Newbie Question(s) so dumb, you're afraid to even ask!

fatalityhawk said:
Guys, is it just me or the search console has stopped updating after 17th Sep? This is happening across all my verified sites and clients.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure I saw a notice on my search console that they had problems updating since the 17th. I don't see the notice anymore, though. And the data looks to have been updated.
 
DanielS said:
I've done some research about this and it seems that Google doesn't technically care- they'll rank content from websites they trust, regardless of whether the content is copied/similar. It makes sense- how else would writers be able to paraphrase and piece together articles if having 5-10% of an article plagiarized resulted in penalties.

The thing that was mainly confusing me was that I was getting general sentences such as "at the end of the day, you must" marked as plagiarized- clearly this isn't something to worry about.
Click to expand...

Oh, certainly.

As far as I am concerned, as long as I know that I am the one writing the article (mind you, I know my niche quite well so I don't have to struggle with paraphrasing from other websites) then I don't really care about it.

There are millions of blog posts published every single day. I feel like it is impossible to get 100% uniqueness with any type of article nowadays.
 
If I have a tech website and I don't want to publish news or reviews, what type of content can I have?
 
Apex said:
If I have a tech website and I don't want to publish news or reviews, what type of content can I have?
Click to expand...
  • What is…
  • How to…
  • Can the…
  • Which one…
  • Why does…
  • When should…
  • Where would…
  • Where do…
  • How can…
And so forth. Informational and instructional content.
 
Analytics:
Avg. Page View Duration on GSC different from GA Avg. Time on Page, which is different from Google Sitekit (WP plugin) Avg. Time on Page.

What gives? I understand the bounce rate where someone spends 20 mins on a page but goes back is still considered a bounce, but the page view duration being different from the time on page seems fishy.

Also, does anyone know where to find the Avg. page View Duration report on GSC or GA? I can only seem to find mine on the Search Console Insights, but not the other reports. Thanks.
 
How do I track properly the EPC of an affiliate site?
The time between the click and the money in the bank is often delayed. If I measure my affiliate clicks of last month, I mostly didn't receive the affiliate commission yet.
 
Lowrider said:
How do I track properly the EPC of an affiliate site?
The time between the click and the money in the bank is often delayed. If I measure my affiliate clicks of last month, I mostly didn't receive the affiliate commission yet.
Click to expand...
So measure it by "earnings for the pay period divided by clicks during the pay period". Make the times match up.
 
Is it normal for new post to rank and then fall out of serps and bounce around even on an older domain?
 
dzboston33 said:
Is it normal for new post to rank and then fall out of serps and bounce around even on an older domain?
Click to expand...
It's a very normal pattern. Google still gives posts a honeymoon period (at random these days rather than every post as the net grows) so they can collect performance data and try to "guess" where the post should rank as a starting point.
 
Any negatives with using my name and info for all my different niche sites? E.g. fitness, pets, personal finance, etc? Will links that mention my name (e.g. HARO) then "confuse" Google as to what I'm an expert in?
 
jd90 said:
Any negatives with using my name and info for all my different niche sites? E.g. fitness, pets, personal finance, etc? Will links that mention my name (e.g. HARO) then "confuse" Google as to what I'm an expert in?
Click to expand...
It's a big assumption that Google is even building author profiles. They could be, but it's still an assumption. What they're more likely doing is having their search raters that evaluate the ranking pages look for things that make them feel like they can trust the page and author. Simple things like is there even an author box, is there a blurb that says why the person is an expert, is there an about page that shares even more.

What you want to do is convince the search raters, who have like 30 seconds to a minute to evaluate 3-5 pages. That's what's influencing the algorithms. Whatever signals convince the search raters ultimately get sifted through strainer by the algo, which then looks for those signals.

You could use your same info across all of those sites without concern for Google, I think. That would more likely make you even eligible to have an author profile at all. But I'd be more concerned about footprints and privacy from other SEO's or from the crazies out there.
 
Ryuzaki said:
It's a very normal pattern. Google still gives posts a honeymoon period (at random these days rather than every post as the net grows) so they can collect performance data and try to "guess" where the post should rank as a starting point.
Click to expand...

And it's annoying as hell lol. You'd think high authority sites would be less subject to this, but alas, no...
 
Ryuzaki said:
It's a big assumption that Google is even building author profiles. They could be, but it's still an assumption. What they're more likely doing is having their search raters that evaluate the ranking pages look for things that make them feel like they can trust the page and author. Simple things like is there even an author box, is there a blurb that says why the person is an expert, is there an about page that shares even more.

What you want to do is convince the search raters, who have like 30 seconds to a minute to evaluate 3-5 pages. That's what's influencing the algorithms. Whatever signals convince the search raters ultimately get sifted through strainer by the algo, which then looks for those signals.

You could use your same info across all of those sites without concern for Google, I think. That would more likely make you even eligible to have an author profile at all. But I'd be more concerned about footprints and privacy from other SEO's or from the crazies out there.
Click to expand...
Gotcha. I think I might try create a persona for my other niches to keep them separate. Go full hog with LinkedIn profiles etc so it's not under my real name and see how it goes
 
How do you write posts that require demonstration without actually making the video? For instance, I've seen a competitor using actual photos for a "How to x" post. How do you beat that?
 
Ndegs21 said:
How do you write posts that require demonstration without actually making the video? For instance, I've seen a competitor using actual photos for a "How to x" post. How do you beat that?
Click to expand...

Well, the best would obviously be to take photos and actually make a guide.

If you can't do that, you can do illustrations like Wikihow.

If that isn't an option, then you can write how to do it, and then embed videos showing how.

If videos are not available, you can write how to do it, and link to someone else showing how to do it. The key here is to do a curating of the other guides.

You can say "well this guide shows how to do it like this, but the other guides shows another way to do it" etc.

There's always a value add in there somewhere.

jd90 said:
Gotcha. I think I might try create a persona for my other niches to keep them separate. Go full hog with LinkedIn profiles etc so it's not under my real name and see how it goes
Click to expand...

I'm really not a fan of fake personas. You might want to consider an alter-ego instead, then you can merge your alter ego with your actual ego, so to speak, if you decide to go public later on. That's what I did.
 
I'm looking to boost my domain authority by acquiring/purchasing some backlinks. Are there any go-to services on the topic? I'm looking to send them to my homepage, as my site is purely informational content atm.

I have over 200+ posts on the site and I'm getting decent traffic but I've neglected the domain authority aspect up until now. I'm hoping some quality DA 30+ backlinks could give my site a boost since I currently don't have any backlinks from URLs with a 20+ DA.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Sadly, this isn't a problem you're going to solve. You can filter out ghost hosts (hits on your analytics that never came through your site), you can filter out known spam domains, known spam keywords, etc. But what you can't do is perfectly filter out organic bot traffic and worst of all, you can't fix historical data. This is for Google Analytics, I mean.

The fortunate part is the more traffic you get, the less meaningful the bot and spam noise is, until eventually it's a fraction of a percent and doesn't really affect your data.

Unless you're running huge database sites (these are particularly vulnerable in my experience, especially with tons of addresses listed), it's not something to worry about.

Mediavine's ad exchange partners are well aware of bots. As vague and frustrating as it is, @DunderMannen has the right idea. Just exceed their threshold some. You can apply at the moment you pass the threshold and it might turn out just fine. There's no rule that says you can't apply more than once, and it's not discouraged.

What you're really looking to do is get accepted by enough ad exchanges that you'll have a respectable RPM. Mediavine doesn't do any accepting or rejecting. The exchanges do. But where Mediavine does play a role is if you only get accepted by (and I'm making these numbers up) 4 out of 12 exchanges, they'll reject you because they can't guarantee you their great PRMs, which would hurt their reputation.

Maybe you get to 7 out of 12 and they accept you and you have average RPMs. Then you double your traffic and suddenly qualify for 10 out of 12 exchanges and your RPMs go up. The game never changes. You need more and more traffic to make more and more money at exponential rates due to higher RPMs due to higher acceptance by exchanges and their own advertisers.

So more traffic is always the thing to focus on and it won't change even when you get accepted.
Click to expand...

I've been trying to ignore what I'm considering "bot" traffic and focus on increasing traffic as recommended. It's bugging me as the daily %'s have been really high...70%+ of the traffic registering through google analytics with a 100% bounce rate and 0 seconds on page.

I think perhaps I didn't understand what google analytics was counting as "time on page." i.e. if there is no event to trigger another timestamp, even if the user got what they wanted, I would never know it as it would be counted as 0 seconds and a bounce. My site is purely informational at this point and users are unlikely to click on a second page based on the content type/search intent.

I implemented google tag manager and "scroll depth" and the bounce rate and time on page have changed dramatically. Now I'm wondering if I've set it up correctly and if there are other tags or google analytics/tag manager "best practices" that I should be employing.

If I were an ad network I would absolutely reject a website that had a really high bounce rate and low time on page. While I'm not anywhere near the goal post of applying to mediavine, seeing an increase of traffic is encouraging me to accelerate my efforts and I'm hoping to have a better picture of what's actually happening.
 
I have a weak site with a domain rank of only 10 for health and nutrition!
I'm not a doctor or nutritionist, I do not have the authority, what to choose which keywords to rank on the first page of Google?
 
getRichOrBT said:
@Ryuzaki where can I find/download a copy of your progress tracker?
Click to expand...
There isn't a copy. You can make one in about 5 minutes. It's just a spreadsheet that includes cells with outlines added to them.
 
Are there any benefits or drawbacks of adding a Youtube channel to pair with a site? One issue I imagine would be that it may be difficult to sell in the future.

Other than that I think it may compliment a site, and maybe Google might consider it a strong EAT profile?

I'd love to hear what others have to say about this.
 
Ryuzaki said:
There isn't a copy. You can make one in about 5 minutes. It's just a spreadsheet that includes cells with outlines added to them.
Click to expand...
Awesome thanks. I'll spin up a copy seems like a great accountability tool
 
Which websites or apps do you use to find keywords that forums are ranking for?
 
Ndegs21 said:
Which websites or apps do you use to find keywords that forums are ranking for?
Click to expand...

Ahrefs can easily do this. Just plug the forum / subforum url into the site explorer and then go to Top Pages on the left-hand side
 
Taq said:
Are there any benefits or drawbacks of adding a Youtube channel to pair with a site? One issue I imagine would be that it may be difficult to sell in the future.
Click to expand...
A big benefit of having a YouTube channel to accompany a website is the increased brand exposure. YouTube is the world's 2nd-largest search engine, meaning there's plenty of traffic to be gained that can be directed to the website or used to build an audience list to use for YouTube advertising.

A big drawback of having a YouTube channel to accompany a website is the time investment required. A lot of people think creating video content is easier and quicker than blogging, but the opposite has been true in my experience. Sure, you can create single-take, barely edited videos and call it a day, but if you want your videos to be seen, they need to be high-quality to ensure a high audience retention.

I think a YouTube channel is a more valuable asset than a Twitter or Instagram profile, but a lot of website owners just want to focus on creating written content for their website- not video content. It depends on the website owner/purchaser.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back