Wave Issue 83

First...

As of a couple of weeks ago, there are now over 500 Niche Surfer subscribers!

Thank you to everyone who's here and reading this now! I've enjoyed creating these newsletters every week and sharing the latest with you.

I'd never done much marketing of the newsletter until I started doing the Niche Creator Q&A interviews in February and was more active on Twitter - follow me at @yoyaoh.

The initial influx of subscribers came from the two podcast interviews I did with Spencer Haws and Adam Smith. The newsletter list grew slowly after that.

If you have any thoughts and/or ideas on what you want to see more of, let me know!

There also seems to be an unannounced Google Update out there. One of my sites got hit a couple days ago - not fun 😔 Google Search Console hasn't been consistent with updates either, going on 26 hours as I write this. So something's going on. Keep an eye out.

Niche Creators

Niche Creators - niche surfer

This week's two Niche Creators are very active in sharing their knowledge. They share their journey on Twitter with loads of tips, while making 5-figures every month.

Check out their interviews:

SEO

Entities and E-A-T: The role of entities in authority and trust

Learn the relationship between entities and expertise, authority and trust, or E-A-T evaluation of authors, publishers and companies. The organization of data and information around entities makes it possible for Google to rank entities of the entity type Person such as authors and organizations (publishers and companies) with regard to topics according to E-A-T.

In addition to the well-known SEO fundamentals of ensuring crawlability, indexing control, internal linking optimization and website hygiene, it is primarily the triad of relevance, trust and authority that needs to be considered.

Canonicalization: What It Is & How It Works

Canonicalization is the process that search engines use to determine the main version of a page. That is the page that will be indexed and shown to users. The chosen version is canonical, and ranking signals like links will consolidate to that page. This process is sometimes referred to as standardization or normalization.

It's good to understand the different signals that go into the canonicalization process. These include:

Duplicates
Canonical link elements
Sitemap URLs
Internal links
Redirects

The article also goes into many of the common mistakes that occur with canonicalization.

What's Better for SEO: Unique or Templated Content?

SearchPilot's A/B test this week asked the question: "Is it worth the effort to create unique content for a large number of templated pages?"

One thing in common with many websites, especially large websites with many similar pages, is that they implement at least some content based on a template rather than writing unique content for every page.

An example would be seeing a block of content on a “how to knit” page and then seeing similar content after navigating to a “how to crochet” page.

In the end, the results showed unique content led to an almost 14% uplift in organic traffic!

SEO Office Hours, May 6th, 2022

Onely summarizes the most interesting Q&As from Google SEO Office Hours with John Mueller on May 6th, 2022.

Can you use web components on your website?
Is it OK to use FAQ schema across different sections of a page?
Is it possible to plagiarize your content?
What if your website isn’t user-friendly with JavaScript turned off?
Do indexing issues depend on the type of website technology used?
Why isn’t Google respecting the canonical tag?
How to get rid of spammy backlinks?
How to get your app indexed without App Indexing?

Tools and Resources

Great Deals Out There for Niche Site and Content Creators

Depositphotos - Access high-quality stock photos. Deal ends in 24 hours.

Graficto - Create powerful smart infographics and visuals without any design skills. Get started on those link magnets!

BIGVU - Get a DIY teleprompter (iOS, Android, and browser) with video editing, captions, music, and green screen editing to create YouTube videos.

WriterZen - This has been my go-to keyword clustering tool. They have other tools like AI content generation for writing SEO optimized content. Deal ends in 10 days.

New DigitalOcean Pricing

DigitalOcean raising prices and introducing a new $4 Droplet starting July 1st. That also means if you're using Cloudways with your DO Droplet, they will probably raise prices too. They usually charge 2x of what the VPS provider charges, so it'd be a $2 increase at Cloudways for every $1 increase at DO.

The cheapest, viable plan is now going from $5 to $6 a month for the 1GB memory Droplet. The $4 Droplet has 512MB, so the lack of memory is really only useful for testing. I would not use it for any live sites.

Content

Building High-Performing Content Pillars: Your Ultimate Guide

Pillar pages provide a substantive amount of information that can be divided into numerous formats such as ultimate guides, long reads, hub pages, and more. For digital marketers, it is an opportunity to create a better user experience and be rewarded by search engines with high-level, authoritative content. Topics that Semrush covers here:

What Are Content Pillars? What Is a Pillar Content Strategy?
What Are the Key Elements of Content Pillars? What Are the Examples?
How Do You Develop a Pillar Content Strategy for a Website?
Which Is Better: Evergreen or Timely Pillar Content?

Link Building

What Is Link Bait? 7 Successful Examples

Ahrefs shares 7 link magnet examples to jumpstart link building ideas, along with the triggers of why link bait works:

Social currency – People share things that make them look good to others.
Triggers – People share things that are top of mind.
Emotion – People need to feel something to share something.
Public – People tend to imitate others’ behavior if they can see or observe it.
Practical value – People like to pass along practical, useful information.
Stories – People don’t just share information—they share stories too.

Internal Linking: The Ultimate Guide for SEO (2022)

This is a good article discussing the 7 types of internal links and how they pass SEO value. There are also 13 internal linking strategies you can use to grow your rankings and conversions. Learn more about Google's Patent - Reasonable Surfer Model - and what factors will increase the chances a user will click a link.

Here are the 7 types of internal links covered, from most to least valuable:

Body Content Links
Breadcrumb Links
Main Navigation Links
Sidebar Links
Footer Links
Bookmark Links
Next/Prev Links

When it comes to internal links, there's a lot more than just installing Link Whisper and automating links (NEVER just automate the links).

Education

Are Income School Garage Sale Sites Worth It? 2022 Analysis

Income School teaches how to build niche sites. They have a Garage Sale where they sell their sites. Mushfiq analyzes 10 of their sites that were sold by Income School for valuation, quality, and more.

These site analyses are always good to see and learn from. See what an experienced website flipper like Mushfiq sees when evaluating sites.

11 Internet Marketing Strategies That Work

When creating niche sites, most people focus on SEO, content, and affiliate marketing. That's the base foundation of most sites, especially if you have a portfolio of sites. But if you only have one niche site, I'd encourage you look at other ways to market and attract more visitors and customers. Diversify where your traffic comes from and how you convert them.

This articles covers 11 internet marketing strategies to take a look at:

Search engine optimization
Content marketing
PPC marketing
Email marketing
Affiliate marketing
Influencer marketing
Video marketing
Social media marketing
Podcasting
Conversion rate optimization
Reputation management

Google CTR Stats – Changes Report for Q1 2022

Find out how the Google CTR values for your website’s industry changed in Q1 2022 and estimate how your traffic might have been affected.

This is an interesting look at CTR in different industries. How search demand and CTR has changed on desktops vs mobile. For example, search demand for News increased almost 27%, but CTR decreased about 4 percentage points.

News

Merriam-Webster Starts Cashing In on Affiliate Marketing with Product Reviews

Spencer Haws writes about Merriam-Webster getting into affiliate marketing on their site. Yes, the same Merriam-Webster that's been making physical and online dictionaries. But they're not the only high DA/DR site that's getting into affiliate marketing. Encyclopedia Britannica's site is as well.

How do you feel about more and more of these sites getting into affiliate marketing because of their high DA/DR? Check out their review hubs and pages:

Upgrade from G Suite legacy free edition - Google Workspace Admin Help

For those with a G Suite legacy free edition, Google announced (link below) they're going to let people keep them for free!

No longer need to upgrade to Google Workspace or close the account. But you will need to sign on and select the option to continue the free edition for personal use only.

Or if you upgrade to Google Workspace, they're giving you 3 months for Free and 12 months at 50% off.

Be sure to select to continue the G Suite Free Edition by August 1, 2022 if that's what you want. After that, they're going to suspend accounts that didn't select or upgrade to Google Workspace.

Attached is a screenshot of the pop up options I received when logging in. Great to see they're going to let people keep using it for free.

Similarweb Acquires Rank Ranger | Similarweb

Similarweb has acquired Rank Ranger, a market leader in search term rank tracking and monitoring.

Rank Ranger’s keyword monitoring joins forces with Similarweb’s keyword and traffic analysis capabilities, taking SEO tools to the next level.

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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!