📈 One page website getting 36,000 visits per month

Welcome to Niche Site Digest!

Here’s what you need to know:

• 📊 How to recover from Google’s Helpful Content Update

• 📈 1-page website getting 36,000 visits per month

• 🤯 Running 600+ websites (while keeping your sanity)

Let’s dive in!

📊 Google Helpful Content Update September 2023 - Review, Analysis and Recovery

If you’ve been hit by the September 2023 Helpful Content update, fear not:

You’re not alone.

In fact, there is a bloodbath out there right now.

And if you want to recover your site, this article should be a mandatory reading.

It’s a mammoth 11,000+ word guide that covers everything from a review and an analysis to a full recovery guide.

Brew a cup of coffee (or several) and set aside an hour or two to read it - it’s well worth your time.

💵 Making 6 figures from directory sites

I love finding different and unique angles people are using to make money from their niche sites.

Take directories, for example - that’s a monetization method I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.

But apparently, Tim Stoddart makes $250k/year from his directory business - that’s a nice chunk of change for a business that’s even his primary focus.

🤯 Running 600+ websites (without going crazy)

You think running a niche website is stressful?

Try running 600 of them.

This interview covers a lot, from gambling affiliates to EEAT.

However, the most interesting part for me was the segment on rank & rent sites.

In case you don’t know, that’s where you rank a website for a local business, e.g. plumbers, and then sell leads to local businesses in that area.

If that’s something that interests you, definitely give it a listen.

🔍 Site Spotlight

1 page.

36,000 visits per month.

Simple design.

Today’s site is Words To Time, and it, you guessed it, converts words into the time needed to read them.

At a glance:

• Niche: Online tool

• Traffic: 36,000 visits/month

• DR: 37

Let’s dive in and see what we can learn from this site, shall we?

This site launched in 2019 and so far hasn’t had any major (50% or more) dips in traffic. I’m sure most niche site publishers would love to see a graph like this, especially after the last few updates.

So why hasn’t the site been hit?

We can speculate, but I believe it comes down to a few things:

• The site provides a genuinely useful function to the users.

• Great UX (they only have one ad)

• A high amount of direct traffic, which sends brand signals to Google

• Great links from LA Times, Substack, Ahrefs, and more

✅ Genuinely useful site.

The site has just one page.

In fact, there are only 2 actions you can take on the site: add a number of words, and change the reading speed.

That’s it.

But it’s super simple and super easy for people to use.

You can even copy a text and paste it in the box field, and it will automatically return the number of words - super cool.

✅ Great user experience.

They only have one ad up, and it’s below the fold.

Is it hurting their monetization?

Yes.

Is it helping their UX?

Also yeah.

It’s highly unlikely they would attract so many great links if they plastered the entire page with ads.

But yeah, they probably aren’t making a lot of money with this tool, but it’s great for getting traffic and links.

✅ They get a lot of direct traffic, which sends brand signals to Google.

23.8% direct traffic - that’s a lot.

Where is this direct traffic coming from?

It’s simple - they have an exact match domain

This means a LOT of people will just type in “wordstotime.com” and go directly to the site.

This, in turn, sends brand signals to Google, telling them people want to see this site (Analytics, Chrome data, etc.).

They rank the site higher, meaning it gets even more traffic, and on and on we go.

Who knew exact match domains still work in 2023?

✅ Great links acquired passively.

Because a site ranks #1 for a great keyword, any time someone is writing an article and wants to include a reference on how to calculate reading time, they will go to this site and cite it as a reference.

This is how this site got a ton of good links from the LA Times, Substack, Ahrefs, and so on.

They also did some active link building (like launching on Product Hunt), but most of their links have come passively.

🔥 So what can you take away from this site?

• Build online tools and calculators - they are great link magnets

• Improve your UX - don’t squeeze every bit of ad revenue you can

• Cliche, but true: focus on serving the user

Reply to this email and let me know if you liked this case study!

🚀 Featured Snippets

• ✊ Web Publishers Unite: Would you join an association for web publishers? If you like the idea, read the article.

• 📈 Alternatives to SEO traffic: Let’s face it, all these updates are making it clear you need to diversify your traffic away from SEO. Here are the 3 best alternatives for most niche site publishers.

• 🆚 X vs Y article template: If you’re doing a lot of comparison posts, this template will help you convert like crazy.

• 📹 ChatGPT Vision tip: Here’s a pretty interesting technique on how to create unique SEO content with the ChatGPT Vision feature.

• 🤦 FUNNY: Google destroyed a bunch of niche sites so it could rank the best, most helpful content… right?

🛠️ Tool of the week

So you got hit by Google’s Helpful Content update.

What now?

If you’re at a loss for what to do, this handy template couldn’t have come at a better moment.

It’s a Google Sheet with 124 items to help you analyze your site and then decide what to tackle first.

That’s it for today - see you next week!

Niche Site Guy