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

[CCarter]

What Metrics do I need to look out for in order to properly set-up my an Authority site?

Revenue versus costs.

and what specific figures/numbers should I target as a startup?

Make sure your revenue is significantly more than your costs. The difference is your profit.

 

[freshpeppermint]

I'm not sure how you'd manage to write 10-30 articles about a single product. You can write "best x for y" posts and recommend the product as an option in each post (where relevant), but this is the only way this would make sense. Writing the same posts and targeting the same keyword(s) over and over will just lead to issues and lots of wasted time.


Some people do. Although, the consensus nowadays is that many ClickBank products look spammy and are morally/ethically grey. If you can find good products to recommend then go for it. Just keep in mind, there's no point in directing people to a sales page for a ClickBank product that converts at 0.001%.

Just info articles where you'd recommend that product for example: What to do when it's raining outside? (I use this umbrella) Umbrella Review, Best Umbras Under X, What to do when you go to a country with a lot of rain? (recommend umbrella), Another Brand Umbrella Review -> recommend your brand Umbrella.
Or
Say you have a website where it's making money online, you talk about how to set up ezoic ads and you can say hey this is what I make and this is the course I took. You can do like tons of articles like this, how to pick the right affiliate programs and near the bottom you'd say "I make this much and this is the course I took". Ideally, you'd link to the course review so it's higher converting and your course review page gets more traffic so google would probably rank you higher.

I also was wondering which approach should I do? (I already bought 50 articles or something yesturday but for the future) Which one of these approaches is best in your opinion?
1. Find 1-2 solid products and do the approach I sort of described above. You keep repeating it with products in your niche.
2. 70% info and 30% affiliate content like JamaicanMoose who makes 20k per month here said he does.
3. 60-70% affiliate and 30% info - Assuming the competition is low enough just write affiliate content and write like 30% info. JamaicanMoose also mentioned that he mostly made his money from affiliate content so like reviews/best of posts so, would this be good idea? Although Ryozaki said in one post that sites with just commercial content will get hit by google. My question is what if it had like 30% info articles though?? Would that be hit?

(ALL this is assuming keyword research is QUALITY on all meaning low comp on articles even review and best of articles. Also we are assuming they all have strong interlinking and relevancy.)

Also, so on one of my sites, I recommend a few products, and amazon it's showing like 40-50 clicks but no sales for a long time. But on my other site I got like 2-3 clicks and got a sale on Amazon (it refunded later but you get the point i am saying). This makes me think that you can't really sell that well on info articles. Although depends if it's pain point-based or just a product that might help you in your life which is kinda related.

 

[DanielS]

Just info articles where you'd recommend that product for example: What to do when it's raining outside? (I use this umbrella) Umbrella Review, Best Umbras Under X, What to do when you go to a country with a lot of rain? (recommend umbrella), Another Brand Umbrella Review -> recommend your brand Umbrella.

Recommending products in info articles is what many people have transitioned to doing from typical review-style posts. So, sure, feel free to recommend a product in info articles when it can be done naturally (or link to a dedicated review post for the recommended product).

Say you have a website where it's making money online, you talk about how to set up ezoic ads and you can say hey this is what I make and this is the course I took. You can do like tons of articles like this, how to pick the right affiliate programs and near the bottom you'd say "I make this much and this is the course I took". Ideally, you'd link to the course review so it's higher converting and your course review page gets more traffic so google would probably rank you higher.

I can't help but think of a dog waiting by the side of the dinner table in anticipation of crumbs when I see this strategy. This strategy reminds me so much of those people who launch jack WSOs and write reviews on products before they're released in hopes of getting an affiliate sale.

If you aren't making a decent amount of money online, don't try to teach other people how to make money online- this has always been my personal stance on this. Just do things legitimately so you don't put work into projects that will crash and burn.

I also was wondering which approach should I do? (I already bought 50 articles or something yesturday but for the future) Which one of these approaches is best in your opinion?
1. Find 1-2 solid products and do the approach I sort of described above. You keep repeating it with products in your niche.
2. 70% info and 30% affiliate content like JamaicanMoose who makes 20k per month here said he does.
3. 60-70% affiliate and 30% info - Assuming the competition is low enough just write affiliate content and write like 30% info. JamaicanMoose also mentioned that he mostly made his money from affiliate content so like reviews/best of posts so, would this be good idea? Although Ryozaki said in one post that sites with just commercial content will get hit by google. My question is what if it had like 30% info articles though?? Would that be hit?

I'd do a combination of #1 and #2. Use the 70/30 ratio for your content strategy and link to affiliate products or dedicated affiliate product review posts in info content naturally.

Also, so on one of my sites, I recommend a few products, and amazon it's showing like 40-50 clicks but no sales for a long time. But on my other site I got like 2-3 clicks and got a sale on Amazon (it refunded later but you get the point i am saying). This makes me think that you can't really sell that well on info articles. Although depends if it's pain point-based or just a product that might help you in your life which is kinda related.

Something important to remember is that every visitor has an intent when they visit your website. A visitor to a review-style post is typically closer to the buying process (bottom of the funnel) than a visitor to an informational post. Naturally, clicks from visitors further along the buying process will result in sales more often (especially because posts targeting these individuals often have a buyer-centric intent) than those who are closer to the top of the funnel just looking for information.

 

[angeleyes]

I have been reading it is best to stay away from YMYL niches because of the increased difficulty in terms of ranking in the SERPS without having any credentials etc.

What about using an expired domain in a health niche? One with some decent backlinks and DR. Wondering if anyone has experience here. Thanks

 

[freshpeppermint]

Recommending products in info articles is what many people have transitioned to doing from typical review-style posts. So, sure, feel free to recommend a product in info articles when it can be done naturally (or link to a dedicated review post for the recommended product).


I can't help but think of a dog waiting by the side of the dinner table in anticipation of crumbs when I see this strategy. This strategy reminds me so much of those people who launch jack WSOs and write reviews on products before they're released in hopes of getting an affiliate sale.

If you aren't making a decent amount of money online, don't try to teach other people how to make money online- this has always been my personal stance on this. Just do things legitimately so you don't put work into projects that will crash and burn.


I'd do a combination of #1 and #2. Use the 70/30 ratio for your content strategy and link to affiliate products or dedicated affiliate product review posts in info content naturally.


Something important to remember is that every visitor has an intent when they visit your website. A visitor to a review-style post is typically closer to the buying process (bottom of the funnel) than a visitor to an informational post. Naturally, clicks from visitors further along the buying process will result in sales more often (especially because posts targeting these individuals often have a buyer-centric intent) than those who are closer to the top of the funnel just looking for information.

I learned the hardway on that. But what do you think on the fact that if you did that crash and burn, you'd be making way more than the guys who did like an evergreen niche but they make way less money. BUT you use this money that you make from burn thing to buy a TON of articles, wouldn't you get ahead in the long run? (Just something I was wondering)

BUT I wonder this, let's say I find really good keywords for X product and I do an X review and like NO reviews or 1 review is written on Google. If this is the case why don't I just make a site wiwth full affiliate content and just forget about Info articles? (AGain ASSUME I could do 50-100+ articles with 0 to really low comp) CAN Google hit your website? Is it possible?

Also how many sites you own? How are they doing??

 

[CCarter]

Is it possible?

"Action breeds confidence and courage. Inaction breeds doubt and fear" – Dale Carnegie

"Everything you want is on the other side of fear."​

 

[DanielS]

BUT I wonder this, let's say I find really good keywords for X product and I do an X review and like NO reviews or 1 review is written on Google. If this is the case why don't I just make a site wiwth full affiliate content and just forget about Info articles? (AGain ASSUME I could do 50-100+ articles with 0 to really low comp) CAN Google hit your website? Is it possible?

Google wants to serve content to users from websites that provide value- not websites trying to make money (there's a difference). If you load up a website with 100% affiliate content, Google will slap your website down. Do some research into the December 2021 Google Product Review Update- websites lost 80% of their traffic overnight because they didn't create enough informational content (among other things).

I learned the hardway on that. But what do you think on the fact that if you did that crash and burn, you'd be making way more than the guys who did like an evergreen niche but they make way less money. BUT you use this money that you make from burn thing to buy a TON of articles, wouldn't you get ahead in the long run? (Just something I was wondering)

I wouldn't recommend putting yourself in the position of having to start a new project every 3-6 months. When you do this, you don't start from 0 when a new project begins, you start from below 0.

Also, Google is heavily time oriented. Starting a new website every 6 months is not something you want to do if you want to gain organic traffic via Google. If you're traffic leaking or using paid ads to direct visitors to your website, however, that's different. But, it doesn't sound like this is what you want to do.

You need to create articles for yourself so you can understand the process and what to expect. Everything (for the most part) "clicked" for me when articles I wrote started ranking in Google and getting organic traffic.

Find low competition keywords, write, publish. That's it, that's the process. There are no secrets, just best practices. As you perform the process more, you learn. I'm a prime example of this. If I started a new website now, I'd have it where my case study website is at currently in half the time or less.

 

[hiruma]

My website is at a point where I'm constantly getting a lot of weird links every day. How do I know if the links pointing to my site should be disavowed? How do I know if the links pointing to me are a PBNs that could potentially do damage to my site?

Which of these links should I even bother to disavow:

- .blogspot.com subdomain links
- wikipedia copy? links
- reddit copy? links
- www.domain.com/yqz5bh5(random text)/example-url.html links

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

I have been reading it is best to stay away from YMYL niches because of the increased difficulty in terms of ranking in the SERPS without having any credentials etc.

What about using an expired domain in a health niche? One with some decent backlinks and DR. Wondering if anyone has experience here. Thanks

It'll help, but you're still in a YMYL niche.

My website is at a point where I'm constantly getting a lot of weird links every day. How do I know if the links pointing to my site should be disavowed? How do I know if the links pointing to me are a PBNs that could potentially do damage to my site?

Which of these links should I even bother to disavow:

- .blogspot.com subdomain links
- wikipedia copy? links
- reddit copy? links
- www.domain.com/yqz5bh5(random text)/example-url.html links

Looked into this a ton myself. The overwhelming advice is that Google can handle it and not to worry about it. All those styles of links are standard. Keep your focus on what matters.

 

[stoat]

Is it a bad idea to reorganize the navigation bar (main menu)? I made the mistake of adding too many items but I'm afraid removing them would confuse search engines.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Is it a bad idea to reorganize the navigation bar (main menu)? I made the mistake of adding too many items but I'm afraid removing them would confuse search engines.

It would be totally fine. Google can do a lot more complex stuff than understand what's in your top menu or not. They'll adapt, reflow the page rank, recalculate which pages YOU think are the most important based on their inclusion in your menu, and everything will carry on like normal. It's a change you may not even notice taking place.

 

[Jesse]

I don't know a way to ask this that isn't going to probably offend someone, but here we go.

Do dumb people open ads more often? Like if we were targeting a niche or industry that was more dense in dumb people, does that just inherently get a CTR boost with all else being equal?

I assume dumb people are less likely to have an ad blocker at the very least.

This doesn't really affect anything directly for me or whatever, but it's got me curious.

 

[hiruma]

Can I link back to my other website using the about section or will it cause some kind of penalty? Say I have a fish website and a dog website, can I put a link to the about page of my dog website saying they should check out my fish website?

 

[Boy]

I don't know a way to ask this that isn't going to probably offend someone, but here we go.

Do dumb people open ads more often? Like if we were targeting a niche or industry that was more dense in dumb people, does that just inherently get a CTR boost with all else being equal?

I assume dumb people are less likely to have an ad blocker at the very least.

This doesn't really affect anything directly for me or whatever, but it's got me curious.

It's less about being dumb and more about not being internet savvy/an internet power user. Even the most intelligent and logical people click ads, get lost in VSLs, accept the first result of Google as the truth, think the email with their name in it was sent 1-on-1, etc. They're just unaware of what's happening behind the scenes, and you're hyperaware.

 

[larcha]

Can I link back to my other website using the about section or will it cause some kind of penalty? Say I have a fish website and a dog website, can I put a link to the about page of my dog website saying they should check out my fish website?

I don't think this will cause any issue, especially if it is just one link compared to your entire backlink profile for the site. Probably safe to just use your site name as the anchor text. But, I don't think it is worth linking your fish website back to the dog website referencing the same article/page.

The other part to it is how much juice & relevancy does this link benefit you? Does Google really care that much about a dog site linking with a fish site? It would make more sense if they were the same or a similar niche. It just may not move the needle as much.

 

[Jesse]

Just looking for a quick check on how I'm approaching guest posts and if anything I'm doing here is just flat out wrong or needs rethinking.

1. I use w/e footprints to get a raw list of opportunities.
2. I check the DA to see if it's at least 30.
3. I check the requirements for guest posting on that site to see if it'll be a pain. I prefer if I can just send them something written and get a yes/no.
4. Write them, send them off, etc.

I realize that I could go after other ones that are more involved, but I'm reserving that for later on. Right now, I'm just trying to bang out what I can on my own within a reasonable amount of time.

 

[JamaicanMoose]

Just looking for a quick check on how I'm approaching guest posts and if anything I'm doing here is just flat out wrong or needs rethinking.

1. I use w/e footprints to get a raw list of opportunities.
2. I check the DA to see if it's at least 30.
3. I check the requirements for guest posting on that site to see if it'll be a pain. I prefer if I can just send them something written and get a yes/no.
4. Write them, send them off, etc.

I realize that I could go after other ones that are more involved, but I'm reserving that for later on. Right now, I'm just trying to bang out what I can on my own within a reasonable amount of time.

It's a bit more work, but I would drop the DA/DR down to like 10/15. You can grab links on some legitimate, growing sites that are still in their infancy. Those sites can then eventually turn into DA/DR30+. But like, hire a VA or two and have them do all of this for you if you're not already.

 

[Jesse]

You can grab links on some legitimate, growing sites that are still in their infancy.

Good point. I've been logging them all that I've been checking just in case.

But like, hire a VA or two and have them do all of this for you if you're not already.

I definitely will, but I wanted to figure the process out and do some of them myself so that I have an idea of what's going on with it. I'll be writing the first few myself, etc.

Once again, I appreciate the help.

 

[hiruma]

I just found out that someone is copying my post and posting it on their site in a different language.

Can I do something about this or even bother doing something? If so, how do you usually deal with this?

 

[freshpeppermint]

OK I have a question so I was talking with some people about niche sites and stuff and 2 things happened.

One was they said best x for y keywords after dec update you won't rank for it. For example: Best Screwdriver For Electricians. The Best ScrewDrivers will all dominate through the whole google page. BUt mines more relevant and there's no comp, I still won't be able to rank for this right? Let's assume I cant rank for this. ( I bought a lot of these articles for my sites.)

Another thing was someone mentioned how Jon Dykstra was planning on creating a brand through his niche sites.

I just feel like I am going backwards for some reason, like it seems to be going at a pace that is much faster than I am at. So, even though I catchup and learn proper keyword research, article formatting and adding images/multimedia there's seems to be more and more stuff I seem to need to learn. But, this time I am not just "doing" it because by doing it wrong you end up losing a ton of time and money. Doing it NOT wrong (me at the moment) pays off but, the most money is doing it right which seems to pay off greatly.
So how do I avoid mistakes like this one where I bought a bunch of best x for y articles because their specific/relevant querries have no competition. This makes me realize I could be doing a WHOLE bunch of things wrong and NOT know it. Is this something I could prevent? Because in the last few months the amount of knowledge I learned is crazy to me compared to what I knew way back doing things wrong for years. In fact, I implemented it and one of my sites gets like 40-45 sessions per day compared to my 4 or 5 year old site with slightly more articles.

 

[Jesse]

Looking for a quick check on how I'm handling blog commenting. I feel like there's more room to squeeze value out of what I'm doing here, but I just don't know enough about this stuff yet to see it.

Disclaimer: I realize that a lot of this could be outsourced. I'm learning how it works and working out a system before I do that by doing it myself for a bit.

1. Use footprints to get a raw list.
2. Throw up a manual comment, 3-5 sentences, include my "face of my site" name, url, dedicated email address for this blog commenting stuff.
3. Wait a week to give them time for approval.
4. Check to see which ones approved and if the link was dofollow. Put all of the dofollow links in a separate list to go into an RSS feed to comment on later.
5. For all of the nofollow, check to see if I was responded to by the author. If so, put them in a separate sheet of potential outreach opportunities.
6. Go through that list of outreach opportunities, gather contact information, look over their social media for intel I can take some quick notes on that I can use to craft a better solicitation.
7. For each outreach opportunity, contact via email, IG, comment reply or however else I can get ahold of them for something like one of these:
   • Hey Person! We spoke briefly I love your work and blah blah and your post about blah blah and so on and you're so great. I'd love to interview you via email for my own site. If you're interested, just reply back with answers to these questions and links to any social media or projects you have going on. Don't worry about the formatting, I'll handle all of that, and I'll let you know when I have it published! (banking on them linking back to it and sharing it)
   • Hey Person! I've gotten hooked on your site and have been reading for the past hour and a half. I really need to get up and get back to what I was doing, but I thought I'd reach out and ask what you would think about me writing a post for your site about X. I think your readers would enjoy it because of Y, but if you're not interested, then no worries! (banking on including a link somewhere in it or at least treating it like a guest post bio)

I'm going back and reading through the outreach section of the DSCC to try to figure out more options with step 7 here.

Thanks.

 

[Ryuzaki]

OK I have a question so I was talking with some people about niche sites and stuff and 2 things happened.

One was they said best x for y keywords after dec update you won't rank for it. For example: Best Screwdriver For Electricians. The Best ScrewDrivers will all dominate through the whole google page. BUt mines more relevant and there's no comp, I still won't be able to rank for this right? Let's assume I cant rank for this. ( I bought a lot of these articles for my sites.)

Another thing was someone mentioned how Jon Dykstra was planning on creating a brand through his niche sites.

I just feel like I am going backwards for some reason, like it seems to be going at a pace that is much faster than I am at. So, even though I catchup and learn proper keyword research, article formatting and adding images/multimedia there's seems to be more and more stuff I seem to need to learn. But, this time I am not just "doing" it because by doing it wrong you end up losing a ton of time and money. Doing it NOT wrong (me at the moment) pays off but, the most money is doing it right which seems to pay off greatly.
So how do I avoid mistakes like this one where I bought a bunch of best x for y articles because their specific/relevant querries have no competition. This makes me realize I could be doing a WHOLE bunch of things wrong and NOT know it. Is this something I could prevent? Because in the last few months the amount of knowledge I learned is crazy to me compared to what I knew way back doing things wrong for years. In fact, I implemented it and one of my sites gets like 40-45 sessions per day compared to my 4 or 5 year old site with slightly more articles.

You need to stop believing every thing you hear and read, including from here, and get more experience. All the Best X for Y content you bought should be published and worked on and you'll have an actual answer you can trust, and not one you got from hearsay or misinterpreted data or guesswork or intuition. In my opinion you're having trouble dealing with all of the information you're constantly seeking out because you're dealing in too much theoretics.

Once you have more real life, personal experience you'll be able to detect what is or isn't nonsense when you're out soaking up info. But right now everything is doomsday or validation and nothing in between because you don't know better. Figure out the fundamentals, stick to them, and you'll win.

 

[courage99]

Hi folks. First of all, thank you for all the amazing information that we can get for free here.

I have a couple of questions... Should I bother editing the snippets in my articles? I was doing that but Google seems to show whatever they want there based on the user query...

The other one is: does it affect my rankings if I keep updating my already published posts with minor details?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Sutra]

Just discovered that some of the internal links on our site have a meta charset="utf-8" tag. Think this was due to copying the text from elsewhere on the page and then using that text to paste the info for the link.

On the front-end of the site the text and link look like this:

Check this out: Big Red Widgets for Widget Collectors

However, when viewing the page source the code looks like this:

<p><strong>Check this out:</strong><br><a href="https://domain.com/red-widgets/" data-type="post" data-id="123">Big Red Widgets for <meta charset="utf-8">Widget Collectors</a></p>

Even with that meta charset="utf-8" tag in the middle of the anchor text, will Google know that the anchor text is actually "Big Red Widgets for Widget Collectors"?

 

[freshpeppermint]

You need to stop believing every thing you hear and read, including from here, and get more experience. All the Best X for Y content you bought should be published and worked on and you'll have an actual answer you can trust, and not one you got from hearsay or misinterpreted data or guesswork or intuition. In my opinion you're having trouble dealing with all of the information you're constantly seeking out because you're dealing in too much theoretics.

Once you have more real life, personal experience you'll be able to detect what is or isn't nonsense when you're out soaking up info. But right now everything is doomsday or validation and nothing in between because you don't know better. Figure out the fundamentals, stick to them, and you'll win.

hmm makes sense but, don't you think if I just listen to let's say someone like yourself who's an expert and knows what he's talking about, I would get much further?

This would save more of my money and speed up my progress right?

I am still going to do whatever I bought from my writers and put it on my site but this was more for future cases, if it's situational I can just avoid buying that type for next time.