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

Also - how important is topical authority really? I was listening to an interview with Backlinko's Brian Dean, where he talked about ranking for peleton keywords on Backlinko. He claims topical authority is overhyped. Of course I would be niching down on my site initially. And then I'd hope to branch out slightly, eg starting a site about indoor plants, and then going for plants in general.

It's not overhyped, but for newer sites, it doesn't matter as much as you're a blank slate and google doesn't know what you're about.

I've definitely felt the difficulty in moving into new verticals with established sites though. This is where backlinks and age help, if you have strong backlinks and good age, you can rank for pretty much everything.

Topical authority is a very strong tool for smaller sites though. It allows you to outrank bigger sites by being more niche.
 
Hey so I recently watched some twitter guy saying to optimize affiliate post titles. So, this got me curious as to what the best one is to use?
The twitter guy said this: "Negative emotions weight higher in a reader's mind than positive - check Prospect Theory for more." This would mean the Don't Buy one would have the highest CTR or no?

What would you say would get the most CTR? (Assume the product is WP Rocket, whenever reading reviews I always like ones that are up to date so that's why I included 2023 in all. I know you can do something like OCT 2023 but, then you have less room for other things.)

- WP Rocket Review (2023) Don't Buy This
- WP Rocket Review (2023) Real User Opinion
- WP Rocket Review (2023) Honest & Unbiased
- WP Rocket Review (2023) Pros, Cons, Worth?
- WP Rocket Review (2023) Huge Discount
- WP Rocket Review (2023) Fastest Plugin Or No?
- WP Rocket Review (2023) See How It Compares With
- WP Rocket Review (2023) 97% Speed Increase (This one implies it does work but it could also be seen as biased so less or more Clicks?)
- WP Rocket Review (2023) Overhyped Or Not?

I also know that if you add certain keywords in the title/meta title, you'll rank for specific variations. Like if someone googles WP Rocket Pros, the guy who put Pros in the H1 will outrank others assuming all other factors are equal.

It's little things like these which really start to add up other than the guys who have more money to spend on better writers, editors, and link builders. (And of course, one with the best CTR won't be ranking first because other factors matter way more like links and actual content.)

I looked through the titles to see which one I would click on myself personally if I was considering buying WP Rocket.

The one I would click on first would be this:
WP Rocket Review (2023) Real User Opinion

Probably followed by one of these 2:
- WP Rocket Review (2023) Honest & Unbiased
- WP Rocket Review (2023) Pros, Cons, Worth?


This is just me as a person, I don't know if it applies to others, but this is what I would do myself.
 
Is there somewhere where I can learn more about the impact of a site's dr on outbound links? eg people say things like "a link from a dr80 site is 40x more powerful than a link from a dr40 site" etc and that dr is a logarithmic metric - how can I understand more?
especially in the context of links required to rank for a kw, eg getting one link from a dr70/80+ site is the same as x from a dr 40+ site?
I know "number of links required to rank" is hard to guess and depends on the link, the site, etc but let's say for a kd10 kw (commercial intent, but not product specific), how would you go about estimating how many links (minimum) to get to the page? Most ranking sites are news/authority/super high dr sites, with two (dr 35, dr 44) niche sites ranking with no/minimal/mostly scraperish backlinks to their page. I know this specific question is a bit of a piece of string question :/
 
My WordPress site frequently had pages that were not created by me, but got flagged as "Social Engineering" by google. Now I have decided to use a custom theme.
I hope I can learn how to get the most out of it.
Can I get some suggestions regarding Semantic tags?

Do I have to use all of the following?
Main
Article
Section
Figure
Aside
Details
Summary
 
Is there somewhere where I can learn more about the impact of a site's dr on outbound links? eg people say things like "a link from a dr80 site is 40x more powerful than a link from a dr40 site" etc and that dr is a logarithmic metric - how can I understand more?
especially in the context of links required to rank for a kw, eg getting one link from a dr70/80+ site is the same as x from a dr 40+ site?
I know "number of links required to rank" is hard to guess and depends on the link, the site, etc but let's say for a kd10 kw (commercial intent, but not product specific), how would you go about estimating how many links (minimum) to get to the page? Most ranking sites are news/authority/super high dr sites, with two (dr 35, dr 44) niche sites ranking with no/minimal/mostly scraperish backlinks to their page. I know this specific question is a bit of a piece of string question :/
A good way to determine this is to check the backlinks of other ranking pages and arriving the average DRs of the backlinks linking to them. This way you can arrive at a figure to start with. However, the SEO is not a simple math in most situations. While you analyze the backlinks, please also do an internal linking audit (in ScreamingFrog or Ahrefs) of the ranking pages to see how many internal links are there pointing with the keyword anchor text to the ranked page. This number will give you another figure to work upon. Then, try to analyze the semantics of the ranked pages in any semantic tools ( a trial version of Textfocus will also work) to determine the semantics keywords distributions on ranked pages. This will give you another figure to work on. Now, try to create a page with better semantics, better backlinks (i.e high DR than the avergae) and better internal linking than ranked pages. Once done, let the page get indexed in Google and see its rank. We all learn SEO through experimenting. The more you experiment, the more experience you will gain.
 
Has anyone ever heard of digital PR agencies sending out unsolicited/unauthorized press releases? If so, why would they do this and what would they have to gain if they weren't being paid?
 
I'm through with the first 3 days of the Digital Strategy Crash Course and find it very interesting.
Love the course! and loads of love to all the contributors of the course :smile:
Given that most of this was posted way back, should I lookout for anything that might be out of place for the current time period? Has there been updated to this course?
 
I can't remember if there was anything completely outdated in the crash course when I read it about a year ago, but there wasn't anything new (and useful) in it, at least to me.

So when you're done with the crash course, I'd recommend continuing with this thread:

Recovering Failing SEO Sites with the Kitchen Sink Method

It contains a lot of helpful content and is much more up to date. I would call it the “advanced digital crash course”.
 
I dropped out of university at the age of 22, moved to a new country, took a job as a SEO executive ( junior SEO title in that niche), grinded away at a $27k PA salary for 2 years, got promoted to SEO Manager (sort of team lead position), salary increased to like $35k pa stayed in that company for another year. After those 3 years I was head-hunted by another firm in the same niche, started there as a SEO manager at 45k, 1 year later I was promoted to Head of SEO and am now getting $300k+ per year.

I never chased money, my intention was never to get rich. I just liked working within marketing and put in the hours. I'm average IQ. The ONLY THING I did that my peers didn't was showing up at office 7 days per week, grinding from 8 in the morning until 9 in the nights. Passion pays off.
Kudos. Describe your day it would be fascinating to hear.
 
Kudos. Describe your day it would be fascinating to hear.
No day is the same tbh.
But any single day I'm:
- Assigning out tasks for on-page optimisation;
- Ordering backlinks (for 30+ websites this become a daily task lol);
- Dealing with ORM;
- General people management;
- Dealing with external partners we have native ad deals with (parasite SEO);
- Crawling for technical issues on our key money making sites (500k+ pm).

How does that work? I've never heard of salaries that high are you part owner?
Obviously never thought I'd earn that much when I was @ 27k PA. I am in a high ticket niche, am not an official part owner contractually speaking but I do have a capped revenue share which constitutes about 60% of my salary, should probably not have left that out in the initial post :-)
 
Very cool, if I had to guess, you're in gambling or crypto.
 
How good is "health & wellness" as a SEO learning vertical with a starting focus on keywords around "weight loss"? I know its highly competitive - will it be a good challenge from a learning perspective? weight loss and wellness seem to be the closest topics I'm passionate about and this might help sustain my interest. What are your thoughts?
 
It may be a stupid question and I’m not sure if buso is the right community for me but do you guys do progress logs or is this forum only for information exchange? I’ve taken a look around and I found no one doing it.

The reason I’m asking is because, in other areas of my life, I found writing a progress log a great way to morivate myself to take consistent action and also to organize my thoughts.
 
How good is "health & wellness" as a SEO learning vertical with a starting focus on keywords around "weight loss"? I know its highly competitive - will it be a good challenge from a learning perspective? weight loss and wellness seem to be the closest topics I'm passionate about and this might help sustain my interest. What are your thoughts?

Extremely competitive, but that isn't even the main challenge. The main issue is that this really isn't a SEO play anymore, it's almost entirely Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Youtube.
 
The reason I’m asking is because, in other areas of my life, I found writing a progress log a great way to morivate myself to take consistent action and also to organize my thoughts.
Interesting.. I tried launching something called proglogs a while back (because i needed one for my projects and thought i will build one if more people wanted something) .. but there was very low (almost none) interest and i didn't proceed any further :smile:
 
Interesting.. I tried launching something called proglogs a while back (because i needed one for my projects and thought i will build one if more people wanted something) .. but there was very low (almost none) interest and i didn't proceed any further :smile:
I think the forums should be built around a very specific topic like gym stuff or making FU money for it to work.

Another newbie question:

Can I somehow edit my past posts?
 
Is there a consensus for the optimal font size for headers on mobile?

Font size for H1?
Font size for H2?
Font size for H3?
 
Is there a consensus for the optimal font size for headers on mobile?

Font size for H1?
Font size for H2?
Font size for H3?
My 2c is that it doesn't matter at all for SEO. As long as the smallest one isn't below 16px as it then isn't readable in the eyes of Google.

That answer was probably not the one you were looking for, at least it opens the door to (almost) endless possibilities. It's naturally nice if the size gets smaller as you move down in H-tags, at least I think so (seen many themes where h2-h6 is the same size..).
 
My 2c is that it doesn't matter at all for SEO. As long as the smallest one isn't below 16px as it then isn't readable in the eyes of Google.
I agree with the rest of your comment (that each header should be larger than your normal paragraph text and should be bigger as you approach H1), but the idea that Google see's 16px as unreadable... never heard that one.

Google reads the source code, not the rendered and styled HTML. It can read and index invisible text. I'm not aware that it considers 16px as a minimum size for users either. Many sites still use 12px and 14px and even smaller for "fine print" all the time.

If you have any links that you can share where Google has made any suggestions on font-size for SEO, I'd be interested in seeing it. Thanks.

Can I somehow edit my past posts?
After a certain amount of time (30 minutes?), posts become uneditable. Otherwise people could come back and edit in backlinks or deface their old content, post vulgar pictures, etc. This amount of time can be extended with the BuSo Pro upgrade, but even then, ultimately they become uneditable.
 
Quick question on those who do affiliate focused content and those who sell links.

Why does everyone almost always say to build backlinks to money pages? Why is it never run backlinks to statistics, link bait posts to increase your authority? Then you can easily beat most competitors who mainly build links to money pages right? Wouldn't that be the most bang for your buck?

Is it because they usually flip their websites? (I am wanting to hold the site for minimum 3-5 years from now.)
 
I've got a "problem" one of my site that I could sell last year for "big money" now dropped for around -75%

So far I think to sell it but in other way I feel like it would be useless. So it would be better to improve it and get more traffic.

What do you think? Few notes.

1. RPMs for my site are around -50% also that means selling site would be at "loss" because of shitty RPMs

2. I found out i had some ads disaabled and not that optimized ads as they used to be last year.
 
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