Wave Issue 95

First...

Just published the 50th Niche Creator interview!

I was able to start off these Q&As with two of the most experienced niche site builders out there - Mushfiq from The Website Flip and Chris from Niche Safari.

They really helped to move the needle as I continued to look for great people to profile. In the beginning, it was easy to get people to agree and answer the 20 questions.

But now, it's gotten to a point now where I'm hitting a wall when it comes to getting two interviews per week. Many people agree, but it seems that with the latest Google updates and industry changes, people have been busier than in the past.

I do get it though because I've been busier than in the past as well. So my outreach to new people hasn't been as active as before.

That has led to longer lead times to getting Creators to answer the 20 questions. I have 20+ people who have agreed and haven't had a chance to fill out the questions yet.

Another major factor is trying to find people who are willing to be public and share all/some of the information in the questions.

I'll keep chugging along and trying to find great people that can provide great value to you!

And if you'd like to share your story, reply back and let me know!

Niche Creators

Niche Creators - Q&A Interviews

This week's Niche Creator - Tejas Rane - is very active in sharing his knowledge and great niche site / SEO tips on Twitter.

Tejas also has the honor of being the 50th Niche Creator!

Check out his interview:

Tejas Rane from Affiliate Corner

Income Reports

July 2022 Income Reports - Part 2

Here are more income reports from July 2022 that weren't available when last week's newsletter went out.

SEO

New ways we're helping you find high-quality information

Google shared new developments about how they're improving the quality of information that they show in the SERPs. There are a number of updates, including information literacy, About This Result, Content Advisories, Misinformation, and others. But the main thing that people have been talking about is Featured Snippets.

Featured snippets have had lots of fluctuations the last few months with updates and disappearing snippets. Has the MUM AI model and their work on improving the quality of featured snippets been the underlying reason for why there has been featured snippet volatility?

Going International: 15 SEO Steps for a Successful Expansion

This article will guide you through 15 SEO steps to follow that will allow you to conquer new markets. It will cover topics like:

Keyword research
Competitor analysis
Website configuration and domain best practices
Brand name vs. localized name
URL structure preference
International targeting with Google Search Console
Content translation
Adaptation to the new country

Tools and Resources

Great Tools for Niche Site Owners and Content Creators

Brand Overflow - SEO Tool for individuals and agencies. Price increase on Aug. 14th from $79 to $99 per code. Get in now if you want it. Use "BRANDOVERFLOW10" code to get an additional 10% off.
Persona by Delve AI - Automatically generate buyer and competitor personas with AI. It extracts personas and journeys, segment-wise from web/mobile analytics data (like Google Analytics and social media) to create personas.

Content optimizers go head-to-head!

NeuronWriter - Content SEO Optimization and AI Writer. Appears the most focused on content optimization with their NLP-driven editor.
Robinize - Use AI to research, outline, and write SEO-optimized content that ranks better on Google. Research keywords, measure your content quality, and analyze competitors. Doesn't seem to have AI writing just yet, but it looks like they're looking to add it.
Mieux.ai - Churn out SEO-friendly, plagiarism-free content with powerful AI. Generate long-form blog posts, Google ads, and Facebook ads with the help of AI-powered tools
Blogely - Craft and publish original content that ranks with content optimization.
Postpace - An AI-powered content workspace that automates hours of topic research in two minutes. Optimize content faster & better with workflow automation

Tools That Have Implemented Pros and Cons Schema Already

Rank Math has already added the Pros and Cons Schema to their Schema module for Pro users. You can create the proper schema to take advantage of it. Watch their video and review the help page to see it in action.

Affiliatable has also automatically implemented Pros and Cons schema into their Pros & Cons boxes. So there's nothing else that needs to be done manually. They also added a Glowing Effect option on product boxes to capture a reader's attention when they're scrolling.

Content

SEO audience and buyer persona targeting

Do you know who the target audiences and buyer personas are for your niche sites, online businesses, SaaS tools, etc.?

Anytime you sit down to write content, you're talking to them. Anytime you sit down to publish content, you're releasing information to them.

This article will dive into targeting your visitors while doing keyword research and creating content.

Link Building

Why Creating Competitor Link Gaps Is Just as Important as Closing Them

In this post, Rebecca shares the framework that her team at JBH the Digital PR Agency uses to create hyper-niche and relevant digital PR campaigns that earn links on sites where your competitors aren’t found, and highlights the strategic importance of creating these gaps for SEO success.

The idea behind this technique is to generate links from sites that are:

Topically relevant to the industry your brand or client operates in
High quality and non-spammy
Not feature a link to any of your competitors

5 Best HARO Alternatives

HARO is a great tool, but it has its limitations and in recent years has become less used and relevant than in the past. Plus, it still relies on daily emails about pitches and doesn’t provide a web interface for browsing pitches to then reply to.

So if you’re using HARO and looking for alternatives, Credo shares their five favorite HARO alternatives:

Terkel
Help A B2B Writer
Qwoted
SourceBottle
ProfNet

Education

Steal NerdWallet’s SEO Topic Clusters Strategy Worth $84M

Great insights into NerdWallet's content strategy and how it uses topic clusters for SEO and conversions. It's a good look into how they use the topic cluster strategy to become a leader who gets 18 million people on their website monthly.

Do Affiliate Links on Informational Posts Convert?

Chris from Niche Safari publishes a short video on whether affiliate links on informational posts convert. He didn't have amazing results, but he will still add affiliate links in certain situations.

I definitely agree with including an affiliate link into your info articles if it makes sense and only if it makes sense.

He mentions a survey to his YouTube followers and 80% of his followers have display ad-focused sites, while 20% had affiliate-focused sites.

Thos are interesting results. This past week, I also did a poll on Twitter asking people if they'd rather have an info site or affiliate site with 50k users. While the info site option was an early leader, the affiliate site option won out with almost 55% of the vote. It didn't win by a large margin, but it did win out. I also describe why I prefer an affiliate site and its future potential growth.

Case Study

6 Things I Love About Zapier's SEO Strategy: A Case Study

A great look by Mateusz Makosiewicz at Zapier and how they get an estimated 1.6 million organic visitors a month. Six takeaways for SEOs and content marketers:

Pitching the product through the back door
Ranking for other people’s keywords. Because Google and searchers demand it
Self-building content hubs
Link baiting at the rate of 1.5 domains per word
In Zapier’s world, everything is connected. Or at least interlinked
Zapier blogs about substituting coffee with hot water???

News

Survey shows how people decide what to trust online

Enlightening survey by MediaWise and YouGov, with support from Google on how people spot misinformation online. Key takeaways:

62% of respondents think they see false or misleading information on at least a weekly basis.
Roughly 50% of all Gen X, Millennial and Gen Z respondents (these are people ages 18 to 57) said they’re concerned about their family being exposed to it.
Gen Zers are two times more likely than the Silent Generation (people 68 or older) to use a search engine to verify information, and also two times more likely than Baby Boomers to check social media comments to verify something they’ve seen online.

Google Search outage causing major issues with search quality and indexing

Google Search outage on Aug. 9th was caused by a Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa that caught on fire. It caused major issues with search quality and indexing, including:

Outages and inaccessibility of Google Search
Old pages dropping out of Google Search
New pages not being indexed by Google Search
Google Search results look stale and outdated
Huge ranking fluctuations

If you saw big fluctuations in your rankings, this is most likely why.

Like Niche Surfer?

Join the Niche Surfer Community

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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!