{"id":8003,"date":"2023-06-23T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-23T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nichetwins.com\/?p=8003"},"modified":"2023-07-31T15:02:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T15:02:00","slug":"there-is-nothing-permanent-except-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nichetwins.com\/there-is-nothing-permanent-except-change\/","title":{"rendered":"#17 | There Is Nothing Permanent Except Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s been said many times and many ways that Google is bipolar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She loves me, she loves me not. Google giveth and Google taketh away.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there\u2019s plenty of truth in that. I know. Last week I shared that my site, TheFlexibleWorker.com<\/a>, has been stuck on Google\u2019s bipolar roller coaster for the past 18 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does Big G always<\/em> serve the highest quality content? Of course not. We all know countless examples of thin, garbage content that sit on top of the SERP pile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But directionally speaking, on net,<\/em> Google surfaces what the searcher is looking for. This becomes clear when looking at sites on extreme ends of the quality spectrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Established, branded sites with multiple reasons to exist beyond JUST driving organic traffic will maintain stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cookie cutter niche sites like mine will get taken for a ride.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So changes are needed. But what changes and how<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up until now, I\u2019ve split my strategy into two primary buckets:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Near-term, easy(ish<\/em>) updates<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Long-term, hard updates<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Here are the top five, bucket #1 changes I\u2019ve made over the past few months\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n\n\n\n

    Link Building<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    I\u2019d largely ignored link building all together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As a result, The Flexible Worker has spent nearly the entirety of its existence with a Domain Rating of 1 or 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And yes, plenty of sites pull in significant traffic with low single digit DRs \u2013 happens all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    SEOs will argue until they\u2019re blue in the face about exactly how much Domain Ratings matter, but the bottom line is: links matter.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It also matters how<\/em> you acquire them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Mike learned this the hard way when a service he was working with was buying links on his behalf. His reward? A manual penalty from Google for \u201cunnatural inbound links to some pages\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So naturally, we\u2019ve grown extremely skeptical of the entire link building industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Until we met with the team at LinkiFi (you can check them out HERE<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    They walked us through their approach to building white-hat, high quality HARO links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A few months ago, we decided to trust them with all three of our sites and they\u2019ve delivered exactly as advertised.*<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    My site had gone 16 months without ever landing a single DR50+ DR backlink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In just 2 months, LinkiFi landed links with DR67, DR73, DR76 and DR82 sites. Not to mention a highly relevant DR90 nofollow and a bunch of high DR unlinked mentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Collectively, these all represent little votes of confidence to Google that are finally starting to move the needle\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"TheFlexibleWorker.com<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
    <\/div>\n\n\n\n

    *As a side note, Linkifi is now the ONLY link building service that Mike and I recommend. We are actively working with the their team on a promo for Niche Twin subscribers, so be on the lookout for this in the coming weeks.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Content Pruning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    A significant part of my site revival strategy is also centered around strategically deleting posts.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    At one point, I had published a total of 162 posts. Today I\u2019m down to 91.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I axed posts that covered topics too far outside of my topical authority sphere, as well as several posts that never pulled in a meaningful number of monthly pageviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s important to acknowledge that a significant percentage of these articles include Brand Swapping<\/a> clusters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The hope here is that any negative detractors applied to the site will be removed over time by removing what Google may view as \u201cduplicate content\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Updating Old Content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Rewording brand swapped articles also plays a role in minimizing the overall percentage of duplicate content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But the truth is, duplicate content aside, I\u2019ve slept on updating old content for far too long.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    My content verticals target tech products \u2013- products that are constantly evolving<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The content covering these verticals is not evergreen. That means more frequent updates are flat out necessary to ensure these posts are maximumly helpful and relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Updating Categories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Until recently, I had just two category pages for ALL of the content on my site: \u201cGuides\u201d and \u201cHow-to\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Determining whether to assign a post to one versus the other has been a totally arbitrary process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I honestly don\u2019t know why or how I even decided on this \u2013 just one of those cases where I implemented it from the jump and never looked back.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The vast majority of people who encounter a tech- related issue go straight to Google, search for the solution, and once they get it, they bounce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So in my case, creating more logical category pages is not really meant to help readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Instead, I made this change to (hopefully<\/em>) help search engines better understand the relationship between the different pieces of content and how they fit together.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Updating<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
    <\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Improving Site Performance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    In general, I think site owners assign far too much weight to site speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I\u2019m talking about the people spending hours tinkering just to go from a 98 to a 99. Not a great ROI on your time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That said, it is definitely worth taking the time to get your Core Web Vitals into the green.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Initially, this seemed impossible with Ezoic. So much so that I removed ads from my site all together for many months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But sometime in April I switched out my WordPress theme to GeneratePress<\/a>, set up a bunch of ad restrictions (removed all above the fold ad, set maximum ads per post by word count, etc.<\/em>) and pretty much begged the Ezoic support team to configure Leap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So far, so good.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"PageSpeedInsights<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
    <\/div>\n\n\n\n
    \n\n\n\n

    Did one of these changes contribute to the recent bump? All of them? None of them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    No way to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Here\u2019s one thing I\u2019m confident of: The Flexible Worker will continue to get swept up in the bipolar roller coaster unless a few more SIGNIFICANT changes are made.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That brings us to the ominous \u201cbucket #2\u201d updates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    More on that next week\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For now I\u2019m off to a bachelor party in Montana to act like I\u2019m in my 20s again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Pray for me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Have a weekend! \u270c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    -Keith<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
    \n\n\n
    \n
    \"mike<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

    Niche Twins newsletter sent weekly on Fridays at 8:30 AM ET<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n