Wave Issue 77

First...

What would you do?

I was asked recently by someone about whether they should add display ads to their site. Wanted to take it to the group as a thinking exercise to see what you would do.

Here are the key background items to know:

Large authority site
Generates 5-figure montly income from affiliate sales, courses, and ebooks
100K+ visitors per month

What would you do? Would you:

Add display ads to ALL the pages?
Add display ads to informational pages only?
Skip display ads and focus on sales conversions?
Other...

It's an interesting question because you get a lot of traffic and you can generate a good income from display ads. But there's the concern of the UX and if display ads might take away from converting a visitor into a customer of a digital product or affilaite product.

There's been some tests done by the likes of Matt Diggity showing that affiliate sales aren't affected by display ads on the same articles. I didn't see any big effects from adding display ads on my affiliate pages either, but I didn't perform a vast test either.

Margins would be higher for your own digital products, but there's also a lot more work that goes into sales conversions.

Putting display ads onto pages won't be a lot of work, but there's the chance it affects your sales conversions, as well as the possibility of slowing your site down. Site speed could then affect your rankings.

So what would you do?

I'll tell you what I'd do next week!

Niche Creators

Niche Surfer Homepage - niche surfer

This week's two Niche Creators are very active in sharing their knowledge. One shares on Twitter mainly and the other on YouTube, as well as both of their blogs.

Check out their interviews:

Income Reports

Income Reports for March 2022

Revenue: $96,927 Expenses: $9,976 Content investment: Must join the Fat Stacks courses for this information. Revenue does NOT include Fat Stacks revenue. Screenshots (just Mediavine ad revenue…

SEO

Google's 2021 & 2022 Product Reviews Updates: What Happened?

Lily Ray gives a good recap of how Google's product reviews updates from 2021 and 2022 work, their recent outcomes, and why expertise matters even more in online content.

The first product reviews update took place on April 8, 2021, the second on December 1, 2021, and the third on March 23, 2022.

It's a good recap of some of the effects that's been seen, as well as extra information she's gathered from Twitter and other sources. For example, it's not just physical products that can be affected by these updates. Service reviews may also benefit from the update.

There's a nice recap of the winners of the March 2022 update and examples of why she thinks they won.

How to DOMINATE Google with Parasite SEO

Matt Diggity covers Parasite SEO and he uses it to dominate the SERPs. The strategy is buying Sponsored Posts on large media sites. It's an interesting strategy, including getting links to the sponsored posts themselves.

Selecting Where to Post
Content Writing
What to Do After it's Posted

SEO Office Hours, April 1st, 2022 - Onely Blog

Onely's recap of the most interesting questions and answers from Google's SEO Office Hours with John Mueller on April 1st, 2022.

Adjusting redirects to regain lost traffic
Optimal word count
Indexing issues with newly published content
Using AI tools to create content
Crawlability of a View more button on a page
The length and use of alt text

Can Authorship Content Impact E-A-T Signals?

For this A/B split test, SearchPilot looks at whether authorship content helps E-A-T signals for Google's algorithms.

The initial response from their Twitter followers on what they think would happen with the results is interesting as it's split 50/50.

They ran it a couple times and showed no detectable impact, but their results did show a very slight decline. It was just within their range of what would be considered a noticeable impact.

Content

Google Says AI Generated Content Is Against Guidelines

During one of the recent Google Search Central SEO Office Hours, John Mueller was asked a question about GPT-3 AI writing tools. John reminds everyone that auto-generated content is still against the Webmaster Guidelines. He adds:

"And people have been automatically generating content in lots of different ways. And for us, if you’re using machine learning tools to generate your content, it’s essentially the same as if you’re just shuffling words around, or looking up synonyms, or doing the translation tricks that people used to do."

I've seen some AI-generated content sites that appear to have high traffic, even though the content on there is really bad. Even if Google's algos don't catch the bad content, they're eventually going to get seen by Google's webspam team.

I'm not against using AI-generated content, but it should definitely have a human touch to it. Humans should edit and fact-check the information to make sure it serves the reader. AI content by itself cannot serve the reader (at least any that I've seen).

16 Ways to Generate Stellar Content Ideas

Megan Mahoney and Ahrefs comes up with 16 places for content inspiration. I know I also feel like I have run out of content ideas (especially in what to write for an intro to these weekly newsletters hah).

Here are some of the go-to strategies for content ideas:

Find trending topics on Reddit
Look for easy topics with SEO potential
Have a contrarian take on a popular opinion
Host a virtual lunch for your customers
Swipe popular headline frameworks
Ask the customer success and sales teams
Check the “People Also Ask” results
Look for pain points in case studies
Check your competitors’ paid keywords
Research who your customers compare you to

Link Building

Best Backlink Service: Analyze 14K+ Links On 4 Marketplaces

The Website Flip analyzed 14,296 backlinks across 4 popular backlink marketplaces to look at which marketplace has the best value and which one has the best metrics. They cover the average price and metrics for each marketplace, along with an analysis of link prices and takeaways.

The four marketplaces they take a look at are:

Authority Builders
Loganix
Serp Pro
SerpTrust

I've used SerpTrust before and like that I can see the actual domains before making any orders. I can go to the actual sites and perform due diligence on them, so you can decide yourself if it's a quality site to get a backlink from.

I've also used Authority Builders before, but you can't see the actual domains before purchasing unless you ask them for the domain. I've done that before too, but it's cumbersome.

Remember, it's not just about the metrics of the sites that determine what's good or bad about the backlink site. Be sure to do your due diligence on the sites.

How I Built 5,660 Backlinks in 30 Days [New Strategy]

Brian Dean introduces his new link building strategy that he calls Reverse Outreach. This strategy involves making a post that will have bloggers and journalists come to you by creating a post that targets keywords that they are looking for. He shows an example of a "TikTok User Statistics" page he creates.

It's a great strategy and is definitely useful. But I'll be honest, I'm not quite sure how this is all that different from creating a great post that others can link to. Isn't that also known as a Link Magnet? It's not the first time I've heard the term Reverse Outreach either.

I heard it first from Chris of Niche Safari with his "Reverse Outreach" video a year ago on his YouTube channel when talking about his link building strategy. When he receives requests for links, he turns it back on them and asks for a link as well from a third site.

Both are great ways to build links though. Which method do you think is more Reverse Outreach?

Education

Optimizing website performance with a Search Console bubble chart | Google Search Central Blog | Google Developers

Google shows how to create a bubble chart of Search queries with Average Position and Click-Through Rate across different devices.

The bubble chart helps show four groups of queries for analysis:

Top position, high CTR
Low position, high CTR
Low position, low CTR
Top position, low CTR

How to Learn SEO (Complete Roadmap)

Learning SEO can seem overwhelming. It’s a complex topic, and the industry is rife with misinformation. But with a bit of time, effort, and the right roadmap, it’s something that anyone can learn.

Joshua Hardwick gives a roadmap of how to learn and continue learning SEO.

Learn SEO fundamentals
Put your knowledge into practice
Deepen your SEO knowledge
Keep your finger on the pulse
Teach others what you know

Troubleshooting Origin Errors on Ezoic

It seems like Ezoic must be getting more Origin Error complaints because they just put out a video about troubleshooting it and pointing to their How to Fix Origin Errors article.

I rarely got it in the past and after whitelisting the Ezoic IPs at the web host, the issue was gone. But I have seen over the last few months that I'd get an origin error once in a while.

I'm sometimes on a VPN, so what I'd do is change the VPN server and the origin error would be gone.

News

Google Search News (March ‘22) - Search Console URL Inspection API, ranking changes and more! - YouTube

In the latest episode of Google Search News, John Mueller goes over recent developments in the Google Search world from March. He covers these topics:

Page experience ranking factor
Product review ranking
Search Console URL Inspection API
Moving on from universal analytics
Community milestone
Search Console & Data Studio - a new blog series!
New robots tag
Search Console Insights
SEOs & Devs - a new video series!
Search Relations team at in-person events again!

New Google Search Label For Highly Cited Sources

Google is rolling out a new label is search results for pages that are recognized as highly cited sources.

The label will appear next to pages in Top Stories and is designed to help people find credible information.

Google’s new “highly cited sources” label comes just in time for International Fact-Checking Day on April 2.

It’s part of a greater effort to help people spot misinformation, as Google explains in a blog post. The search company affirms its commitment to supporting the fact-checking ecosystem over the long term

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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 taking your niche sites to another level!