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December Income Reports; Key SEO Metrics; GPT-3 + Web Search; Content Hubs; SEO Pricing; SEO ROI; and Much More!
Yoyao
January 21, 2023
FIRST…
With more and more great content and resources focused on AI for SEO and digital marketing, I had to add a new category in the newsletter - AI!
No more trying to fit AI articles into existing categories.
While I now feel a little more free to include AI-related content, Red Ventures told their staff on Friday that they're stopping the use of AI to write articles on CNET, Bankrate, and CreditCards.com (at least temporarily).
It seems that they had their own proprietary tool that grabbed data from various sources to generate articles.
It'll be interesting to see what Google does (if anything) to adjust their algorithms with the noise that's been created.
Many large sites/companies have been using AI-generated content for many years now, since 2014 for Red Ventures alone. But now that it's in the public eye and not just localized to the SEO space, will Google adjust any?
If I was Google and getting ready to put out 20 AI tools and a chatbot feature this year, I'd take advantage of the public outrage to tweak the SERPs even more (much like what they've done to maximize their earnings in the last few months).
The low-hanging fruit is to find keywords in the author byline and any AI-disclosures in the content to mark them as "AI-generated content - information may not be factual" in the SERPs.
Next step would then be to use their algos to identify and mark content as "possibly AI-generated" in the SERPs.
What do you think? Would you want to know if content was possibly AI-generated and the content is not factual?
It's a similar question to paid ads and sponsored posts. There are regulations around that content now. Even if the content wasn't AI-generated, the influencers or sites sharing the content probably didn't generate the content themselves. They're usually given scripts to write.
I've turned down paid ads and sponsorship opportunities because they wanted me to share Tweets, newsletter mentions, blog articles, and others without saying it was an ad, paid, or sponsored.
The money is nice to have, but I also believe that it's important to let people know if the glowing comments were paid for.
That's just me though... 😃
INCOME REPORTS
Here are the December 2022 income reports I saw. Not a lot out there from December.
If you do income reports and want to be listed, just let me know where to go and I'll get it in my feed!
SEO
The December 2022 Link Spam and Helpful Content Updates are finally finished! Wondering how long ago they started?
Helpful Content Update - Started Dec. 5, 2022
Link Spam Update - Started Dec. 14, 2022
Must have been one doozy of an update...well 2 updates. As usual, lots of sites that should have been hit, got hit. Lots of sites that should have been caught, didn't get caught. Lots of sites that should not have been hit, got hit.
Google's John Mueller said that Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool to submit a page to be crawled would probably not see the quota increase anytime soon. He said on Mastodon:
"given how much junk we get submitted there, I don't see us increasing those limits."
Zoe Ashbridge shares 13 metrics that can help you assess how successful your SEO efforts are.
Engagement rate
Enhanced measurements
Landing pages
Email sign-ups
PPC metrics that are influenced by SEO: Retargeting and keywords
Images
Content engagement
Customer lifetime value
Brand visibility
Missed brand searches
Conversions and conversion rate
Revenue
Clicks and impressions
Apple Business Connect is a new tool to help more people find your business locally. Learn about its unique benefits and how to get started. If you use Google Business Profile, you'll want to also set up your Apple Business Connect (ABC) profile.
This article gives an overview of ABC, its benefits, and setting it up.
TOOLS AND RESOURCES
Slim SEO Link Manager just launched and this is Link Whisper's main competitor, even overtaking LW. The features are very similar, but Slim has key features that fix a few missing features from LW:
Auto update internal links when post slugs/URL changes
Bulk link updater in content (works well if you need to update an external links in all posts)
Dynamically find link opportunities with keywords when editing posts
They have annual and lifetime plans available.
Use this coupon code for 20% off: LAUNCH20
CONTENT
Google added a new "E" for Experience to E-E-A-T. Jamie Reedy from Amsive Digital shares how to adapt your SEO content strategy for this update.
Your Money or Your Life topics are most impacted by Experience
Examples of the new E in the SERPs
Changes to "Worth It" Phrases
What This Means for Your Content Strategy
Alexia Carr from Siege Media discuss what content hubs (aka silos) and why they're important for the SEO of sites to drive organic traffic.
What Is a Content Hub?
Types of Content Hubs
The Benefits of Content Hubs
Content Hub Examples & Best Practices
How To Create a Content Hub
Carl Broadbent added author boxes and author bios to his homepage and every post, and his traffic almost doubled. He says it's because his EEAT increased.
My Take: Author bios obviously help and help to show your expertise, so it makes sense that traffic would increase. I've never tried to put all author bios on the homepage though. I've done it before for 1-2 of the key people that are experts (and real people), but not for personas like he does. If you've tried it, would love to hear how it worked for you!
AI
Anne Moss discusses the good and bad about using ChatGPT to help write articles. It's a great look because many writers will take the output from ChatGPT and other AI tools as "fact" and that's just not the case.
She covers some examples of where following ChatGPT's output would put her in "Just Plain Wrong" territory. Have to also love the links that ChatGPT often gives because the majority of links are made up!
This free script from Danny Richman allows you to generate AI-generated responses to search queries on current information with cited sources.
One of the problems with ChatGPT and other AI models is the lack of the latest news and information. This free tools helps to take care of that by using RapidAPI.com and the YouChat GPT API to get up to date information.
YouChat GPT does use GPT-3, so they call it ChatGPT+Google Search.
CNET employees are wondering: what’s AI and what’s not?
The Verge takes a look at CNET and their AI-written content since Red Ventures, a private equity firm, took over two years ago. Apparently, there is content that used AI that CNET's editorial staff don't even know.
Ever since Red Ventures took over the site for $500 million in 2020 from CBS (who purchased it for $1.8 billion in 2008), CNET has been publishing content designed to rank well in Google for "high-intent" queries. They then monetize with affiliate links.
Red Ventures also owns The Points Guy, Bankrate, CreditCards.com, and many others. They've been using AI since 2014 across their portfolio of sites too.
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were called back in to help advise on Google's AI product strategy.
They're now planning to release 20 new products, including a search engine with chatbot features this year.
EDUCATION
This is an article that is tailored more for small businesses, but it's still relevant for any niche site owner.
Treat your niche sites as a business and think about it from the same POV. Do you do the SEO work yourself or are there areas that you should outsource because it's better ROI?
Understand whether your SEO efforts are providing any return for you. Should you put more focus on content, link building, PPC, or somewhere else?
Jacky Chou and James de Lacey talk to Matt Diggity from Diggity Marketing. They talked about what we're working on, his thoughts on E-A-T, businesses he's involved in, importance of delegation, YouTube growth strategies, and building topical authority with no links.
CASE STUDY
Spencer Haws being interviewed on the Niche Pursuits podcast that he started and is being hosted by Jared Bauman now.
He published 878 new blog posts and updated 119 articles in 2022 to grow the nichepursuits.com site by over 500%.
My Take: One of the sites in my feed is the Niche Pursuits blog, so I've been seeing the types of articles that they've been publishing. I think I even gave an example or two in the past in the newsletter or in the Discord of how they're following a topical map approach. That's just my take from the articles that they publish in bunches.
NEWS
Ahrefs asked 350 SEOs and agencies around the world how much they charge for their services. Lots of interesting takeaways:
78.2% of SEOs charge monthly retainers for some or all of their services.
54.5% of SEOs only offer one pricing model (i.e., hourly, retainer, or per-project).
$501–$1,000 is the most popular monthly retainer.
$75–$100 is the most popular hourly rate.
$2,501–$5,000 is the most popular per-project rate.
Fewer than 1 in 10 SEOs (9.9%) charge more than $150/hour.
Agencies and consultants charge significantly more than freelancers.
There’s a clear positive correlation between experience and rates. (Surprising, right?)
Local SEOs charge less than those with global clients.
SEOs based in India, Central America, and South America charge the least.
Join the conversation