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

[thisishatred]

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?

Because you're shoving pagerank right down the throat of the page you want to rank as apposed to sending links to other pages where-in pagerank might be diluted.

Also you're making some gross assumptions with regards to how "most" people do backlinking.

People do run links to pages with stats/link bait - I'm doing it right now and I'd wager to say others do it to. If anything these pages become necessary because sending links directly at a target page often isn't possible as most Webmasters don't like linking to heavily monetized pages - like "reviews" or "best" style content; They'd much rather send a link to something informational.

In my opinion, you should be sending links all over your site, not 100 to "best xyz."

 

[atlanteanmerchant]

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.


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.

They don't see it as unreadable in terms of render-ability. Rather they flag it as hard to read for users in Search Console, see here for further reading: https://dev.to/vinodsys/google-search-console-text-too-small-to-read-error-bb0

 

[Ryuzaki]

They don't see it as unreadable in terms of render-ability. Rather they flag it as hard to read for users in Search Console, see here for further reading: https://dev.to/vinodsys/google-search-console-text-too-small-to-read-error-bb0

True, I totally forgot about the Mobile Friendly Test. I forgot about it because it's broken to hell and rarely renders pages correctly. I've never seen it complain on websites with paragraph font sizes of even 12px on mobile. The only time it freaks out is when it fails to load the CSS and JS files, in which case it should fall back to the default browser font sizes, which is 16px, in which case it shouldn't moan about "text too small" but it does.

A real life example is this very forum, where the main font size is 15px, and we've never once received the "text too small" message.

To summarize, it doesn't complain when the font size is too small, and does when it isn't. After what's been at least 6 years of this broken behavior, with Google acknowledging it and having not fixed it, I eventually pushed it out of my mind. It's broken in Search Console too. They don't care, so I don't care. I defaulted my font size to 18px in my own custom theme and quit thinking about it. Good reminder though for sure, thanks.

 

[atlanteanmerchant]

True, I totally forgot about the Mobile Friendly Test. I forgot about it because it's broken to hell and rarely renders pages correctly. I've never seen it complain on websites with paragraph font sizes of even 12px on mobile. The only time it freaks out is when it fails to load the CSS and JS files, in which case it should fall back to the default browser font sizes, which is 16px, in which case it shouldn't moan about "text too small" but it does.

A real life example is this very forum, where the main font size is 15px, and we've never once received the "text too small" message.

To summarize, it doesn't complain when the font size is too small, and does when it isn't. After what's been at least 6 years of this broken behavior, with Google acknowledging it and having not fixed it, I eventually pushed it out of my mind. It's broken in Search Console too. They don't care, so I don't care. I defaulted my font size to 18px in my own custom theme and quit thinking about it. Good reminder though for sure, thanks.

Haha! Completely agree it's broken, every time I actually see it failing is as you say when JS/CSS fails to load. Was just pointing out that's the "guidelines" we've been given by Google in terms of font-sizes overall.

 

[bernard]

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?

Because it's most difficult to get links to your money pages. Info content can attract (some) links on their own. Affiliate keywords are also typically much more competitive.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Hey, I was looking past a few of my sites that made some money a few years ago. And I realized most were reviews, they got traffic, made money and the traffic slowly went away because the product wasn't evergreen.

For those who do affiliate, what do you do in this type of case?

I was also wondering with the avalanche technique, if you write about easy to rank for informational topics, it will build up traffic but, what if those articles don't naturally attract backlinks? I am looking at a lot of my competitors, on ahrefs backlink explorer, most of their "statistics" articles are the ones that get a lot of links. So, why not start with those (of course for low comp) rather than just any low comp article?

And let's say you write many reviews or info articles regarding specific products and you start getting more and more traffic, when those products' hype dies down, are you still considered at the specific level you were at before?

 

[misterkel]

I'm looking for a keyword finder tool that's free / lowcost without any search limits and gives enough output to do a basic KGR. Basically, some measure of ranking difficulty and unlimited output of keywords.
Does that exist?

 

[misterkel]

I'm looking for a keyword finder tool that's free / lowcost without any search limits and gives enough output to do a basic KGR. Basically, some measure of ranking difficulty and unlimited output of keywords.
Does that exist?

fyi - Keywords Everywhere looks pretty good. Enough metrics for most CM's, $15 for 100k keywords, entry level.

 

[misterkel]

Next dumb question. on interlinking:
is it better to build a web of links throughout the site, linking where it makes the most sense OR
to always create inbound links to target pages, juicing those pages?
OR a mix?

 

[DanielS]

Hey, I was looking past a few of my sites that made some money a few years ago. And I realized most were reviews, they got traffic, made money and the traffic slowly went away because the product wasn't evergreen.

For those who do affiliate, what do you do in this type of case?

I was also wondering with the avalanche technique, if you write about easy to rank for informational topics, it will build up traffic but, what if those articles don't naturally attract backlinks? I am looking at a lot of my competitors, on ahrefs backlink explorer, most of their "statistics" articles are the ones that get a lot of links. So, why not start with those (of course for low comp) rather than just any low comp article?

And let's say you write many reviews or info articles regarding specific products and you start getting more and more traffic, when those products' hype dies down, are you still considered at the specific level you were at before?

You're kind of compartmentalizing things.

If traffic drops because a product isn't evergreen, you either publish more content on new products or you adjust your strategy to be more evergreen.

Also, regarding the low volume informational articles, what's wrong with getting more traffic? Don't you have display ads running on your site? On my old site, I had articles targeting keywords with under 50 monthly searches attract links. Why? They were the only articles that actually addressed the queries in detail.

The answer to all your questions is: You need to do it all. You need to write reviews. You need to write informational articles. You need to be creating "linkbait" type articles with statistics, etc.

Use the Avalanche strategy as a general guideline, but don't get stuck in a rigid mindset with regards to the tiers. Everything works on a delay. Write 30 articles in every tier, starting with the lowest tier.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Next dumb question. on interlinking:
is it better to build a web of links throughout the site, linking where it makes the most sense OR
to always create inbound links to target pages, juicing those pages?
OR a mix?

Definitely a mix. You want to spread the love around so every page can serve it's purpose, while also giving your "special" pages a chance to make a run at the money. In a false dichotomy / either-or situation, the middle path is usually the right one!

 

[Qwe1]

A newbie question here.
Is there an advantage or disadvantage of hosting your domain with the same domain registrar?

 

[misterkel]

A newbie question here.
Is there an advantage or disadvantage of hosting your domain with the same domain registrar?

I wish that made sense for me, because I like to have stuff in one place. But the registrar I used (Cloudflare, I think) didn't host. I also went with a best fit host who didn't offer registrar services.
C'est la vie.

 

[Bob_the_Builder]

When would you invest in a tool like Semrush/Ahrefs? $100/mo, $500/mo, $1000/mo?

I'm about to subscribe to Semrush. I believe it's better for non-us websites. Also, I realy dislike the credits model from Ahrefs.

Any thoughts about this?

 

[DanielS]

When would you invest in a tool like Semrush/Ahrefs? $100/mo, $500/mo, $1000/mo?

I'm about to subscribe to Semrush. I believe it's better for non-us websites. Also, I realy dislike the credits model from Ahrefs.

Any thoughts about this?

The objective should be to perform the best quality keyword research right from the start. Of course, there's a learning curve, but if these tools are helpful in assisting you they're worth the purchase. The last thing you want to do is devote 50,000 words to poor target keywords.

 

[Bob_the_Builder]

The objective should be to perform the best quality keyword research right from the start. Of course, there's a learning curve, but if these tools are helpful in assisting you they're worth the purchase. The last thing you want to do is devote 50,000 words to poor target keywords.

Thanks! I'm running out of keywords I can find for free.
I guess I'm trying to justify the costs because this project has been very low cost until now.
You are right, if I can find value in these tools, I should buy them.

 

[Bob_the_Builder]

Another newbie question. It's about image file names.
I optimized ALT tags about a year ago, so that they describe the image well (no keyword stuffing).

Now I read something on this forum about image file names. Should they be optimized too?

I can understand that ALT tags have to be optimized because of usability, but this isn't (as much) the case with file names.

 

[MrMedia]

I’ve applied @CCarter ’s avalanche technique on 6 different sites for the past 16 months, and 5 of them are now on Mediavine, the 6th site is eligible within 30 days. I’m doing 5 figures/month now. My biggest site will be sold for about $250.000 within 3 weeks.

Before starting my SEO journey, I was on welfare for 10 years with no future ahead of me.

I never thought I would accomplish anything in life. Now, I actually believe in myself. I have confidence in myself.

To top that, I found the love of my life and got married! I think my success helped me Come out of my shell!

I’ve never been this happy, and if you’d told me 2 years ago all of this would happen, I would probably not have believed it.

Thank you guys for posting such helpful threads over the years. I haven’t been active posting, but I’ve been reading and busy grinding!

Love to hear this. Consider taking some profits off the table by selling sooner rather than later.

 

[Tarzan]

Love to hear this. Consider taking some profits off the table by selling sooner rather than later.

It’s still hard to believe today. I still remember not having ANY money at the end of every month. Now I actually have savings?!?!

Your threads inspired me so much, @MrMedia - I really appreciate it!

But to answer your reply, are you referring to selling more of my sites rather than just the one?

I have thought about selling my 2nd biggest site as well, and I probably will.

Perhaps this is a little off-topic… but are you afraid of SGE and its impact on organic traffic? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The reason I ask is, this business model saved my life. I would just love to continue doing this for another 5-10 years and save enough money to retire basically.

 

[MrMedia]

It’s still hard to believe today. I still remember not having ANY money at the end of every month. Now I actually have savings?!?!

Your threads inspired me so much, @MrMedia - I really appreciate it!

But to answer your reply, are you referring to selling more of my sites rather than just the one?

I have thought about selling my 2nd biggest site as well, and I probably will.

Perhaps this is a little off-topic… but are you afraid of SGE and its impact on organic traffic? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The reason I ask is, this business model saved my life. I would just love to continue doing this for another 5-10 years and save enough money to retire basically.

I’m not concerned no.

The reason I suggest locking in profits by selling at least one of your sites is that it will give you a fund to start again with if shit hits the fan.

It can and does happen all the time so having a fund in place gives you added resilience to future shocks.

It also gives you extra confidence in new opportunities. Eg. I sold my first batch for 7 figs and then spent around 400k on buying an existing site.

I never could have done that if I didn’t cash out. In addition to that site I had a large fund of cash that I could invest and keep to sleep easy at night.

I’m now in the process of selling that site for multiple 7 figures.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Hey so I noticed I add certain things to certain articles they seem to start ranking. This tells me if I am not hitting search intent properly.

Is there a better way to have outlines that I can use to cover search intent thoroughly than just looking at PAA? A lot of PAA's have separate articles for.

 

[Tarzan]

I’m not concerned no.

The reason I suggest locking in profits by selling at least one of your sites is that it will give you a fund to start again with if shit hits the fan.

It can and does happen all the time so having a fund in place gives you added resilience to future shocks.

It also gives you extra confidence in new opportunities. Eg. I sold my first batch for 7 figs and then spent around 400k on buying an existing site.

I never could have done that if I didn’t cash out. In addition to that site I had a large fund of cash that I could invest and keep to sleep easy at night.

I’m now in the process of selling that site for multiple 7 figures.

Really appreciate the info! I will most definitely use some funds for my new site - I’m thinking linkbuilding should be something I put way more focus and money into from now on.

 

[JanisG]

Hey, I was looking past a few of my sites that made some money a few years ago. And I realized most were reviews, they got traffic, made money and the traffic slowly went away because the product wasn't evergreen.

I published several reviews of products that were relaunched with the new model names and a few minor spec changes every 2 years. As soon as the new model was available, I published an updated review as a new blog post and redirected the old review URL to the current one.

 

[Jesse]

What are people using to organize social media content from planning/preproduction to publishing?

 

[Mentalite]

This might be a VERY dumb question but.... In doing SEO for Facebook ads, would including SEO keywords in the creative boost its visibility? Thank you anybody who can let me know!