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April 2021 News Roundup📰: What’s New In SEO & Affiliate Marketing

Welcome to the fourth news roundup of the year 2021 #️⃣4️⃣ After this issue, I may take a break for a while… As I mentioned in my last income report, I have got a personal project that will consume a lot of my time. It was on back burner during the last two months but a few days ago, it got finally advanced 🤓 My next couple of months promise to be intense 😅

This issue might be the last one maybe even for this year…We’ll see. 

So in my April news roundup, you’ll read about:

  • Google’s Product Reviews Update analysis 😣
  • Google’s Page Experience Update delay 🙄
  • Speed optimization guide by Matt Diggity 🏃‍♀️💨
  • Switching from Ezoic to AdThrive and back by Spencer 🤑
  • WordPress does not like Google’s third-party cookie replacement 🍪
  • Anchor text optimization guide 🔗
  • Black sheep in SEO by Matt Diggity 🐑

Let’s dive in 🐋

Google’s Product Reviews Update – Analysis and findings from a major algorithm update impacting affiliate marketers, review sites, and more

👉👉👉 https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-product-reviews-algorithm-update/

Google keeps us on our toes all the time 😫 In the beginning of April, it released a product reviews update 😔

I wanted to avoid talking about the update… but then I realized that it is affecting many affiliate websites and it’s important to look at least one of the analyses 👩‍🔬

Some of posts on my 🐪 Website jumped to the 1st position and some dropped… and after reading the article above, I now have much better idea why it happened.

That’s a good in-depth article and you should read it if you are doing affiliate marketing 👍

Google’s Product Reviews Update Graphic
Image credit: gsqi.com

Meanwhile, a new Google update is coming and we all have been preparing hard for it 👷‍♀️🚧👷‍♂️ Arguably, it’s the most talked about and anticipated future update by Google! Well, it seems like we now have more time to prepare 😅

More time, tools, and details on the page experience update

👉👉👉https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/more-details-page-experience

Google has pushed its page experience update (a.k.a. Speed Update) from May to middle of June 🎉

We’ll begin using page experience as part of our ranking systems beginning in mid-June 2021. However, page experience won’t play its full role as part of those systems until the end of August.

So we have extra 1.5 months to prepare 😅

If you are not sure what it is about, this update will start taking into consideration the Core Web Vitals metrics. Google will include these metrics in the list of the ranking signals.

Google Core Web Vital- Large Contentful Paint Scoring
Image credit: web.dev
Google Core Web Vital- First Input Delay Scoring
Image credit: web.dev
Google Core Web Vital- Cumulative Layout Shift Scoring
Image credit: web.dev

It’s all about speed – and the next item on our list talks exactly about that.

Site speed optimization in 2021: The definitive guide

👉👉👉 https://diggitymarketing.com/site-speed-optimization/

This is a good read from Matt Diggity – as always. 

It is an exhaustive guide with explanations and actionable steps. I really have nothing else to say 🤷‍♀️ I will be using it to make sure that my sites are ready for mid-June! 😅

Now, let’s turn to one of the biggest contributors to the slow site speed and also one of the most vital monetization strategies – ads! ☯

The painful roller coaster story of moving from Adthrive to Ezoic and what happened to my earnings

👉👉👉 https://www.nichepursuits.com/ezoic-vs-adthrive/

If you monetize your websites with ads and especially with Ezoic, you might be very interested to learn that Ezoic is not necessarily worse compared AdThrive 🤯

If you have no idea what AdThrive is, it’s the top tier of the ad platform that usually pays the most (compared to two other platforms, Ezoic and Mediavine).

In this post, Spenser talks about how he moved one of his websites from Ezoic to AdThrive and back to Ezoic 🔁 He explained the methodology he used to compare the ad revenue from these platforms. 

Ezoic Graph for EPMV
Image credit: nichepursuits.com

It tuned out that the Ezoic Premium tier can pay better than AdThrive 🤯

Have you tried Ezoic Premium? It’s an invite-only tier so usually, you need to wait until they invite you.

However, after reading this post, I asked my account manager whether I can switch to it… And I was approved! 😁 It has been only a couple of days since I got into Ezoic Premium so it’s too early to talk about any results.

if you are not in, you can also try to ask your manager and maybe, you will get approved without waiting for the invitation 😏

And you may remember that the future of ads is in jeopardy 😫 In 2022, Google plans to phase out third-party cookies that are used for ads from the Chrome browser. 

As I wrote in the previous news release, Google plans to implement their own system for aggregating user-behavior called FLoC 🐧🐧🐧

But it turns out that not everybody is happy with this solution 😮

WordPress proposes blocking FLoC by default

👉👉👉 https://searchengineland.com/wordpress-proposes-blocking-floc-by-default-347887

WordPress, the biggest blogging platform and toolset, has got a proposal about disabling FLoC by default 😱 It has not been approved yet, though:

Matt Mullenweg, CEO at WordPress’ parent company Automattic, has emphasized that a decision has yet to be made. “It is more correct to say there is a proposal from a WP contributor to block FLoC by default,” he tweeted.

Given that about 40% of all sites across the web use WordPress. If they decide to move forward with it, Google’s ad initiative will be screwed 🤷‍♀️ 

If you ask me what I think about it, well, I am torn! 😫😆 On one hand, I do want to stop Google monopoly in ads and search. On the other hand, I do want to get my ad revenue 🙈😅

But enough of Google! Let’s read about some SEO instead 🤩😀

The Complete Guide To Anchor Text Optimization (2021)

👉👉👉 https://seosherpa.com/anchor-text/

This is an in-depth article about how to use anchor text for SEO 🖇

It is useful for beginners since it explains what anchor text is and what types it can be classified to. It is also useful for advanced SEO masters since it helps to make sure that anchor text is optimized properly

In the past, I tried to teach one of my VAs about what anchor text is. I don’t think I ever succeeded 🙈🤷‍♀️ This article would have come very handy back then! So, you may use it as a learning material for your stuff.

Anchor Text Infograph
Image credit: seosherpa.com

And now, let’s look at sheeps… SEO sheep! 🐑🐏

Get your website unstuck by avoiding the Black Sheep Effect [Live Webinar]

👉👉👉  👇👇👇

Is a particular page on your website not ranking despite all these links you have built to it? Watch this video by Matt Diggity to learn what could be wrong!

Did you enjoy my News Roundup? Let me know what you think in the comments!


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