Wave Issue 91

First...

I started a new niche site on June 11, 2022 and thought I'd share my results after 1 month and 3 days.

Here's what I did in the first month to build the site's foundation:

1 topic cluster
1 fresh domain (0 DR)
3 social accounts created (no posts yet)
25 citations
42 info posts, all indexed
Low-Med competition keywords with Search Volume ranging from 0 to 6600 per month. Only 4 keywords have SV under 100.

Some of the key result metrics so far:

17 organic users
14 articles have broken into US Top 100 at one point.
13 articles have broken into US Top 20.
7 articles have broken into US Top 10
But with the way SERPs are displayed, Top 10 Does Not Equal Page 1
12 articles haven't shown up in GSC rankings for any keywords yet
Ahrefs 124 keywords, 222 Org Traffic

Here are my insights so far:

With Google's SERP Features, the second half of Top 10 results are getting pushed to Page 2, lowering CTR.
Planning out a tight cluster has helped the articles collectively rank more quickly.
These 42 keywords in 1 cluster on a fresh domain have grown faster than 2 ongoing sites, each adding 100+ articles on low-comp kws in 10+ clusters.

I like to plan out sites and work through topic clusters, while being open and flexible to new topics. Clusters help show authority and help sites rank. Then I move on to related topics one at a time. This is something I've learned over time.

Just Start Publishing is a great message for beginners, because paralysis analysis is definitely one of the main reasons someone doesn't catch the wave and start their niche site journey.

But once you're riding the wave, you need to start being more smart about your time and money. Learn from your past mistakes and failures. Avoid repeating them.

I'm sharing these things to hopefully help you save yourself time and money by learning from my mistakes.

Be more efficient in how you approach sites to save yourself time and money. Get traffic sooner and cheaper.

Many of the Niche Creators I've interviewed have share some great tips from their failures, so be sure to read their Q&As and learn from them!

Niche Creators

Niche Creators - Q&A Interviews

This week's two Niche Creators - Shaun Marrs and Saint Vienna - are very active in sharing their knowledge on YouTube and Twitter. Both share great tips and positive messages.

Check out their interviews:

SEO

How Long Does SEO Take to Work for New Websites?

Matt Diggity answers the question - How long does it take to see results from SEO? Find out how long it'll take to see results from your SEO efforts (and what you can do to speed things up)

Why SEO takes longer
How long it takes SEO to work for new websites
Avoid The Google Sandbox
Topical Authority Launch
Avalanche Technique
Fully Optimized Content
Expired Domains
301 Redirects
PBN Links

Interaction To Next Paint (INP): Everything You Need To Know

Google is currently in the process of changing Core Web Vitals. It has added two new metrics to the mix: INP (Interaction To Next Paint) and TTFB (Time to First Byte).

INP refers to how the page responds to specific user interactions that are programmed into the overall INP metric measured by Google Chrome’s lab data and field data. Google says "An INP below or at 200 milliseconds means that your page has good responsiveness."

TTFB measures the length of time that it takes for the first byte to be transferred by the server.

The Importance of Quality Thresholds and Predictive Ranking

This Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR case study examines how quality threshold and predictive ranking are related and what impact they have on a site's ranking potential. The purpose of the project is to increase the organic traffic via semantic SEO to improve the conversions and make investments that will grow the brand bigger.

Koray creates these super in-depth case studies that can be technical and dense, especially if you don't have much SEO knowledge already. But going through these will always give you some good tips.

He has a list of 37 items to help you exceed quality thresholds to rank better. Some include:

Use factual sentence structures. (X is known for Y → X does Y)
Use research and university studies to prove the point. (X provides Y → According to X University research from Z Department, on C Date, the P provides Y)
Be concise, do not use fluff in the sentence. (X is the most common Y → X is Y with D%)
Include branded images with a unique composition.
Have all the EXIF data and licenses of the images.
Do not break the context across different paragraphs.
Opt for the question and answer format.
Do not have any E-A-T negativity, have news about the brand with a physical address and facility.

SEO Split Test Result: The Importance of Writing Effective Meta Descriptions

Optimizing meta descriptions is something that just about every SEO has devoted time and attention to at some point in their career. The purpose of the meta description is to inform and engage search users with a brief, relevant summary of what a particular page is about.

For this test, they focused on two elements: the CTA and adding USPs. After 21 days of testing, they saw a 6.5% increase in clicks.

Optimizing meta descriptions are meant for users to read, so be sure to optimize your meta for searchers.

Why Authority Media Sites Are Publishing Buying Guides

Large media sites (e.g., Forbes, CNN) have started to publish commercial buying guides reviewing products and services.

Mushfiq and Charles Sipe at The Website Flip put together this analysis of why these large authority sites are publishing buying guides.

They also analyze the product reviews and guides, pointing out the many good thing they're doing to stand out.

Does a CMS matter for ranking in Google Search? #AskGooglebot

Does the way web pages are created - and the content management systems used to build them - influence your content’s ranking?

In this video, John Mueller discusses whether or not a CMS influences the visibility of your web content.

Tools and Resources

Kazan SEO - Content Optimization App

Here's a free tool that gives you a Content Optimizer, SERP Overlap, Text Extract, simple AI text expander, and Keyword Clustering.

The keyword clustering and SERPs scraping are what excite me the most because other tools that do this can be more expensive. Seems to be supported by affiliate links, so do support them if you decide to get anything they're promoting. It seems to only be on the AI writing page right now.

I've been playing around with the keyword clustering and had a pro and con. I love that it does the clustering based on overlap of the SERP Results and I can adjust how many results for a cluster. But what I don't like is that it overlaps and 'reuses' keywords in multiple clusters.

While technically true that's how the SERPs overlap, it's difficult to use and create clusters. 1 keyword should go in 1 cluster and not multiple clusters. You'll need to do some manual work here.

If you need to analyze and cluster keywords, LowFruits does this. The credits are inexpensive and there's no manual tweaking you'll need to do to get your clusters too.

Link Building

Niche Website Builders 'Done For You'' HARO Service Review

If you've been thinking about HARO outreach and link building, Jasper Pieterse tries out Niche Website Builders' HARO Outreach Service.

You can check out NWB's HARO Service. For links that count toward the minimum number of links guaranteed each month, the links must be DoFollow and DR40+. The others are free links and won't count towards your package.

Education

How to Value Your Website’s Worth

If you’re considering selling your website, you need to know how much your website’s worth. Or if you're buying a niche site, it's important to have your list of calculations to come up with a value for a site.

Bill Widmer, guest posts on Ahrefs, to give an overview of how to value sites and how to increase your website's sale price.

Mushfiq, an expert at website flipping and valuation, has a Website Worth Calculator that takes into account many different factors for a rough valuation.

If you're looking to sell a site, you can also use the Empire Flippers Valuation Tool for an estimate on what a site is worth.

33 GENIUS Ways to Increase Blog Traffic in 2022

Here's a big list of 33 ways to increase blog traffic? Maybe something in the list that will inspire you to try something new for your sites. Here are 10 of the first things listed:

Know your audience
Optimize for SEO
Run Ads on Social Media
Optimize Your Site for Conversions
Retarget Visitors on Other Platforms
Grow a Twitter following
Only Create High-Quality Content
Use IFTTT to Automate Social Media Sharing
Write Scientifically Shareable Content
Develop a Pinterest Strategy

Gardening Know How Attracts 11M Visitors A Month With This Strategy

I'm starting to see more and more people get into the gardening niche. Don't know if it's really a trend or if it's just the people I've been around.

Gardening Know How is the internet's go-to gardening site. This is a good overview by Julia Jenkins at Niche Pursuits to see how GKH has created their site to help you with yours.

Content is king - they have a huge selection of high-quality articles on just about every gardening topic imaginable.
A simple, straightforward design helps visitors find the information they're looking for quickly and easily.
Advertising is a great way to monetize a website with high traffic levels.
Quality links can be obtained organically by producing great content.
Leveraging your audience through relevant social media giveaways is a great way to generate income from other brands.
Paid courses are another effective monetization strategy.

Common Niche Site Mistakes - This Kills Affiliate Sites

Jason Mills at The Affiliate School ran site audits on websites from the community and he saw many of the same mistakes being made.

Lack of homepage content (Please get rid of those Blogrolls!)
Thin and duplicate content
Bad internal linking practices
Long form content for simple questions (way too much fluff out there)
E-A-T

What's Changing? - Moving Past 1 Million Pageviews (Content Sites)

Morten Storgaard has reached 1 million pageviews with his content sites!

He discusses how he's going to change his blogging strategies now moving forward. For example, he's going to move even further away from affiliate links.

Case Study

LowFruits Case Study Site, Month 9: Website URL and Keyword Reveal!

It's Month 9 of Dim's LowFruits case study and it's time for the URL reveal! Dim reveals the site's URL and his keywords list.

He shows how he used LowFruits to get over 11,000 views monthly in only 9 months.

Important Note: Don't copy and steal his site/content. Use it for inspiration, but don't steal. Many people don't give this much insight, especially publicly. I don't share URLs myself for that very reason.

How To Increase Traffic By 96% (SEO Case Study)

In this case study, Matt Diggity shows how his team at The Search Initiative increased a client’s organic traffic by 96%. The client is a US-based SaaS B2B company. He covers the three pillars of SEO (on-page, off-page, and technical factors) and how they applied it to the client's site:

Crawl Budget Management
XML Sitemaps
Implementing hreflang Attributes Correctly
Establishing Topical Relevance With Supporting Blog Content
Building Links To Important Pages

These are all important for niche sites, except for hreflang. Hreflang is only needed if you have multiple languages on your site.

News

Google people also ask feature showing up half as often in Google Search

RankRanger, Semrush and seoClarity all confirmed a significant drop for the people also ask box last week in Google Search.

People also ask use to show up for about 60% of all queries those tools tracked but now they show up for about 30% of all queries, that is a 30 point drop and a huge reduction in the people also ask box feature.

It's unclear if it's a bug or an actual change by Google, so stay tuned.

Announcing the new Search Console Video index report

Google has announced a new Video Indexing report in Google Search Console that they'll be rolling out over the new few months. The report shows the status of video indexing on your site. It helps you answer the following questions:

In how many pages has Google identified a video?
Which videos were indexed successfully?
What are the issues preventing videos from being indexed?

Google Search Indexing Issue July 15th. Google Not Indexing New Content Again.

By the time you read this, the indexing issues was confirmed by Google to have been resolved.

There was a confirmed indexing issue in Google Search prior to 7 am ET on the morning of July 15, 2022.

What happened was that Google was not indexing any new content that was published. Lots of news sites would had no new articles indexing.

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