I'm not sure if Pinterest would be suitable for the guitar niche , Youtube is probably better ?
rock on!
Lizzy

I think so too, Lizzy.

Right now I’m doing Pinterest and Medium, so one would probably have to go to make room in my schedule.

I just started them both, so I’ll give it another 3 or 4 months before I make any changes. 😎

Rock On! 🤘
Frank 🎸

yeay,good luck!

Thanks, Lizzy! 👍😎

Hi Partha

I totally agree with you that content is no longer king; it's domain authority, and unfortunately, my MOZ DA is only 23.

Google is making a mockery of their search results, trying to deal with things like the flood of worthless-quality AI content, etc., but what are they going to do when high-domain authority sites jump on the AI-fluff bandwagon? Vintage Guitar Magazine (DA 58) already has, to some extent, and it's ugly!

As far as using longer and super-specific keywords to find DA <=10 sites on page one, there is a point of no return.

I could write an article using the keyword "What to do when the drive potentiometer on my Aphex Punch Factory Optical Compressor makes bizarre sounds when I turn it?" (I chose that keyword because I just had to fix mine, Lol).

However, nobody is going to type that into Google, and if they do, page one is still dominated by videos and UGC, for which TalkBass and Reddit say absolutely nothing of any value.

On the plus side, Aphex makes a kick-ass optical compressor, very similar to the sound of the Teletronix LA-2A Leveling Amplifiers that were used in the 1960s and early '70s recording studios (think the Beatles white album sound)!

With Great Respect, 👍 😎
Frank 🤘🎸

Hey Dr. F,

Firstly, 23 isn't something to be sniffed at (although I do have a method THAT WORKS to get sites to about DA 15-20 within a couple of months... but I'm NOT giving it out for FREE!! Hahahaha).

Plus, I know your site has been affected, but your DA proves something I mentioned (in the long, lost FIRST accidentally deleted draft of my reply).

Basically, one of the most common things you'd hear during the "write loads of articles and rely on ON-PAGE SEO" stage of Google rankings is that you "naturally obtain backlinks".

Now, while this is somewhat true, this is only the case IF YOU ARE RANKING FOR SEARCH TERMS IN THE TOP 10 RESULTS.

The way to look at it is our own EXTERNAL links we place within articles, these are essentially US giving backlinks to someone else.

How do we generally find those sites to link externally to?

You're either told to link to ONE specific well-known authority site, but this leaves a "footprint" that Google can follow and can be viewed as SEO manipulation...

OR

The "usual method" - you do a quick search on Google for something related to what you want to EXTERNALLY LINK TO, and you typically choose an article that is in the TOP 10 RESULTS.

Therefore, "naturally obtaining backlinks" mainly relies on your RANKING IN THE TOP 10 SEARCH RESULTS (sure, some people will pick you up via social media, etc. but more often than not, people externally link after a Google search).

Anyway, the point being, for you to get a DA23 you clearly have a VARIETY of backlinks.

So, when "things were going great guns" you clearly were "naturally obtaining backlinks", mainly because you had many more TOP 10 RANKINGS (don't forget GSC only gives you a snapshot of backlinks, NOT ALL).

So, for now, it does seem to be the case that authority (backlinks) matter more, and in reality, forget "no follow" and "do follow", as google is CURRENTLY ranking ANY website with a high authority, therefore links from those sites will still carry some power.

For yourself, and your current DA, you could look for keywords which have at least ONE result in the TOP 20 which a similar authority to your website.

This almost shows that you can rank in the top 20 results for that keyword (although you won't know the backlink profile of the site with a similar DA as yours unless you have specific tools to check).

So, write that article, and then see what high DA socials and web 2.0 are ranking for that keyword and get your backlink from one of them (don't forget, although not as effective, YouTube has the "community" section on your YouTube channel, I see nothing wrong with a short "meta-description" and a link to articles on a regular basis.

Anyway, I do think there are some changes coming, and I feel that a lot of high authority websites with complete crap will be replaced by slightly lower authority sites (e.g. DA 23 🤣🤣) who ACTUALLY ANSWER THE QUERY).

So, this year could see the SERPS being a mix of authority domains (especially social media and web 2.0) and "half-decent" authority that covers the topic properly.

Another way to look at it, everything we do on our websites today we do for the future, keep that in mind over the coming year.

As for Crap AI, currently absolutely fine for HIGH DA, not so much for new sites and low DA.

Those who are new to this industry, if they're relying solely on "out-of-the box AI" and sharing to 1-2 or social media sites, they're in for a terrible ride.

Partha

Thanks, Partha! 👍

Yeah, I went from about 100 articles (out of a total of 200) in the top 10 of Google page one to about 50 after the last HCU, but things are starting to improve slowly.

Anyway, I'm still having fun! 😎

Rock On! 🤘
Frank 🎸

My gosh Parta, I feel so sorry for you that you needed to rewrite it several times DARN lol!
" Realistically, if youve managed to "train" AI really well this business is going to be much easier (write article, get AI to smmarize certain points, turn those into shorter articles, pin descriptions, YT videos, infographics, and then share to all the platforms that are currently ranking on page one... or as many as you can)"
==> exactly my plan, I dropped Instagram and Twitter (no traffic), upping up my FB groups and page (filling in the agenda for a month), upping Pinterest, filling in the Youtube community (gets quite some likes to each blog post, in between my videos). After I had a few other chores done (damn Amazon images), I will plan out dailly posts on Reddit as well, growing an audience there is the plan as well. I never see anything on Quora though for my niche.

" For anyone using the "old" affiliate model and saying it "still works", their website has AUTHORITY (as an example, of the 4-5 people who make it to Vegas every year, their websites have been running for at least 7 years, how much content, how many backlinks, do you think they built up in that time? And they've built their own brand <---- put one these guy's "brand names" into Google and see how many different platforms mention their brand)" ==> Exactly what I thought!
(although my DA is 33 now, this is surely not high enough, compared to the socials, or general (craft)sites like wikihow and stuff. There are websites that craft EVERYTHING and they have DA for over years of higher then 70-80. I'll try and stop competing with those.

I should get on tiktok, but I hate it haha! Step by step.

Going to keep this post for reference to come back to, thanks!

Hi Lizzy

Did you use Lasso to solve the Amazon image problem?

Thanks! 😎
Frank 🎸

I have noticed that to in my niche, when Pinterest or Reddit (in my case even my own crappy pin ranks higher), this doesn't mean at all that the answer that someone gives on Reddit for that topic is the greatest ever, like on the contrary. So indeed, it shows that now Google thinks DA is the better option, for whatever reason. It's kind of horrible :-(

" Those who are new to this industry, if they're relying solely on "out-of-the box AI" and sharing to 1-2 or social media sites, they're in for a terrible ride."
==> exactly what I stated somewhere this week,that new users, comming into WA, seeing and using the AI writer,without checking up on mistakes/too much fluff/ writing about things that no one is interested in or asks on Google/don't care about social media, so overall using AI in the wrong way, they will waste their time and be off here in no time, because they will say " this doesn't work".
Lizzy

I big miscalculation, for sure, by Google, Lizzy! 😁

I'm using wp tasty because that is much more affordable, BUT i needed to go through each image to replace it one by one, instead of all at once. And I have used more of them than I thought LOL, Almost through I hope!

Lucky I mostly used images from other sources and created my Amazon affiliate links from text-only. 😎

Yeah, I thought I did as well, because lots of these DIY miniature kits reviews are my own pictures and videos, so I was a bit surprised to see how many I did still use lol! But mainly crafting materials and tools like table saws reviews and such. Bummer; oh well :-)

Hi Diane!
Thanks for the support, yes I'm fighting at the moment, I don't want to go under yet with my "baby" website haha!
About offline selling, I once was thinking about doing that, but then selling my own miniatures and fairy houses, so more like in a form of art than actual kit building, but I craft so irregularly, that this wouldn't be successful to live from.
As for actually selling these DIY kits, the competition is fearce. There are so many resellers on the market,charging ridiculous prices and they spend tons of money on advertising. That much that I couldn't compete with them at all. I would also need storage space and such, shipping, etc. My health and energy level wouldn't be good enough at all for this, but if anyone else would go there here in Europe, why not!
All the best,
Lizzy
PS I do have something in the back of my head though, like dollhouse printables and DIY building plans, that would purely be digital, and there is probably a market for that. Now to find the time and know-how and how to promote that haha!

Oh dear, I'm sure you've already tried almost everything to get traffic and ranking, but there still is "unplowed ground" left.

Where and with what? Partha, as usual, has your back and gives you the place and the tools to use. We all can make use of them. :)

I wish you all the best, Lizzy!
Diana.

thanks Jeff!

You're very welcome, Lizzy!

Agreed, your niche could be for example popular on Youtube ( I don't know anything about chess, but certain 'moves' explained in video format could be great, no?) . Like when I type "chess openings" : https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chess+openings . Could be doing great there!
Lizzy

You're absolutely right Lizzy, but there's no chance on Earth I can compete with the big chess YouTube channels.

There are chess masters with millions of subscribers, whereas I am just an intermediate player who likes playing chess.

Let's be realistic, there's zero room for a chess "blogger" on YouTube.

Ok, hold on here.
The other day I was watching a seminar from a certain SEO Guru, who examined the trends for 2024 and he gathered statistics from his clients in different niches over several months.
What he saw was :
- yes, don't continue with a certain social media channel when it clearly doesnt work, but don't give up for trying another channel!
So, on Pinterest you had no traffic, ok! Stop wasting time there then. But eventhough there is high competition on Youtube, you still could get traffic from Youtube. Which is better, no traffic, or some traffic?
And that made me think, as I did in my post: I look for keywords in Google and take the socials that are working for me in my niche.

Let me try to clarify what I mean (my mother tongue isnt english sorry lol)

When I google " best opening chess moves for beginners"
==>
Ok, what I see is indeed a few blogs, so only doing SEO for you could definitely work.
But NO Pinterest, so of course you won't get anything from Pinterest.
Social media for this keyword are : Youtube (as I thought), and Reddit.

I would defenitely try to get traffic from these 2 (to your website) , just don't focus on making ads money with youtube or so, because indeed the competition is to big, but I think you would be able to get traffic to your website for sure! Give it a try for at least 3-4 months (youtube needs to also "marinate" I have noticed).
And as said in the webinar I saw, some traffic is better then none and they count as good backlinks!
For my Africa niche, I hardly have subscribers to my Youtube channel, but my domain authority is finally rising because I place my blog links from it.
I still would try and see!
Just my 2 cents

I really appreciate the insights Lizzy.

English is not my first language either, so no worries. 😁

Just to quickly comment on this - never think that you can't rank any niche or on any platform anywhere because the grandmasters (or in other niches 'gurus') have already taken over.

I did a quick search on Youtube, and found the following channel: https://www.youtube.com/@HangingPawns The guy has over 200K subs, gets 3K+ views on his videos, and he's only has a 1980 ELO rating (so not even title, at least no that I could see). Point being, even chess 'bloggers' (or in the words of ChatGPT, "enthusiasts", lol) can rank against titled players.

Just another thought - if English is your second language, you could think about publishing content about chess in your native language, depending on how popular it is.

(Okay, so I did a little more digging, and according to your profile on Quora, you say that you're from Dubai, so if I assume that Arabic is your native language [and that could be a large assumption], I took a quick look at chess.com's Arabic youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChesscomArabic and it looks like they're getting some pretty decent traffic to their channel per video (it just shows that there is popularity for Chess in Arabic - you probably know all this already) - It's just another idea for you to dig around and see if there is something useful there).

Hopefully something from here is helpful.

Definitely helpful, as always.

Thanks a bunch Andy. 😁

this is great!

You'll have to PM about how your FB groups are going - I'm testing some things out with mine, that I can let you know the results of it in a week or two, to see if we can re-create something similar with yours :)

thanks, will let you know soon! I've seen some more subscriptions to my newsletter already, but need to go through your other hints ;-) thanks again!
Lizzy