ISSUE 45

SEO Scams; Try To Prevent Google Title Rewrites; Blogging Terms; Niche Examples; SEO Tiers; Plagiarism Checkers; and More!

Author

Yoyao
September 04, 2021 • Est. Learning Time: 17 minutes

Issue 2

FIRST…

The kids started school again this past week, and it got me thinking about how I started learning about SEO and building niche sites. There are so many resources out there nowadays for people to learn about niche sites.

When I started out, I remember watching many YouTube videos and blog articles about how easy this passive income journey is. The message was Field of Dreams-esque, "if you build it, they will come."

  1. Build a website

  2. Write a bunch of articles

  3. Wait for the money to roll in

If only it was that easy! That's Niche Site Building 101.

For anyone who's built your own niche site, I think you know how hard it is. There are so many steps before 1, between 1 and 2, between 2 and 3, and even after 3. You want to continue learning with the 200, 300, 400, and graduate-level courses.

It's important to educate yourself about as much as possible, but know that there's also no clear-cut "This is how you do it" answer.

There are many methods and variables to consider when building niche sites. So if you were to ask experienced niche site owners and SEOs a question, looking for a clear-cut answer, sorry.

Their answer will start with "It depends."

That's why it's good to learn as much as possible about different things. It's like searching for long-tail keywords about sewing to give your sewing site a leg up against other sewing sites that already have the same basic sewing 101 posts.

Learn the "long-tail" information about niche sites and SEO to give yourself a leg up when building niche sites against others with the same foundational 101 information.

There are a number of places to learn from:

  1. YouTube - Subscribe to channels, subscribe to ones YouTube recommends based on your subscriptions, subscribe to the other ones YouTube recommends, and so on. Find the ones that are most helpful to you. Go own this rabbit hole for gems. Podcasts are good too, but the majority of podcasts are video now, so they're on YouTube too.

  2. Twitter - Use hashtags to find people to follow for specific topics. Look at people who are followed by the ones you follow already. Go down this rabbit hole for gems.

  3. Blogs - You'll come across a number of blogs of people in this industry. Curate them and use a RSS aggregator to follow all the blogs in one place. I've been using Feedly and their free plan for forever now, whenever they started.

  4. Service Providers - If you have some funds, hire freelancers and/or agencies to do some work. See how they do things and if they get you results. I had never done a Shotgun Skyscraper Link Building Campaign before, so I hired Niche Website Builders to do a campaign for me. I was able to learn and got some good results.

  5. Courses - There are many people who build courses like Income School, Passive Income Geek, Jon Dykstra, Matt Diggity, Kyle Roof, and many others. They all bring something different to the table with their experiences. All have different approaches and techniques. Watch their YouTube videos and see what rings for you.

I prefer Matt Diggity and Kyle Roof myself because they're more technical and experienced when it comes to methodical SEO testing for Google algorithm changes and results. Matt has his Affiliate Lab Course that's great for A-to-Z. Kyle has Internet Marketing Gold (IMG), which is like a Netflix for SEO Courses.

I go to different places to learn to help me with my journey. I curate some of the better ones I come across during the week and share what I think will be helpful to the majority of people in the Niche Surfer newsletter.

Keep learning. Keep getting better. Keep making more money!

SEO

ISSUE 45

Dr. Pete from Moz explored over 50,000 tags to find out how Google's title rewrite update is changing things. The results were that 58% of the <title> tags were rewritten. He presents 9.5 ways that the changes are occurring:

  1. Simple truncation

  2. Complex truncation

  3. Rewrite truncation

  4. Keyword stuffing

  5. Brand name added

  6. Brand name moved

  7. <title> is too short

  8. Relevance issues

  9. (8.5) Marketing lingo

  10. (9.5) Query-based rewrites

He then gives 3 ways to try and prevent rewrites:

  1. Mind the length limit

  2. Don't keyword-stuff titles

  3. Write for searcher intent

This is a good look at the rewrite update and examples of how Google is trying to better titles for searchers. This can help with writing your future titles.

I think Google may eventually come out with a <data-nosnippet> equivalent with the title, but I'm not sure it'd be beneficial to ranking. Google's rewriting titles because it thinks that the original titles are not offering searchers as much value. If you tell Google not to change the title, it may not show the post as high because it doesn't think the post is that relevant.

There is no single tactic that works in isolation. The SERP is so highly dynamic at the moment, that aiming for, or banking on a single part of the SERP is likely to leave you vulnerable to traffic disruption if/when things evolve. Think about how you can use these tactics to build upon and level up your existing SEO foundations. Change is the only constant, plan accordingly.

  • Optimizing content for mixed media Featured Snippet panel results

  • Creating knowledge hubs for potential contextual linking developments

  • Building structured data into your website before rich results arise

  • Using Intent Focused Long Form content to potentially benefit from Passage Ranking

ISSUE 45

Fun look by Matt Diggity on the SEO profession and how it compares to the video gaming industry. He breaks down SEOs and agencies into different tiers:

  • E Tier - SEO Service Providers

  • D Tier - Newbie Affiliate/Jr Agency Employee

  • C Tier - Thriving Affiliate/Agency Manager

  • B Tier - Portfolio Owner/Agency Owner/In-house Enterprise

  • A Tier - Founder/JV Artist

  • S Tier - Media Groups

  • A Special Entry... F Tier

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

ISSUE 45

Nozzle - SERP Tracking on steroids. I haven't seen this level of data before. Doesn't seem like it's for the beginner niche site owner / SEO unless you love granular data. This is data galore. Watch the video on the page to see what I mean.

Link Whisper - Deal Starts Monday, Sept. 6th. Internal linking plugin is on AppSumo with a 1 year deal for 1 site. Get it for $49 instead of the regular $77 on the site. There's no stacking of the deal, so you'd need to create multiple Link Whisper accounts for each code you buy.

Konnect Insights - Social Media Marketing Analytics platform. Create posts and with the data, know when to post on YouTube, Facebook and more.

Canapii - Create, organize, and deliver event experiences that keep attendees engaged.

Mastera - Online course creator with the ability to host live classes.

Wisecut - Video editing software that uses AI and voice recognition to edit videos for you, automatically creating jump cuts, subtitles, and more.

CONTENT

ISSUE 45

Ricky from Income School breaks down how to do topic clustering with pillar pages without calling it "topic clusters."

It's the first time I think I've seen Income School talk about clusters/silos and interlinking between posts in a structured way. Maybe they've been doing it in their course for some time? I don't have their course, so I can't say.

If you've been around for some time, you've seen me share many links on topic clusters/silos. But I like this for beginners, because it's broken down without any SEO jargon.

ISSUE 45

In this recorded product demo, the Frase CEO demonstrates how to use the Frase AI Writer to create content at the click of a button.

Good overview of how to write an article using Frase AI. Whether you have Frase or another AI writer, like JarvisAI, it's a good look at how to use AI to write content faster.

A lot of these AI content generator walk-through videos are cool, but also remember that it's important to double-check any data that is output. More often than not, it's not correct.

ISSUE 45

26 copywriting tips to engage your readers. As more and more niche site owners are turning to informational articles, it's important to take a look at copywriting.

Having copywriting skills can make a big difference in the success of your website in keeping readers on the page, as well as getting them to click your CTA (Call-to-action) buttons.

ISSUE 45

Search Engine Journal offers up 10 free and paid alternatives to Copyscape. Whether you write, outsource or use AI to get content out, it's always good to check to see whether the content was copied from anywhere.

EDUCATION

issue 45

Allison Lindstrom goes through 43 blogging terms that you may or may not have heard yet. It's a great video if you're just starting out on the journey. Some of the terms include:

  • A/B Split Testing

  • Above the Fold

  • CPC (Cost per Click)

  • CPM (Cost per Mille)

  • Funnels

ISSUE 45

It’s better to think small when you’re trying to come up with a winning idea. That’s because it’s hard to dominate a big market – you’ll often need lots of money and resources to do so.

Instead, think about finding a tiny, overlooked group of people who have money but no time (or patience) to shop for what they need.

In this article, Ahrefs looks at some successful examples of companies that have managed to do just that… and dominated their respective markets.

  1. Lefty’s (left-handed people)

  2. Nomad List (digital nomads)

  3. The Modest Man (short men)

  4. TomBoyX (LGBTQ+ community)

  5. Bee’s Wrap (sustainable foodies)

  6. Divvies (vegans and people with nut allergies)

  7. Ahrefs (website owners)

ISSUE 45

Bruce Clay takes a look at whether Domain Authority (DA), Domain Rating (DR), and the other iterations depending on which SEO tool you use, are just vanity metrics. Are they useful at all?

There is no such thing as a single “site authority” or ranking factor that Google uses to determine the authority of a website. Instead, Google outlines several factors it considers when evaluating the quality of a website and its pages in its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, including:

  1. The authority of the content creator

  2. The authority of the content itself

  3. The authority of the website as a whole

ISSUE 45

SEO scams are as old as search engine optimization itself. Learn the top scams, how to spot them, and what you need to know to steer clear.

  1. DA-based Link Building/Guest Posting

  2. Link Bait and Switch

  3. Guest Posts for Your Website

  4. Guaranteed Rankings

  5. The Google Partner

  6. Search Engine Submittal

  7. “We Noticed Your Website Isn’t Ranking for…”

  8. “This is Google. Your Listing is About to Expire…”

  9. “Want Proof? I Rank Number One for X”

  10. Prices Too Good to Be True

NEWS

ISSUE 45

Get an inside look at Motion Invest and how things have gone in the 2 years that they've been around. Some interesting stats:

  • 96.43% success rate (only 11 out of 308 listings have not sold)

  • 11.1 days for a site to sell

  • 35.5x monthly multiple (17x to 90x on a $20/mth site)

Actually, I think the 90x site was me! I talked to Spencer Haws about it on his podcast interview with me.

LIKE NICHE SURFER?

Let me know! 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 with taking your niche sites to another level!

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