do you get it? it's from the song...

☀️

hello again, friends

on this late Friday afternoon.

what is this guy doing. sending a marketing email on a Friday afternoon? foolish. I won't stand for it.

i hear you. i won't stand for it either!

what kind of idiot...

anyway, things have been a little tough lately, sorry. pet stuff, and house stuff. and launching my first book stuff where I'm trying to start a publishing company, literally THE HARDEST AND MOST IMPOSSIBLE SHIT...

so from my incredibly scattered two weeks --> an incredibly scattered effort of trying to produce this newsletter, so I extra hope you like it this week.

News and Updates

+ I'm looking for a kind of co-host, someone to help run my podcast. I won't say much here, it's already very long, but if you want to work together check out this post and fill out the form. :)

+ Click here to consume dope memes in the service of showing ConvertKit that you read my email and I shouldn't delete you for being a "cold subscriber" because you don't engage. You know the drill...

+ Made an offer on the house I wrote about a few newsletters ago, but it fell through because literally literally the foundations were crumbling and needed 100% to be 100% replaced. Yikes. On to the next thing, but I was pretty bummed...

+ Thanks to the few people that reached out to inquire about my new DFY newsletter @ Impressions.org -- really excited about this thing.

+ I dunno if you know this, but one thing I do with my spare time (and all of my money) is run a publishing company. A real one. We just released our first REAL, ACTUAL book by an award-winning author. It's a ghost story. It's available as a physical book and an ebook. If you love good fiction consider picking up a copy--it'd really help me out, and: bonus! You get a good book to read.

​Here's a link to the book on AMZ << not an affiliate link.

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Three Sites, Three Approaches to Content/Ranking

If your site looks like this, your goose is fucking cooked:

Sorry Jim Edwards, IF that is your real name (it's totally not).

JunkFoodBlog.com was one of the sites that made the extremely unfortunate list of sites that got super deindexed at the beginning of March:

Might as well put it behind the event horizon of the black hole at the center of our galaxy cuz that shit is GONE FOREVER.

The rankings have been on a slow decline since the August update of last year, finished off by this latest algo update/manual deindexation:

I know, you get it, it's dead, stop kicking it.

I still see people building sites like this... why, what are you doing?!

Here are a few things you should instantly change about your site if this is you:

• your single author image and bio in the sidebar, that's SO 2015
• your single author image and bio is fake af lol
• your homepage is just a blogroll. this is basic af
• all your article titles are OBVIOUS AI
• your site doesn't do anything, it just has 800 blog posts and ads

If your site hasn't been hit yet, by some miracle, it's coming.

(And to be clear: I'm not AGAINST doing this, if your timeline for achieving success is 3 months, getting some cash, and then getting obliterated... it's when you think it's gonna be this way forever that I'm trying to help you with).

If your site is doing this, you're probably fine for now but eventually Google is gonna cook your goose-y ass:

This next site--I don't know where I first saw it, sorry (I definitely try not to be the first person to write about sites--I ain't no original NARC) is Forestry.com.

At first glance, it looks GREAT:

Right away you know two things:

1. This site DOES SOMETHING, not just content, and
2. This site is about new and used logging equipment for sale

Here's the Ahrefs traffic graph:

Slow and steadily up--good!

However, there's a few things about this site that, if I were running it, I would caution against.

The First Thing:

I've said it before, but your site needs to DO something (in fact I said it just above) and this site, very loudly, says it sells or connects New and Used Logging Equipment.

Very niche, I like it!

However, if scratch even a tiny bit below the surface, it falls apart. Here's what I found when I clicked on "rental equipment"

Clicking "sell equipment" prompted me to log in to an app (I didn't) and clicking "buy equipment" DID take me to a marketplace, but for extremely out-dated listings:

So... one strategy people are looking to as Google continues to hammer niche/content/ad sites into oblivion is LOOKING like a site that does something.

• An ecommerce site with no products in stock
• A forum with no active discussions
• A marketplace with... nothing in the marketplace

It LOOKS like it does something other than just providing content for the sole purpose of sucking up organic traffic, but it's just a facade.

The website equivalent of this:

I think it's a bit of a gamble for Forestry, but it'll probably work for several years until it becomes super mainstream (you heard it here first, probably. If not, why are you lying?)...

And just for the record: I think having your site LOOK like it does something but not actually do something is definitely risky. It'll work... until it doesn't.

But that is not as bad as the 2nd thing:

The Second Thing:

There are some WEIRD posts on this site that don't at ALL relate to the buying and selling of forestry equipment:

I guess one COULD make the argument that otters live... near the forest?

Maybe?

But like, bro, we're looking to buy/sell forestry equipment, why are you writing about otters.

They are actually writing about A LOT of animals and ranking for A LOT of keywords about animals... on the forestry equipment site:

7500 keywords worth of animals!

The Trap That Successful Sites Fall Into

I've seen it a thousand times, a site starts ranking well within their niche, gets addicted to those traffic numbers, fucking junkie, and starts writing about anything and everything.

They ride that traffic wave straight into a coconut palm, smash face first and get a triple concussion from two coconuts that fall on their head while they lay on the ground dazed.

The Google update is the coconut tree, here, in this low-effort metaphor...

A lot of sites that get their ass kicked during an algo update are facing a reckoning of how much they deserve to be ranking at all.

If you're ranking for 7500+ animal posts on your CLEARLY BUY/SELL FORESTRY EQUIPMENT SITE and you're getting several thousand visitors a month for that, you don't really DESERVE to be ranking for those keywords, and the next algo update will be a course correction.

So maybe your site didn't really get punished so much as it got corrected. But then, does Google's algo (or manual person) think you were trying to manipulate things so that you got a bunch of search traffic you didn't deserve by trying to rank on purpose for a bunch of stuff outside your niche?

Well now you ARE going to get punished.

(Just a quick note re: deserving--I'm saying this from the perspective of Google's guidelines, not my own opinion, IDGAS what you do, go nuts! But if you go nuts in this particular way you're GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME).

This last site isn't perfect, but that traffic graph is...

Dogster is a site I saw being talked about on twitter--mostly because the traffic looks like this after the latest update:

And when you see something like that you have to ask yourself SCREAM AT THE ELDER GODS AND OFFER YOUR FIRST BORN AS SACRIFICE FOR THE SAME FOR *YOUR* SITE

What are they doing, and why is it working.

This site is particularly interesting given the other two sites I just covered, because:

1. It mostly uses the blog roll format on the home page and main category pages (with some customizations--which I approve of), and
2. It has a very simple store page.

The site looks very basic accept for a few custom things, like this in the sidebar:

Look how much better that looks than "hi my name is tom smith this is my dog site I'm a dog lover."

Also, an opt-in box, JUST LIKE A REAL COMPANY.

They've got a shop page that is just like ...12 books or something lol.

I took it through to the cart and stopped just short of buying--seems legit. But it's so tiny! Just buy some books wholesale and put up woo commerce like come on, this isn't rocket science...

But where this site REALLY shines, regardless of what Google says that "putting reviewed by blah blah" on your site, or EEAT is not a thing, it's just a state of mind or whatever propoganda...

Having a stacked about page like this is 10/10 if you can get it:

The site also used to be a magazine, so it has hella links:

+16,000 legit links...

Forget everything else I said, if you can get 16,000 legit links to your site and you do like... the bare minimum best practices you're probably gonna be fine.

Bare minimum EEAT, bare minimum design, bare minimum content... those links are gonna carry it.

(But you know... do better than the bare minimum, that's just to illustrate a point).

(If you want to. I'm not the boss of you)

(...or am I?)

(no, I don't need that kind of responsibility I'ma get high and eat Easter candy while I watch reruns of It's Always Sunny... that's what I want to be the boss of)

Work With Me

I can write a newsletter that'll blow the ass right off of your B2B subscribers, you can check that out here.

I can help guide your SEO with my Fractional Director of SEO offering, which you can view here.

Finally, I can grow the shit out of your business, whatever it is, agency styles, which we can talk more about by you booking a call here.

~

well, that's a wrap.

hope you enjoyed this one.

i know i promised the "how to do GSC so your sites don't all get banned" but I'll write about that in the next one--I didn't forget!

if you're wondering what I'm up to this weekend, it's this;

😬

shit. snow weekend.

❄️❄️❄️

what are you up to this weekend?

hit reply and LMK and also LMK what did you think of this email, I just love to hear from people esp. snowed-in.

until next time...

sean
sean@ranktheory.com