December Top Q/A Roundup
Today’s post is on some of the best questions in the last month. To start it and the new year off, “Link Juice. What do?”
Question #1
Link Juice. What do?
Links are one of the main ranking factors on Google. Link juice is the page authority that gets passed from one site to another site when it links to it. It's a signal of trust from one site to the other. The higher authority site/page, the more link juice that's passed. Relevance to your niche also matters here.
You should read up on the founding of Google’s algorithm of PageRank and citation analysis.
I suspect Google has also developed an algorithm similar to SimRank to measure the relevance of pages linking to each other.
If you really want to nerd out, look at how graph theory works.
Question #2
My question and concern at the moment is, due to web3 is growing, what do you think of about having affiliate site in future (3-5 years term), why I ask this, I really want to have a long term view and effort into this business.
That's an understandable concern. Let me address some of the ways I *think* it's going to play out.
1. Technological change doesn't happen over night. VR hardware has been commercialized for over a decade (decade*s* for government) and it's yet to go real mainstream yet. It will but it will take longer than most people think. Another example is driverless cars. By this point, I expected we'd be at the point that I could just stop driving all together. It's coming but not as fast as we all want.
I imagine what will happen as we transition into Web 3.0 is that there will be a way to transition 2.0 websites into 3.0 websites similarly as to how we change hosting. This doesn't exist yet but there's no way that millions of websites just vanish and we have to start at 0 again with all of the content that's on the web.
2. Google or another competitor will have a 3.0 search engine. The web needs indexed and to be easily searchable for the masses. To think that the history of domains, links, authority, etc. just goes away and start fresh again is very unlikely.
3. In any venture, you should be building a brand. So even if the above two assumptions are incorrect, you still have the tangible brand to launch you into 3.0.
4. The affiliate relationship model is not going away any time soon. Businesses still need to be discovered and marketed. So even with 1-2 above wrong, you can fall back on 3 above to continue the business relationship.
Question #3
Now that I'm getting more active on building my site I'm seeing a trend in super lengthy product reviews as on the healthy body. Why are they so long? Is it for maximum use of key words for SEO?
There's some debate in the SEO community on this. One side is write to the intent of the keyword and the other side is write past the intent of the keyword. The view on why you should write much longer posts boils down to "Google is stupid".
As smart as algorithms are, they aren't quite to the point where they can figure out the exact intent and answer of a query. If they could, Google would just present the answer on it's own. You see this happening with some search queries. IE - Featured Snippets
Essentially what you're trying to do is trick Google's algorithm into thinking you solved the searcher's intent and covered the topic more fully by writing a longer post separated by strategic headers.
I don't have confirmation from Google, but my experience tells me longer posts work better if they're structured as a semantic tree. See semantic networks and graph theory above.
At a basic, non-theoretical level, I *think* Google's algorithm views this laddering of information more favorably due to it being structured with headers (easier for the algo to understand) and seems like it covers the topic more since all of the points ladder to the main searchers intent.
Question #4
I don't understand why in your opinion there is a lack of content and that the page is not targeted? I carefully selected target words for each of these articles that would be suitable for my target group [redacted target group].
Before writing *any* article that’s not a newsletter… You should decide what you’re trying to rank for. What do you expect users to type into Google to land on your page. IE - the searcher’s intent. You should then Google that term yourself and see what Google thinks the searcher’s intent is.
You should then analyze the SERPs and see if there’s any way you can be competitive and rank for the KW. If the results are full of Healthline, WebMD, and the CDC answering the query completely… Good luck. You’re wasting your time.
If on the other hand, it’s Quora, Reddit, or low quality websites, then you’re good to go. Having a tool that shows you competitiveness of KW is crucial here to keep you from analyzing the SERPs of hundreds of KWs. My favorite way to do this is to do a KW analysis on low quality sites or Quora to see what you can rank for.
The process is the exact opposite that most newbies take. They pick a topic/keyword then see whether they can rank for it. You should be finding a list of KW that you can rank for and deciding what from that list you can/want to write about.
Now. Getting to the point of lack of content. 12 articles does not make your website an authority on the topic. Google barely even notices you at that point. If at all. Especially with very little links. Quote from a Reddit discussion with John Mueller below.
It's really hard to call a site authoritative after 30 articles, and especially if you've stopped publishing for a while, I can see how Google might be a bit more conservative with regards to indexing more. Over time, as we see that your site is more than just "30 ok posts", and instead something we're keen on sending as many users to as possible, then indexing will pick up. This isn't something you can push through technical means though, it's not the button-push before indexing that makes your site by far the best of its kind.
Question #5
What niche should I go in to bro?
Ok. Well maybe it wasn’t phrased that way. I get this question constantly, phrased in a 100 different way. The problem is, I don’t know your skillset, knowledge, or interests.
There are obviously more competitive niches and less competitive niches.
There’s also tens or hundreds of thousands of niches and different angles to play the niche.
There’s also reasons to why some niches are less competitive. Less money to be made in the niche, more specialized knowledge needed, longer timeline to monetize, YMYL (more difficult to rank), etc. There’s no way to quantify the entire ecosystem and give you the best niche to succeed in.
I could tell you whether a specific niche is competitive or not. How much demand is in that niche, commission structure, etc. That’s about it though.
So here’s what I advice you to do.
Write down every possible idea that you have. Throw it on paper. No matter how stupid. Get it down. It’s a brainstorming session.
Start looking at the competition of the niches and filter the ones that you’re never going to win in with your planned acquisition channels. From an SEO perspective, as an example, take health and supplements off the table unless you really know what you’re doing. You will get crushed if you don’t know how to build backlinks or do really good keyword research. From a paid ads perspective, start calculating your CAC (customer acquisition cost) needed to make it work and work backwards through public CPC (cost per click) data.
Start looking at affiliate commissions in the industry or margin profiles of products. When I say affiliate commissions and margin profile, I also mean CTR, shipping costs, etc.
The above won’t get you the exact idea you should do. BUT. If you get 20+ ideas from step one and do the research in step 2-3, you should be able to narrow it down to 2-3 ideas of what you want to start. If not, you have an indecision/commitment problem.
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Really like the answer to the last question.
Good stuff. When is next Q&A?