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

I am writing a best of at the moment and I was wondering if something like this is allowed by Amazon? Would this break the rule of amazon of incentivizing the user to use your affiliate link or no? Also, the fact that I put pricing but don't mention anything about pricing, would this get me in trouble from amazon for being "misleading"?

Where to buy Product Name? Product Name Discount & Pricing <- heading​

There isn't any available discounts for Product Name, make sure that you only purchase from the official vendor here because there are few sites that claim to offer discounts when there are none.
 
I've been comparing page speeds with and without the Adsense script. I'm getting 90 on mobile without Adsense, 50 with. Is it simply something I have to accept if I want to run Adsense ads, or can I increase the score somehow?

EDIT: To clarify, the page speed is measured with PageSpeed Insights.
 
Is there an image optimizer plugin that works with AMP to serve WebP files? I'm currently using Ewww Image Optimizer which works great for non-AMP pages, but when I run pagespeed insights with the AMP plugin turned on it is saying this:

Image formats like WebP and AVIF often provide better compression than PNG or JPEG, which means faster downloads and less data consumption

Consider displaying all `amp-img` components in WebP formats while specifying an appropriate fallback for other browsers.
Consider using a plugin or service that will automatically convert your uploaded images to the optimal formats.
Is there a work around? I'm trying to fix the "serve images in next-gen formats" and "properly size images" error in pagespeed to ultimately stop LCP from going over 2.5s.
 
I am writing a best of at the moment and I was wondering if something like this is allowed by Amazon? Would this break the rule of amazon of incentivizing the user to use your affiliate link or no? Also, the fact that I put pricing but don't mention anything about pricing, would this get me in trouble from amazon for being "misleading"?
That's a tricky one. I don't think it's incentivizing the user, but mentioning "pricing" even when you don't display prices could make you come under fire of whatever algorithm they're using to flag you for manual review, and you might fail the manual review. I wouldn't do any of these schemes, because if they become problems it'll be a big headache for you later. Just fly straight and narrow.

I've been comparing page speeds with and without the Adsense script. I'm getting 90 on mobile without Adsense, 50 with. Is it simply something I have to accept if I want to run Adsense ads, or can I increase the score somehow?
You'll have to accept a hit no matter what type of ad network you use. Some like Adsense will load asynchronously except some render blocking scripts that run early and sometimes fail some cumulative layout shifting. Other networks will lazy load and handle cumulative layout shift. Where they all suck is the on-going HTTP resources pouring in, pushing back your onload times and other stuff these tools may measure.

The best move is to not include ads on some simple page like the About page, and to do everything you can sitewide to optimize the speed of that page. At this point, you'll know you've done all you can. The rest is the cost of making money.
 
You'll have to accept a hit no matter what type of ad network you use. Some like Adsense will load asynchronously except some render blocking scripts that run early and sometimes fail some cumulative layout shifting. Other networks will lazy load and handle cumulative layout shift. Where they all suck is the on-going HTTP resources pouring in, pushing back your onload times and other stuff these tools may measure.

The best move is to not include ads on some simple page like the About page, and to do everything you can sitewide to optimize the speed of that page. At this point, you'll know you've done all you can. The rest is the cost of making money.
Well received. I'll try excluding ads from the About page and optimize the speed.

I don't fully understand the technical details of your answer, but it's a great start to dig further.

Thanks a lot for the help!
 
Which other vendors than Odys do we have of expired domains that we can vouch for here on BuSo?
 
A very newbish question, considering how long I've built sites.

Right now I am working on a rather large project, and have for the first time designed category pages instead of using the theme's standard options.

My question:
Would it be bad for certain posts to appear in 3 different pages/categories?

Example:
It's a magazine-type site. One post I am promoting a lot is mydomain.com/fitnessbike

This post is now being linked from the homepage, "bikes"-category and "fitness equipment"-category. Among a bunch of other posts, of course.

Each category page have +20 links in them. The "fitnessbike"-post being one of them.

I'm leaning towards it being ok, if it's only 3 pages. But curious to hear what you guys think. As I've heard others say this is a bad thing - but I'm not convinced.

From a user standpoint, it's all good, because the post is not in the top of each page and it doesn't look spammy. However, I'm curious if Google might see it as spammy-whammy.

Thanks!
 
Ok this is what I don't get. One of my older sites, I have this keyword ranking.

And like it's ranked at like the top of BING like right under featured snippet. But on GOogle it's on PAGE: 7 or 8 I think. Does anyone know how to check if you have a DOMAIN LEVEL issue? How different does Bing work?
 
Which other vendors than Odys do we have of expired domains that we can vouch for here on BuSo?
  • Odys Global is great. I've purchased from them and what has become my main project is built on a domain I bought from them. Great selection of branded domains.
  • DomainCoasters, I bought a domain from this team before. Perfect transaction, and even got one in an international TLD that needed extra attention that I couldn't have gotten otherwise. They have a good selection of both branded and SEO-only style domains.
  • Domains R Forever is Golan's operation. He's been around forever and has tons of great SEO-only style domains. If I was building PBNs still I'd be all over this. I think he offers premium domains as well. I've not purchased from Golan but I have full confidence that I could with no issue.
  • Nargil is another option. He describes his offerings as "Expired and Premium PBN Domains". I've not bought from Nargil or used his inventory, but I wouldn't hesitate to buy if I found something in his inventory I wanted.
From a user standpoint, it's all good, because the post is not in the top of each page and it doesn't look spammy. However, I'm curious if Google might see it as spammy-whammy.
Yeah, this is a non-issue. But if you wanted, if the pages will be static, you can just type a unique description for the post on each page so there'd be no worries. But I think there's no worries regardless, even with the same description snippet and the same outbound link across all the categories. That's what they're for and Google knows posts can fall in multiple categories. Zero problem. I've done it my entire career. The one time I tried not to just added extra complication.

Ok this is what I don't get. One of my older sites, I have this keyword ranking.

And like it's ranked at like the top of BING like right under featured snippet. But on GOogle it's on PAGE: 7 or 8 I think. Does anyone know how to check if you have a DOMAIN LEVEL issue? How different does Bing work?
I think Bing is way more "obvious and basic on-page" with "more links is better", versus Google who's digging into deeper on-page and link metrics and all that stuff. Bing seems to care less about age and more about link validation (especially with indexing), and to be fair Google seems to be heading in that direction too. Everyone ranks on Bing before Google, simply because it's less complex and more easily exploitable. It doesn't mean you have a problem so much as you're just not satisfying Google yet.
 
  • Odys Global is great. I've purchased from them and what has become my main project is built on a domain I bought from them. Great selection of branded domains.
  • DomainCoasters, I bought a domain from this team before. Perfect transaction, and even got one in an international TLD that needed extra attention that I couldn't have gotten otherwise. They have a good selection of both branded and SEO-only style domains.
  • Domains R Forever is Golan's operation. He's been around forever and has tons of great SEO-only style domains. If I was building PBNs still I'd be all over this. I think he offers premium domains as well. I've not purchased from Golan but I have full confidence that I could with no issue.
  • Nargil is another option. He describes his offerings as "Expired and Premium PBN Domains". I've not bought from Nargil or used his inventory, but I wouldn't hesitate to buy if I found something in his inventory I wanted.

Thanks. Odys seems good, but wow, prices have gone up huh?
 
In October I wrote 12 articles on a particular silo. Think terms like best headphones for running, best headphones for music production, best headphones for xyz.

The keyword difficulty between keywords was similar, and I interlinked between each other. However, some articles got 5-10 keywords in the first month, then lost all of them.

What would you change before resubmitting them for indexing to get a shot at ranking with these articles? They are literally not picking up any keywords, while others are ranking quite well. I have written all of them around the same time, so stuff like keyword density, article structure, etc is similar.
 
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Is it a good idea to add a shop to an already successful blog that's earning thru ads? I'm wondering if I can start a dropshipping business to my site or would it somehow affect my rankings.

Does anyone have experience with this?
 
I am also interested in the dropshipping store question. However, I think I am going to hold out on this because I might try to give positive product reviews for dropshipping stores within my niche for a backlink and affiliate link. I wonder what would happen then I become a dropshipping store myself, I suppose I'd lose those links. (Anyways this is the VERY future.)

But I have a few more questions.

Ok so there's like a place with a list of backlinks you go on the site make a profile and you get a backlink. Should I get these ASSUMING the website Isn't relevant at all BUT it's not a SPAM site? Is this a waste of time because there's like 1000's of links I can get like this, high/low chance of penalization and is it effective or nah?

So far I have a quiz in the making, tool that I am planning on getting made, and infographics/data/charts on posts to get backlinks naturally. I have done some quora, blog commenting, directory submission and I am planning on trying this out. I will also run some google ads for the tool and quiz so I can get some backlinks. For now I am going at the list of SUPER EASY backlinks to my site and stuff. I am also thinking of doing LINK swaps on FB groups in similar niches, should I do this? I am a little worried that the people might steal my keywords since they have way higher DA with site which is established. (Or should I buy fiverr gig to get my DA to fake 50?)

So I've seen a lot of people including shaun mars who say go for under DR 25 ahrefs or moz for the keyword difficulty and stuff. (They are assuming that you build backlinks they say DR 25 is easy.) But, we know DR doesn't mean anything since it can easily be manipulated and people on fiverr offering DA 50 for few dollars. So what I am wondering basically is there a way for me to decide after X amount of backlinks I will be able to rank for keywords that have domains that are ranked 25 and under cus again we established DR doesn't mean anything?

Apart from the things I said above, I am wondering which option should I do? Focus on creating more articles and just have the backlinks come naturally since I am doing quality content + quiz + tools + running ads to get backlinks or create fewer articles and maybe try some other methods of building links? The blog is still only 3-4 months old. I am going to soon have like 170 articles total on the site after my writer gives them all. I don't wanna be that guy making only 3k after 800 articles. I am not going to restart but I feel now it would have been nicer if I picked a higher ticket niche with even lower comp and something I liked/was interested in or knew something about but, I think I can push through with just sheer effort and maybe a little creativity.
 
What would you change before resubmitting them for indexing to get a shot at ranking with these articles? They are literally not picking up any keywords, while others are ranking quite well. I have written all of them around the same time, so stuff like keyword density, article structure, etc is similar.
It could be that the keywords are more competitive. It could be that Google "honeymoon'd" those posts and didn't like the results on them while it did like the others. I see this happening much any more to be honest, it's usually more predictive now than actual honeymood periods.

Are you sure they're ranking for zero keywords? Like something like Ahrefs isn't picking up the pages for a single keyword, even at rank #40 on some long-tail? Because it's very normal for a page to rank okay then drop back and have to crawl back to the top. But essentially being blacklisted is a different thing. Are they indexed?

Is it a good idea to add a shop to an already successful blog that's earning thru ads? I'm wondering if I can start a dropshipping business to my site or would it somehow affect my rankings.

Does anyone have experience with this?
Every single person I've seen try this has failed. Of the many reasons, the main one is that your userbase arrives at your site for specific reasons in specific states of mind, and that's likely not to be shopping or you'd already be a shop.

I'm not saying it'll hurt your other conversions since it'll be isolated parts of a site, but the last thing you want to do is to pull your users in two different directions when they're already focused on one. You want to drive them deeper down the lane (the funnel) they were in when they found your site, not switch them over to a different one. It's easier to make money if you escalate their mind state than try to change it.

To summarize, you need to be one thing to your users. The only thing I can think of that comes to mind is Cracker Barrel and their gift shop (lol). Or a distribution store like Walmart. Think of the vast majority of businesses and websites. 99.9% of the successful ones probably do one thing only.

Ok so there's like a place with a list of backlinks you go on the site make a profile and you get a backlink. Should I get these ASSUMING the website Isn't relevant at all BUT it's not a SPAM site? Is this a waste of time
Most profile links are nofollow, and even the ones that aren't (like Pinterest wasn't back in the day, it might be nofollow now, I'm not sure), if they're good Google knows to ignore them. They've addressed this, specifically about Pinterest which is why I used them as an example.

The other challenge with profile links is that you need to get them crawled and hopefully indexed. Good luck these days.

Google ignores profiles possibly more than any other type of link in existence thanks to one of the oldest tools in SEO history: Xrumer. If you only knew how many millions of profiles per day were and are still being created.

The bottom line, disregarding the spam aspect, is that Google doesn't like user-submitted content. It's not to be trusted because it didn't go through an editorial process, it didn't have the hurdle and barrier of someone needing to operate a website, etc.

All of these types of links are okay to get and probably expected and healthy to a degree. But to waste too much time on them is just that, a waste. A spread of these, I think is probably good, then you move on and never think about it again.

If you want to build links, you need to think about the needle movers: dofollow relevantly-anchored text links in a relevant article. Past that, any contextual dofollow link is good, even if it's less relevant by anchor (brand anchor, URL) or article (tangentially related or not at all).
 
It could be that the keywords are more competitive. It could be that Google "honeymoon'd" those posts and didn't like the results on them while it did like the others. I see this happening much any more to be honest, it's usually more predictive now than actual honeymood periods.

Are you sure they're ranking for zero keywords? Like something like Ahrefs isn't picking up the pages for a single keyword, even at rank #40 on some long-tail? Because it's very normal for a page to rank okay then drop back and have to crawl back to the top. But essentially being blacklisted is a different thing. Are they indexed?

Yes, literally 0 keywords in Ahrefs. Page is indexed and appears in GSC's URL Inspection. I have some internal links pointing to it so I am not sure what could be the issue. This is the case with multiple pages.
 
Hey, I was wondering what's a solid quiz plugin you guys have reliably used. Like you know a personality quiz or something where you answer a few questions then hit submits and it spits out X Result based on which one you picked.

Another question, I created this quiz to acquire backlinks. Do I just wait for it to rank on Google or Where do you promote it??

Lastly, I was wondering those of you doing dropshipping, how do you find stores which make decent money in a particular niche? For example, if I wanted to find Shopify stores in the camping niche which let's say makes around 10k-100k. Mainly I am trying to acquire backlinks from them for a positive product review. I know there was some code you type in google with brackets or something to find shopify stores in a specific niche not sure what it is though.
 
What is your process to evaluate, if it's worth to invest in a link? Do you have certain metrics that you pay attention to?
 
What is your process to evaluate, if it's worth to invest in a link? Do you have certain metrics that you pay attention to?
For a guest post I typically look for DR (ahrefs domain rating), site organic traffic, referring domains, and TF (majestic trust flow). For a link insertion I would also consider UR (ahrefs url rating) of the specific page the link will go on and also backlinks to that page.
 
I don't do this, does this give like a good boost or good seo benefit? I use astra wp premium theme btw.
There are different types of schema offered to you there. If you use the wrong ones you can get a Schema Penalty. And good luck doing this for every page of a reasonably sized website.

Use something like Yoast SEO or RankMath and it'll automatically generate what you need and insert it globally across all pages. You'll get sitewide schema and per-page schema based on the types of blocks you use and what not. You'll have to fill in a little data for the sitewide schema, too, in the plugin's dashboard.
 
There are different types of schema offered to you there. If you use the wrong ones you can get a Schema Penalty. And good luck doing this for every page of a reasonably sized website.

Use something like Yoast SEO or RankMath and it'll automatically generate what you need and insert it globally across all pages. You'll get sitewide schema and per-page schema based on the types of blocks you use and what not. You'll have to fill in a little data for the sitewide schema, too, in the plugin's dashboard.
Hey if I have a jobs/career page on my website saying we would like to for these 3 positions. I have rankmath btw. Should I change that page's schema to job listing or just have it default to an article I think.

Also what schema type is a quiz? I basically have a quiz in rankmath which I have deindexed but I put it on a page so hopefully, that page ranks but the schema is set to Article for that page.
 
nvm about above.

Anyways random question, so I was watching authority hacker episode and I was wondering if anyone has experience with creating guest post farm websites?

I was wondering this because since I have like many failed websites with articles that have aged they don't bring in much traffic but can't I sell backlinks on them? Wouldn't it benefit the person who tries to buy a link on my site if their website is relevant and since my website isn't technically a guest post farm or have random spam, it's technically better than websites out there selling links right? Also, For something like this where would you recommend selling?
 
Question: I'm currently based in Southeast Asia and was looking to go to the Philippines next. Goal is (apart from having fun of course) to find writers and recruit them in person (to circumvent platform fees). How would you go about that?
 
Question: I'm currently based in Southeast Asia and was looking to go to the Philippines next. Goal is (apart from having fun of course) to find writers and recruit them in person (to circumvent platform fees). How would you go about that?
You could always meet people on Upwork before hand, or OnlineJobs.ph and all those. If you hire and work with some first, when you arrive you could offer to take them for a meal / meeting, and ask them if they have friends and family that they would trust to do the kind of work they do, because you want to grow your team and would love to meet everyone in person once, etc. Seems possible. Of course you could get there and advertise in any other way too (flyers, etc.) and let them come to your office. I feel like going from online to offline might weird people out. Many of us older people were trained that that's a barrier that shouldn't be crossed for safety reasons, in the early days of the net.

nvm about above.

Anyways random question, so I was watching authority hacker episode and I was wondering if anyone has experience with creating guest post farm websites?

I was wondering this because since I have like many failed websites with articles that have aged they don't bring in much traffic but can't I sell backlinks on them?
Based on what I recall from past conversations, your sites probably don't have the link metrics (Ahrefs DR, Moz DA, etc.) to be attractive or warrant the expense. Something to consider. You might be able to whore them out to casino link buyers, who tend to take anything they can get. Just know that once you sell on them, there's no cutting and running or ignoring the sites and letting them expire, etc. You'll have an obligation at that point to maintain them, lest you piss off the wrong person in the seedier niches.
 
Can't I pay someone on fiverr to make my DA 50 or some shit on Ahrefs & Moz? Then start selling links? Or
Maybe if I accept guest posting for free and get free content that ranks on Google and maybe make money that way? Is allowing free guest posts to get free low comp keyword content to rank on Google and build up my traffic a good idea or nah?

Also, so today I got a comment on my site saying if they would be interested in doing link exchange/guest posting since my blog is somewhat similar topic and stuff. And I am actually interested in doing this since it's somewhat related but, it seems to be a scraper site with 6000+ posts. Should I go through with this?

This got me thinking instead of doing email outreach or anything of that, can't I just literally go on random blogs in my niche and just comment that same exact comment? Is this a bad idea, would the success rate be low or what? Cause I was interested in this so I am assuming others would be as well yeah?
 
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