Here's how you can use ChatGPT to research like a topic expert on topics I'm not an expert on.
And let's do it with a case study because I know you guys love practical examples.
Let's imagine I'm writing an article on "the health benefits of switching from sugar to Xylitol."
The affiliate site
@vpnmentor
.com recently sold for $150,000,000. ๐ค
That's probably one of the BIGGEST exits for an affiliate site.
It also makes it one of the highest-earning affiliate sites ever.
Let's see what we can learn from them ๐งต ๐
Many people talk about build content silos / hubs etc for better rankings.
But very few people show you how they actually look in real life.
So in this ๐งต Iโll show you some real life examples you can model your sites after to build content hubs and get more traffic. ๐ช
Hereโs exactly how you can find low-competition long-tail keywords using ChatGPT.
Traditional keyword tools rarely surface these keywords, and this could give you a real competitive edge.
Start by giving it context on your site, then ask for a list of sub-niches ๐๐งต
Iโm not against removing low quality sites from search.
But I find it amusing that Google is giving 2 months to large publications to remove spam from their sites.
For small businesses they deindex them overnight.
If this isnโt double standards I donโt know what is.
Google: Links are not a top 3 ranking factor.
We redirected 100+ links (from old posts we removed) to this page without updating ANYTHING.
Result:
#11
>
#1
Now, we need to update the page... We shouldn't recommend Jasper. ๐ฌ
Food for thought for anything Google shares.
Here's how Google teaches quality raters how to determine if a site is trustworthy (for E-E-A-T).
They search: -site:
And use the top results to determine if the site's sentiment is positive or negative.
They also use Wikipedia.
Many boast about making bank with ads & affiliates. ๐คฏ
But the blogs that make the most money are usually NOT counting on either of these.
In this ๐งต, I'll show you real-life examples of $1,000,000+ / year blogs and how they make their money. ๐
Some people on Reddit already have access to Bing GPT and have been running some experiments ๐งช.
Hereโs one many content creators & SEOs will find both terrifying and relieving. ๐ฌย ๐งตย ๐
Imagine being the source of the story (and getting all the links) and STILL ranking
#3
for the exact title of your article by higher authority sites.
You don't even need to read the article.
The screenshot shows how broken Google currently is.
The recent Google core updates have been pretty brutal for many site owners ๐ญ.
Recovering from these is tough but doable, so I decided to prepare a ๐งต that will help you recover if you got hit.
Applying this stuff may also prevent you from being hit in the next update. ๐๐
A good example of Google's algo these days:
Keyword: Best WordPress Hosting
#1
: Random newspaper that has no "EAT" about WordPress and no good links to pages.
Pure parasite SEO.
Below that: Well-respected sites with tons of high-quality content & links on the topic. ๐ค
Iโve had some time to play with the new Bing search examples.
Is it the end of SEO traffic?
What could Google steal from this?
Here are 6 practical key takeways for those who care about search traffic. ๐งต๐
Whether you're Pro or Against AI Content, if you are a web publisher, you are going to be dealing with it next year.
So I tested the AI Detection tool in many difficult situations to see if it catches AI Content.
The results were quite surprising. ๐งต๐
A LOT of changes to search are ahead of us and will probably change the way we do business.
Here are my quick thoughts on Bing GPT / Google Bard for niche / authority site builders ๐๐งต
What I learned from the Google leaks:
Everyone sees what they want to see.
๐ Link sellers tell you it proves links are still important.
๐ Semantic SEO people tell you it proves they were right all along.
๐ผ Niche sites tell you this is why they went down.
๐ฉโ๐ผ Agencies tell
SEOs didnโt ruin the web.
Google encouraged a certain type of content by ranking it and SEOs identified it and produced more of it to gain visibility.
If Google rewarded super hq original content with traffic, everyone would try to be producing it (like on YouTube for example)
How Google ranks content doesn't make sense anymore.
1๏ธโฃ SEOs create 3000 words with AI when 500 is enough because that's how the algo works
2๏ธโฃ Users find 3000 words BS and switch to Reddit, youtube, social
3๏ธโฃ People use Google less
Time for a radical change in the algo.
It's interesting. You go on Twitter, and you feel MASSIVE changes are going on in SEO.
Then you go on Google, and you see the same ol' shit content & guest post link building rank and bank ๐คทโโ๏ธ.
According to many SEOs, links are still the
#1
ranking factor on Google. ๐
But a lot of the advice on acquiring links is elusive at best. ๐คจ
So a while ago, we decided to dig DEEP into our internal link-building data, and here's what we learned ๐งต๐
Google is becoming the spam theyโve been fighting for 20 years.
I suspect we will see a significant market share drop if they donโt fix this quickly.
My guess is the rumours of OpenAI launching a search engine was just a bait to make them launch an unfinished product early at
People don't add "Reddit" to the end of their query because they love Reddit.
They do it because Google sucks at surfacing useful content. ๐
The solution is not to rank Reddit.
The solution is to reward content searchers enjoy.
Ranking Reddit is basically giving up.
Are you still optimising your blog images manually?
Or are you paying a monthly sub to do it?
Do you have a mac?
Hereโs how you can bulk optimise a whole folder in 2 clicks. ๐งต๐
The more I use the new Bing, the more I feel that search as we know it will stick around.
1๏ธโฃ It takes 20-30 seconds to type answers out
2๏ธโฃ It's a lot more effort to type long queries. I doubt people will do it
3๏ธโฃ Answers are often quite bland
4๏ธโฃ It makes stuff up regularly
After the recent Google updates, most are looking for new traffic sources to do the same thing, when the solution is probably to look for a new business model.
Google is probably starting to realize it's hard to monetize SGE, and people's appetite for "AI everywhere" is drying up.
The result?
SGE is shrinking more and more in its experimental version.
Are you only using stock images on your site?
It may be time to reconsider.
If you read Google's own quality rater guidelines:
The lack of original imagery is directly associated with "low quality content".
I've often quoted
@thehoopsgeek
for being one of the better build "small" affiliate sites.
With 43DR yet 300,000 monthly visitors, they have one of the best, most "practical" implementations of EAT site owners should look to the model.
Here's what you can learn from them ๐งต
Easy to rank niche idea in the legal niche:
๐ Is it legal to marry your cousin
Easy to template, easy to rank, high value leads, build it today, easy win-win (except for the kids of your visitors)
Follow me for more niche ideas.
The more I look at SERPs with parasite and shit AI content ranking, the more I realize Google is now facing an existential threat. โ ๏ธ
If they don't solve this soon and the best tactic is to spam, the platform will die a slow death as users abandon it to find info elsewhere.
If Reddit and Quora start showing like this on the SERP's, I think it's more "fair" to everyone.
- They take less vertical space
- User chooses if they want a forum or an article
- It rarely shows
#1
It still sucks organic traffic, but it's a better experience overall.
Letโs be clear:
If you are mass creating & posting content with AI without editing and fact checking it:
Youโre a spammer.
Youโre spreading potential misinformation, hurting the people who use it and you shouldnโt be surprised when your site tanks with the next update.
Do you want to be a more productive marketer? โ
After 13 years in this industry, Iโve used 100โs of Chrome Extensions to help me with my daily work.
Hereโs a ๐งต of the best FREE ones and how to use them to get more done in less time ๐๐
For those of you who didn't know:
You can absolutely use emojis in title tags ๐.
They'll show up most of the time ๐.
And they'll increase your CTR ๐คฉ.
The new Apple x OpenAI partnership AND the fact that you can type to Siri from anywhere in the system creates the perfect storm toโฆ completely bypass Google to find information.
On hundreds of millions of device as soon as September.
I wanted to share a theory that's NOT supported by common SEO knowledge or Google.
I published this post yesterday.
It's 700 words, barely edited, and NOT optimized.
The only keyword occurrence is in the URL.
Today, it's ranking
#2
(for a low comp keyword)
2023:
Google -> The place where I go for reliable info
TikTok -> The place where I go for entertainment
2024:
Google -> The place where I go for entertainment
TikTok ->The place where I go for "reliable" info
๐คทโโ๏ธ
Remember this tweet by John Mueller about the HCU? ๐ฌ
He has now deleted it along with all the answers, saying HCU did a good job at the time.
This or
@seroundtable
and
@rustybrick
can't link to Tweets properly.
Link in the next tweet for your fact-checking ๐
We complain about Google all the time, but honestly, I'm truly grateful for all the free traffic and career this one company got me ๐.
No other Internet giant shares this much traffic for free.
Sometimes it's good to take a step back and appreciate what we have been given.
Company
@SearchPilot
ran proper A/B testing on EAT using authorship.
Control pages had no author name/bio/pics and test pages had all 3 of them.
Can you guess what the results were? ๐
6/ It makes a TON of stuff up.
I decided to lightly fact check the response it gave to a journalist about picking a new phone.
The screenshot speaks for itself. I wouldnโt want this level of accuracy to make buying decisions.
ALL SEOs get both big wins & big hits from algo updates throughout their careers.
NOBODY is so good that they always win.
If you donโt want to make a fool of yourself:
โ Stay humble when youโre doing well
โ Keep your chin up when youโre struggling.
I see SEOโs talking about sites that dropped and blaming the lack of โtopical authorityโ for it and everyone nods.
I open the site, content reads like shit, flows badly and is poorly researched.
Sometimes the answer is right in front of you but it feels like nobody reads ๐คทโโ๏ธ.
Here's a free & easy way to remove all the fake traffic that plagues GA 3 these days:
In Cloudflare:
1๏ธโฃ Go Security > WAF
2๏ธโฃ Name rule
3๏ธโฃ Country = Czech Republic OR Seychelles
4๏ธโฃ Managed Challenge
5๏ธโฃ Deploy
RT so more people can fix their analytics โ๏ธ
Iโve seen that story so many times:
1. Site starts doing well and makes some money
2. Owner decides to โscaleโ and hires many writers
3. Editorial quality slips due to volume pressure
4. Site tanks 1 year later
Sometimes scaling slow is the way, even if itโs less sexy.
It's official: Parasite SEO is now out of control. ๐
Large domains, including the most prestigious, are being used by SEOs.
Others get into "partnerships" with high authority sites (read parasite SEO where they split the profit)
And, of course, news sites still need money.
The people who insist on doing everything with AI are the same people who told you crypto would replace cash 2 years ago.
I get it; it's cool, but in many cases, AI does a WORSE job than traditional tools.
That's especially true for keyword research and content creation.
The Google snake is biting its tail. ๐
Thanks to Google's newfound love for UGC content, Google group discussions(a Gmail/Gsuite app) can be indexed and now rank like Gangbuster.
So, spammers are using it to distribute rank and malware, illegal content, and more dirty stuff.
This morning I'm comparing the data between
@SERanking
,
@semrush
and
@ahrefs
.
I'll be documenting some of the stuff I'm finding below.
If you want to understand the difference between these tools, check this ๐งต out ๐
Reply with things you'd like me to test.
Well after going through most of the content of the leak, I feel pretty confident in the advice I've given recently:
To do better at SEO, focus less on SEO and more on other channels.
Basically SEO is not the discovery engine it once was, it's more of a feedback loop for how
The new Edge caching by
@BunnyCDN
is awesome when put together with WPRocket.
This is a ready-for-production staging site's content page with many images, text, youtube videos, etc.
LCP : < 0.5s
Full load < 1s
Monthly cost: Less than $2 for most sites.
How you can do it ๐๐งต
I know many people want to storm out and slam the door right now.
But Google still sends almost 2/3 of all referring traffic on the web.
Are you really going to run an online business ignoring it?
Impressions for the keyword โAhrefs Alternativesโ and variations in the past 6 months.
Clearly people are NOT happy with the new pricing ๐คฌ.
Have you considered switching yet? If so to what?
The spam update is done rolling out!
So naturally, this newspaper hosting incredibly biased parasite review pages (sales pages, really) is up 23% since the update started ๐คทโโ๏ธ.
Rankmaths adding an AI writer to an SEO plugin is the ultimate bloat / core product focus loss example.
The tool's missing or has buggy core SEO features like advanced SCHEMA, yet they put the dev towards building a late AI writing tool that brings nothing new to the table.
I
Reddit is noticing that Google is getting worse (note the 110 upvotes on the comment)
And if itโs on Reddit it must be true (according to Google) ๐คทโโ๏ธ
People are eager to see what alternative OpenAI is going to offer.
We're releasing an interview with an ex-Forbes SEO tonight, and we uncover how they pull such trickery.
Watch out for the video dropping in a few hours ๐
OpenAI is about to bury YouTube under a sea of AI video content (with their customers' money) the same way they've done it for Google with text.
Gemini 1.5 with 1m tokens is very impressive, but Google's cash cows are under attack now, and I'd be worried if I were their CFO.
It's good to see the niche site world getting into FB ads.. but I think you guys are doing it wrong.
Buying likes will get you the lowest quality audiences.
Take it from a guy who spent almost $40,000 on FB ads in the last 2 months.
The anti-Google movement is so strong right now that people would rather focus on a search engine with an 8% marketshare.
I'm not sure that's the right strategy ๐คทโโ๏ธ
What
@BrianEDean
did, less than 0.01% of us will ever achieve:
He built his site to DR 90, almost on his own.
His blog has a higher authority than:
NBA .com
TheSpruce .com
Lenovo .com
And he shares his secrets in this week's podcast.
๐ in the next tweet ๐
The SEO industry really has multiple personality disorders.
Personality
#1
: Noooo, AI search engines are bad and will kill the open web! ๐ฅ
Personality
#2
: Look at my amazing spreadsheet that created 3000 (shit) articles with AI on autopilot. ๐
I can't wait to see all the "successful" SEO case studies people are gonna create out of Ahrefs tweaking their traffic calculation and attributing explosive growth to sites that aren't growing explosively.
The reason many are not successful at SEO is not that they're missing out on a tactic or "secret".
It's usually because their execution and attention to detail are poor, and/or their content is dull AF.
You don't need more tactics, you need more discipline and personality.
Call me a hater, but after looking into "topical authority" content for the last 2 days (free and paid), it looks like it's just a buzzword attached to well-known SEO good practices ๐ฌ.
I Covered this stuff 5+ years ago in TASS and Pro.
Microsoft is not just adding OpenAI to Bing.
It's also adding it to the
@MicrosoftEdge
browser.
Meaning you'll have a desktop and mobile app for AI access now.
Source: Microsoft event
Is this new? ๐ฎ
Google search "Best head shaver" just popped a faceted navigation sidebar.
When you click on an item, it adjusts the search query.
It almost makes Google feel like an ecom for popular affiliate queries.
Have you observed this before?
Here's another way you can use for ChatGPT today.
I pretend I want to write a guest post from
@authorityhacker
to
@epicgardening
by
@KevinEspiritu
.
So I ask ChatGPT to come up with topic ideas that cross my expertise (Marketing) with his (Gardening)
What Iโm reading:
You donโt have to be an expert, you just need users to behave like youโre one.
IE if youโre not an expert but fool people, our algorithm will reward you ๐คทโโ๏ธ
@ichbinGisele
Thank you. I appreciated the thoughtfulness of the post, and the concerns and the detail in it. I've passed it along to our Search team along with my thoughts that I'd like to see us do more to ensure we're showing a better diversity of results that does include both small and
Following the Bankrate / Cnet AI story of last week, I've decided to analyze the performance of their AI content.
I pitched their AI-assisted pages against their top writers, and the results were... interesting.
@JimRoyalPhD
outperformed AI by 776% on average in November.
I made this graph a few years ago.
In a nutshell, it means that Affiliate payouts increase faster than SEO difficulty.
So it's not 100x harder to rank for a $100 high-ticket sale than it is to rank for a $1 Amazon sale.
Good to know when picking a niche ๐ค
Google sucks ๐คฎ
Letโs invent a better Google together ๐ค
My wish list ๐ง
๐ Google uses Chrome data to measure content engagement and uses it as ranking factor
๐ Implement like and subscribe button in Chrome. Subscribe shows more results of follows in search, likes are used
I know there are a lot of complaints about seeing no HCU recovery stories.
Spoiler alert, this is not a full recovery story.
We helped a friend of ours after he lost around 40% of his traffic to HCU.
We prompted him to make drastic changes and to no index most of his site