1

LivingOffCloud SEO & Affiliate Marketing News Roundup📰: March, 2019

Welcome to my new post about interesting topics in the SEO and niche/affiliate marketer blogs and forums I read about in the past month.

In this roundup, we will talk about recent Google search algorithm updates, another major update that caused some worries and confusion in the SEO world, a value of nofollow links, two case studies, Gutenberg and a few other things related to UI and content updates.

Let’s start with our most favorite subject: Google update!

Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On March 12 & 13th

👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻 seroundtable.com/march-12-13-google-search-ranking-algorithm-update-27249.html

Google confirmed that they released ” a broad core algorithm update” on the week of March 12.

The news was first released on Twitter and the community confirmed they see the changes being rolled out 🎢

How have your rankings been recently?

SEMRush:

Cognitive SEO:

 

Now, onto that major confusing update.

Moz Updated Domain Authority (DA)

👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻 moz.com/blog/comprehensive-analysis-domain-authority

In March, Moz recalculated the Domain Authority score and it made a big splash in the SEO community.

In the article, Moz explain why they did it and how it affected the scores of various groups of websites. In nutshell, it was done to weed out spammy websites and even the playfield.

The goal of the change is to make the Moz SA score more reliable and less vulnerable when it comes to manipulations.

SERoundTable reported about some SEOs freaking out 🙀🙀🙀 because of the change. Turns out that some SEOs thought this was an internal metric of Google. Now, that the DAs of websites got recalculated, these webmasters are concerned about their sites being “hit” and ask about how to recover 🙀

SERoundTable explains what is a possible reason behind this misunderstanding and what can be done in the future to prevent it (hint: It’s on the Moz’s side).

 

Continuing the SEO topic, do you think that nofollow backlinks bring no value to your website? 🤔

Let’s see! 😜

2019 Analysis of SEO for Higher Education Marketing

👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻 serpwoo.com/blog/analysis/seo-for-higher-education-marketing

I stumbled upon this article in the AuthorityHacker FB group.

The post is an in-depth analysis that explores what it takes to rank #1 in the higher education niche 👩🏻‍🎓👨🏻‍🎓

It is definitely very helpful for the ones who are in the niche.

And for the ones who are not, it is also helpful since it shows that Google ranking approaches and techniques should vary from niche to niche. Also, the article contains pieces that are relevant to any niche.

One of the curious findings that in this niche, no-follow links do help websites to go to search page #1 😮 This bold claim is supported by the data they gathered and presented in the article. For example, the author says Quora links (they are no-follow) helped their websites to rank 🧐

The article also talks about keyword placement in the text, whether or not having a lead generation form helps your ranking (spoiler: It does!), how the domain age affects it, and other useful bits.

A worthy read!

Made me think about conducting similar experiments in my own niches 🤔

 

And when it comes to experiments, one of the great ways to get into mood might be readying case studies

Today, I included not one but two case studies!

The first one is about how to start making money via white hat methods from a new website quickly (and then sell it).

Case Study: How We Grew and Sold An 18-Month-Old Site For Mid 6 Figures

👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻 authorityhacker.com/how-to-sell-your-business/

In this post, Gael from the AuthorityHackers talks about how they grew a brand-new website for 18 months until it hit over $14,000 a month in commissions.

He explains how and why they picked this precise niche and how they built backlinks using only white hat methods.

You can see how much exactly they spent on the content (a lot! 💸) and how the content was built.

Definitely, not everybody can pull it off.

But at least, you now know what direction you should move if you want to achieve similar success. Frankly speaking, for me, even 1/10 of it would quite suffice 🤣🤣🤣

 

So, this was a case study of a new site.

Now, let’s take a look at a case study of an old and already tanked website 📉

Case Study: Reviving A Dead Site To 6,400 Visits Per Month

👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻 rankxl.com/reviving-a-penalized-site-to-6400-visits-per-month-case-study/

In this post, you can read about how to revive an old penalized site with a ton of spammy backlinks.

The revival steps included getting rid of low-quality thin content and disavowing some bad backlinks.

Surprisingly, the reviving (and the growth) did not include building any new backlinks! This will come in the second part of the revival, which is not done yet.

 

Continuing the topic of updates…

EasyBlogNetworks is about to change the whole look of their platform

This is my personal insight! 😉

Easy Blog Networks, one of the most convenient and robust PBN platforms out there, is about to reveal a new look next week.

In the launch week, I will reveal some sweet deal you can get if you decided to subscribe for the service. Stay tuned!

If you do not know what Easy Blog Networks is or want to read more about it, check out my Easy Blog Networks review I have updated a couple of weeks ago.

 

Speaking of UI, have you started using Gutenberg (a new WordPress editor) yet? 🤔

If not, the next piece may make you reconsider 🎉

The Ultimate Gutenberg Blocks Library

👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻 ultimategutenberg.com/

I stumbled upon it in the AuthorityHacker FB group.

This is a powerful library of Gutemberg elements from the same team that makes Astra WordPress theme, ConvertPro, and Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder/Elementor.

Section block and Advanced Column block seem to be two elements that are particularly useful. You can use them to create product reviews, infoboxes, Pros/cons lists and much more. All what an affiliate marketer needs 😍

Check out this video review of the library:

This library is still free and I won’t be surprised if it won’t stay such for long! It definitely makes life with Gutenberg more pleasant 😋

 

It seems that more and more affiliate marketers are switching to Gutenberg.  While migrating your pages to a new editor, why not update your content at the same time?

And what if while updating your content, you noticed that some of Amazon affiliate products you used to use are no longer available?

What to do if the products you wrote about are no longer available?

This came out of  Human Prof Designs forum discussion where somebody asked this question.

What to do if the products you wrote about in your review are no longer available?

First of all, what not to do is to delete your review articles 🚫 It may affect your rankings.

A few things you can do instead:

1️⃣ write something like “x product is no longer available, but check out product y”

2️⃣ find the same products on eBay; but first, don’t forget to become an eBay affiliate!

3️⃣ convert the article into an informational post which sends readers to other reviews on your site of related products

Number 2️⃣ (find these products on eBay) was somehow a revelation to me a while ago.

In my niche, people keep bugging me with requests to find products that are no longer available. And I could not help them because Amazon did not have these products 😟

Eventually, I found some of the products on eBay. I suggested it to my readers, and, wow, they bought it! It was as simple as that. I am planning to add more Ebay links to my websites in this niche 👍🏻

Don’t miss a post – subscribe to my newsletters!

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! 🤗