July 2020 News Roundup📰: What’s New In SEO & Affiliate Marketing
Want to know how to increase the Ahrefs DR (Domain Rating) and how they calculate it? Does using stock photos affect the ranking in the image search? Can you build a Saas if you are not a software developer?
You can learn answers to all these questions and more from my July news roundup!
In this release, I have decided to continue the trend I’ve set up in the last news roundup and stir away from chewing on the old gum of Google updates. Instead, I focus on other topics that are more fun 😏
So, in this news issue, we will talk about:
- The Rich Results Test tool by Google getting out of beta and what it means for SEO masters 🛠
- A new change on Buy On Google platform for online shopping 🛒
- Whether using stock images affect your site rankings 🖼
- How Matt Diggity grows his affiliate sites in a fast way 💨
- Building a digital product without being a software developer 👩💻
- A new niche website case study 🤗
- What is DR by Ahref and how to increase it 🤪
Let’s dive in 🐋
The Rich Results Test Is Out Of Beta
👉👉👉 webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/07/rich-results-test-out-of-beta.html
At the beginning of the month, Google announced that its Rich Results Test Tool (RRTT) is out of beta. Sadly, it also means that the Structured Data Testing Tool (SDTT) will be deprecated soon 😭
Similar to the Structured Data Testing Tool, you can test both a code snippet or a page URL.
However, it feels like we will lose a lot when SDTT will be gone.
Among other things, SDTT has an ability to edit the code on the spot even if you checked the page – and RRTT does not 😕
SDTT will be deeply missed 💔 and here, SearchEngineLand talks more about the reasons.
Now, let’s move to another product by Google – this time, the news is rather good! 😆
Buy On Google Goes Commission-free, Will Enable Checkout Via Paypal, Shopify
Google is very determined to compete with Amazon in the online sales area.
In April, it decided to allow selling goods for free on their shopping platform. Now, it has moved to the next phase: Making its Buy on Google, the company’s native checkout from product listings, commission-free.
This will make the Google shopping platform much more accessible for sellers 😏 Especially when you compare it to the Amazon fees of 8 to 15% per item sold 😲
Google Shopping even has an affiliate program 😉 You can join it on CJ.com. Here are the affiliate rates they offer:
The next topic is quite interesting – have you ever thought that stock images can affect SERP? 🤔
Image Search & Stock Photography – Jordan Koene // Searchmetrics
👉👉👉 blog.searchmetrics.com/us/image-search-stock-photography-jordan-koene-searchmetrics/
It’s a podcast episode by Searchmetrics about how using stock photos impacts image search on Google. In the nutshell:
Ultimately Google aims to ensure that individuals who are image creators and leveraging image content in its purest form will receive the biggest benefit and rise in ranking.
To listen to the episode (or read it), go to the link above.
Speaking of the website ranking in particular and growth in general, here’s an example of how to grow a small site 👶
My Cyclebaron.com Niche Site Case Study and Timeline
👉👉👉 fatstacksblog.com/cyclebaron-niche-site-case-study/
Do you like niche website building case studies as much as I do? 🤗 If so, here’s a new one for you!
John Dykstra from fatstacksblog.com has started a public niche site case study to show how he’s building and growing niche sites.
His new site is in the cycling niche. In the first post, he explains the reasons why he chose it – go to the link above to take a look.
An alternative to building websites is buying them and this is what we will talk about in the next section.
How to Get an Affiliate Website from 0 to 100 as Fast as Possible (with Matt Diggity)
👉👉👉 semrush.com/webinars/how-to-get-an-affiliate-website-from-0-to-100-as-fast-as-possible/
This is an awesome webinar between Matt Diggity, Craig Campbell from SEMRushm, and two SEO professionals invited as experts.
Matt shares his tips and tricks about how to scale an (established) affiliate website as fast as possible.
He talks about a website he bought a while ago and how he and his team increased the revenue from 2.1k to 50.5k and then flipped it for a much higher price.
Here are the topics discussed during the webinar:
- Why purchasing a website? (spoiler alert: more efficient and simply cheaper)
- How to audit a website before purchasing to ensure its fast growth after? (a useful checklist)
- What are techniques to increase the affiliate income especially when it comes to Amazon Affiliate?
- How to keep the turn-over of your VAs and writers low and keep good people
The webinar is 1h long 🤯 but I felt it was too short 😭😆
Watch it here:
The next topic is about where and how to grow your niche site further – even if you do not have the necessary skills.
How Mark Thompson Built A SaaS Empire Without Writing A Line Of Code
👉👉👉 authorityhacker.com/mark-thompson/
A SaaS (Software as a Service) can be a great way to develop your niche website further from being just an affiliate site to something that is much more lucrative (of course, given that the niche has a room for digital products).
Here is a great talk between Mark from AuthorityHackers and Mark Thompson of PayKickstart. They talk about the journey Mark of PayKickstart took to start making and selling digital products, without being a dev himself!👍
You will learn about how to take your business idea and grow it into a full-fledged company, how to properly outsource development tasks, and how to market a software business. These are just a few highlights.
Watch the full talk here:
How do you evaluate the site authority? I bet you do it by looking at its DR in Ahrefs. But do you know how it is calculated and how to increase it? 😉
How to Increase Website Authority (Domain Rating)
👉 ahrefs.com/blog/how-to-increase-website-authority/
Domain Rating (DR) by Ahrefs has become an industry standard when it comes to evaluating how authoritative the site is.
The more authority it conveys, the better it is for you the owner: new articles get ranked faster, backlinks get acquired easier, traffic is growing, and more, and more.
So naturally, many people want to increase the DRs of their websites.
In this video / article, Ahrefs shares secrets behind DR. They talk about how a DR is calculated 🤓 how to interpret this metric properly 🤔 and finally, how to increase it 😍
Watch this exciting video here:
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Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. I will receive a small fee if you choose to buy after clicking on any of these links. Thank you if you do! 🤗
