Do Yoyao and I throw in the towel and start fresh, or do we attempt a recovery?

It's a difficult decision. On the one hand, starting from scratch seems simpler than salvaging a build gone wrong. On the other, we asked you—Paul through LowFruits and Yoyao via the Niche Surfer newsletter—and the consensus was clear: “We want you to try to recover this site.”

Recovery it is.

Let’s go over the game plan.

Removing Silo #2

In the last case study update, we suggested that a likely culprit for the website's downturn was a flawed second silo.

The silo delved too deeply into a specific subject and, from an SEO perspective, got it wrong. For example, you wouldn't search for the tire size of a “red” Ford F-150; you'd look for the tire size based on the make and model, not the color.

The approach to the second silo was more of a “low-competition keyword” approach and slightly detoured from the first silo’s approach.

The reason for that was the impressions we were seeing from the first silo and wanted to see if we could get traffic faster following the patterns that we saw were getting traffic. 

While our error wasn't as blatant, and our website isn’t about vehicles, we suspected that the site's decline was linked to the tens of articles that approached this subject in a weird way.

So, we removed them. We deleted all 72 articles within the silo and 301-redirected them, with the WordPress category archive, to a 2,346-word article that explains what the subject is (the cliché “What Is {This Subject}?” article).

Keep in mind, this is a competitive search term.

To boost the article's ranking potential, we used outlines from Surfer AI and KoalaWriter, followed by fact-checking, human editing, and proper formatting.

The final SurferSEO score was a whole 94 out of 100, so I slightly de-optimized it before publishing. I don't have empirical data to prove this, but I know from firsthand experience, and I've heard it from others, that over-optimizing an article tends to produce the opposite result.

The “human editing” aspect was key. The one thing we had to make sure of was that the article addressed all the questions covered by the redirected articles—something the AI writers couldn't anticipate.

Now, it may seem counterintuitive to try to recover a site by deleting content instead of revising it. But given the flawed silo, both Yoyao and I see it wiser to remove the articles rather than rework them. We can revisit the topic later with new content.

However, we have more pressing things to take care of first.

Reinforcing Silo #1

With 95 articles now in Silo #1 and a 2,346-word pillar article in Silo #2, our next step is to strengthen Silo #1.

In the last case study update, we also mentioned that we could have done better at establishing topical authority for Silo #1.

Now that we’re going back to fix that, we can achieve this by adding “What Is {This Subject}?” articles for each corner of the silo and enhancing the internal linking between individual articles.

Here's the visual. This is the current structure for Silo #1:

We have a category archive and several programmatically generated articles that answer questions related to a given product and its varieties.

The articles you write (Is, Does, Will, etc.) will heavily depend on your niche and topics. The keyword research is vital here to avoid writing articles that have no searches, are not stand-alone articles, and could lead to keyword cannibalization issues.

And this is the structure we’re going to implement instead:

Observe the subtle—but important—difference. There's a pillar article for the main product and each of its variations. This allows for strong internal linking between each article.

Going back to the example with the Ford F-150 tire sizes, we want to make sure we also discuss the broader aspects of the Ford F-150 to give a better user experience to visitors and in-depth topical coverage to search engine bots.

We are also showing our broader knowledge.

This is the biggest difference between the low-competition keyword approach and the topical authority approach.

We want to have the topical coverage for everything we want to cover. We’re not cherry-picking articles simply because no one else is writing about them. 

With ChatGPT, Google SGE, and other Generative AI tools, the one-off visitors you get from targeting long-tail keyword articles will only decline from this moment on.

If you want to maintain and grow traffic, you want to also create a memorable brand and site, so visitors will remember you and want to revisit you. Which leads us to… 

Improving E-E-A-T

These days, no site recovery attempt is complete without E-E-A-T signals. At the very least, this includes a decent “About” page, a credible author bio, articles that cover the subject matter in-depth, and external links to authoritative sources.

As we rework Silo #1 and spend time on the site, we’ll work all these things in.

Backlinks

The time for building backlinks will come. But first, we'll focus on getting Silo #1 just right. When we get there, we’ll templatize and proceduralize the creation of new siloes in a cost-effective and replicable way, so we can take a second stab at growing the site.

The Rollout Plan

It’s never ideal when your website gets hit by an algorithmic penalty, but it's part of the business and a rite of passage for any website builder.

We’ll do the overhaul in what’s left of this year. Recovery is a gradual process and it usually coincides with a core algo update, so I don’t anticipate any immediate improvements.

Thanks for following along and expect our next update in December! In the meantime, share your thoughts or experiences on site recovery in the comments below.

Who We Are

Yoyao

Yoyao manages his portfolio of niche and authority sites, publishes the Niche Surfer weekly newsletter, and has a topical map service that helps sites build topical authority and drive organic traffic.

Learn more about NicheSurfer.com and TopicalMap.com

Dim

Dim started his first site in 2007 when he stumbled upon a blog about making money online. He’s been buying, growing, and selling sites ever since. Fast-forward to today, and Dim owns an indie media company and runs Publetise, a weekly email newsletter for online publishers.

Subscribe to Dim’s newsletter at Publetise.com

The post Case Study 2, Month 09: Improving Silos and Updates first appeared on LowFruits.

In this guest post, you will learn:

• How he utilizes LowFruits to help make his keyword research easier
• Why he targets keywords that have a search volume of less than 10
• Why he uses a long-tail keyword strategy
• His top 3 tips for effective keyword research when using LowFruits
• and a lot more!

1. Can you share a little bit about your background and what you do?

I’ve been in the affiliate marketing industry since 2009 and used to sell white label SEO services to SEO agencies. Now I run a visa processing concierge.

2. Can you provide us with some info on your main website, its primary objectives, and the results of your SEO efforts?

Visasforfuture.com is a sustainable tourist visa concierge. We help travellers with their tourist visas and, for every product sold, we plant a tree.

We started in April 2023 and are currently in the google dance. There’s no impressive results to show other than 400 visits/day from GoogleBot and 300 impressions/day.

3. Utilizing LowFruits in Keyword Research

3.1 1 How have you incorporated LowFruits into your keyword research process?

We added LowFruits to our keyword research SOP. I find it useful to de-duplicate with low fruits rather than by hand, as we can have spreadsheets of a few thousand keywords easily.

3.2 How do you come up with seed keywords or topics to search?

We write about all and any topic that’s visa related for a broad depth and breath of topics covered. We only cover keywords that we can sell so no keywords about “retirement visa” for example.

3.3 Do you filter down and target specific keywords? Which filters do you mainly use?

I don’t filter down.

3.4 What range of search volumes do you typically target in your keyword selection?

All

3.5 What are you looking for in the weak spots?

None

3.6 Do you focus on maximizing the use of keywords in a particular topic before moving on to the next?

No. Term Frequency is not a ranking factor nowadays.

4. Content

4.1 How many articles have you published using LowFruits?

We publish 200 articles/week and are at about 1,000 articles on the site.

4.2 How long did it take for those articles to start ranking?

Usually 3-6 months but we’re still in the google dance.

4.3 Do you use AI / hire writers / write yourself / other?

AI assisted with writing staff of 10 or so.

5. Tips and Strategies

5.1 What are your top tips and strategies for effective keyword research using LowFruits?

This long tail keyword strategy is a tried and true strategy. I first learned it on WickedFire back in 2011 or so.

Basically, if you go for 0-10 search volume keywords, there’s no competition there and it’s a great way to gain traffic soon, when your site is new.

5.2 What advice would you give to someone just starting out with keyword research using LowFruits or keyword research in general?

1. So, in the grand scheme of things, low fruits is an OK keyword research tool that helps save time with de-duplication.
   
   The old-school method of checking if two keywords are duplicates, by viewing their SERPS in two separate incognito browsers and comparing them, is no longer needed with clustering. That really saves time in keyword research.
   
   
2. The tip to target keywords with 0 volume is also a good old-school trick too. If it was really 0 volume on the keyword, how would Google know that the keyword exists?!
   
   It’s because the volume wasn’t zero. The volume was just too low to be counted on the function that counts keywords.
   
   The function that lists keywords defines a user in a different way, hence how volume can be 0 while the keyword is shown. I’ve gotten 500 hits/month from 0 volume keywords before.
   
   
3. If you’re going for such a long tail strategy, check with other people in your organization like customer service to see what other questions people have.
   
   You might find topics that aren’t even in keyword tools but your core audience needs that content.

Final Thoughts

Is there anything else you’d like to share or any final thoughts on keyword research?

In the SEO community, people stress finding keywords and writing but, if you want to run a business, you need to re-evaluate your content every year to see if it should be updated or not.

You also need to check what your competitors are ranking too because, if the qualitative test (humans) shows that your content sucks, sooner or later the quantitative checks (the algorithm) will figure it out.

SEOs tend to be very narrow minded and don’t realise that qualitative checks are more important in the long term.

This isn’t SEO but content marketing. If your content is no good, no one wants to read it. Then that’s how your site’s valuation goes to 0.

The post Visa processing concierge website includes Lowfruits to keyword research SOP first appeared on LowFruits.

In this guest post, you will learn:

• What unconventional method does Brian use to discover seed keywords?
• How he evaluates the strength of a niche?
• Why is he also targeting keywords that have a search volume of less than 10?
• Which filters does he use, all the time, to find low-competition keywords?
• His top 6 tips for effective keyword research, when using LowFruits
• and a lot more!

1. Can you share a little bit about your background and what you do?

While I have a legal background (law school graduate and former lawyer), I am now doing what I enjoy in life as a full-time Internet marketer who builds niche YouTube channels and websites, and monetize both mediums.  

2. Can you provide us with some info on your website, its primary objectives, and the results of your SEO efforts?

While I have multiple websites, I have experienced the highest level of success with a website that I created using LowFruits exclusively for my keyword research strategy.

The primary objective of this website was to provide information to people who are either about to have some type of eye surgery (i.e., Cataract Surgery, PRK, LASIK) or have had one of these types of surgeries in the past. 

I was able to identify the information voids that I could fill with my website by utilizing the tools provided by LowFruits, in addition to tools that I utilize to create content and build backlinks to my website categories.

Below are four (4) graphs (12 months, 3 months, 28 days, and “Most Recent Day” respectively) which show the performance of this website over these time periods.

What is even more exciting, is that my work on this website is 100% complete.  I just have to allow this website to exist while its organic traffic continues to grow and generate more and more passive income for me.

This website’s success would have been impossible without LowFruits.

[12 Month Graph]

[3 Month Graph]

[28 Days Graph]

The website now receives over 1,000 visitors daily and is still growing in traffic.

3. Utilizing LowFruits in Keyword Research

3.1 How have you incorporated LowFruits into your keyword research process?

1. I go to the Keyword Finder in LowFruits and type in my seed keyword.

2. I then analyze about 100-300 keywords and then go to the Reports page to determine the “Opportunity Percentage” where I am looking for 80% and above.

This tells me that at least 80% of the keywords that I just analyzed have low competition, and that I have a strong niche.

3.2 How do you come up with seed keywords or topics to search?

While this is very unorthodox, I became an author on multiple freelance writing websites and made a list on the topics that people were consistently willing to pay writers to create content about.

I then created a spreadsheet with the seed keyword for each topic and rated each keyword as “Good, Fair or Poor” based on a combination of the Cost Per Click and Search Volume associated with each keyword.

I was able to find numerous obscure yet highly profitable niches with very low competition by using this method.

3.3 Do you filter down and target specific keywords? Which filters do you mainly use?

The filters that I rely on most heavily and run concurrently are:

1. Weak Spots —–> At least 1
2. Title —–> No AllInTitle (top 10) 

This allows me to target underserved keywords for which less relevant articles are ranking. 

“No AllInTitle (top 10)” means that the websites which rank for this keyword on the 1st page of Google do not contain this keyword in their titles. Additionally, they are lower authority websites.

Nevertheless, once I have created articles for all keywords under these combined filters, I will turn the “Title Filter” off, and just focus on creating content for weak spots.

3.4 What range of search volumes do you typically target in your keyword selection?

Although it goes against conventional thinking, I do not pay attention to search volume. As long as there is an opportunity to rank, I am targeting a keyword, including < 10 keywords.

The reason why I take this approach is:

1. Search volume is always changing and I am in it for the long-haul. 
2. Reported search volume is notoriously inaccurate. 

3.5 What are you looking for in the weak spots?

I typically need to see at least two (2) green/blue/ (either or both combined) to target a keyword. However, if the search volume is higher or the CPC is high, I might create content if there is only one (1) low fruit, but this is rare. 

3.6 Do you focus on maximizing the use of keywords in a particular topic before moving on to the next?

I will exhaust a topic until there are no more keywords that fit my criteria. However, the main reason why I use the topic filters is because it is easiest for me to create content in one category at a time due to my content creation strategy.

4. Content

4.1 How many articles have you published using LowFruits?

6,928 published articles as of this moment.

1. The website that I registered on December 28, 2022, has 3,560 articles, which were all created using LowFruits.

2. I created a smaller website to promote one of my YouTube channels which has 660 articles, which were all created using LowFruits.

3. Currently I am working on a website that as of this moment has 2,708 published articles, but my plan is to add around 1,300 more articles since that website is in a very good niche.

4.2 How long did it take for those articles to start ranking?

When I registered my domain on December 28, 2022, I started publishing articles that same day. The website received its first search engine impressions on January 12, 2023, and its first three (3) search engine clicks on Friday, January 13, 2023. 

In January 2023, the majority of my traffic was from Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo. It took about a month for those articles to start ranking and my website left Google’s sandbox around March 15, 2023 (2.5 months). 

Now the vast majority of my traffic comes from Google and today I get around 1,000 visitors per day and growing.

4.3 Do you use AI / hire writers / write yourself / other?

I use 100% Ai, but never anything GPT. I avoid GPT because, as of today, it cannot provide details post-2021. 

The Ai that I use to create content researches in real-time and writes content from scratch, ensuring that it is both factual and unique. It is important that you use a tool that creates 100% fact-based content.

Once my content is written by Ai, I post it “as-is” with no changes on my part.

5. Tips and Strategies

5.1 What are your top tips and strategies for effective keyword research using LowFruits?

My top tips are

1. Make sure you start out by identifying a niche which actually has good opportunities using the “Opportunity Percentage” feature in LowFruits. 

2. Focus less on search volume and more on the opportunity to fill a void.

3. Make sure to factor Cost Per Click (CPC) into your analysis because this is how you will be paid.

For example, if a keyword has a CPC of $0.80, you should explore the niche more deeply to see if there are higher CPC keywords in that niche.

If there are not, this is not a good niche.  Keep in mind that there are low competition keywords with a CPC of close to $20.

4. Make sure that your website is organized well by menu category and keep topics within their designated menu categories. 

5. Make sure that your articles are at least 1,200 words long, and are written in short paragraphs with multiple subheadings throughout the article.

6. Start building highly relevant backlinks to your website’s menu within the 1st month.

If your website is about dog training and has a category about German Shepherd dog training, get a backlink to that category from a website that covers the topic of “German Shepherd dog training”. 

I don’t research my competitors when it comes to creating backlinks because I build my own private blog networks (PBN)  which link back to my website.

Therefore, if I were to create a website which covered the topic of “German Shepherd dog training”, I would create a 40 – 60 page website which covers topics exclusively related to “German Shepherd dog training”.

Then I would link all of the internal pages to a 2000-word  “Super Post” which would contain a backlink to the “German Shepherd dog training” category on my money website. 

I doubt that a PBN is necessary to rank when using LowFruits, but I like to “future-proof” to ensure that my rankings stick for years to come.

5.2 What advice would you give to someone just starting out with keyword research using LowFruits or keyword research in general?

Make sure that you use LowFruits to find a void that needs to be filled. You can easily do this by utilizing the “Weak Spots” and “Title” filters in LowFruits together. That is going to be your quickest path to success. 

Final Thoughts

Is there anything else you’d like to share or any final thoughts on keyword research?

LowFruits is a game changer for anyone who is considering building niche websites because it streamlines the process of identifying a profitable niche. 

Keep in mind that when you build and monetize a website, you can turn around and sell it for 35x to 48x the profit if earns per month. This is the going rate for a monetized website on Empire Flippers.

In other words, once your website starts generating $14,000 per month in net profit, you will be able to sell it for between “$490,000 and  $672,000”. 

I highly recommend that you build your websites on WordPress. Doing so will allow you to use the free “Jetpack” plugin, which will allow you to turn on a feature within Jetpack that automatically links your most relevant articles.

Internal linking is an on-page SEO strategy that is critical to the success of your website. 

Where can people follow you?

You can follow my work or ask me questions through my Twitter account.

The post Achieving 1k Daily Visits and rising! first appeared on LowFruits.

Dim here with an Oppenheimer-worthy update.

We're now in the eighth month of our study on programmatic SEO, and the website took a hit.

On June 30th—right at the end of the month—organic impressions in Google’s SERPs dropped from 750-1,000 to 100-150 per day. Expectedly, organic clicks dropped from 10-15 per day to 2-5 per day.

There were no official updates announced on that specific day, according to the Google Search Status Dashboard. And there isn't anything alarming under the Manual Actions and Security Issues tabs.

Clearly, this was an algorithmic penalty.

Something triggered a flag in Google's algorithms, causing the website to fall in the SERPs.

Sure, it hasn't disappeared completely from Google's index, and we're still getting some organic clicks:

But considering we're already in the eighth month, I was hoping for much better progress in terms of growth, especially for a programmatic website. So far, the website build is failing.

Hey, this is the nature of this business.

I built a site with minimal effort and sold it for four figures (unmonetized) when I tried programmatic SEO for the first time. Now, when I try to do it again with a public case study, it's becoming evident that I won't be as lucky as I was the first time—no more beginner's luck!

Yoyao and I will have to work for it.

The question is, what did we not see and/or do wrong?

Troubleshooting the SEO Performance

We took a good hard look at the website and came to a few assumptions:

#1 Analyzing the Cluster Depth

The second topic we focused on went in much too deep:

Let's say we were writing content about fish (even though we're not). 

Instead of publishing a guide called “How to Cook Trout,” we ended up creating separate guides like “How to Cook Brook Trout,” “How to Cook Lake Trout,” “How to Cook Tiger Trout,” and so on.

It's one of those mistakes that appear obvious when you reflect on it afterward, but not so clear while you're building the site. 

Regardless, we (or, as the one who took on content production, should I say “I”) learned an important lesson: When building out a programmatic site, think very, very carefully about the depth of each topical cluster before creating the content for it.

Suppose you search for some of the terms in your content plan and notice the general term appears instead of your specific terms. In that case, you probably want to produce content about the general one (i.e., “trout”) instead of the specific ones (for instance, “brook trout,” “lake trout,” “tiger trout,” etc.) 

Otherwise, you risk keyword cannibalization.

#2 Link Building

We postponed link building until late in the build:

We're now in the eighth month of building the site, and we only have one link so far.

The link?

Not great, people. Definitely not great.

That “scam adviser” check doesn’t necessarily report the site as a fraud… but it doesn’t deem it trustworthy either.

Given the influx of AI-generated content and the massive number of new websites, there’s no way Google won’t prioritize backlinks even more in their algorithm.

If we focus on the backlink profile of this website and set everything else aside for a moment, it's looking pretty sus.

#3 Internal Links

We neglected internal links:

Jeez, another big one.

Yes, we had put up a good categorization system. We used categories and subcategories to differentiate between the topical clusters and subclusters (think “Fish” > “Trout” > “Lake Trout”). 

But we fell short in creating strong internal links between the posts, which is also a missed opportunity when building up topical authority.

Imagine if we had built out strong internal linking between all of these different levels of content:

It’s harder to do and requires you to approach the site build a lot more strategically, but looking back from the position of somebody who ignored it, it’s absolutely worth it—if not even necessary.

How did I miss all of this?

The first time I built a programmatic SEO site, I also neglected link building and internal backlinks. It didn’t matter:

But that was earlier in 2022 before OpenAI released GPT-4 and ChatGPT, and when programmatic SEO was still this weird, niche thing that very few people knew about or tried.

It’s August 2023. Things are different.

It takes more time and more effort to build a site. Search engines are more suspicious of new sites. Scaled content creation is in a gray zone between “you can do it if you create value for your users” and “don’t do it at all.”

When mediocrity is the norm, you can’t be mediocre.

As much as I hate to admit it, that's where we’re at with this website build.

Hey, at least it never gets boring when you’re building websites!

What’s Next?

So, what’s next?

Should we continue doing what we’re doing and hope the site takes a different direction?

(We could, but then we would be ignoring the signs that something is amiss in the way we're building this site.)

Or should we call this case study a failure, let it sit for another few months, and come back to see if anything changes?

Perhaps we should. There’s no use in trying to salvage a sinking ship.

Or maybe we could try to turn this ship around and make this case study even more interesting. And if we do, how exactly do we salvage this?

Stick around!

(And let me know what you think we should do in the comments!)

June 2023 Metrics

Content

Indexing

In June 2023, 138 out of 167 posts were indexed by Google.

Production

In June 2023, we published 2 new templates that covered 32 new entities under the second topical cluster.

Traffic

In June 2023, the site had 268 total clicks and 26.9k total impressions in Google Search Console, with an average CTR of 1% and an average position of 16.

Who We Are

Yoyao

Yoyao manages his portfolio of niche and authority sites, publishes the Niche Surfer weekly newsletter, and has a topical map service that helps sites build topical authority and drive organic traffic.

Learn more about NicheSurfer.com and TopicalMap.com

Dim

Dim started his first site in 2007, when he stumbled upon a blog about making money online. He’s been buying, growing, and selling sites ever since. Fast-forward to today, and Dim owns an indie media company and runs Publetise, a weekly email newsletter for online publishers.

Subscribe to Dim’s newsletter at Publetise.com

[ratemypost]

The post Case Study 2, Month 08: What Went Wrong with the Programmatic SEO Website? first appeared on LowFruits.

It’s summer.

People all around the world are firing up their grills and cooking delicious meals for their families and friends.

As they’re grilling, they come up with all sorts of questions. And whenever they pull out their phones to search for answers, Barbehow is one of the sites they most frequently come across.

The Progress So Far

When I first started building this site, I told you I’d begin by focusing on: 

• Informational content 
• With keywords researched in LowFruits 
• Monetized with display ads

Once the site had established itself as an authority in the niche and gained ground on Google, the editorial team and I would slowly but surely work our way up to commercial content monetized with affiliate programs.

This is exactly what the team and I did when we published a bunch of commercial articles in Q4 of last year and Q1 of this year, rounding up the best grills, meat smokers, and accessories for different purposes in anticipation of BBQ season.

Our patience has paid off, and LowFruits' suggestions were once again right on the money. 

Today, the commercial articles consistently rank on the first page of search results—and for the second consecutive quarter in a row, the site is earning more revenue from affiliate commissions than display ads.

The site earned $1,847.57 in April, May, and June of this year:

• 59% came from affiliate programs (mostly Amazon Associates)
• 41% came from display ads (exclusively Ezoic Ads; I am a member of the Ezoic Premium program)

The fact that I've only published 16 new pieces of content since the beginning of the year, and yet the site has already generated $2,778.53 in revenue in H1 2023, speaks plenty about the passivity of this business model.

What’s Next for the Case Study Site?

I’m split between two options, and I haven’t made up my mind yet.

One, I could sell the site this year and refocus time, talent, and capital on growing a bigger asset in my portfolio. 

Or, two, I could continue investing in it and building it up for an even stronger BBQ season and sale next year.

If I decide to keep the site, I'm already thinking about several ways to grow it. 

Many of these ways involve experimenting with new supplementary channels and revenue streams, as well as using generative AI in creative ways beyond just content creation.

Until I’ve made up my mind, the focus is on improving the existing content, whether that’s: 

• Adding additional sections to articles based on Google Search Console data, 
• Creating illustrations that make it easier for readers to digest the information, or 
• Tweaking the design and content for Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Either way, I think that, ultimately, selling this site is a conclusive and somewhat poetic ending to a case study gone right.

As you’ll find out in the programmatic SEO case study update later this month, they don’t always go as well as planned.

What do you think?

Hit me up in the comments below.

P.S. If you’re a serious buyer interested in the site, hit me up at hey@dimnikov.com.

Is Building Websites Still a Good Business in the AI Era?

Lately, I've been getting a ton of questions from friends and coaching clients about whether building websites is still a good business model on the web that’s increasingly flooded with AI content.

The honest answer is: I don’t know.

(And if anybody claims to know for sure, take what they say with a pinch of salt.)

So let’s talk about what I do know!

Barriers to Entry

Before generative AI, creating a niche website required tech savviness and an investment of a few thousand dollars (or the equivalent amount of time) in content targeting the right keywords. Then you had to wait for 6 to 9 months for that content to mature and start getting organic traffic from Google. Eventually, you’d monetize that traffic with display ads, affiliate programs, and/or selling products.

Thanks to ChatGPT, the cost of content production has dropped to $0 (or if you're using ChatGPT Plus, like myself, $20 per month). Literally anyone can spin up a site, start prompting, and pump out tens—even hundreds—of articles within a few weeks.

Don’t get me wrong; the content that comes out of any generative AI tool is shit content. It needs editing, fact-checking, and a good amount of formatting to become factual and legible for human readers. If you rely heavily on generative AI, you also need good prompts.

But that doesn’t negate the fact that the barriers to entry into this business have been demolished.

In response, brand-new sites need more time to rank high and receive organic traffic. More time without traffic means more time to see revenue and break even.

Aged domains can help you reduce that time to days, weeks, or months. However, they’ll only get more expensive as SEOs revert to them—and the more people in the industry use them, the more likely search engines are to crack down on them sooner rather than later. 

They are a shortcut. 

However, shortcuts can, and very often do, backfire.

Generative AI-Powered Search and Search Experiments

Then there’s generative AI-powered search.

As if it wasn’t enough that anyone can flood the web with shit content, search engines have started experimenting with chatbots and generating long-form answers by themselves.

We have yet to see how this experiment turns out. 

I’ve seen experiments of the same magnitude fail before. 

Many years ago, Google tried to launch a social network called Google+. They aimed to compete with Facebook and Twitter, and it was arguably one of their biggest experiments since they changed search. (For those who remember, Google+ ultimately failed and faded into obscurity.)

Voice search was also supposed to revolutionize search. And yet Siri still struggles to do much more than set an alarm or reminder, and I continue to use my Echo Dot as nothing more than a talkative kitchen timer.

Will the same happen to Bard and/or the Search Generative Experience (SGE)?

If it doesn’t, and these things stick around, how will they affect the traffic that Google is sending to publishers like you and me today? 

Will informational queries get more clicks? Will commercial queries get fewer clicks? 

How much traffic will we gain and lose?

Once again, no one knows.

Bing claims their Bing Chatbot is actually increasing CTRs to publishers in the SERPs.

However, we’re still in the early days of generative AI and large language models—and everyone, including search engines, is learning and adapting. Within a few years, how we interact with computers “tomorrow” may become vastly different from today.

Or it may stay more or less the same.

Not everyone knows that, in 2012, I built a media company on the Bulgarian web (although I no longer live there, Bulgaria is my home country). My partners and I grew it to a portfolio of several sites, YouTube channels, and a tech-themed show on a music TV channel. I eventually sold my shares and cashed out.

One of the sites, Smart News, is still around—and it looks very much like how I remember it. 

Can you imagine that the way we built websites eleven years ago hasn’t changed all that much today?

Sure, the sources of traffic have. Back then, Facebook was king, and Google was secondary.

Traffic Sources

So next, we have the means of getting traffic. 

Before Google rolled out the Penguin and Panda updates, SEO was all about buying backlinks to boost PageRank (Google even had a PageRank toolbar) and cramming keywords.

Even so, the business's core mechanics—finding a low-competition niche, investing in good enough content, monetizing with display ads, affiliate partnerships, and product or service sales—haven’t changed much.

As long as there’s a Web, there will always be ways for publishers and content creators to reach audiences and make money.

And yet there’s something about generative AI that's giving me a gut feeling that it could be the most significant change I've witnessed since I started my first website back in 2007.

So, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Online publishing may undergo a major transformative shift, for better or worse, and the way we currently do things may no longer be the same way we do things in the future.

If you're already on board, it's worth sticking around and keeping to what works to see how things unfold. If you’re just entering this business, keep in mind that you’re entering an industry that just found itself in uncharted waters, and the weather’s getting stormy.

My play?

Focus on quality, optimize properly, scale wisely, and don’t keep all your eggs in one basket.

Tell me about yours in the comments below!

Content

Traffic

Ezoic Big Data Analytics

We're right in the middle of BBQ season, and the seasonality of the BBQ niche is showing in the site’s traffic.

Even though we only published only 1 post during the entire second quarter, the website received an impressive 68,265 visits and 77,674 page views.

That's a 57% increase in visits compared to the 43,361 visits we had in the first quarter and a 56% increase in page views compared to the 49,556 page views we had during the same period.

Google Search

During Q2, the site received 53,200 clicks and had 1.9 million impressions on Google's search engine results pages. The average click-through rate (CTR) was 2.8%, and the average position in the search results was 14.5.

Just to refresh your memory if you don’t remember the stats from the previous update, in the first quarter of 2023, the site received 31,000 clicks and had 1.29 million impressions in Google's SERPs. The average CTR during that period was 2.4%, and the average position in the search results was 18.

Earnings

In Q2, the site earned $1,847,57, of which $751.60 was from display ads (compared to $413.31 in Q1) and $1,095.97 from affiliate programs (compared to $528.07 in Q1).

Display Ads

Affiliate Programs

Amazon Associates

All “best X for Y” articles have buttons pointing to Amazon and other sites, including direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands or alternative retailers. Even so, Amazon continues to be the best-converting affiliate program.

Other Affiliate Programs

Who I Am

Hey!

My name’s Dim.

Thanks for reading (or skimming) this far.

I started my first site in 2007 after I stumbled upon a blog about making money online. I’ve been buying, growing, and selling sites ever since.

These days, I own an indie media company and run an email newsletter for online publishers called “Publetise.”

Don’t be a stranger: Subscribe to my newsletter at Publetise.com and get my best strategies and tactics delivered to your inbox once a week.

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The post Barbehow Case Study 1, Year 2, Quarterly Update 3: Are Niche Websites Still Profitable in the AI Era? first appeared on LowFruits.

(Weird name, maybe? Or okay… ish? Let me know in the comments!)

Dim here with the May 2023 update for my programmatic SEO site case study with Yoyao.

But before we dive into the down-and-dirty details, I want to give you a couple of critical updates:

1. I’m starting a weekly email newsletter for online publishers, and I invite you to sign up at Publetise.com. I will be dropping a lot of good stuff there, so don’t miss out.
2. Watch out for the next quarterly Barbehow update, my LowFruits low-competition keywords case study, in July. The website is killing it in affiliate earnings, as you will see in the income report for the previous three months once the update goes live.

Now that we’ve gotten the updates out of the way, let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming.

May 2023 Metrics

Content

Indexing

With a fresh batch of programmatic content live and after Yoyao, a.k.a. Mr. Topical Maps, did some indexing magic in the previous month’s update, indexing is looking healthy.

Here’s what the “Page indexing” report in Google Search Console looks like:

As I’m writing this update, the site has 135 published posts. 

113 of them are in Google’s index, and a majority of the ones that aren’t haven’t been crawled by Google yet—and I expect that number to go up once that changes.

Production

The site now has 2 topical clusters with 24 entities, covered by 18 templates used to generate 135 posts.

If you’re new here or just don’t remember the terminology, here it is:

• A topical cluster is basically a category, like Cars or Pickup Cars.
• An entity is a single thing to write about, like Ford F-150 or Ford F-350.
• A template is a Google Docs file with variables for the name and features of the entity.
• Posts are the output of the template and the final pieces of content that users get to see, and the search engine bots get to crawl.

The Difference Between Programmatic vs. Regular Content

Producing programmatic content is similar, and yet different, to producing regular content.

You have to do your research to find a niche that’s broad enough to have plenty of topical clusters or topics, to write about, but also narrow enough to allow you to build up topical authority.

Then, you have to build up a spreadsheet of entities or things, along with their variations and their attributes. 

For example, Ford releases a Ford F-150 truck every year, and the specs vary from year to year. The models also have different variants with different engines and features.

Next, you have to identify your strategy. Will you produce one post per model, or will you aggregate answers in a single post that covers all models of a specific make? 

There’s no right or wrong answer; you should let the content that Google’s already ranking on Page 1 for your target terms guide you.

There are also technicalities, like selecting a web-based tool or WordPress plugin for your programmatic publishing process, documenting procedures for your authoring team, training them on how to use the tool, etc.

Last but not least, there’s the production. The posts need to be written, edited, fact-checked, and published.

It’s not a shortcut—and it isn’t guaranteed to work. But if it works, it can pay off big time.

Traffic

The site is slowly but surely crawling its way up the SERPs.

This is what the “Performance” tab in Google Search Console has looked like for the past 12 months:

And this is the data for May 2023:

In April 2023, the site got 160 clicks from 12.8k impressions with an average CTR of 1.2% and an average position of 14.

In May 2023, it got 271 clicks from 25.4k impressions with an average CTR of 1.1% and an average position of 15.4.

The site is growing.

I’ve had seven-month-old sites with 100+ posts that have had much more impressive growth, but still, growth is growth, and it needs to be acknowledged.

Who knows? Maybe this site will turn out to be a late bloomer!

I attribute the reduction in CTR and average position to new content making its way to the lower end of the search pages. But there’s also work we can do—and, in the coming months, we will—to improve and optimize the existing content on the site.

One way to think about programmatic sites, especially in their first year, is as icebreakers, those special-purpose ships that clear the waterways for other boats to use.

But in this case, the site is clearing the waterways for itself. As soon as specific posts start getting impressions and traffic, it’s a good idea to return and make them better than the original template.

“Better” how, you might be wondering?

How to Upgrade Your Content

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1. Look at the search terms those posts rank for in Google Search Console, then add text, illustrations, or embedded videos to satisfy searcher intent better.
2. Run your posts in an AI content optimizer, like Surfer, Frase, or some other tool, and ensure they cover all the entities that search engines expect to see inside.
3. Build backlinks. To your home page, to special pages that link to the posts you want to rank, or to the posts themselves. Keep the links high quality and the anchor texts diverse so you don’t end up with a manual action on your site.

I’ve already built and sold one programmatic SEO site, and I’ve seen success with these methods.

Will Yoyao and I be able to pull it off this time? 

And just how big can a programmatic SEO site grow?

We’re asking the same questions—and updating you monthly as we get the answers!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned.

Who We Are

Yoyao

Yoyao manages his portfolio of niche and authority sites, publishes the Niche Surfer weekly newsletter, and has a topical map service that helps sites build topical authority and drive organic traffic. 

Learn more about NicheSurfer.com and TopicalMap.com

Dim

Dim started his first site in 2007, when he stumbled upon a blog about making money online. He’s been buying, growing, and selling sites ever since. Fast-forward to today, and Dim owns an indie media company and runs Publetise, a weekly email newsletter for online publishers.

Subscribe to Dim’s newsletter at Publetise.com

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The post Case Study 2, Month 7: Upgrading Programmatic SEO Content & Updates first appeared on LowFruits.

Yoyao here with a story about some indexing issues we had (and how we fixed them)!

Dim mentioned indexing issues in the case study update for month three. We thought they had resolved on their own, but it turned out they hadn’t.

After last month’s update and the April Update was over, I figured enough was enough. Time to try something else!

How I Usually Resolve Indexing Issues

One thing I succeeded with in the past was tapping into the Google Indexing API directly. The Indexing API is meant for short-lived pages, job postings, or livestream videos, where content freshness is important. 

Google Search Central’s documentation says the Indexing API can only be used to crawl pages with either JobPosting or BroadcastEvent embedded in a VideoObject. 

But, the API can technically work with any type of page. There’s no checking system in place that I’ve seen. 

When certain pages on a site are stubborn and have not been indexed for some time, I'll post those URLs to the Indexing API to try and get them indexed. 

How to Connect to Google’s Indexing API

The easiest way of connecting to the Indexing API is with the Rank Math Instant Indexing Plugin. However, you’ll still need to perform a few extra steps. 

First, create a project on the Google Cloud Platform and enable access to the API. 

Then, you’ll need to set up additional service accounts and JSON keys to use with Google Search Console and the plugin.  

Once everything is set up, enter your list of URLs that are not indexed, and they’ll be instantly submitted to Google for indexing. 

Results

On May 4, 2023, 48 URLs were not indexed. Their status was either “Discovered – currently not indexed” or “Crawled – currently not indexed.” 

I submitted all 48 of those to the Indexing API. 

On May 5th, I checked, and there were only 8 that needed to be indexed. This means we effectively got 40 URLs indexed with the plugin in 24 hours!

I submitted those 8 again, but they didn’t index. Not sure why, but we’ll continue to work on them to see if there are things we can do to get them indexed. 

As of writing this article (May 13th), there are 15 articles that need to be indexed, meaning 7 were de-indexed. Not sure why the deindexing occurred, but we’ll need to look into it. 

Most of these non-indexed pages use two templates, but other pages use them, too, and they are indexed OK. 

We will keep you up to date on how the indexing goes and what other methods we use! 

April 2023 Metrics

Content

Dim here. Now that we’ve covered Yoyao’s indexing wizardry (and the 7 articles that mysteriously keep disappearing from the index), let’s talk about content production!

As I mentioned in last month’s update, March and April were going to be slow months for reasons unrelated to the case study.

In April 2023, we published 1 new template that covered 8 existing entities in 1 existing topical cluster, bringing the total number of articles published on the site to 104 (a milestone!).

Another milestone is the case study website reaching six months of age.

So, what’s next?

We’re ramping up content production from late May and beyond.

We’ll use more generative AI to assist this process, which has already become a staple for content creators.

We’ll also review the already-published templates to try to find patterns and identify what’s working and what isn’t — so stay tuned.

Traffic

The site survived Google’s April 2023 reviews update and had 160 clicks and 12.8k impressions in Google’s SERPs, with an average CTR of 1.2% and an average position of 14:

If you expand the timeline to look at the trend for the past six months, the line is definitely in the right direction:

Of course, the Web is as uncertain as ever. 

From the new Google's algorithm updates to search engines generating their own answers instead of giving you results, the future of this business model looks less bright when you consider that we’re competing for user attention with the platforms that are supposed to be sending them to us.

Anyone who remembers the social media boom and the downfall of the organic traffic from Facebook (and then Pinterest) knows that this usually doesn’t end well for publishers, who will have to find new ways to stay afloat.

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The post Case Study 2, Month 6: Solving Indexing Issues for a Programmatic SEO Website first appeared on LowFruits.

Dim here with another update for the programmatic SEO site I’m building with Yoyao.

Let’s start this one off with a story:

Less than a lifetime ago, elevators had two features they no longer have today.

Inside each elevator stood a uniformed man or woman — the operator — who would open the doors from floor to floor and greet elevator goers on their way in and out of the cabin. There was also a mechanical lever on the wall, which the operator used to control the cabin’s movement and speed manually.

The job wasn’t for everyone. To be an elevator operator, you had to like being around people and maneuver the cabin with precision, patience, and skill. Building owners had to hire carefully; they looked for responsible, composed workers who could keep a smile on their faces all day while working the elevator like clockwork.

By the 1970s, hiring elevator operators was a non-problem.

Every elevator was automated, and the once-omnipresent elevator operator was replaced by the less welcoming but more efficient mechanical buttons on a metal panel on the wall.

I’m sure that if you and I could walk into a futuristic-looking booth and travel back in time to an elevator operator union meeting in the 1950s when elevator automation technology was still in its nascence, we’d hear a union rep say that no machine would ever be capable of operating an elevator as safely and as smoothly as a human could — with everyone in the room nodding heads and clapping hands in agreement.

Will people in the future be saying the same about you and me? More importantly, how far off is this future?

If you think about it, ChatGPT is already doing this to content writers. To write, one used to need a computer — the lever — and the ability to type out structured, coherent thought — the skills — on the keyboard. Now, all they need is a prompt — the button — and the machine does the writing — controls the elevator — for them.

What made elevator automation technology so consequential wasn’t the fact that they replaced a mechanical lever with an automated panel. No, it was the fact that this small change allowed anyone who had never worked an elevator before to push a button and get to the floor they needed to go to without needing somebody in the cabin to do it for them.

Working an elevator used to be a job, a career. Now, it’s something you do on your way somewhere else, a means to an end rather than the end itself.

Photographers are facing the same existential crisis thanks to Midjourney and DALL·E.

One needed a camera — the lever — and a working knowledge of photography — the skills to take photos. Now, a photographer can generate an award-winning photo with just words. So can anyone else with a bit of imagination and ingenuity.

Photographers are plagued by the same question people had about operator elevators in the mid-50s: if we can generate lifelike pictures by ourselves, do we really need photographers to do it for us?

It gets even weirder when you add artists to the mix.

If anyone can train an AI model on Gordon Freeman’s image or Kanye West’s voice and produce movies or songs without them, you could say that actors no longer “own” their image… just like singers no longer “own” their voice. 

Even if you’re skeptical about the rate or pace of change AI can introduce to our business. It only takes a few Google searches to realize this reality isn’t as far away as you think.

There’s a chance that AI will do to entertainment, journalism, media, and the entire white-collar economy what the Industrial Revolution started for manual labor in the 1870s (and what computers finished in the 1960s).

Just look at the share of the labor force employed in agriculture over time — where machines, first operated by humans and now increasingly more autonomous, replaced manual labor:

Who gets to profit from this change is a big, open question.

Are we elevator operators? Is Google less like the building owner and more like the union?

If we think of ourselves as the building owners, is generative AI then allowing anyone to spawn buildings just like ours with a few prompts?

In a world of done-for-you answers, what’s the future of websites, let alone search? 

Will consumer habits — slow to change — and industry inertia — always a drag on change — be enough to counter, or at least slow down, an unprecedented shift in how we interface with information and use computers?

Remember, the World Wide Web was created by humans, for humans. With AI, we’re about to introduce something radically different into the mix, and we have no idea (yet) how it will pan out.

Darwinian evolution guarantees the survival of the fittest in life. In business, business models that are no longer efficient enough to keep growing and remain profitable eventually wean off and die. However I look at it, I can’t shake off the feeling that the way we create content today will be seen as grossly inefficient in tomorrow's weird world of content creation.

The only rational thing left for business owners like you and I to do is the cliché: stay on top of change, cash in on some of our chips, and keep milking the cash cow for as long as we can – while remembering not to keep all of our eggs in one basket.

Advice for Using AI in Programmatic SEO Content Creation

For all of you building programmatic SEO sites out there, here are a few tips:

• Start thinking about how you can use the likes of Midjourney and DALL·E to generate images. They don’t have to be lifelike; you can prompt for sketches or color drawings. By keeping the outputs simple and stylized, you compensate for the lack of accuracy of the AI models in their current form.
• Insert the variable keyword — and as many variations of it as you can — in every sentence. (Seriously, in every sentence.) Doing so makes your sentences and paragraphs “more unique” from one article to another, which supposedly helps indexation and ranking. If you do it right, you won’t be penalized for keyword stuffing.
• Research, research, research. The time and money you save from writing should go to making your content richer with facts and quotes. Don’t just regurgitate the already-regurgitated content by everyone else on Page 1; try to do proprietary research or tap into better and more authoritative sources for your posts than your competitors.

March 2023 Metrics

Now, onto the programmatic SEO case study!

March was the least productive month I’ve had in years. I caught the flu, then a virus, and then dragged a cough and the unrelenting need to keep napping for three weeks. That, and one of my writers is running on low capacity because he did the right thing for his family and got a proper job.

Content

Now that I’ve set your expectations low (keep them that way for April), you won’t be disappointed to read that we published 8 articles on our programmatic SEO site based on 1 new template for 1 new cluster in March.

This brings our total to 10 templates live and 96 posts published across 2 clusters.

The new topical cluster is semantically related to the first one. Think of it as a subcategory of a broader category, if you will. 

We continue to expand the entity coverage and, consequently, the topical authority of this site horizontally (more of the same) rather than vertically (more of something different).

Still, progress is progress — and the purpose of this case study, after all, is to test out how well programmatic SEO content will perform on a Web written by humans… and now bots.

Traffic

We bought the domain name on October 23, 2022, exactly 181 days ago. Here’s what the last 12 months in Google Search Console’s performance tab look like:

The site survived Google’s algorithm updates in Q4 ‘22 and Q1 ‘23 (in contrast, some of the websites in my portfolio were hit by 10 to 40%) and kept growing, albeit slowly.

That one post is still killing it, and a few others are finally starting to pick up:

Indexing has been somewhat stable but stuck at plus/minus 60 pages — roughly 36 pages less than the index-worthy pages on the site:

All in all, not bad, but it could be better. The fact that the site has managed to stay on the good side of Google and not suffer a major blow in an algo update is encouraging.

We’re not pouring everything we can into this programmatic SEO website, at least not yet. But as it keeps growing, the site is making a stronger and stronger case to get more and more of our teams’ time and attention. 

To be determined!

Even so, I don’t have the same appetite I used to have for this business. I have reduced the investment in new written content significantly across the board and am focusing on optimizing what I already have so that it ranks higher and converts better.

We’re at the point where AI is devaluing content on the web, and the law of diminishing returns is eating away at our moats the same way printing money is causing inflation in the economy to rise and making everyone poorer.

It’s a good time to keep and optimize or buy and flip quickly, and a bad one to build for the long run. Of course, I may be wrong. 

And even if I’m right, this may change.

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The post Case Study 2, Month 5: Using AI for Programmatic SEO Content first appeared on LowFruits.

And the trend of affiliate earnings is precisely where I want it to be: the site's revenue from affiliate links has been increasing MoM since January.

All of this comes from only 16 best-X-for-Y posts and 1 product review. I plan to publish a dozen more commercial posts, then sit back and observe how the site will do this summer — its second BBQ season.

Ready for the numbers, wins, and breakdown? Read on!

Win #1: Redesigning the Site to Boost Earnings

In the final days of March, I redesigned the site from this:

To this:

Notice that it’s still using the same theme, a heavily modified version of WordPress’ default Twenty Twenty-One theme. 

As far as Google’s web crawler is concerned, the CSS style sheet has changed, but the underlying HTML markup (and, therefore, the site’s DOM structure) hasn’t changed all that much. (They say you shouldn’t fix what ain’t broken.)

What has changed are:

• The logo
• Colors
• Fonts
• White spaces between elements
• Category names in the navigation menu
• Sidebar content

It sounds minor, but here’s why this can make more of a difference than some of you may think:

The articles on the site are now easier to read. The new design uses a sans-serif font family. Sans-serif fonts are generally more legible than serif fonts on high-resolution screens, which everybody has these days.

The site’s UX elements have been tightened up, meaning there's less white space between the titles, excerpts, featured images, content, and comments.

This makes it easier for your eyes to quickly absorb the information on larger screens, and you won't have to do as much scrolling to read the text on smaller screens.

These two tweaks can and probably will lead to improved engagement signals for users browsing the web, which can contribute to the site’s SEO success.

How to Quickly Redesign Your Site Like an Expert

I’m no UX designer, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from working with many outstanding UX designers over the years, it’s that you need matching and contrasting colors for a design to work. 

I use a free tool called Coolors to generate color palettes (a.k.a. color schemes) for my websites.

The site’s new color palette consists of a light pink background, bright-red links, and product boxes with bright-red buttons and dark-blue borders.

The background has the color of pink butcher paper — the type you wrap smoked meats with — by all means, a nice Easter egg and credibility booster for readers who know. But it’s there for a reason, and that reason is called CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization).

See, the pink background makes the Affiliatable plugin’s product boxes stand out on all devices, so the product boxes are easy to spot for all readers, especially those who scroll and skim:

Notice the presence of red, bolded links every 1-2 paragraphs under each product box:

It’s not the color that matters here; I’ll be testing out different colors to see which one works best in the coming months. 

It’s the fact that the links stick out.

I am a data-savvy guy, and I track user engagement on my websites with Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. 

On average, I know that 25% of the clicks on affiliate links on my sites come from these in-content links. 

In other words, if you’re not doing this in your product roundups, you’re missing out on ¼ of potential traffic to retailers and partners!

You can thank me later. ?

I’ve simplified the site’s navigation menu to two self-descriptive categories: “Articles” and “Buying Guides.”

There used to be a third category called “Local,” but it only has five or six posts, and I haven’t gotten around to growing it just yet, so I kept it but removed it from the navigation menu. I moved the “Glossary” page, which provides dictionary-like definitions of BBQ terms with lots of internal links, to the footer menu.

The posts are sized to a maximum width of 728 px, the same as the widest horizontal ad banner I use for in-content placements (728 x 90 px). Additionally, the sidebar has a width of 328 px and an unlimited height, which can fit the widest sidebar ad banner at 336 x 280 px.

Design-wise, I have now optimized the site's earning potential with enhanced usability, conversion rate optimization (CRO) for affiliate links, and strategically-sized ad placements. 

No, this won’t be a game-changer. But these tweaks and improvements add up over time.

Win #2: ChatGPT Helped Me Get 76% More Clicks in Google

In March, I did a little experiment.

I asked ChatGPT to help me come up with click-worthy titles for 10 of my site’s aged and underperforming posts to improve their CTR (Click-Through Rate) in Google’s SERPs.

I used the following prompt:

I am a BBQ blogger. Help me improve my articles' CTR in Google's SERPs. I'll give you the titles of the articles with the lowest CTR, and you'll generate 5 click-worthy title ideas for each. Can you do that for me?

I gave it the titles of my posts one by one, and, as instructed, it gave me back five variants for each.

After a bit of editing, I ended up with this:

The results speak for themselves:

• 28% more impressions
• 76% more clicks 
• 0.16% higher average CTR
• +4.87 points higher position

In the previous 14 days and with the original titles, these posts had 41 clicks, 9.42k impressions, an average CTR of 0.44%, and an average position of 29.86 in Google’s SERPs.

In the first 14 days with the new titles, they had 72 clicks, 12.1k impressions, an average CTR of 0.6%, and an average position of 24.98.

… All of this because I changed the posts’ titles! 

Yes, there's more work to be done to bring the average position of these posts down to a level lower than 10.

Nevertheless, the fact that I got pretty significant gains with ChatGPT’s help shows the immense value of using generative AI tools as a sparring partner for your sites’ SEO.

I’ll update another 15 posts in April, then 20 or 30 more in May, and tell you how it goes in next quarter’s case study update.

Metrics over Time

Content

Traffic

Ezoic Big Data Analytics

The site had 43,048 visits and 48,499 page views in Q1 2023.

Google Search

The site had 31k clicks and 1.29M impressions in Google’s SERPs in Q1 2023 with an average CTR of 2.4% and average position of 18.

Earnings

From January through March, the site made a total of $930.96, of which $402.89 (43%) from display ads and $528.07 (57%) from affiliate programs.

Display Ads

Affiliate Programs

Although the product boxes have buttons to other retailers or D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) brands, once again Amazon Associates was the highest-converting affiliate program.

Amazon Associates

Other Affiliate Programs

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The post Barbehow Case Study 1, Year 2, Quarterly Update 2: Boosting Earnings & CRO first appeared on LowFruits.

It's Dim here, back with another update for our programmatic SEO case study. Can you believe it’s already February 2023? Time flies when you're deep in the trenches of SEO!

In the previous update, Yoyao and I continued to focus on our first topical cluster, publishing more articles and tracking our progress as we aimed to establish topical authority. We also encountered some indexing issues that seemed to resolve on their own.

In this update, I'll share our progress for February 2023, including our traffic numbers and updates on our content and SEO strategy.

Let's dive in!

February 2023 Metrics

Content

We had 88 articles published by the end of February (23 in the month).

Those articles were aimed at one topical cluster: a category of products within the programmatic SEO website's niche. 

There are 8 different entities (meaning products within the category) and 9 different templates (in other words, the articles we use to generate the content).

We’re more or less done with topical cluster #1. 

Yoyao’s Topical Maps service team created new, well, topical maps for two new clusters. From March, we'll start publishing content for these two new clusters and cover more entities on the site.

Traffic

In February 2023, the site got 23 clicks and 1.74k impressions in Google’s SERPs, with an average CTR of 1.3% and an average position of 10.3.

When compared month-over-month, that’s 15% more clicks and 34% more impressions. However, the numbers themselves are not impressive or remotely interesting just yet:

That one article continues to bring most of the traffic. Fewer articles got clicks this month:

If you read last month’s update, you remember that indexing was an issue.

By January 31, the site had 42 out of 65 posts indexed, and the indexing trendline was shaky:

But by February 28, indexing had stabilized, with 51 out of 88 posts indexed:

There’s still some way to go. Even so, the trendline is where we want it to be — pointing up.

Programmatic Content vs. AI Content

Are the numbers good or bad?

If you ask me, they’re in line with what you’d expect from a new site in 2023.

Here’s a snapshot from Google Search Console’s performance tab for one of my other ongoing experiments (not a case study). It’s a new, AI-only site with 19 articles published between January 16 and 20.

Interestingly enough, this one also ended up on Google Discover:

We’re not necessarily comparing apples to apples here because these two sites are not in the same niche (besides, the case study isn’t about pSEO vs. AI content). But if we were to compare apples to peaches, the new site with AI-generated content is, at least for now, winning.

The question is, is AI-generated content programmatic when the generation is done at scale?

I know people who use OpenAI’s APIs to generate programmatic content based on templated prompts with the GPT-3 and GPT-3.5 models. 

The problem is that the outputs are unpredictable, and the facts inside those articles are often wrong.

What we’re doing with this case study is different. We have humans researching facts and producing templates for creating scaled content with verifiable factuality. 

Is it an effective strategy? As with any other case study, only time will tell.

For now, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for next month’s content!

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