Wave Issue 72

First...

I just started watching The Food That Built America and it's fascinating what these entrepreneurs went through to build their food empires.

So many of these entrepreneurs failed and failed early in their journeys, but they kept going, learning from their mistakes. I love stories like these because they're so inspiring.

“The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying.” - John C. Maxwell

If it wasn't for perseverance after all the failures, there would be no happy mistakes that took their endeavors to the next level.

If it wasn't for perseverance after all the failures, they wouldn't have seen the opportunities that took them to the next level.

“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” - Henry Ford

But one thing that all these entrepreneurs had, was the willingness to take risk. Without risk, there's no failure - but there's also no success.

What we do with building affiliate websites and creating content is risky. There are all kinds of risks with Google algorithm updates, hackers, competitors, etc. There's no guarantee we'll be successful.

But there is one guarantee. If you don't try, you will 100% fail.

Read the Niche Creators Q&A's. Every single one of them has failed at some point, but they kept going. That's what I hope to show you through with these interviews.

Everyone goes on this journey of creating content. Everyone's journey is different - but they all have one thing in common.

Everyone fails.

So don't be afraid to try something just because you're afraid to fail. We all fail! The ones who succeed will learn from the failures and keep trying.

Niche Creators

Emilia Gardner and Keith Mint

This week's Niche Creator Q&A's come from YouTubers Emilia Gardner and Keith Mint (Minted Empire).

Emilia and Keith have both built many niche sites, while also regularly creating videos on YouTube. Check out their interviews:

SEO

How does the geographic location of a web server affect SEO?

John Mueller covers whether migrating a website's hosting location to another country affects SEO, what kind of practical effects larger geographic server moves might cause, and the two ways to target users in a specific location.

He mentions that anytime there's a server move, Googlebot will slow its crawling down initially and then ramp back up. He adds that to give a user a good experience, focus on a couple things:

Server and Page speed
Using a CDN

To target users in a specific geographical location, he says you can geo-target by using:

Country-code top-level domain
Geo-targeting in Google Search Console

Toxic Backlinks: What Are They + How They Hurt SEO

In the world of SEO, “toxic backlinks” are seriously dirty words.

This article by Loganix describes what toxic backlinks are and 9 different types of low quality links, including:

Link networks and spammy sites
Footer links
Blogrolls and other blocks of links
Site-wide links
Wildly unrelated sites

There are a couple ways to try and fix those toxic and spammy links, so Google doesn't devalue the ranking of your site:

Request Removal from Website
Create and Submit a Disavow File to Google

SEO Office Hours, February 18th, 2022

Read Onely's overview of the most interesting questions and answers from Google's SEO Office Hours with John Mueller on February 18th, 2022.

Types of websites affected by the Product Reviews update
The use of the Indexing API
E-A-T and Google’s algorithms
Unlinked brand mentions and user-generated content
Googlebot and infinite scrolling
Refresh and discovery data in the Crawl Stats report
Reduced crawling of a website
How Google identifies countries targeted by pages
Large numbers of URLs marked as Discovered – currently not indexed

Tools and Resources

Free PDF, Video, Image & Other Online Tools - TinyWow

Great collection of Free mini-tools

Split PDF, Merge PDF, Compress PDF, Protect PDF, Unlock PDF, Rotate PDF
eSign PDF
Add Numbers to PDF
Word to PDF
PDF to Word
PDF to text
PDF to JPG
JPG to PDF
PNG to PDF
Extract images PDF

Content

How to Do a Content Audit in 2022

This is a good how to do a content audit from Ahrefs. I like their easy-to-follow flow chart. They offer another larger flow chart that also includes conversions. Start a content audit asking yourself these questions for each page:

Is the page more than 6 months old?
Does it rank in the top three?
Does it rank in the top 20?
Is ranking for this keyword important to you?

Our ULTIMATE Editorial SEO Checklist

Mark and Gael run through their full editorial process. This can help you with streamlining your process.

They cover everything: SERP analysis, section selection, research, full structure, writing, editing, SurferSEO, images, links, upload, and publish.

How does it compare to yours?

Link Building

How to Get .EDU Backlinks (15 Ways That Work for EDU Links)

Stephen Hockman offers up 15 ways to get .EDU backlinks. EDU backlinks have high domain authority, so these are great backlinks to get. Here are a few ways:

Get Local .EDU Backlinks
Offer Discounts to Students
Offer a Job or Internship
Interview Faculty or Staff
Offer a Local or Virtual Event
Befriend a Librarian for Easy .EDU Backlinks

Here's Why You Should Prioritize Internal Linking in 2022

All about internal linking to help you rank higher with 6 great tips on implementing internal links. The key takeaways:

Internally link from your most authoritative content to the pages that drive revenue
Breadcrumbs are incredibly powerful and add to PageRank
Internal links play a big part of PageRank
Links higher in the content may pass more 'Authority'

Education

13 Step SEO Checklist for New Websites

Here's a good 13-point SEO Checklist for New Websites from Rank Ranger. Discover how you can easily set up your site's foundations and go after low-hanging fruit. Here are the first several steps:

Plan your site structure
Create content silos
Optimize your internal links
Keyword research

The other steps are more when you're already publishing content, so I wanted to highlight those 4 first. They're so important to starting a new website. I think most people are so excited to start a new site that they will quickly go through the steps without planning ahead.

I've been working with clients lately on those top 4 items and I surprise myself how easy niches can go deep in terms of topics.

The mind map above (turn it 90°) is the beginnings of a site structure for a new site. I do these for every site I do before I install WordPress, because it helps me see the potential of the niche.

These mind maps plan out the site architecture, content silos, internal links, and keyword research all-in-one.

How to see which posts lost Google search traffic (and how much traffic they lost)

Jon Dykstra shows how he checks which pages have lost and gained traffic. It's important to check in on your site traffic and how your pages are doing. You'll want to see if there's been a Google algo update that's negatively or positively affected your site.

I also do a similar check in Google Search Console. Not all pages get traffic, so GSC helps to show how your pages are showing up in the SERPs and if they're gaining rankings or not.

10 Types of Blogs That Make Money In 2022

According to ProBlogger, about two-thirds of bloggers earn less than $100 a month from their blogs...1 in 10 earn $1k-$10k a month, and 1 in 25 make more than $10k a month.

Not the best of odds, but you can do it. Put in the work and always keep learning. Take a look at this article covering 10 profitable niches and examples of successful blogs. Maybe this can help jog ideas on how to increase your traffic and earnings. Some of the niches they cover:

Finance Blogs
Travel Blogs
Lifestyle Blogs
Health And Fitness Blogs
Beauty Blogs

Case Study

VPNOnline.com Niche Site Case Study: Month 1

Mushfiq at TheWebsiteFlip.com is publicly sharing this case study in one of the most competitive niches, VPNs. But it's also one of the most lucrative if you can get the traffic.

In the first post, he shares the acquisition details, purchase price, growth plans, what he's already done on the site, his team, and future plans.

This should be a good case study to follow.

Business Ideas

How to Become a Successful Content Creator

What is a content creator? A content creator is someone who creates written, audio, video, or visual content for a digital platform like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or a blog.

They can be working in-house for a company (like me) or agency, freelancing, or doing their own thing (e.g., influencers).

News

Stand With Ukraine — Help Millions of People (SE Ranking Team Included)

"A big part of the SE Ranking team are Ukrainians. Some of us have spent days on the road striving to bring our families to a safer place. Some are still in Kyiv and other cities of Ukraine, trying to do their daily routine to the sounds of air raid sirens. All of us feel scared and devastated, but also hopeful and strong."

Learn how you can help the Ukrainian people survive the Russian invasion. The SE Ranking team has put together a list of options for those who would like to help.

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Be sure to also join others riding the passive income wave in the new Discord group.

Have questions? 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!