
What are Google’s quality guidelines?
What do SEOs need to know?

Tools and Resources

Great Deals Out There for Niche Site and Content Creators

Link Whisper - Price will increase in 3 days from the $49 for 1 site. It's currently the cheapest deal that's ever been out there for Link Whisper. If you have multiple sites, it's still cheaper to get a 3,10 or 50 domain license.

Smart Quiz Builder - Create quizzes and funnels to collect emails from visitors.

Nozzle - Ends in 3 days. Rank tracker that provides an incredible amount of data. I've been using it and there's a bit of a learning curve navigating through the data, but it's manageable if you like data.

Ranktracker - Ends in 10 days. Another rank tracker, but much more simplified than Nozzle.

Nozzle provides more value for the money if you're just tracking keywords, in my opinion. SerpRobot is $5 a month for 300 keywords, but that's monthly. Nozzle $59 for ~166 keywords and Ranktracker $49 for 100 keywords are lifetime deals. They deals for the next level up that'll get you more keywords.

24 BEST SEO Chrome Extensions: Helpful Chrome Plugins For SEO

The best SEO Chrome extensions, plugins, and addons will help you to find the info you need faster. Site metrics, content help, and more.

I have many of these installed (chrome extension hoarder). One of the issues with all the extensions is it eats up computer resources and slows everything down. To solve that, I installed Extensity. Yes, it's another extension.

Oftentimes, I don't need all the extensions enabled. Extensity gives me quick access to disable and enable the extension whenever needed. I don't need to go into Chrome's settings to do that.

Content

How to Create a Winning Blog Content Strategy in 7 Steps

Before putting the first word down into any post, be sure to have your strategy in place. I see many beginner sites that start out with low-competition keyword articles, but there's no strategy in place, other than just low-competition.

Google needs to see what the the niche site is about and if you go across multiple topics and mini-niches on your site, it's just going to take longer for Google to understand what your site is about. You may still get 1-2 posts that are successful because no one else has written about them, but the other posts will have a tough time ranking.

There are many good points in this article about planning and strategizing niche sites:

What is a blog content strategy?
Why do you need a blog content strategy?
How to create a blog content strategy

How to Identify and Then Repurpose Old Blog Posts

Liraz Postan covers how to identify old blog posts that may have gone stale and how to breathe new life into them. The article also covers 6 steps of how to repurpose the old posts after identifying which ones are good to relook at:

Let Your Creativity Run Wild
Work With Visual to Achieve the Wow Effect
Optimize to Conquer
Summon the Power of Social Media
Spread the Word
Be a Guest

How to get paid to test products

Jon Dykstra offers up a look into the world of geting paid to test products in cash or sample freebies. Some brands have reached out to me on a couple of my sites, but I've never taken them up on it because I live in Taiwan. They usually only send to U.S. addresses.

He gives a few programs that has product testing like Johnson & Johnson's Friends & Neighbors program and Amazon Vine.

Education

How Shawna Newman Scales and Flips Niche And Authority Sites In 2021

Shawna Newman of Skipblast is one of the more prolific niche site builders with 17 niche sites currently. She's sold a number of sites in the past too. Good to hear from someone like her with all that experience.

She's also done a number of interviews in the past. If you like this one, you should also look up those on YouTube.

How Byrdie Toppled Billion Dollar Beauty Brands (Without Ads)

The beauty industry is a tough one to break into, but it's also such a large market. This is an interesting look at Byrdie's SEO strategy, things like:

Well-organized website architecture
Categories and Subcategories
URL structure
Breadcrumbs
Internal links
Topic clusters
E-A-T

What Are Breadcrumbs?

A breadcrumb is a small text path that is usually found at the top of the page and indicates where the user is on the site. This breadcrumb trail shows you exactly where you are. Every step of that path, all the way back to the homepage, is clickable.

Breadcrumbs are easy to apply as it's built-in with some SEO plugins and themes. I use the Rank Math plugin myself.

I use it to improve the visitor experience, so they always know where they are in a site. It also helps Google understand how my sites are organized, so it can improve rankings.

Businesses OnFolio Passed On

Dominic Wells at Onfolio buys, builds, and sells sites in their portfolio. Many case studies cover cherry picked success stories, but he covers some of the failures here. We get a behind-the-scenes look at why this buyer passed on purchasing some niche sites.

These types of insights can help us as we build up our sites and look at things to avoid.

Case Study

How To Flip A Website For 6 FIGURES (Our Golf Site Story)

Authority Hackers discuss how they started by buying the $10 domain and later sold the golf site for 6 figures. Always good to hear these types of stories to see what you can learn from them.

They're currently promoting their Authority Hacker Pro course too. I haven't taken it before, but they do know what they're talking about.

News

Continuous scrolling comes to Search on mobile

Google is making browsing search results more seamless and intuitive with the introduction of continuous scrolling on mobile devices.

It's a good thing in my opinion. That means ranking on Page 2 is less of an issue for us since search users aren't clicking "Next" anymore. That also means your titles and snippets are even more important to get the clicks.

While Google does a lot of title and meta rewrites (look at last week's Goole link on Title and Meta Descriptions), you can still get ahead of it by proofreading your content. That's where Google will be grabbing from.

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.

Also, be sure to Whitelist [email protected] and/or drag the email to the Primary Inbox to make sure you don't miss the emails!

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