NP News: Results From the Google Review Update, ChatGPT Incognito, A Winning Donut Site, & More

Eager to stay up to date on the latest news in the world of niche sites?

Join hosts Jared and Josh as they dive into various topics related to website creation and traffic generation.

First up is their discussion of the recent Google update, the April 2023 Review Update, which now includes local, travel, film, and other types of reviews.

They discuss the importance of keeping your content up-to-date to get the most out of these Google updates. And Jared shares how updating his website’s old content helped improve his rankings.

Next, the hosts explore the adoption of AI and its implications for website creation and traffic generation. They discuss Hugging Face’s new ChatGPT competitor, Hugging Chat, and ChatGPT’s introduction of incognito mode with new data sharing and privacy controls.

The guys also discuss their YouTube side hustle projects and share their plans to experiment with creating shorts from their long-form videos, emphasizing the importance of diversifying content and growing an email list to own your site’s traffic.

But that’s not all! They also talk about the success of a site centered around donuts which ranks for over 700,000 keywords and gets close to a million visits a month.

The conversation then turns to the use of AI in programmatic SEO, with the example site “How Many Syllables”. With a DR of 44 and ranking for 138,000 keywords, this website gets an estimated 26,000 organic traffic per month from 35,000 pages. And they contemplate the potential of AI in programmatic SEO and the longevity of this particular website’s traffic.

This podcast episode covers a wide range of topics related to website creation and traffic generation, offering valuable insights and practical tips. So, what are you waiting for? Listen now and take your website to the next level!

Watch The Full Episode

transcription

Jared: Hey, hey, and welcome back to another week of Niche Pursuits News, where we dissect the latest news in the online world and, uh, today. Uh, well, my name is Jared Bauman. Today I’m joined by, uh, Josh with Link Whisper. Josh, welcome back on board. 

Josh: Hey, Jared, thanks for having me back, and it’s good to see you.

Jared: You as well. You know, so you are, I mean, certified a repeat guest. Now, this is, uh, your second time on the news episode. I think it was what, probably about a month ago. You joined us for the first time. 

Josh: Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah. Probably, yeah. Three, four weeks ago or so. Yeah. Three, four weeks ago. 

Jared: So, um, we’re, we’re going through the news today.

Spencer’s out. It’s just the two of us. We’re dissecting this week’s news. I will say that we have a lot of topics on the list. I, I think that’s pretty normal nowadays, but, um, but I, I hope we get to all of ’em cuz they’re all pretty dog on. Interesting. Um, let’s go ahead and dive into our first segment, which is the news of the week.

And I think the big headliner that we want to dive into is that, uh, Google has finished. Releasing the April, 2023 reviews update. Uh, so for those of you watching on YouTube, we’ll go ahead and share some screens here about that. But, um, you know, Josh, while I’m getting that all set up, uh, you know, any first initial thoughts from you on the, um, on this update and anything in the rollout that, uh, that you saw?

Josh: Yeah. So one thing that was interesting, uh, that I saw in, uh, search engine land, uh, was just that they’re saying now that the reviews are, are all reviews, right? Not just affiliate reviews. So it’s local, it’s it’s movies, uh, stuff like that. Um, which was interesting to me. Like I, I just haven’t been following the updates so closely, uh, these days.

But, uh, that was, that was interesting to see. 

Jared: Yeah, it’s, I’m glad you brought it up because Spencer and I just touched on it briefly a couple weeks ago when the update first hit, and so Google’s, this used to be the product reviews update, right? Mm-hmm. So it’s no longer called the product reviews update.

It’s now been adjusted to the reviews update and, um, Uh, you know, the official guidance on Google’s review system states reviews designed to evaluate articles, blog posts, pages, or similar first party standalone content written with the purpose of providing a recommendation, giving an opinion, or providing an analysis.

And it expanded. Um, I’m gonna pull up the section where it talks about the expansion, but it no longer is just product reviews. Now it is. I mean, it’s much larger. It’s local, it’s travel. It’s uh, it’s expanded quite a bit. 

Josh: Yeah. And one thing that, that I saw is, uh, I just recently got access to a, a local HVAC site.

Um, and the, the SEO on the site, the OnPage SEO is, is terrible. Uh, and just interesting to notice that the last few days that they’ve kind of shot up in rankings. And now finding out like the review update could have impacted them positively. Uh, and one thing that I noticed was that like their review count is like 315 4.9 stars versus their competitors around 50 to 60 reviews.

Um, wow. I haven’t really spent a lot of time digging into it yet. I actually just kind of glanced over and looked at it, uh, preparing for this show. Uh, so it’s something like, it’s interesting to see and, you know, worth another dig to see like, hey, Was it related to this update and is it already impacting, uh, you know, the whole internet, I guess essentially all the sites now?

Jared: Yeah. So a couple things to keep in mind here. Um, one thing is that, uh, and we’ll talk about it here in a little bit, but even though this update kind of to your point, Josh, even though this update is only really supposed to be targeting. Review content, right? Like content that has these opinions and is passing along a review or something.

Um, it’s widespread has been reported that it affects a lot more than just that on your website. So even though, again, you would think, oh, I have maybe 10% of my articles are review articles, let me go check the traffic on those. You really wanna go check the traffic on all your articles and you want to check and maybe slice and dice a bit.

Between review content versus non review content. I mean, the example you shared right there, the entire site seemed to have an, uh, upward surge. This is a local website rather than maybe just a review on it. Um, uh, another thing that was reported is that there was a lot of movement on April 19th, right? So the, the, uh, the update rolled out like, you know, two weeks ago, so probably about April, uh, you know, 13th or so, I think if I have that right.

But as these updates happen, like they, they kind of have a, sometimes have a big rollout in the first couple days, and then not a lot, maybe changes for a little while, but you’ll see these kind of, I guess they call ’em tremors. Or spikes in changes. So again, you might have had, um, no change when the update started.

And, but if you haven’t gone back and checked again since then, you might want to go back and see. And it’s not uncommon to see your site if you’re watching it go up and then down, and then back up, and then back down. And then finally when the update finishes, you’ll kind of settle to where, where, where, where you might be landing after that.

Josh: And what about your sites, Jared? Uh, one of my websites. 

Jared: Yeah, I was about to say one of my websites. It’s interesting you bring it up. Um, the, uh, uh, let’s see. So one of my personal websites went up quite a bit in this update and it hasn’t moved a lot in previous updates, so it’s really interesting to see, um, the makeup of the site.

It’s an affiliate website, um, uh, which is probably mostly content. I’d say maybe 20% of the articles on the website are review in nature. And, um, I pulled the stats so that we had ’em in front of us. This is a site, it’s about 800 pages. So decently sized, but certainly not mammoth, not big. Um, this site was hit in the May, 2022 update.

I lost a ton of traffic and rankings in that update, and so I have been making systematic improvements to the content and it hasn’t really. Had an impact really until this update here. Um, so after the dust settled on this review, update traffic is up 131%, so more than double. So that’s a nice win. I’ll take that.

That’s nice. Yeah. It’s really, really nice when you’ve been working on the site, um, you know, whenever you can to see it go up. And I, so what I did though is I went in and broke it down the review content. It’s about 20% of the site is review content that tripled in traffic. And then the non review tra uh, content roughly doubled in traffic, and that’s where you kind of land at.

That 131%, about 20% of it went up 200%, which is tripling. And then about 80% of the content went up about a hundred percent, which is really kind of where you get that 131%. Increase in traffic. I thought that was interesting. Both. Yeah. Non review and review content was affected, but the review content was positively affected.

More 

Josh: so, I mean, two questions and one I guess to clarify nowadays, right? Is this is not an AI site, right? This was all human written content. Yeah. 

Jared: And then all human written. Yeah, yeah. No ai. Uh, what, 

Josh: what, what did you, what kind of updates did you do to the content and did you focus more on your updates on working on review content to get it ready or?

Or did you kind of, was it equally like, so the non review content you reviewed, you updated that content as well? Or I guess what’s like the, you know, the few things that you really did that you feel kind of pushed this thing forward? 

Jared: Yeah, great question. I mean, I, I, I need to go back and maybe put together like a, a, a tweet or an email.

Probably this, probably an email cuz this is, it would be a lot of information. But, um, some of the big things I did was out of the gate I reviewed all the content and deleted just straight out deleted the, the, the worst performing 20%. Um, now after the, the, the May update, a lot of the content did drop in ranking, right?

But I went back and I looked at all the content and it’s traffic prior to the update releasing, and there was a, there was about 20% of content that was getting very little traffic, like zero to 3, 4, 5 page views a month, and really didn’t rank for much of anything and didn’t have a lot of links. And so I just deleted.

That content. Um, and got rid of that. Uh, then I went back and did an internal linking audit, right? Because when you delete a bunch of content, now you’ve got a bunch of internal links pointing to four or four pages. Mm-hmm. So I was gonna go back through and fix the internal linking anyways, but I noticed that I was internally linking to, um, we’ll say that I was over internal linking, and that’s probably a topic for another day, but my internal linking, because I had kind of given it to like a, like a VA kind of person, um, without enough.

S so p around it and framework, it was kind of a little bit too, uh, it was a little bit too much. So, so those are the two big things I did. And then I just started updating content, like going in and trying to make it better, trying to add more, trying to make, um, it more readable. Um, trying to add FAQ questions, trying to make sure that I was.

Serving the answer to the question or giving the article, um, intent up higher in the article and a bunch of other little things. But, um, was it focused on review content or informational? No, it was kind of just, you know, whichever con article I thought needed updating. I would start at the top and work my way down and I’m, I didn’t get through all of it.

I’m still working my way through it, but you know, here and there, those are the big things that I did. 

Josh: Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. But it’s good to see, right, that it’s just you went back and you, you updated the content, right? You just continued to try to make the site better versus publishing and, and just let it sit is just continue to try to make it better.

Uh, and just make sure you’re current with your information for the search engines. 

Jared: I did stop publishing new content. I thought, you know, I mean, Uh, and, and not cuz I thought new content’s a bad move at that point, but because I just wanted to put my time, my effort, my budget, my everything into just fixing old content first and foremost.

So, yeah, it, um, you know, I, I’m really excited about it and hopefully it will continue to grow. It’s not back to where it was. Uh, before the May, 2022 update, it’s really nice. You look at the graph, and I’m sure all of us have this experience at some point, you have a website that, that, um, that you know, goes through the rollercoaster of Google updates, which this one has.

And if you look like over the last month, you see this big 131% spike, and you’re like, oh man, this is awesome. And then if you pull back a year, which encompasses what the traffic was before the May, 2022 update. Um, you realize that the 131% increase isn’t that dramatic in comparison to the drop that it caught last year.

So we still got work to do, but it is nice. Um, let me share some other feedback we’re getting from, I guess you’ll call it the community there. Um, Spencer put out a poll, um, uh, what was it, probably yesterday, maybe the day before. It was yesterday. Yeah. And asked people. Yesterday. And so, um, let’s see.

Basically 32% of people asked, saw a five to 19% improvement in traffic. 28% of people pulled, um, lost five to 19% in traffic. And then we had about 22% who were up, um, over 20%. And you can see my check mark there on the screen. So I, um, I, uh, I voted for that, obviously. Uh, and then we had about 18% of people that were down.

So, you know, overall, uh, just over 50%, about 54% of people were up and 46% of people went down. So I guess you could say that, um, that, that, you know, a lot of affiliate marketers and people that are in this audience saw some increases. 

Josh: Which is good. Right. And it’s, but it’s unfortunate too that the other half kind of saw the decrease.

Right. But like, I think your site was a great example. It’s like, hey, you know, just because you got hit doesn’t mean it’s over. Go back in, clean it up, you know, try to turn things back around and, and hopefully, uh, in the next update, they can come out, come out on top. 

Jared: I asked yesterday as well. I said, Hey, any stories about the, you know, review, update?

Um, anybody have anything that they wanna share about it, up down, you know, uh, any details, um, some interesting responses. Um, uh, Jason, who’s been on the podcast before, great. Listen on his age domain, he said, um, he said he had a pretty rough time with the December updates of 2022. Uh, core update review updates.

Um, these this month have put his site now at all time highs, and I love his point here. He said, I’ve even had sites I’ve not touched for a year that have surged. So, uh, some in many ways, if you get hit by an update, sometimes the best thing to do is don’t make any knee jerk reactions and really evaluate if stuff needs updated.

Sometimes you just get caught up in the way an update goes.

Here we have Nina Clapperton, also someone who’s on the uh, podcast saying that her website went up, but she had been also making other updates. To it. So maybe it was a process that came out of her, um, her content updates and whatnot. But, uh, anyways, just thought there were some interesting things to share there.

You’ve brought up a really good tweet from, um, from Lil Ray who, uh, you know, analyzes these sorts of things quite a bit. Um, let’s see. Let me bring that up on the screen, but you wanna talk on touch on that? Yeah. So 

Josh: she, uh, had mentioned a few days ago, uh, about like the movie review sites. Uh, IM I M B D. In Collider, uh, co Collider had actually passed I M B D for, uh, you know, a lot of search traffic.

And one thing that she pointed out was that Collider is like having articles written by like movie enthusiast. One article I looked at was like a screenwriter, uh, versus Im bd Uh, their content is all U G c user, user generated content. Uh, so that is kind of interesting there to see like, is it, is it the fact that it’s written by people that are.

Maybe more involved in the niche, uh, you know, kind of producing better content that they’re seeing this jump here versus, you know, the U G C content is probably, you know, I, I haven’t looked but would think a little bit more all over the place versus, you know, something with a structure editorial process.

Jared: I mean, it’s, um, it’s long been somewhat known that if you see an article. From, say, Quora or Reddit that’s ranking on the top couple results of Google. Like that’s probably a pretty good keyword to go after because often, more often than not, Google prefers authoritative content, right? Rather than U G C content, which Reddit, Quora, these sites are probably considered to be U gc.

It’s user generated content. So it’s interesting to see some of the evidence of that winning out in, in this review. Yeah, very interesting. Well, so again, it’s one of those things where, um, you know, I mean, Josh, you touched on it before we actually started recording here. We were talking about it like long gone.

Are the days of one or two Google updates a year? Yeah, they are cut. They, they, they happen every month now in some fashion. So, um, uh, but it’s, it’s always worth diving into, especially if you’re a site, if you have a site that got hit, um, and if you have a site that was previously hit and you’re working hard on it, Typically if your site gets hit, it needs another update to recover.

Doesn’t mean you can’t see marginal improvements, but more often than not, if you get hit in this update, you’re usually gonna need another somewhat similar update to recover. And so a lot of people are paying attention to this because, like Jason said, maybe their site got hit in December and they’re making improvements or doing nothing, and they need another update like this to help it, um, g get back to where it was or improve.

Josh: Yeah, and I think Jason was a great example, right? That he’s like, Hey, look, I have this site that got hit in December, and then these last few updates like, Hey, I’m seeing games. But then I have sites that I haven’t touched in, you know, a long time that are surging through these updates. And I, I, I think it’s tough when, you know, it’s, nobody truly knows the answer to why things go up and go down, right?

And Spencer’s poll was about 50 50, you know, and I bet if you ask the people that were down, they’re gonna tell you that, Hey, I’m doing everything right, you know? Uh, but. You know, are you truly right? Like, are you truly doing the fundamentals in, in doing everything you know you should be doing to the best of your ability or, or for Google?

And, and sometimes even if you are, you still could lose, um, you know, at, at the end of the day it’s, it’s a tough game. And now with, uh, updates rolling out every month, it’s, you know, it’s a little bit tougher, but I think it’s like, you gotta stay the course and, and like you did, right? You went in, you cleaned things up, and now you’re seeing the improvements.

Jared: I had somebody reach out to me this week who runs a decent size website, right? Like, this is not a small website generating, um, I’m gonna guess low to mid, well not low, but like 20, $30,000 a month in revenue. And their site had gotten hit in this update. Um, and I just kind of appreciated some of the, the back and forth we were having.

And, you know, we’re gonna take a deep dive on this site, but they just said, Hey, Look, you know, um, I just want to use this as an opportunity to make sure I’m checking all the boxes and doing all the things right? I don’t wanna be missing anything. And so sometimes, like you said, like it’s just a good reminder, um, to reevaluate your content, reevaluate your, your, uh, your website, and just make sure that, uh, you’re doing everything to the best that you possibly can.

But, Um, you know, certainly if you’re have a website that got hit, uh, it’s not game over. It’s, uh, it’s just, you know, it’s just a, a nice little wake up call and, um, recovery can happen does happen. Frequently happens. And, uh, uh, as you said, like in this update, it looks like from the very small sample size on Spencer’s pool, like about 50 50 went up and 50 50 went down.

So, you know, hopefully it would be you the next time that goes up and vice versa. 

Josh: Yeah. And it’s a tough game and it’s a good reminder to, you know, try to find a way to build an email list, you know, um, yes. You know, to, 

Jared: to don’t build your 

Josh: only source of traffic. Yeah. Diversify your traffic source and, uh, you know, and try to build a more sustainable business that is just not solely relying on Google because they’re fickle, you know?

And, um, you know, nobody knows what’s gonna come next. So, you know, you just gotta stay the course though, and. You know, and hope you end up on top, uh, long enough. Long enough. Yeah. 

Jared: Well, hey, let’s move on to some of the other news here. Cause there, this isn’t the only thing that happened this week. Um, let us talk about ai.

I mean, let’s be honest. It’s, it’s been 15 minutes so far. We haven’t really talked about AI yet. What, what would a, what would a week of news be without talking ai? Um, So chat GPTs all the buzz and all the rage when it comes to ai, but this week, hugging face released its own version of chat, g p t. Um, many will recognize hugging face and uh, basically they wanted to come out with a competitor to chat.

G p D, they’re calling it hugging Chat. Um, and, um, uh, you know, this article I’m sharing here on TechCrunch went through and asked a few, uh, a few questions. Didn’t get the best of answers, but, um, at the same time as we know, these models change and update so frequently and so fast that it probably isn’t all that indicative of where it will go.

Um, they have a, a pretty sizable hugging, hugging, uh, hugging face has a pretty sizable backing, so yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if this actually turns out to be a competitor for, uh, for chat G P T. 

Josh: Yeah. I don’t know a whole, whole lot about hugging face, but I know they’re like in the machine learning space and I think that, I believe in, I’m probably wrong, but I think there’s a lot of, like, you can combine this like I think with Python to, uh, For running scripts or maybe some for doing some things.

Um, but yeah, I think with the, with the rise of, of chat G p T, uh, I think a lot of people are gonna want to get their piece of the pie, you know?

Jared: Yeah. I, I mean, I haven’t played around much with hugging face either. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve known about them. I’m, um, I’m sure a lot of people who, uh, are deep into this AI will have a lot more experience with them. But you know, like you said, like they’ve already announced that they are gonna want to have, um, plug-ins available and a lot of the things that chat G p t has been pioneering.

They’re kind of, you know, coming on the backside of, uh, it also mentions here in this Tech Crunch article just last week, stability, AI released stable lm, a set of models that can generate code and text given basic instructions. So, I mean, I feel like. Almost every week now, we’re gonna be getting, um, you know, some news about some new AI model coming out and whatnot.

But it’s good cuz competition is good. Competition makes, uh, everyone have to be on their game and, and be the best. So I don’t know if I’ll pop over and use hugging face. I’ll probably just stick with chat. G p t I mean, do you use chat g p t on a regular basis? Will you be using hugging face? What, what’s, where are, where are you gonna land on this?

Yeah, I’m gonna stick 

Josh: with chat G P T right? It’s just, and it’s, it’s kind of like, because they were first. Right. It’s, it’s, uh, I’m already accustomed to it. I, I pay the 20 bucks a month. Um, yeah. I was gonna ask, I know you pay the 20 bucks a month. Yeah, yeah. I, I’ve been paying, right. And I, I already, I know the process.

I can get to it easily. I can get in, I can ask it some questions, and I, I’ve been, uh, I’ve had it coding some things for me, uh, doing a few different things. Um, I love it and I, like, I wanted to learn more, but at the same time, it’s, it’s just trying to balance like. How much time do I want to invest in this, uh, as far as learning and doing other things, um, and like mid journey, like learning prompts there and, and using those images instead of stock photos like we talked about last time.

Um, but it’s very time consuming and it’s moving so fast, you know? Um, it’s like you said, like couple times a day. There’s, there’s things that are changing, but I would be really curious to see like, who hasn’t experienced with AI yet and what’s holding them back. Uh, From doing so, you know, because I, I don’t think it’s gonna go anywhere, anytime soon.

Jared: Authority Hacker released the results of a AI poll. They did. I don’t know if it was this week or last week, but, um mm-hmm. I, uh, I saw some of the numbers there and just to your point, I, I, I don’t quote me, I don’t have it in front of me, but I believe that the, one of the questions they ask is, you know, how often are you using chat G P t?

And I think the. The field of people that aren’t using it all was, I mean, sub 10%, you know? Um, very low. 

Josh: Yeah. And but also too, right, like this is still at, at the marketer level, right? Their audience is all marketers. But it’s like, like, and I wonder, you know, my mom, she’s older, right? Uh, upper sixties I believe, I guess, but, uh, You know, does she, is she gonna try ai?

Is she gonna, like, is her work gonna like, Hey look, we’ve got this and we can do this now. Um, and I think we’re all so far ahead of that, but I think once it gets to that point, then it’s like it’s gonna be a whole nother level, you know? 

Jared: I get a lot of texts from friends who are trying it out or want to talk about it, you know, want to know more about it.

Certainly still a novelty item outside of the marketing world it feels like. Um, mm-hmm. Um, but I, I recently took a. A trip for fun and um, I mean we planned a lot of the trip based on some chat G P T conversations, you know, we got a lot of great advice and feedback on where to go and what to do and stuff, and then did cross check that up against some other other things.

But, uh, even, uh, you know, it’s kind of funny to be talking with friends outside of this environment about chat g PT and actually using it. So. Well, speaking of chat, G P T, kind of the last news item we will have time to touch on, I think is, is just a quick update. Here on, um, on what chat? So chat, G B T, let’s see if I can pull it up here.

Introduced incognito mode. Um, and so, oh, I gotta get outta that screen there. There we go. So chat, c p d introduces incognito mode and basically it’s a new set of data sharing and privacy controls for chat G P T. And they’re already out there for you so you can dive in, um, and, uh, and, and adjust the settings.

They basically added a prompt history. Uh, well, we know they’ve had a prompt history to these left sidebar. So when you’re in there using chat pd, you can kind of see all your past prompts. It remembers those. You can access ’em later, but now you can go in and turn off prompt history, which basically, um, turns it into an incognito mode and, uh, and controls how they use the data.

So you can basically tell them not to use the data to train their models. And that’s been a big issue. For some website owners, but also big issue for privacy concerns across the world. You know, we talked, uh, in previous episodes about Italy, about Canada, uh, having problems with chat G P T in general. So I don’t know, we’ll see.

Will this allow maybe Italy to say, okay, with these controls we can actually have more control now over it. I’m, I’m curious to see how that plays out. 

Josh: Yeah, it’ll be interesting too. And then I guess like to the earlier point is like this getting more adopted throughout the world or throughout the, uh, Uh, you know, through, through people, right?

And is if these countries are blocked from using it, does that just do them a dis, like a disservice in, in another year or five years when, uh, the countries who could use it are, are so much further along with, with using it for whatever their task is that they use it for, you know,

Jared: Yeah. So, um, uh, you know, worth, worth paying attention to. Worth following along. We’ll, we’ll see how that all plays out. Obviously privacy is gonna collide with ai, um, in dramatic fashion over the next couple years. Uh, who knows which way it’s gonna go, but I, I’m pretty sure we’re gonna see some fireworks when it comes to, uh, to, to how that all plays out.

Um, man, so much else we could keep talking about, but let us move on to shiny object shenanigans. And touch on some of the things that we’re working on, right? This epi or this series. This segment really is what I should call it, is really dedicated to shiny objects that we’re all working on. Most online marketers, I feel like, that you talk to always have at least one or two shiny objects.

They’re, they’re kind of, you know, put a little time towards, um, they’re things that, uh, side hustles, you might call it, or little things they’re trying could be in the AI world nowadays, a lot of people are playing around with ai. Could be. With, um, uh, uh, you know, expanding channels on a website you have or whatnot.

But, um, let’s go ahead and, uh, and you know, last we talked with you, you were working on a YouTube channel. Mm-hmm. Uh, what have you got first us today? Wha and you can fill us in the progress cuz it’s been about a month or so. Yeah. Yeah. 

Josh: So, uh, still have that. Uh, yeah, man, I can’t believe, like I’ve, I’ve been slacking, right?

I haven’t got another video uploaded. We have filmed another. I don’t know, three or so, uh, somewhere with the editor now and just getting edited. Um, you know, there’s definitely things I to be learned from me, like the thumbnail design, right? Trying to get that. Um, we did get some good feedback off of that video.

I think when I came on. It was just recently published, so we did have a few comments from people that weren’t family, uh, that left some, some good, some good comments. They enjoyed the video, so, uh, so that was nice. Um, tested some shorts, uh, for the channel and. You know, I noticed like when I, if I put a dollar sign in the title for a short, like it will just shoot up, uh, you know, a couple thousand views.

So that, that’s kind of interesting to see if, you know, is it, you know, can I keep doing that? And then also will it relate or will it, uh, will it bring the subscribers? Um, so kind of testing there. And then I guess also too is, is like G P T and ai, right? Uh, I think it was last week. Um, Looking at other plug-in sites, uh, not necessarily competitors, not a lot of competitors for Link Whisper, but just other plug-in sites and seeing the traffic that some of these sites are getting, you know, 800,000 visitors a month.

And it’s, I want to go through their content and say, Hey, what are they writing about that we could be covering on the Link Whisper blog? We’ve been putting out a lot of content over there, uh, seo, internal linking and stuff like that. Um, so I fired up gpt said, Hey, I need a Python script. I wanna run this site map.

Find every mention of this keyword and put it in a CSV file. Mm-hmm. Uh, so in about 15, 20 minutes from really no coding experience, I’m running Python and, uh, I, I’ve got just a load of, of CSV files that, that have so many URLs that I can start going through. Uh, and now I’m thinking like, Hey, you know what?

I need to get a script that could go through and maybe find this and, uh, could build outlines and, and do stuff like this. Um, I, I, I just think the ideas are, are limitless. And I think the other night I actually built a WordPress plugin too, um, which I haven’t tested yet. I need to test it this weekend. Um, you, 

Jared: you think you built a WordPress plugin?

Yeah. 

Josh: It, it, it tells me we did. So yeah, I’ve gotta try it, but, uh, I have access to a AI tools api. It’s not open ai. Uh, I’m still waiting for, uh, G P T four, uh, but I have a, in an api and I’m gonna see if I can build a plugin that can just communicate from my WordPress site to their AI tool. And I’ll simply just publish articles, uh, you know, I see what happens, um, just, just kind of as an experiment to see if I can execute it.

And, and, uh, I think we’ll get through some things later too, that. It kind of sparked this, uh, for me, but, uh, yeah, I mean, that’s it. It’s uh, are 

Jared: you using any, um, are you using any AI on the YouTube channel that you’re working on? Um, cuz I’ve seen a lot of AI hitting the world, obviously as it relates to video, audio, this kinds of things.

Like are you using any a any AI for it? 

Josh: No, we’re not. Yeah, so this is, this is just us. Yeah. On camera. Um, And then just kind of doing the videos and then editing. Um, haven’t, haven’t tried like AI video or anything that way yet, but I, I think like for the faceless channels, I think that could be, uh, could be really interesting.

And people, you know, I’ve seen, I keep seeing these, these, uh, music videos or not, or songs I guess coming out of, of, you know, these famous singers and it’s all AI and they’re just making these songs. Uh, So I, I mean, it’s getting better and better, right? It’s, it’s interesting times.

Jared: Well update on, on my end, you know, the, uh, still continuing to send out one email, uh, per week, uh, effort to build a newsletter. Um, and, uh, I’ve continue, I don’t know how many weeks we’re at now. I really should have pulled that up. We’re probably nearing seven or eight weeks. And, uh, what I started to do this past week, um, oh, and we did get a YouTube video live that was live.

Like right before we hit record last week, so, um, nice. Uh, I have to say, not much traffic to it. Mm-hmm. So, you know, first video on a new channel, um, and, uh, but, you know, got the thumbnail designed and, and had the video edited. So we’ll have a couple more of those coming out. Um, after we got that live, I had to record some more, get ’em over to the editor and all that so that, that’s turning into a, probably from ideation to going live.

It’s probably gonna be like at least a two week process in terms of turnaround. So, We’ll get a few more live, hopefully by, by next week. One thing new I started to do was, you know, now that we have seven or eight or nine new, uh, newsletters or emails that have gone out, I realized, hey, most of these could work as blog posts.

Mm-hmm. And so we started publishing. Past emails that we’d sent onto a, the blog, a newly created blog on weekend growth.com. And, um, I think we got like six of the, the, the eight or nine live this past week. And I mean, weekend growth is a brand new domain. Like it’s, uh, it might have, it might be a Dr. Five.

Um, and probably only because I think niche pursuits.com links to it at some point. And so nice. Maybe that’s like, it’s got no links, it’s got no age, it’s got no history. But lo and behold, within a day, one of the articles was already ranking on page one for a couple of long tail, uh, search queries. So, I mean, man, I talk about a happy accident, but it really, uh, it reminds me how, how, how valuable it is.

Mm-hmm. When you sit down and put a lot of effort into kind of publishing something, whatever it is, whether you publish it to email, you publish it to your blog, but how you can use that single piece of content to then, let’s say you send it out as an email like I did, to then go make a YouTube video about it and publish that on YouTube, and then take that and put it into a blog post and again, You can’t just copy and paste because what you send as an email needs modifying to create a script from, to put on YouTube and then what you send as an email, you need to change it up a bit So it has headers and it’s different for readability on a blog post, but it, it doesn’t take that much more work cuz the work’s already been done.

So it really reminded me about as niche website owners, many of us have put in all the work to publish content, but it’s the 80% of the work’s done now to go create YouTube videos from that. Um, I’m being dramatic, not 80%, but you know, a lot of the work has been done by creating that content and now you just have to kind of translate it into different mediums.

So pretty inspiring to be honest with you. I was really moved by that ranking so quickly. 

Josh: Yeah, that is awesome. And I guess, did you, did you email the link out to your list? Like, did you send any traffic to it? No. So it just, so Google’s just founded and, and started ranking. That’s even more impressive.

Right. That’s like, that’s a, I mean, that’s a great sign. Uh, and yeah, to your point is like, It’s like what we said in the beginning is like diversifying your traffic. Now you’ve taken something that you put in the email, like you said 80% of the work is done and now you just reformat it. So people that if they weren’t on your email list in week two, they didn’t know this existed.

Now they can go to the log and see it, but now you have distribution where Google can rank it and bring in more traffic, get more people to your email list, and now you can send these people to your YouTube to build that ecosystem and you’re gonna be well diversified. Um, Somebody who does this really, really well is a guy named Dan Coe.

Um, he’s, he’s really big on like money, Twitter, and it kind of started his tweets and then he built the email list and then he took them and put ’em as a blog and then as a YouTube. And now he even does the audio on standalone podcast. Uh, but it like, I mean, like, that’s, that’s the way, you know, it’s, um, it’s, 

Jared: it’s a recipe that we all know.

Like, you know, if what if you’ve been around, you know, market online marketing for mm-hmm. You know, a couple days. Like you realize that’s the point. And I mean, I run a marketing agency, like, this is what we preach to our clients. This is what we help them do. This is what we, it’s just so funny. When you are working on a project, how you can get really locked in.

Mm-hmm. And it’s, um, you, you just never know, like, which one is gonna take off more than the other, you know, the YouTube. Video hasn’t done anything yet, but lo and behold, kind of the last thought for this content was to put it on a blog and bam, it’s already ranking on page one for some, you know, longer tail keywords.

I’m, I’m not saying this is, uh, exploding in traffic, but Right. But then, then you can also, I guess I gotta publish more blog content. 

Josh: Yeah. And then embed the video into the blog post. Right. Say, Hey, you don’t, they don’t, they don’t wanna read this. It’s 6,000 words. Hey, you can watch the video. Uh, and then it’s just that it’s gonna eventually just gonna grow in, in snowball.

And I think. And maybe some people it’s, it’s, it’s the middle block of saying, Hey, I have to sit down in front of a camera or, but you don’t. Right. You could even just make a slide presentation and then just read it out, uh, just to get it going and put it out there and start trying to diversify. And, and then the, I think the big thing here is, is the email list.

Like, that’s, that’s gonna be the key cuz that’s indi maybe like you own it now, you know, like you don’t have to worry about the Google updates. 

Jared: Now, one thing I’m gonna do, based on some of the things you’re doing, and some of the things Spencer said a week or two earlier with his faceless YouTube channel is I’m gonna now try to figure out how to break up these videos we’re making and try to make some shorts out of them, you know, and, and experiment with publishing some shorts.

Mm-hmm. Because the videos, many of them are broken up. Like the first video we released was like nine SEO Tactics for 2023 that kind of were, were zeroing in on. So it’s like, oh wow. Probably each of those could be a short almost. And then, you know, you gotta fit in that in under the minute and all that.

But, um, that’s what I wanna try next. So I’m gonna just build out this shiny object empire of ideas. I’m trying, 

Josh: so like, I’ve kind of dabbled with some shorts and some people though have said that the audience that you get from shorts is different than the long form video. The quality is just not as there cause their intention span is much faster.

Uh, So it’d be interesting to see like, uh, from the marketing side, if, if that carries over or not, you know, and if, if they come through and subscribe and then go to the long form. 

Jared: I, I mean, again, Spencer talked about how they used the shorts as a strategy just to get them to the thousand subscribers. I think he said they even went back and deleted the shorts once they got those thousand subscribers.

Um, yeah, which I was interesting. I wanted to ask him about it, but we didn’t have time. And then we, um, you know, just released this week, the episode on the podcast with Pat Flynn, where we dove headlong into his YouTube channel, um, with deep pocket monsters, which is, I don’t remember. Hundreds of thousands of subscribers and he was very bullish on the long form video content.

And um, okay. Uh, I don’t think we really dug too much into shorts, but he was, he was very bullish on the long form content. He talked about the analogy of he wants to be a chef that you go to for a four course meal. He doesn’t want to be the guy who you stop by and pick up Halloween candy from. Right. And he was kind of analogizing.

Um, the shorts versus the long form content and, and that sort of thing. So, um, yeah, no, no doubt. You’re, I think you’re probably onto something there. Um, uh, so yeah, I bet the long form content might just do better over the long run, but, 

Josh: but it’s like you said, you already have it and if you can get it chopped up and it’s no, it’s no new work for you.

You’re just, it’s just, you know, something else to distribute. Um, like there’s no harm in trying it and testing it and, and then building your own data and say, Hey, it worked or it didn’t, you know, 

Jared: There also is, um, I haven’t tried it yet, but there’s some AI out there that will take a long form video from YouTube and automatically split up into shorts or into shorter videos, so might Interesting.

I might try that out too. Yeah. I know. Well, um, hey, let’s dive into our last segment. Uh, arguably the, my favorite one, um, certainly one that I know we get a lot of comments on, and that is, um, weird niches. So a lot of us are in the online publishing world. A lot of us are building out websites, um, taking an idea and running with it on, on, on, on the internet.

And there’s a lot of weird niches out there. There’s a lot of weird ideas that people have taken. Um, and they’re not necessarily weird. Some of ’em are weird. Like last week I did a whole website on cockroaches and Wow. We had to share all the images of, I mean, there were some big images of cockroaches that we were putting up on this YouTube account.

Um, so interesting. But uh, you know, some of them are just weird because. You wouldn’t think that they would work or you wouldn’t think that people look for it. You wouldn’t think that people care about it. So I’m gonna kick it over to you. Uh, tell this one is the opposite for me of cockroaches. This one warms my heart because this is a subject that’s near and dear to, to me.

But let me stop, uh, bearing the lead and, and send it over to you. 

Josh: Okay. Uh, so this site is the donut hole. Um, Which is just, you know, usually you go buy a bag, a dozen donut holes, and you look at the site, it’s like, wow, it’s just a site about donuts. Uh, super niche. Um, pretty wild. It’s like, Hey, how many pages could you really have that talk about donuts?

Well, when I put the site into ah, refs, I was blown away. Uh, I didn’t see anything donut related ranking. Um, no. What the site it? Yeah. So if you click, uh, Oh 

Jared: my goodness. Seven 38,000 keywords. 

Josh: Yeah. So, uh, reshare your screen, Jared, uh, on AHS maybe. Thank you. Yes, will do. Yep. So, so this, so just for context guys, the site is a DR 32.

It ranks for 735,000 keywords, and the organic traffic is 708,000. Uh, and you can see his graph there, I think it was around October. Of 2022, December of 2022, uh, they really went to starting to publish content on this site. I believe the blue line should be the content, uh, frequency there. And if you look at their top pages for what they’re ranking for, it’s, they’re talking about McDonald’s cheeseburgers, McDoubles, uh, like quarter pounders.

So this is a site that’s covering. A lot of food stuff. But then I see that they have stuff about YouTube. They had stuff about 50 synth the wrapper here. So what looked to be just like the simplest, smallest, little niche site about donuts is another AI site. Um, whenever I had first seen the site earlier this week, it had 27,000 pages.

When I was prepping for the show, it had 29,500 pages and I would. I wouldn’t be surprised if today it has 30 plus thousand pages. Um, so they’ve clearly got something figured out Where they are, are mass, mass publishing this content. Uh, and, and just by looking at the homepage and their blog post, I don’t see how you get to any of the other content that’s on the site.

Yeah, that’s not, it’s not donut related. So it’s almost like it’s orphaned off of, off of their site. Uh, So this was just such an intriguing, just the whole thing was just intriguing to me. Um, and so this is why that I kind of tried building the plugin in G P T for the ai. I’m gonna see if I can spin up something like this with, uh, honestly with minimal effort, um, and see what I can do, uh, for, is it a good long-term strategy?

No. Um, but it is a shiny object and. If I can execute, it’d be pretty cool. 

Jared: I mean, to your point, I’m trying to figure out how you even get to all this YouTube and Pokemon and 50 50 cent, uh, content because I, I don’t see it in the menu. I don’t see it internally linked in these donor articles. Um, uh, I’m on the about page little thin.

All it has is the donut holes a blog about food. Yeah. You know, 

Josh: and, and, and that was another thing. It’s like, Eat, right. It’s the e e a t is, is is the thing. You must have that. And, and once again, right? Somebody’s showing us that you don’t. Uh, but then again, this is an anomaly, right? For this one site. And we’ve seen the sites over these last year or two that, you know, had shot up to millions of visits a month, and then in one update they went down to zero.

Um, you know, for the one site we find that works, there’s probably a hundred or a thousand that didn’t, uh, right. But it’s, again, it’s 

Jared: shiny, well, it’s monetized on Ezoic and so it’s probably gotta be making some pretty good cash month over month with that kind of traffic. 

Josh: Yeah, yeah, exactly. If, uh, yeah, if you’re getting close to a million visits a month, I mean, even with, with terrible RPMs, you’re, you’re still making money.

And if you figured out a way to, or you’re publishing a thousand to 2000 articles a day, uh, if you’re getting those indexed, then. You know, it’s just a rank and bank and, you know, cash in until it’s gone. Um, but so this is, this would, if if I’m on for a third time, this will probably be the shiny object is, is trying to replicate, uh, some, something like this.

Jared: Good. How, I mean, just, you don’t have to go in and divulge all of it, but like from a high level, how would someone, from a very high level, how would someone like make something like this? I mean, Would you, um, obviously probably be using a G P T model here, but what would you, uh, what would you, what would you look to do for to publish the, that many pages all at once?

Basically, I mean, thousands a day. Well, 

Josh: that’s what I’m really trying to figure out. Like, I don’t know. I’m not a coder, but, uh, like I have access to this one AI tool with an API so I can tap into that api. And so like if I can build a plugin and it, it, it build like Aron job, like I don’t know anything about this stuff, but, uh, G P T is telling me like, Hey, you need Aron job.

We’re gonna call the a p I. You upload your keyword, we’re gonna run. We can pull in the article and then we can publish it to your site. Um, so I don’t, I don’t know exactly how it all works. Uh, I know there’s a lot smarter people out there than me that of course have figured it out. Um, there’s a few different tools that have auto publishing.

Uh, one. I think they say they can do like 10 or 15 at a time through like a Google sheet. Um, there was another tool that, there was a case study. We, we didn’t have time to cover, but a guy said he put up like 7,500 articles in a year, got to like 700,000, uh, page views. Um, and the tool that he used, which you need your own open AI api.

Yeah, key, uh, to use their tools. So they just have the interface. So it’s just figuring out how to build the interface to, to make it work. Uh, so that’s kind of where I’m at and probably where I’ll spend my weekend is, is just talking to G P t and like, how can I work through this process to, to figure out how, where I could get to even a thousand articles a month.

I mean, that’s, that would still be a lot, you know. Um, Well, I think we’ll 

Jared: have to have you back on, just watch you, uh, work that process. 

Josh: Yeah, yeah. And then, and then you have, then of course you’re gonna run into indexing, which, you know, getting everything indexed fast enough. Um, which that site’s crazy. I don’t know how they’re getting indexed.

Uh, but yeah, just uh, uh, kind of combining the one weird niche with shiny object and, uh, we’ll see where it takes us. 

Jared: I love it. I love it, man. It’s, I, I, I’m sure I share the same feeling as a lot of people where it just makes you want to drop what you’re doing right now. Yeah. Just go figure that out because if you could write gold like that, even if it’s gonna, like you say, rank and bank, even if it’s going to, to disappear in a couple of months.

Um, the excitement of creating that and then, you know, obviously if it does well, the windfall, that that could come from it. So. Amen. It’s, uh, it’s fun to talk about. That’s what this segment’s for. Yeah, 

Josh: exactly. We’ll see how it goes. Uh, you know, I mean, and it’s probably not the smartest decision to try it, especially when I know zero about it.

Uh, but for whatever reason it just intrigues me and, you know, I’m gonna spend a little bit of time and see if I can’t figure it out. 

Jared: Shiny objects, you know? That’s it. Yeah. 

Josh: Ah, 

Jared: well let me, let me, um, let me go into my weird niche. Um, and, uh, you know, it’s definitely not a, um, a donut website, although as we realized that wasn’t really a donut site either.

Yeah. Um, this one is, is very interesting and probably goes down a, a little bit of a different road. It’s, it’s called how many syllables.com and so. It’s a website where you put a, um, a word in, uh, it’s got, basically the homepage is just a big search field, and you can put a word in and it will spit back how many syllables the word has, uh, on the screen.

If you’re watching on YouTube, I just plugged in the word automated and it comes back with, uh, it says it has four syllables. Um, and then it, uh, it, it will usually tell you how to say it. Uh, and then sometimes it also will tell you like where to put the accent, right? Like where to actually emphasize the word.

And, um, probably because I’m sharing my screen, it’s taken a little while for all the ads to come up, but it’s, it’s, it’s monetized with ads, um, pretty heavily. Right. And, uh, let’s see if I can keep sharing. Like, it’s, um, it’s, it’s doing pretty well in terms of the traffic that it gets. Although again, Josh, I have to say it pales in comparison to, uh, to what your site was.

But, uh, you know, probably a more modest growth p uh, growth path. We can see that. Um, it has, go ahead. 

Josh: I was just gonna say, and probably more stable, right? It, it’s probably, uh, you know, like you probably could see this one weathering, some Google updates a lot better. Then the, uh, fake donut site, which will probably be gone soon, you know?

Jared: Totally agree. Totally agree. Um, you know, and I think what we have here really, uh, and I’ll kind of navigate, everybody can see the, the traffic and we’ll talk about that, but clearly a, you know, a database type, programmatic type site, right? Because it’s just got a, basically a page for all these different.

Um, these different results. And then every time that page gets loaded, it’s gonna serve ads, and then it’s gonna monetize by that. So, you know, it’s, according to hf, it’s a DR 44, it’s ranking for 138,000 keywords, getting organic traffic of 20, roughly 26,000 estimated organic traffic per month. It’s got 35,000 pages, right?

So it’s got a lot of results in there and it’s got a lot of indexed results that, um, In this case, age ref says crawled. Um, you know, it ranks number one for how many syllables, number two for syllable counter, um, you know, uh, and then how many syllables in, and then it just ranks for like a gazillion of these search queries.

So you might type into Google how many syllables are in this now. It’s interesting cuz I feel like this is also a site where Google could almost just answer that query in the search field and not have you leave them. So I’m wondering how long. Traffic will continue or how much traffic will, will kind of get chipped away on a site like this?

Josh: Yeah, I mean, of course. I mean, if we could see, it’d be, I would love to see their, uh, search console data just to see if over the years they have run into that problem.

Jared: I, um, you know, I mean, have you ever experimented with any programmatic seo, like using a data set, pulling the information in, creating pages in bulk that are, we’ll call ’em relatively thin because it’s really not a lot of unique content on there. It’s mostly just pulling the results from a database.

Like have you done much of that? 

Josh: Yeah, well actually, uh, yeah. At, at my last job, um, so like I worked for like the largest gambling affiliate. Like in the world. Uh, and so they had a few thousand sites and it was, you know, casino and sports betting, and they would use APIs to pull in odds and a lot of information.

And could they had something built? Uh, I didn’t, I don’t know enough about it, but they would automatically just generate thousands of pages. Um, and it worked really well, right? I mean, it’s, of course you were on Dr. You know, 70 sites, uh, been around for a while, but, you know, that always helps. Um, but it was, uh, they were built in a way that it was very information rich, uh, that if you were a better, like, hey, this is very valuable for, for like this matchup like tonight, team A versus team B.

Like, this is very valuable for tonight, but like tomorrow it’s not gonna be as good until the next matchup. And then it would update. With the new information. Um, and just seeing there like, I mean, how many pages they could build, excuse me. Uh, and it just like, I mean for me it was quickly, right? Cause I wasn’t on the back end building this system, uh, you know, and then seeing stuff like this and there’s the guy Ian on Twitter, he does a lot of this.

So now, like my interest is really peaked. Yeah. It’s like, Hey, how could you combine the pro programmatic SEO with, with ai? Um, You know, now, like I think the ai, like G P T four, I think puts out some pretty decent content. Uh, I would put it up against some of the, the riders at some of these agencies that it could be better, you know, and I think it’s only gonna get better.

So it’s like, Hey, could you combine something and, and build out a site like that or something that just is very, uh, data, data rich and, and then add a little bit more content to it. Um, And then I guess kind of be like the donut site, just scale out thousands of pages and then just, you know, collect checks.

But of course, it’s, it’s always easier said than done. Right. 

Jared: Well, I do kind of like this, um, this segment. Cause we, we, we get to look at a lot of different models, right? Like last week we looked at some very, um, we’ll call ’em niche sites, people publishing content and kind of, um, um, going about it by being an expert in their space publishing content about it.

This week we’re looking at sites that are created by AI created using programmatic seo. Like there’s so many ways to slice and dice this. And again, I will remind people please, As fun as this episode, this section is of the episode, but it’s really meant to inspire you. You know, it’s meant to get your head, your head, uh, your wheels spinning in your head.

Get you thinking about, maybe think about your site differently, uh, and maybe think about things you can do in addition that you’re not doing yet on your website, or give you some ideas for your next project. You know, maybe you’re in between projects. And so, um, so many different ways to do it, right? So many different ways to, uh, to crack this nut and, and, and have success and get traffic, whether you do it on.

Uh, through Google traffic, whether you do it through, uh, through social media, through video, all these different things. So, well, um, Josh, I, man, I never flew by. Uh, how was your, uh, how, how do you feel, how do you feel we did here? That was your second time on? How do you think it rates you enjoy it more or less?

A little less nerves this time? Maybe 

Josh: a lot, a lot less. Right. I remember being, uh, getting through the first episode. I was like, oh my God. Like, man, I can’t breathe. Uh, so I feel a lot better this time. Um, no, I had fun. Right? And I think it’s, it. I think it’s so fun, like, just because this, you never, we don’t know where this conversation is gonna lead, where it’s gonna go.

Um, but of course, like, you know, we could sit all day and just talk about these different sites and, uh, shiny objects and stuff. So yeah, I enjoyed it. I had a great time. I think, uh, you know, it’s a good episode and hopefully the people who watch it, uh, feel the same way. 

Jared: Well, I’m sure we’ll see you back again soon.

Um, you know, these, uh, these episodes go out every Friday and so if you’re not subscribed to the newsletter, you’ll wanna make sure that you pop on over there. It’s niche pursuits.com/newsletter. Uh, this isn’t the only thing that we publish. Obviously we have our interviews, um, that go live every Wednesday.

And then, um, Spencer also emails out some great content on Monday as well, so you can kind of. Not just get your news of the week, but there’s a lot more content that we share on a weekly basis. So make sure you’re subscribed. Again, that’s um, niche pursuits.com/newsletter and until we talk again, have a great weekend everyone.

Josh: Thanks chair. Bye guys.