Wave Issue 58

First...

Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are upon us, so hope you're getting on all the great deals out there to help you take your niche sites to the next level!

What deals have you gotten so far?

If you haven't had a chance to look at what's available yet, check out the special Black Friday Deals issue sent a few days ago - go to that issue here.

As you go through the deals and wonder if the deals are any good, you can compare it to their regular prices and last year's BFCM deals.

Look at the Pricing pages for the tools you're looking at buying. Look at the Wayback Machine to see if the prices had changed from a couple of months ago to make people believe the discount is larger than it really is.

You can also use the Wayback Machine to look at last year's BFCM deal. Or you can google "Product Name Black Friday 2020" to see what the deal was. Obviously, don't expect the same deal since prices generally rise with time, but this gives you an idea of the value you're getting.

If you have any questions about any of the tools, feel free to shoot me a message. I currently use or have used almost all the tools and services, so I'm happy to relay my thoughts to you.

Have a great week ahead!

SEO

A 2021 update on mobile-indexing | Google Search Central Blog

Google announced that there's a continued postponement on mobile-first indexing. It's been delayed since March 2021. There's no specific date to move all sites to mobile-first.

After analyzing the sites that are not yet indexed mobile-first, we've determined that some of these sites are still not ready to be shifted over due to various, unexpected challenges that they're facing. Because of these difficulties, we've decided to leave the timeline open for the last steps of mobile-first indexing.

SEO Office Hours, November 19th, 2021

This is a summary of the most interesting questions and answers from the Google SEO Office Hours with John Mueller on November 19th, 2021 by Onely. These are some of the topics covered:

Title and URL length
Google and Bing crawling
Why is indexing slower?
Old domain vs. site authority
Preventing pages from getting deindexed
Sitemap removal from the old website
The future of search vs. Google Knowledge Graph

Expired domains have become a hot topic with affiliate sites and one of the questions that John answers is around a content site that's been parked for four years with no content.

"If the content was gone for a couple of years, probably we need to figure out what this site is, essentially starting over fresh. So from that point of view, I wouldn’t expect much in terms of bonus because you had content there in the past."

Don't forget the backlinks that are still live though. This comment was only about the content.

How to hide a website in search #AskGooglebot

In this episode of AskGooglebot, John Mueller explains how password protection, blocking crawling, and blocking indexing are three ways to prevent a website from showing up in search engines, while keeping them accessible.

Why would you hide a site?

One reason I do it is if I'm making a significant design change or if I'm using it as a temporary site/URL. Wouldn't want Google to crawl something I didn't want it to crawl.

Content

Keywords vs Topics - Semantic SEO Strategy Overview

Many beginners get confused between Keywords and Topics when it comes to Semantic SEO. It's important to understand the difference when you're doing your keyword and topic research and content strategy.

Internal linking structure can be affected too, because your internal linking could confuse Google and visitors about how the site is structured and what it's about.

This is a nice breakdown from RankRanger on explaining terminology and how they relate to each other.

Education

Why 91% of Businesses Don’t Pass Our Vetting Process - Empire Flippers

Empire Flippers has one of the highest seller submission rejection rates, meaning they don't allow just anyone to sell their niche sites on their marketplace. Their vetting process is one of the main reasons they're a trusted place to buy and sell sites, especially the higher priced sites.

If you're looking to sell your site, especially a 6-figure sale, you should look at this to understand what kind of vetting will take place. Due diligence isn't only performed if you want to sell on a marketplace like EF. Many private buyers will have people vet sites for them.

Be sure you're doing things like updating your monthly P&L, so you decide to sell your site, you're already prepared with the things potential buyers will want to see.

How Much Is A Website Worth With 1 Million Users?

Mushfiq discusses how to calculate what sites are worth. If you're thinking of building a new site, he also helps you figure out what a potential niche and site would be worth.

This is a great look from someone who has flipped 39+ niche sites and has just launched his own website flipping course (save $150 during Black Friday). Here's the 4-step process he covers:

Determine Your Niche
Estimate Your RPM In Your Niche
Calculate Monthly Average Revenue (L6M)
Calculate How Much Your Website Is Worth

How to Find a Profitable Niche for Affiliate Marketing - YouTube

Niche research and selection is the most important step in the affiliate marketing game. Find out everything you need to know about how to find a profitable niche for affiliate marketing, and start earning some serious cash

Matt Diggity offers up some of his best tips on niche research and mistakes to avoid when choosing a niche to build sites for.

These Titles Get MORE CLICKS On Google

Morten Storsgaard covers some of the best titles that will help drive clicks from the SERPs. It's really important how we format and compose our main headline on each article, as they are pulled by Google to be shown on the search result page. If you're not using an SEO plugin, the title of your blog post is also used as the meta title.

He uses wordcounter.net (an old favorite of mine too) to count characters when creating titles. If you're already using a SEO plugin like Rank Math, you won't need to use wordcounter. Also be sure to count the characters of your site name if you add the site name to the Title.

My Thoughts On AI Content Writing Tools For Pulling SEO Traffic To Blog Articles!

Shaun Marrs discusses his thoughts on AI content writing tools. I like listening to Shaun since he just gives his thoughts honestly, whether you agree or not.

When it comes to AI, use them as writing assistants. Don't expect them to replace a content writer or the research that's performed by writers. Any data/facts are almost always wrong. Once in a blue moon, it might get something right.

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!