Wave Issue 71

First...

Almost there. I received an offer for the site I'm selling and accepted it! The listing went live on Feb. 14th and an offer was made on Feb. 21st.

It's now being migrated by Empire Flippers to the buyer. It's nice that EF takes care of the migration, but it also adds a lot of time to the migration process. I also need to give EF access to my accounts, so they can perform the migration of domain and server.

While, I don't need to touch anything, there's always the concern that something accidentally goes wrong with my other domain and/or server setups. When I'm migrating directly with buyers or sellers, I feel it's easier and safer because there's no middle-man.

With EF, their team is knowledgeable and quick to respond throughout the process so far. But one thing you don't get is a personal touch because you're handed off from one EF team member to another.

Each stage of the process so far has been a new person - Vetting, Active Listing, Migration. While the listing was active, it was actually the first support member to get to the ticket message.

Once migration is complete, there's a 14-day inspection period for the buyer to confirm everything is good. The buyer can end the period early too. Once the inspection is done, then I get the money transferred to me.

It's been a good experience with EF so far. As of now, I'll use them again for selling and/or buying sites, but I think only for more complex sites or businesses. If it's just a simple content site, it'll be easier and faster to do everything between the two parties.

Price-wise, when compared to Flippa, you wouldn't be saving that much money. Flippa has a listing fee and a commission of 5-10% depending on the price of the listing. Then there's the hassle of doing everything yourself.

Will let you know how the rest of the website sale process goes with EF.

Niche Creators

Stephen Hockman and Jacky Chou

This week's Niche Creator Q&A's come from Stephen Hockman and Jacky Chou.

Both of these guys have been really successful with building, buying, and selling multiple sites selling for 6-figures and more.

SEO

Google's blog post on how AI powers search results and what it means for SEO

Dr. Marie Haynes discusses how Google uses AI to power search results, based on a recent Google blog post about the topic. Google's blog can be dense sometimes and not as clear, so it can be helpful to read summaries like what Marie has done here.

She covers a variety of topics, including:

How Google understands language through the years and algorithm updates
RankBrain - a smarter ranking system
Neural matching - a sophisticated retrieval engine
BERT - a model for understanding meaning and context
MUM - moving from language to information understanding
Why Google is pushing site owners to create excellent product pages

MUM is the future and even present in some cases. What makes it 1000x more powerful than BERT is its ability to understand and generate content - across 75 languages. And that's in text, images, and videos. Google says it'll take complex searches and return information that its generated itself using all the content.

Tools and Resources

Great Deals Out There for Niche Site and Content Creators

WriterZen - A nice all-in-one tool from researching keywords, creating topic clusters, creating briefs/outlines, and actual writing with AI. I have this, mainly for keyword research and clustering. I use Frase for briefs/outlines/writing.

InTab - User-friendly browser extension to visually edit or debug any website's CSS. Can be useful to test changes on a website and it'll give you the CSS code to add to WordPress.

Paced Email - Create disposable email addresses and have them batch delivery by day, week or month into convenient digests. I use this myself, very useful to create emails to register for things, so you don't need to use your regular email.

Teyuto - Create your own video platform that you can use to sell as a course. Upload, organize, distribute, and monetize videos across all devices in just a few simple steps.

Lost Google Impressions Index Check

Very useful tool to find URLs that have lost impressions in Google Search Console and check the indexing status.

This makes it much easier to find the pages that have lost search impressions recently. Maybe one of your pages isn't getting the same amount of traffic it was getting 3 months ago. This tool can help you find out what happened.

Content

How to improve E-A-T for YMYL pages

Marie Haynes has a great article on an overview of E-A-T and how to improve it for YMYL Pages. YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life and covers those topics that affect a person's happiness, health, finances, or safety.

She analyzes Google's Quality Raters Guidelines (QRG) to discuss how to improve your E-A-T. There are tips like:

Ensure that if we have pages with medical or financial content that authors with expertise write it and that it is regularly updated as new information is available.
Ensure that false information or information that contradicts expert consensus is not published on the site.
Ensure all information that can be supported with authoritative and trustworthy references is.
Determine which sections of our content would and would not be likely to be considered YMYL by Google. Review author expertise, reference use, etc., on those pages in particular.

Content Refreshing: A Step-by-Step Strategy (Based on Updating 50+ Posts)

Refreshing content is an important part of improving rankings and increasing organic traffic. Megan Mahoney writes about her results after updating 50 blog posts in the past 12 months, including content that drives 10x more traffic.

She covers how to find which blog posts to update and how to update them. Action steps to update posts:

Update outdated information
Add actionable advice/cut irrelevant detail
Improve the user experience
Fulfill the searcher’s intent - post style, irrelevant information, and speak to reader's knowledge level
Make final optimizations

Education

Find Long-Tail Keywords in Reddit Subreddits: A How-To Guide

Learn how to find low-competition keywords on Reddit with this The Website Flip article. It's a great step-by-step article if you have Ahrefs.

6 step process to use AHREFs to find and filter the best keyword ideas from Subreddits
5 ways to find Subreddits that are related to your niche

If you have a different SEO tool like Semrush or Ubersuggest, you can try to perform similar steps. The most important step is the ability to be able to search the Subreddits for what keywords they are ranking for.

How to Build a Topic Cluster in 10 Minutes

Topic clusters are an important part of building sites and this Ahrefs article gives a good overview of what they're all about, why it's important to have them, and how to create clusters in 10 minutes (using Ahrefs, of course).

There are also 3 examples of topic clusters from different sites with pages in the cluster ranging from 8 to 700+. It can help give you ideas of how to organize clusters for your site in your niche.

Hiring a Website Operator: Best Operators, Why, When, Red Flags, Incentive Structures

When growing your sites and online businesses, it can often help to hire a website operator. Hiring a website operator to manage your business is how you can scale. In this guide, Mushfiq covers different website operators, why you should hire them, and his strategy.

This is a good read if you're thinking about scaling up your business with website operators for these situations:

Day-to-day website management is becoming less interesting
Already ingested all of your expertise into the site
Lack of time to continue managing
Desire to be completely hands-off

Brian Dean Exclusive Interview [+ Why Sell Backlinko?] - YouTube

Matt Diggity talks to Brian Dean about a wide range of topics, including how and why he sold Backlinko to Semrush. These two are very knowledgeable, so be sure to listen to this for some inspiration and tips.

Niche Selection
Keyword Research
Content Types
Topical Authority - Brian says he doesn't believe in topical mapping
Data Studies
AI Content
Onsite Optimization
Link Building
Skyscraper
First Links to Build
Technical SEO
More about Exploding Topics
Debugging Lost Rankings
Google Detecting E-A-T
Parasite SEO Situations

Case Study

10 Niche Site Launch Case Study Update: 3 Winners, 2 Maybes and 5 Losers (but there’s hope)

Jon Dykstra went on a site building spree last year. Tried all kinds of things including aged domains, new domains, and buying sites (inexpensive sites).

He had some success, but also some failures that could also be too early to call. He played around with fresh and aged domains, so it's a good read for anyone looking to get into the aged domain game.

Business Ideas

Can Amazon Movers and Shakers Benefit Your Online Business In 2022?

Have you heard of Amazon Movers and Shakers? Learn how you can cash in on this trend and boost your online sales in just a few simple steps!

This is one thing that I often forget about, checking the Amazon Movers and Shakers lists for products that I can add to review articles or create new reviews for. It can be helpful to try and catch trends as early as possible. Those are the top products that people will be searching for reviews for.

One thing I do to catch new product releases is to sign up for brand/company newsletters, join Facebook groups, forums, etc. Wherever you can get news and information to keep your site updated.

News

Nine WordPress Plugins Expose Over 1.3 Million Sites To Exploits

9 popular plugins are affecting over 1.3 million websites. If you have any of the plugins, make sure to update them:

Header Footer Code Manager 300,000+ installations
Ad Inserter – Ad Manager & AdSense Ads 200,000+ installations
Popup Builder WordPress plugin 200,000+ installations
Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall 200,000+ installations
WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click 100,000+ installations
Database Backup for WordPress 100,000+ installations
GiveWP – Donation Plugin and Fundraising Platform 100,000+ installations
Download Manager 100,000+ installations
Advanced Database Cleaner WordPress plugin 80,000+ installations

Timeline for bringing page experience ranking to desktop | Google Search Central Blog

Google has announced that the page experience update is rolling out for desktops. The rollout will continue until the end of March 2022. Check out your Google Search Console for the 'Desktop' section in the Page Experience reporting area.

This is good news for those who have desktop URLs and rely on desktop rankings.

Like Niche Surfer?

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