Affiliate, hands down.

Hey MATT. Awesome info as always.
BTW Which do you think is better in terms of income and lifestyle.
Thanks in advance

Assuming your technical SEO is on point, here’s how I’ve gotten unstuck in the past: https://diggitymarketing.com/how-to-get-unstuck-by-establishing-topic-relevance/

I got backlinks from high authority websites too and noticed that my top-ranked competitors have fewer backlinks but they have more content/posts on their website.

I am trying to rank “garage door repair Roseville CA” and “garage door repair” on the home page but the main focus with the location keyword. What would you recommend for, like what type of supportive content I publish on my blog or any other recommendation?

Highly appreciated your responses to every individual.

Links and Offsite SEO is only one part of the puzzle. You need to make sure that you have quality content, your Onsite SEO is on point, and your technical SEO is good as well.

Sure.  They don’t fit another category.

Thanks 🙂

Because I don’t know the full story regarding your website, firstly I’d check the rest of your backlink profile first before looking at getting forum links. What is your anchor text ratio like? How does your ratio of links to the homepage vs inner pages compare? Get them sorted first.

If those ratios on point my next question would be, what type of forums are they? Are they highly niche relevant forums? Or are they local forums? If they are highly niche forums, maybe look to get some guest posts on highly niche websites first. If they are local forums, what are some local linking opportunities (local blogs, news outlets, directories) are there? Go for those types of links first.

I suggest this course of action first, because there are more powerful link opportunities out there than forum links (which can be easily spammed). Sometimes a small amount of targeted powerful links can outdo a large amount of average links.

I’m primarily referring to external. However, using a variety of target keyword and longtail anchors instead of just the exact same anchor over and over, is a good practice with internal linking as well.

“Best of” and “write for us” are still working very well for established Aged sites.

IMHO, Google algorithms have never been fair to the small website owners, who no matter how much quality they put, they will always be outranked by huge and often not-so-relevant sites. This is exactly why monsters like business insider and others are nowadays relying heavily on affiliate income. It is just too easy for them. Look at theit Beat Of articles ranking 1-5 and tell me they all make sense…

Moreover, if the Write For Us was always a no-no, then all UGC-based sites wouldn’t be even indexed, but they’re there and they rank sometimes pretty well.

Again, i loved this article, but i think we are just scratching the surface here.

Social signals are used to justify the links you are getting. You should send social signals to the pages you wish to build links to.

In general, there is no huge advantage whether you have /blog/ or /magazine/ in your URL, unless you are specifically trying to rank for those kinds of keywords eg. “[niche] blog” or “[niche] magazine”

For example, if the content was high quality, would it be best to designate the WP site at mydomain.com/article/articlename or /magazine/articlename?

Or does Google like /blog/ best–or does it not matter at all? Thanks Matt!

In my experience, in general, Google can’t tell the difference between paid backlinks and natural backlinks. There are a few exceptions to this. They are:

If the link has rel=sponsored in the link.
They are obvious Guest Posts. ie the site has “guest post by”, “write for us”, “sponsor a post” etc on the webpage.

Also, check if the links you are getting are from “bad neighborhoods”. Eg is the site selling links to anybody and everybody. Does the site include links to porn, gambling, cbd, and any other “shady” niche sites

Rick Lomas (https://www.indexicon.com/) is my go-to guy for removing toxic links

can I get stuck in the sandbox because G knows what sites offer paid backlinks?

What do you think could be the way forward on this situation.

For internal you don’t need to bother with Branded anchor text. 20% Miscellaneous and %80 Target is a good ratio for internal anchor text. I only bother with Branded anchor text when doing external anchor text optimization.

How can we use branded anchor in internal linking for our money pages. An example please…

Generally, I take the Average Monthly Profit from the last 6 months of the site, and multiple it by 25x – 40x (depending on the quality of the site). I actually go into a lot more detail on how I value a site in my latest case study: https://diggitymarketing.com/project-cashflow-nov-2020/

Absolutely, this case study is still relevant.

The image may be shared or used by other people – it’s often the nature of the internet. However, if an image of yours proves to be popular, you can do monthly checks using Google images and reach out to new websites using your image. It can be an effective link building strategy if done right.

Is this case study can be use as date nov 2020? Is there any significant changes

One point that really I still am unsure about is websites with growth. For example, let’s say a website earned on average $2k a month 2 years ago, $5k a month last year, and $10k/month for this year – how on earth does the website get valued?

You could go by, let’s say, x30 and have it valued at $300k. However, it’s clearly a growing website, doubling roughly each year. Taking that into account, could it not be worth $500k-$750k even?

This is the question that still confuses me. I completely understand a website that has made the same income for a long time. But, for those that are exponentially increasing in traffic and revenue, I don’t see a clear way of valuing them, especially if the growth is also quite passive (with minimal effort).

Interested to hear your thoughts.

It’s hard to say based on what info you have provided. There could be a number of other causes as to why you have seen a ranking drop.

I’d check GSC first to see if there are any manual penalties, then do all the things. Check your technical SEO, check onpage seo, and do a backlink audit.

Regarding your link building efforts, I’d focus on quality content on your money site not web 2.0s, and trickle out guest post links until you start to see some traction.

Still works.

This is interesting strategy.

Will it work in 2020 for new domain?

What do you think, should we continue to building web 2.0’s (1 article daily on behance and and 1 on medium daily) or should we stop?

Thanks for sharing

Great question Justin.

Let’s say you want to rank for “Best Golf Clubs”

An example of an EMD would be bestgolfclubs.com

In this example, the main keyword that the site wants to rank for is “Best Golf Clubs”. This keyword is not something exclusive to this domain. It is an existing search term, AND has the intent of people looking for golf club recommendations.

“Golf Genius” is likely not a common search term – particularly if the business is new. The search intent for those searching for “Golf Genius” is so they can find that specific company.

Just like you would type in “Diggity Marketing” to find this site…You are searching for the company. There is no other search intent behind “Diggity Marketing” except for people looking for this site.

So bringing it back to anchor text…

In the example above, let’s say my website is Golfgenius.com. If I have the anchor text “Golf Genius” – that would be classed as Branded Anchor text. If I have the anchor text “Best Golf Clubs” linked to Golfgenius.com, that would be exact match anchor text.

If you had an EMD site. Eg bestgolfclubs.com then I would still treat the anchor text “Best Gold Clubs” as exact match anchor text, and not branded anchor text.

If you need more Brand/URL anchors in your anchor text ratio, I would lean towards using more URL anchors instead.

I apologize in advance for the length of this. I actually shortened it…drastically. lol

Having just read this article, there’s a description you’ve provided that I’m having a difficult time wrapping my head around. I’m assuming I must not be grasping the concept correctly.

You wrote the following:

******************************

“… a branded anchor for golfgenius.com would be “Golf Genius”.

Branded anchors only apply to non-EMD/PMD sites…”

******************************

As per a quick Google search:

“Exact match domains (EMDs) are domain names that incorporate the exact keywords that you are trying to rank for in Google’s SERPs.”

“Golf Genius” appears to be an “exactly-matching” anchor of the EMD website: “golfgenius.com” , no?

Again, you stated that:
“Branded anchors only apply to non-EMD/PMD sites.”

Does that indicate that -by definition- the site owner must technically NOT be attempting to rank for “Golf Genius” ?

What then determines if a particular word or phrase is indeed a Brand and NOT a keyword, or vice versa? And does one carry additional value over the other?

An example would be the athletic shoe and clothing company, Nike.

Their brand is called “Nike” and their domain is “Nike.com” .

Are they not an “EMD” ?
I would infer that they certainly are. I would have to assume that there would be a lot of competition for the keyword “Nike” from many other companies/websites; for example from footlocker.com etc.

They “SHOULD” -I would suppose-want to rank highly for that word, I’m sure that many people search quite specifically for “Nike” on Google.

I’m inferring that their website contains “nike” as anchor text that links back to “nike.com”

Is it then a brand anchor? Is it not an EMD?

I apologize for the length of the question.

I was trying to be thorough in my explanation by providing examples, because I understand it’s unlikely that I am yet to have acquired and possess the vocabulary (and of acronyms) required to explain my thought process adequately.

And I thank you again.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Justin

Social signals usually aren’t a make-or-break factor that is going to determine if a site will take off or not.  I’d look for other clues.

No need for a blank canvas for info articles. Keep it looking natural and include the nav bar etc.

I still consider word count when creating articles. The way I determine the best article length is looking at the SERPs. Look at results on page 1 for the keyword you are targeting. What is the average length of the top 5 articles? That will give a good indicator of optimal article length. You can find out more details of how I determine article length here.

Hi Matt,

So I started two blogs simultaneously, watched a video about getting out of the sandbox which made reference of social signals blast without a specific number, with less idea on this and the drip feed which you mentioned, I hooped into fiverr and bought a 5000 social signal burst.

Fortunately, it helped my first site out of the sandbox in less than a month which is now ranking for some terms, but the second is still stuck in the sandbox stage.

After reading and watching some videos you made, got to discover that this was quite a huge number of signal I bought and it wasn’t done the right way, now am confused as well as afraid.

1. If the already purchased signal is bad for the websites which could trigger something bad in the future.

2. If I should go ahead to purchase a signal drip from PBNbutler to assist the second website out of the sandbox.

BTW: This is the second month of creating the websites.

Would you recommend a blank canvas? No nav bar, no anything just a blank page (like a piece of paper) with an article on and one link to the money page?

At what point does the wordcount length stop mattering? Is it better to do 1000 words on the supporting article than 500? Or does the word count not really matter past 500 words?

The case study that you expose above is very beneficial, especially for myself. Thank you very much

It’s been a long time since I sourced and built my own PBNs.  These days I just buy from RankClub.io

Exact and Partial match domains can rank easier than others, yet they have shortcomings… Particularly, when it comes to penalization potential and ease of getting outreach links and flipping.

Branded domains are the opposite. They rank slower, but can get outreach links easier and flip easier.

Great article there Matt.
A Big misconception in the industry is that people think Google works at the domain level. In reality, they’re working at a page-by-page level.

My question is what is then the advantage of special domain in this regard?

Alright, thanks

The reason for an article like “top 5 restaurants in Fresno” is to establish topical relevance for the local area of Fresno. On the flip side, you can also write an article on “best roof tiles” to increase topical relevance around Roofing.

A third option is to write a supporting article that has topical relevance for Roofing AND Fresno. Eg “How to insulate your roof from that Fresno summer heat”. It his topical relevance for BOTH roofing and Fresno.

You can use a combination of all three options.

You want to include links to these supporting pages somewhere. In the example above, I have a money page targeting top protein supplements. The supporting articles can be posts I’ve written and included in blog section of my site, all pointing back to that money page.

I don’t recommend posting the same exact blog posts on different platforms. The Panda update put an end to that strategy years ago.

Thanks Matt for the awesome post. It keeps me on fire. : )

If we just create 4-5 supporting pages (without any links to them), wouldn’t these pages be called orphan pages? Is there any concern?

Each supporting article should have its own individual target keyword related to the main page it is supporting.

In your example, your main page is trying to rank for “music lessons”. You supporting pages would cover topics like “lesson costs”, or blog posts topics such as “how to read music”, or “how to learn guitar”. These supporting pages would have their own target keywords. However, all of these supporting pages would link back to your main page, ideally with optimized anchor text.

Example: My main page that I want to rank promotes music lessons. This page is ~1,000 words of quality content with a target keyword of “music lessons” and its synonyms.

Now I create 4 supporting articles such as “How to find the best music lessons near you?” and so on.
– “best music lessons” is the focus keyword of this article, right?
– Can I link this target keyword to my main page?

They get indexed, for sure, but I have no idea how much “weight” they deliver. Impossible to test.

The Heatmap for WordPress plugin by HeatMap, Inc allows heatmap tracking for 5 pages for free. That should be enough to test what is getting the most clicks. For example, you can track the click rate for a CTA button for a set period of time. Then you can make a change to the CTA button, and track its click rate for the same period of time. You then compare the click rate before and after the change to see if the change is worth it.

This way of testing may not be as efficient and clean as A/B Testing but it’s a good start if you are small and on a budget.

I use the same combination of Trello, Google calendar, RescueTime app, and the Promodoro technique, I always divide my tasks into 25 minutes promodoros and push them in a simple day planner template I have on Google Calendar starting from 8 am to 6 pm (With 2 hours break between).
I create a separate board for every project I have (Money site, Web design/Development client, SEO, Learning, etc..), and I have a global board that contains the stream of the due tasks from all projects, that stream goes directly to the day planner in Google Calendar. The problem I have is consistency and self-discipline, that’s the biggest challenge I think most people have. I think using the pen and paper along with your technique will be the approach that may help to overcome this.., I will start my two weeks writing things done.

Thanks

I love the idea of experimenting but find the CRO tools daunting and expensive.

Optimizely is too expensive if you have a small website.

What simple and cheap CRO tool would you recommend for a newbie tester? I could still afford a couple hundred per month.

Do you use any to do list app/ software to list your daily todo things?

My team and I use a combination of Trello and Google Calendar.

Base on your template, maybe the task is just in category model & not specific task. Example in PBN task, there’re a lot of mini-task should be done as: find domain auction, content plan for building pbn…bla bla… Do you do something or write down sub-task in each big task category in anything else like to do list app?

Nah, I like to keep it all on paper when tracking time. If anything takes longer than 5 minutes, note it down. If not, just group it under a general task topic. Saying that, the purpose here is to audit the tasks that take up the majority of your time. Don’t get too hung up on details here.

Btw, have you ever tried time-blocking & plan your day in Google calendar with exact time for each activity. And do you list personal activitiy in your daily time management, bro?

Yes and yes.

During a Pandemic when people are struggling to put food on the table – their stock price just hit an All time high and are now worth over 1 Trillion dollars.

To celebrate, they decide to slash commissions and bankrupt all those that helped them out over the years. Well done Amazon – you’re now back in the running for most evil corporation of the decade award, you greedy heartless twats.

– Do you use any to do list app/ software to list your daily todo things?

– Base on your template, maybe the task is just in category model & not specific task. Example in PBN task, there’re a lot of mini-task should be done as: find domain auction, content plan for building pbn…bla bla… Do you do something or write down sub-task in each big task category in anything else like to do list app?

– Btw, have you ever tried time-blocking & plan your day in Google calendar with exact time for each activity. And do you list personal activitiy in your daily time management, bro?

I spent 20 minutes trying to find your backlink service in Fiverr before I found out later in your article that it was all joke 😀

Yesssssss.

LOL. I believed it.

Loved your report.

Can you share how you schedule your days?

How you manage to work on your stuff in your daily 24 hours life?

Thanks