🔮 The future of niche sites (10 predictions)

Welcome to Niche Site Digest!

Here’s what you should know:

• 🤯 Yet another Google update (with more to come next week)

• 🔮 The future of niche sites (from a $10m content site pro)

• 🤑 How to make 6 figures per month (affiliate + SEO blueprint)

Let’s dive in!

🤯 Yet another Google update

What is this now, 3rd core update in 3 months?

I’m not even counting other updates like Helpful content and reviews updates.

Why another update so soon? Here’s what Google says:

“We have different systems that are considered core to our ranking process; this month’s core update involves an improvement to a different core system than last month.”

Translation?

“We fucked up, and we have to scramble to fix the mess we made last month.”

As always, good luck - if you lost traffic last month hopefully you’ll get it back now.

(PSA for all affiliates here: there is apparently a reviews update coming next week.)

🔗 How to get DR 90+ links

Digital PR is the future of link building.

But most digital PR guides are fluffy and light on practical, actionable info.

But not this one.

In this hour-and-a-half-long podcast, Mark from Authority Hacker talks with Gabriela, a digital PR expert. They get into the nitty-gritty of digital PR link building, from choosing topics to running campaigns.

If you’re in a rush, Mark summarized the entire video in 10 mins, starting at the 1:17 mark.

🔮 The future of content sites

Scott Delong made more than $10 million from his content websites.

So when he puts out a blog post, I tend to pay attention.

In this post, he describes the future of this business model, including his views on SEO, ChatGPT, email, and more.

If you’re interested in building an actual brand, set aside 10 minutes and read this article.

🔍 Site Spotlight

Just a heads up: I’m getting booted from the Ahrefs legacy plan soon so going forward I’ll be using DA as a metric instead of DR.

Today’s niche site is Crosslake Coffee, and it is in the, shockingly, coffee niche.

At a glance:

• Niche: Coffee

• Traffic: 200,000/month

• DA: 15

Let’s explore a bit and see what we can learn, shall we?

It’s no secret that Google doesn’t like niche sites. They prefer to rank real businesses in search.

So what can you do?

How about partnering with a local business and taking their website to new traffic levels with SEO?

At least, that’s what I can guess happened here with Cross Lake Coffee.

They went from 147 monthly visitors to over 200,000 - in just 4 months.

But how?

Simple - they are an existing business - a local coffee shop in Minnesota.

And this is not an expired domain play - the coffee shop is still in business, and the last review was only a few days ago:

So what happened?

Well, it’s simple: someone must have partnered with the shop and agreed to use their website to publish a ton of informational content in the coffee and caffeine niche:

The site is also on Mediavine and probably makes $5k/month or more in display ad revenue.

Why does this work so well?

As I said before, Google wants to see more real businesses in the search results.

And this is a real business - it has a phone number, location, active Google Maps profile, opening hours, Yelp and MapQuest listings, etc.

This is how you can take a low DR/DA site and take it to 200k monthly traffic in just a few months.

Now you have 2 options:

1. Try to fake as many of these signals as possible, probably using expired domains and other tactics

2. Or you can partner with your local business, split the profit, and just take their site to the stratosphere

That’s it - just a really cool strategy I thought I’d share.

What do you think?

Would you prefer option #1 or #2?

Reply to this email and let me know!

🚀 Featured Snippets

• ✍️ Three ways to improve your content: Straight from Google itself, here are 3 ways to use Google Search Console to improve your content and get more SEO traffic.

• 📈 Beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing: Matt Diggity makes 6 figures per month from SEO and affiliate marketing, and in this short video he describes his repeatable strategy.

• 💰 Funnel template to copy: diversifying from SEO seems to be the main theme for the foreseeable future - and this funnel doesn’t depend on Google traffic at all (but still can bring in tons of revenue).

• 👺 Are you a content goblin? If you’re doing SEO, you are, at least according to this article from Verge. You are also responsible for destroying the Internet, prioritizing money over ethics, and for the general decline of civilization as we know it.

• 🤑 $250k from content sites in a year: Read insights from this AMA from Will, who sold more than $250k worth of niche sites in one year.

🛠️ Tool of the week

Not only has Koala been ranked as the #1 tool by independent testing from Indexsy, but it’s also surprisingly cheap - at only $9/month starting out.

They also offer a lot of nifty perks, like Google Sheets integration (so you can cut down on your publishing time) and AI-powered SEO analysis (automatically analyze the SERP and include entities and keywords to help your article rank).

✅ What To Do Next

That’s all for today!

When you’re ready, here are more ways to level up your niche site game:

• Proven niches database - struggling to find a niche? Not anymore. Check out our database full of vetted, proven niches in all industries.

• How to grow a niche site from 0 to 6 figures - watch this video if you want a step-by-step blueprint on how to build successful niche sites.

• Done-for-you niche sites - prefer a more hands-off approach? This service takes care of everything, from keyword research to content production and even speed optimization.

• Beginner-friendly keyword research - if you’re on a budget, this is the best tool to get you started. Find thousands of low competition keywords within minutes.

• #1 AI writing tool - this is the best AI writing and content creation tool on the market right now (independently tested). Create SEO-optimized content with minimal editing required.

• The go-to link building service - want to rank higher on Google? Then you need links - powerful links. This is how you get DR 80+ links from major media brands.

• Fastest WordPress theme - say hello to the fastest WordPress websites you’ll ever build (perfect for Core Web Vitals).

• My favorite plugin for affiliates - increase your affiliate revenue by up to 88% (without increasing your traffic).

• Premium WordPress hosting - hands down the best hosting company I’ve ever used.

• The only internal linking tool you’ll ever need - cut down your publishing time in half AND get more SEO traffic.