Rank Theory #15

a smart SEO newsletter disguised as a very stupid SEO newsletter

Hello friends,

Happy Friday.

How are things?

However they are now, they might be about to get a lot worse. Or better. Another possibly big update coming in the next several days.

But we’ll get to that in a minute.

I want to take a moment to thank everyone that helped support this stupid newsletter (and supported your own future self) by buying an early copy of my course. I was extremely happy with the number of sign-ups, and the very cool people I’ve met in our little Slack group. I’ll be posting the first videos soon—had a really rough week with the unexpected death of a very beloved pet, and I’m only now starting to move past it and becoming productive again. So keep an eye out for THAT.

The course is currently closed to sign-ups. It will open again when the content is all recorded and posted. If you’re interested in knowing immediately when it’s ready to go, don’t even sweat it. I will definitely not shut up about it here or on Twitter (where you should definitely follow me).

In This Newsletter

• A possible follow-up to the absolute piece of shit that was the December 2020 algo update

• For better or worse, all the shit I bought or sold (or sold and then re-bought) this year

• The Rank Theory Index™ of sites

Looking into the face and mind of the abyss, one year on

December 2020.

An algo update on the 3rd. My sites—several affiliate sites earning a combined $25k or so a month very consistently—took a hit. Traffic down 20% ish on December 3rd.

Fuck.

It’s okay… some hard work and I can recover from that. Rankings down but not out.

Talk to the team at the start of the following week with a plan of how we’ll recover.

Then December 9th—a 50% drop from pre-December.

December 10th: +90% drop from pre-December.

Result: 99.99% revenue drop across the board.

That’s how my 2020 ended.

It looks like November’s algo update didn’t do much of anything, based on the entire lack of chatter I’ve seen in regards to it.

But Google just announced a “product review” update for Dec 2021.

Wondering what Google means by “product reviews?”

It’s this:

It’s your dopey affiliate site.

Here’s an SEJ writer-up of the announcement.

So this could be nothing or it could be a career-ending 50 megaton nuclear bomb equivalent that sees you firing your team and trying to fire-sale your mop site LOL what is the meaning of life anywaaaaaaay…

Guess we’ll find out soon enough. You can be sure I will cover the update, if there is one, especially if it affects me personally, which it probably won’t, because I am 0/100 on affiliate sites (meaning I don’t really own any of significance, and I would absolutely not buy one unless I had a plan to immediately turn it into an authority or ecom site), I think they’re super risky and have no moat and if you have affiliate sites what are you even DOING turn that shit into an authority site like YESTERDAY, damn…

***Topical Sponsorship Message***

Oh, hello.

Didn’t see you there.

It’s a wonderful time of year, isn’t it? A time for reflection on the days that’ve passed us by, a time for gathering with the ones you love the most to drink hot chocolate and…oops! Haha, you’ve got some whipped cream in your mustache.

As you take into account the year you’ve just had, and look with hope and possibly, is that some fear?? to the future…. just how safe *IS* your portfolio of affiliate sites?

A product review update, you say?

Fuuuuck, dude, what are you gonna do!??

All that terrible, terrible affiliate content you’ve had written… you for sure need to change it up, make it better, become an authority.

But how?! How will you ever do this thing on your own!!!?!!?

Whenever I get hit with the crippling existential dread of a random Google core algo update completely wiping out my livelihood and the livelihood of my employees, I reach for a nice, warm mug of Clearscope.

Clearscope helps me turn my shitty affiliate comparison articles into thought-provoking, in-depth content that really engages my audience, and gives Google’s algorithm exactly the keywords it wants to see.

Help your portfolio of sites give Google’s endlessly monstrous hungry hungry hippo algorithm the content it wants, and become the authority site you want to see in the world.

Thanks Clearscope for sponsoring this SEO newsletter that is driving change in the hearts and minds of millions, and inspiring all to come together in peace this December.

Check out Clearscope’s amazing content tool here. I use it. You should use it too. Not JUST because they’re sponsoring my dumb newsletter, but because it’s a genuinely useful tool.

Obviously Clearscope has no editorial control over these ad spots, and I think that’s really brave.

***End Sponsorship Message***

What terrible and amazing decisions did I make this year?

I’m going to go through all the major purchases and sales I made this year.

Oof.

Why am I doing this to myself?

Because you all love to be voyeurs and look at my really terrible mistakes, possibly to learn from them, but mostly because it’s entertaining.

Pass the popcorn, please…

But also, because as I’m posting here every week, expecting you to trust me at my word and my experience, maybe showing you a bit of my cards will help you at least see where I’m coming from when I rant about this or that thing.

Here, for better or worse, are the sites I bought and sold this year, minus the domain, and in some cases, OTHER details to protect my own ass, because I did sign some NDAs and shit.

Also, once this email goes out I’m deleting this section the public Substack site, so this is subscriber only content. Thank you for subscribing.

January:

• sold a Vape affiliate site for six figures via Motion Invest

February:

• bought a DR 74, super-amazing one-word brand for low/mid 5 figs to build something cool on

• bought an amazing domain in installments for low 5 figs

• bought a domain (great 5-letter brand) for low 4 figs @ GoDaddy auction

March:

• bought a content site/marketing site for low 5 figs to 301/rebrand a tangentially-related site that got crushed by the Dec 2020 update, that I wanted to build something new on. Acquiring this site helped me shift the site’s topical relevancy.

• bought DNgeek for an undisclosed amount of money in installments (first installment happened in March)

April

• sold the DR 74 domain I bought in Feb, things just didn’t work out like I thought/hoped—sold it for what I paid for it

• sold an affiliate site for low 5 figs made up of content from a site that Dec 2020 algo update crushed—I 301’d all the affiliate content to an expired domain I’d previously rebuilt.

• bought an amazing psychedelics name for mid-high four figures (shout out to Grit Brokerage!)

• bought a super two-word domain for low four figs @ GoDaddy auction

• bought a one-word amazing amazing .org for low four figs @ GoDaddy auction

May

• nothing. Spent this month driving from Utah to Vermont and back again, and packing for a late-June move to Vermont

June

• bought a DR 70+ .org for low 5 figs (on a 3-month or something payment plan)

• sold a domain that I bought for low four figs for low 5 figs, in addition to an agreement to do several months of SEO work on the site they were gonna build, and several other non-money things that, several months later, never materialized. looking to buy this domain back for what I paid as soon as I have enough for it. (ಠ_ಠ)

July

• nothing—settling in to the new house. moving is a lot of fucking work!

August

• bought a cannabis marketing agency website (way overpaid) for high four figs, on a payment plan that runs through the end of the year)

September

• bought a DR 28 domain for low 4 figs @ GoDaddy auction that I haven’t fucking done anything with, yet. Idiot

October

• sold DNgeek for just sliiiightly more than I paid

• bought back the affiliate site I sold in April for sliiiightly more than I sold it for

November

• bought an ecommerce site that I truly believe in selling a product I am super passionate about for mid five-figures—the first time I have gotten a loan to buy a site. still don’t have ownership of the site due to payment processor bullshit, I’m so mad I can’t even… finish this entry

• sold a domain with Juice on JuiceMarket for low 4 figs

• sold a domain (just a good brand) on Dan.com for low 4 figs

• finally, I bought an insta account that’s super engaged and related to the ecom site I just bought for high 3 figs—should be able to get some sales from the synergy.

Well, that’s it.

Some regrets.

Some mediocre purchases that I could probably have done without.

But mostly I stand behind these purchases.

The one thing I DID learn this year: I’m no longer selling any of my assets in my main niche. Not a single one. One day I’ll make a spectacular exit like a star exploding, but until then, no short-sited sales.

What do you think?

That’s a lot right? I may have a problem…

The Rank Theory Index of sites that, what are they even doing, we should pay attention to them

I've wanted to do this for a long time, and today I was like “well I definitely don’t have enough stupid shit going on, so let’s add this into the mix!”

But also, I have someone who can help me keep track of this a bit.

Introducing, very half-assedly, the Rank Theory Index of Sites That, What Are They Even Doing, We Should Pay Attention to Them. The Rank Theory Index for short.

So there are some sites that are doing some weird stuff and we should pay attention to them…

• a site doing millions and millions of visitors per month, in the span of just a few months, with shitty, AI-generated copy (and even worse links)

• a site doing hundreds of thousands of visitors per month if a very lucrative (Delta-8 THC) niche

I’m going to set up some tools to monitor these sites doing interesting or risky things (that I don’t own and that I also will not reveal the URL of so no one can call me a narc) and give period updates here on how these tactics are going over time.

If you have a site that’s doing some crazy shit, or a site that you know of and you’d like to contribute to the RTI, please hit me up sem @ hey . com.

I will have a page on RankTheory.com that shows you a key to the site’s I’m talking about, like:

Site 1:
niche - delta 8 thc
why we’re tracking them: super aggressive link building on an expired domain
etc…

What do you think? Interested? Dumb idea? Hit me back, I want to hear from you on it.

I will publish the first of this series of updates next week (probably).

~

All right, that’s enough outta me. Time for lunch and some client work and then some course work. Excited to post the first few lessons this weekend.

Y’all keep it real.

And go check out what our sponsor has on offer at Clearscope.

Until next time…

Sean

Rank Theory #14

The hopes and dreams of an entire industry, carried on the shoulders of one single SEO newsletter.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart

— Les Misérables

Happy Friday, my friends.

Up here in north-central Vermont we’re expecting 2-9 inches of snow today, so… I’ll be hiding out inside all weekend most likely. Buying things.

It’s black fridaaaaay what are you buying?

For me, it’s mostly hosting, and mostly re-upping all of my accounts with as much discounts as I can. This mostly only works for WPX, which not everybody loves, but which I love a lot.

They are a great managed WP host, and their support is really robust and responsive (opposite of like, Bluehost).

I’ve got an affiliate link if you’re looking for things to click on and here it is. I highly recommend them.

In stuff I’ve never used before but am checking out for the first time, I’m picking up a lifetime Schema Pro account for just under $200. No affiliate link, but click here to check that out if interested.

I also picked up many many Deposit Photo credits at AppSumo, for my various website posting. Highly recommended. No aff link, just click here to check it.

What about you? Share the good deals for shit in the comments.

In This Newsletter:

• I try and convince you to buy my expired domain SEO course using classic marketing techniques couched in humor, sarcasm, and downplaying a serious marketing push with fake “wink wink we’re on the same team it’s us against them” style positioning.

• My reaction to the November 2021 core algorithm update

• How I actually monitor these stupid goddamned updates

• Next week’s (or whatever) newsletter

The Expired Domain SEO Course is Expiring (for new sign-ups)

Do you get it?

Wordplay!

So, I did a pre-sale for this course starting last Friday, and it ends tomorrow at midnight. I’m closing it down to new sign-ups while I actually build the course and deliver it one painful video at a time to those intrepid explorers, those brave and fearless people that signed up first.

To recap:

I’m doing an expired domain SEO course where I cover:

• how and where to find good domains to acquire

• what makes a good expired SEO domain

• how to use these domains to grow your traffic

• a bunch of other foundational stuff

• some cool and weird advanced shit

The course doesn’t exist yet, I’m releasing it as I go. If you sign up to receive the course this way, it’s $199, lifetime, and you get all future updates and stuff (if any).

I’m closing entry to this course on Sunday, and releasing it again once the course is all put together, where it will cost $299.

So, if you’re on the fence, that’s my best and most long-winded pitch to have you give me the monies now, or more later. Whatever you’re comfortable with. Here’s a button:

Or if you have Koumpounophobia, here’s a nice, safe hyperlink for you to click:

Get the course for $199 before it’s no longer available.

#fomo #marketing

The Great Google Update of November 2021

Here are some quotes that sum up mine and most people’s experience with the 2021 November Core Algo Update. Take from this what will you will: life is a mirror.

---

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

~

When you’ve done something right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all

— God, Futurama

~

Film is an illusion. Fame is ephemeral. Faith and family are what endure.

—Emilio Estevez

And that’s all I have to say on the matter.

How to peel back the layers of reality and look at the guts of the artificial machine that drives core algorithm updates

OR: How to keep an eye on the ongoing impact of core algo updates.

Couple things here.

The first way: constantly check the same five SERPs everyday, but especially during updates.

If you’re not obsessively checking the SERPs of your most important keyword, and measuring your own self worth/living and dying by how your site is performing in said SERPs, are you even an SEO?

If your site is not there yet, you should still be checking constantly. Making note of things like:

• Are newspapers ranking?

• Do info KWs dominate?

• Is that one site doing super toxic SEO still ranking first and second?

• Are the any sites left on the internet that aren’t fucking newspapers?

Look at how the intent of the keyword changes. Sometimes it’ll be info heavy, sometimes buying-related, and sometimes a weird mix where Google doesn’t know what to do with itself.

Look at the sites that pop up during an update, the weird mutants that live on page 14 where the sunlight never reaches, who’ve grown strange appendages and multiple, wide milky eyes on the foreheads to better see flashes of movement in the extreme dark down there.

What are they doing in the #2 spot?! What did Google’s algo see in them to temporarily promote, only to have them disappear two hours later, their soft, exposed retinas burned forever by a glimpse of the light of success.

Second: I like to make note of newspapers vs. magazine sponsored posts once the dust of an update has settled.

Look at things like: are they super fresh, just published? That’s something that might matter.

Do they have 10,000 referring domains?

Zero?

This is all good advice.

Finally, look at the sites that used to rank in the top 3, got dropped as-if-by-a-record-label-because-they-were, in fact, no-longer-hot… only to re-emerge three years later in a duet with Justin Bieber about how Miami is like, a city filled with beautiful women and also beaches, and you can dance on the beach and maybe buy some Iced cream on that beach.

Is that DR 75 pure-spam-backlinks-but-has-2400-pages-of-content site back on page one?!

It *IS* back on page one. I bet they’re making $2,000/day in affiliate revenue.

I guess actions have no consequences, might as well fire up the ole GSA machine for 10,000 automatic backlinks, life has no meaning and nice guys truly do finish last in the SERPs. Time be a straight up SHITHEAD with this link building campaign, I’ma hack your ugly site and link to all of mine with exact anchor text and draw a penis on your logo while I’m there.

Anyway.

What were we talking about?

How to monitor Google core updates.

My advice:

• be super obsessive and observant about your niche and your keywords.

• hit a nice vaporizer every night—like the Pax 3 maybe—and a strrrrrong Indica.

That’s how you SEO in 2021, bitch.

~

Well, that’s all the advice I have for you this week.

I’m gonna go listen to the new It’s Always Sunny podcast and play Breath of the Wild on Switch.

Stay tuned to next week’s newsletter where I share my purchases and sales of 2021—it’s been a wild year (I don’t want them to live on forever online, so they will ONLY be sent via, so make sure to subscriiiiiiiibe).

…if you haven’t.

Have a good weekend, and one more reminder to sign up for my course before I close that shit (and if you’ve already signed up: what an OG, you are the best).

Peace, love, and pumpkin pie.

Sean

Rank Theory #13

in which we actually discuss some theory (and also, a new course from me)

Hello!

Another day where I head into the newsletter mines, dust and grime caked beneath my fingernails and building up in my lungs, to chip away at the walls and haul these words up into the bright sunshine above to fucking amaze and delight you.

It’s not much, but it’s honest work.

How are things?

I’m as good as can be expected. Been earning fake internet points with my shitty SEO takes on Twitter. Here’s one:

sean @seanmarkey

#SEO blog posts be like: We analyzed 1.2 trillion pages and here's what we learned: 1. Keyword in the H1 is super important 2. Backlinks are, in general, pretty important 3. Content is King! LOL ...

November 18th 2021

17 Retweets190 Likes

Do you follow me on Twitter yet?

@seanmarkey ← definitely do, if you do yet not.

Before we get into the newsletter, wanted to give a quick update on a few personal things.

Personal Things

Apology:

Sorry I single-handedly crashed the entire worldwide crypto markets by buying some coins. It happens every time I try. Now’s a great time for you to get in, though. As soon as my awkwardly clammy paper hands dry a little and I sell these coins for a loss, this shit is going to the MOON (where, I assume, it will build a moonbase and launch an asteroid mining operation to strip out precious metals like platinum, palladium, and rhodium and bring them back to Earth to sell and flood the precious metals market so people will stop stealing catalytic converters).

Thanks Crypto!

Future Issues:

I’m planning on doing a summary in December of all the things I bought/sold this year (well, you won’t get the exact domain name, settle down). I thought this would be an interesting look at what I’m up to. I sure do blather on and on about websites and domains and shit, but what does that look like, is my money where my mouth is?

You’ll find out in a few weeks. Should be a fun, existentially threatening post.

Saturday:

Happy Saturday. I didn’t get the newsletter done on Friday due to so much going on, but here we are on Saturday morning. I’ll bring the Frosted Flakes you bring the milk, let’s meet up 13 inches away from the T.V. to watch cartoons.

In This Newsletter

Expired Domains Course

Spammed-out Website Laundering Theory

The Best Link Building Tactic You’ll Never Be Able to Use, Statistically Speaking

Announcing: The Rank Theory Expired Domains Ultra Course Experience Bonanza

So, I’m launching a course on expired domains.

It’ll mostly be the same shit I’ve talked about here, endlessly, but all in the same place (and SOME stuff I haven’t talked about before).

It’ll be on the basic side of video production. I’ll narrate over a powerpoint deck Glen Allsopp style, instead of standing in front of a camera being super awkward about what-do-i-do-with-my-arms-oh-shit-I-forgot-how-to-stand-normally…

IYKYK.

There’ll be a slack room where we can all hang out and talk about expired domains, redirects, acquisitions, and etc., as well as maybe get some private dealflow going… I won’t be available to constantly answer questions, but I’ll definitely be around, and it’ll be moderated.

Here’s a rough outline of what will be included in the course:

• Why use an expired domain for SEO

• Where to find expired domains

• A process for deciding if a domain is worth acquiring

• A rough guide on how to value an expired domain

• How to build/rebuild an expired domain

• How to properly 301 an expired domain to your main site

• Expired domain with juice + great brand domain w/o juice—how to combine forces

• Other valuable things you can do with expired domains you acquire (like parasite SEO)

• Examples of expired SEO domains doing well in the real world SERPs

• Over-the-shoulder video as I use DomCop and GoDaddy auctions to sort through expired domains so you can see how I work

• A private slack room where you can hang out with fellow classmates and me

• All updates to this course, free for life.

The course will be priced at $299, when it’s done.

If you read my newsletter and don’t mind receiving the course piecemeal and being patient as I work out the bugs of the course software and blah blah blah as I put it together, you can sign up now for $199. It’ll never be cheaper than that…

Basically, sign up today as a kind of pre-sale. You’ll get access to the course as I release it, and access this weekend to the slack room where I’ll be around to answer some questions about the course (but not, you know, to hold your hand private-consulting-style through acquisitions and redirects—be reasonable…)

So that’s it, that’s the pitch. If you want to learn about this shit, sign up for $199 and I’ll start releasing some content next week. You’ll get slack room access Sunday.

The $100 discount will only be around for about a week-ish, so get on it…

Click here to register for my expired domain names course.

The Spammed-Out Website Laundering Theory

This came about from someone asking a question on an SEO group I’m a part of. No one really responded to my answer, and I really want to get some more eyes on this to maybe help refine it, or to hear from people that have done this successfully before, so I’m putting it here (and leaving out the name of the asker). But first…

***New Rank Theory Sponsor: Clearscope.io***

That’s right, I sold out. I went and got myself a sponsor.

But I wouldn’t let just any company come in here and get their corporate fingers on my precious email list. You’ll never see a sponsorship for something that I don’t use myself.

You know what SEO tool I DO use, though?

Clearscope.

It’s an amazing tool that helps you optimize your content. Y’all know by now I don’t do a lot of link building. Instead, I use 301s/acquisitions + super well optimized content. This is the tool I use for the second part of that.

There’s a content editor that helps you include all the keywords Google’s algo expects to see in well-ranking content. I’ve tried other similar tools, but always come back to Clearscope—and I’ve been subscribed since 2019:

Can’t make it any more clear than that (do you get it?? that’s how it’s done, people), how valuable this tool is for me.

You should check it out here, and support this newsletter by supporting the people that sponsor it.

***End Sponsorship Note and Back to the Show***

Question: If a domain name has been torched due to spam links, can the content be moved to a new domain and the old domain name discarded? Has anyone done this before?

My answer:

It’s tricky, because you want the content to be attributed to the new site, but not the links because they are garbage.

I’ve thought about this before, because I have a few sites like this, where the content I built on them is solid, but the backlinks are three swamp monsters in a trench coat. I haven’t done this yet, it’s purely theory, but here’s what I would do if I were in this situation (which, I am, I’m just lazy/there are other priorities).

I’d try and launder the content through a secondary site.

Like, try and find someone that runs one of those fucking awful DR 68 sites with 400 categories, that only exists as a rebuilt expired-domain to charge $350 per post and I see them post four new blog posts a day to someone’s shitty affiliate site, and god damn I am in the wrong business…

Anyway, find a site like that, someone that will play along, and 301 the posts over to this big authority domain, posting the content THERE. I don’t think this will work for more than a few posts, but again, it’s all theory.

For the ease of explanation:

• the original, spammy backlink site you want content from is SITE #1

• the intermediary site with the big authority is SITE #2

• the final site where you want the content to end up is SITE #3

So.

Wait for the content to—when you select a sentence or two and put it into Google’s search bar in quotes—be indexed and attributed to the URLs on SITE #2. As soon as it is indexed to the new URLs, kill the initial 301 redirects from SITE #1 to SITE #2 (and make sure the content is no longer displayed on SITE #1).

Now, once those URLs are indexed on SITE #2, immediately put that content on SITE #3 and redirect those URLs from #2 to #3.

Keep on testing a snippet of the content quoted in Google. When you see that the URL or Meta Title is coming up in the search for SITE #3 instead of SITE #2, kill the redirects from SITE #2 to SITE #3.

That’s it, that’s the theory.

There are a lot of reasons it may not work, but… if you’re at in this position, you don’t have a lot left to lose.

Each move hinges upon you seeing that the content is indexed and attributed to the updated URL. It may take awhile. The sooner it shows up and the redirects are killed, the better chance you have of extracting the content without the shitty backlinks.

But again, this is just a theory.

The other things I’d consider: doing the same thing, but with a newly registered site. This is a bit riskier, I think, but more in your control. The idea here is that the new site is new enough that your redirects, if temporary, won’t stick. But if you can get the content to be indexed on the middle site, and then again on your final site, and finally you kill the redirects, it could work out well. In theory. :)

In addition to this hinging on the content being indexed, it is equally important to make sure the content that you’ve moved doesn’t live on any site once the redirects are killed. It should only appear on the final site.

Phew.

So that’s the best solution I can think of for this situation.

What do YOU think? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I will say that the least risky and also longest option, if your SITE #3 is your precious baby and you never want a wayward strand of grey thread to drift into the nursery, you could just copy all the content, kill the site and wait for it to be completely deindexed, search for a snippet in Google to confirm, and then put it on your site free and easy.

But who has the time to play it safe these days?

The Best Link Building Tactic You’ll Never Be Able to Use, Statistically Speaking

Step 1, get a baller domain name like Crypto.com

Step 2, raise over $200,000,000

That’s basically it. Then you can own the SERPs for a super short tail head term of moderate value like “crypto.”

And you can buy the naming rights to the Staples Center, write a blog post about it, and get 400+ links on that post alone:

And get over 3.4m monthly visitors from organic search (according to ahrefs):

I feel like this is all pretty straightforward, wtf do you actually spend your day doing?

Get on it. Write great content, buy a huge sports stadium’s naming rights. I shouldn’t have to spell this all out…

~

That’s it for this week!

Hope you enjoyed this Saturday edition of the Rank Theory newsletter.

Extra special shout out to Clearscope for sponsoring. Go check them out.

Let’s keep this discussion going via email or on Twitter — tell me what you think about my laundering theory.

Until next week (probably),

Sean

Rank Theory #12

Tonight, on a very special episode...

Well,

Here we are, another Friday.

You, a handsome intellectual with impeccable taste reading literally the best SEO newsletter on the planet.

Me, the guy on the right side of the bell curve in all those crypto meme posts—it doesn’t matter what the subject of the meme is, I look AMAZING in my robe-with-a-hood.

To catch you up on what I’ve been up to:

• A beaver built a dam in the stream that runs alongside our property and I walked on the dam and knocked it down some (so our backyard doesn’t turn into a swamp) and also a leech got on my finger.

• For my magazine about Death (you should subscribe, reading fiction is good for your brain and you can frame it like some Tim Ferriss memento mori shit) we gave away 30lbs of candy corn, and raised $600 for charity. It was so good, and so dumb.

• I launched an SEO agency that caters just to the cannabis industry—holler at me if you need some help with your cannabusiness.

• Harvested my first ever home grown cannabis (which is legal in VT, if that matters) and now it’s drying/curing for several weeks. Yes, this newsletter is 420 friendly.

In This Newsletter

This is gonna be a short one, I tell you hwhat

I had one big thing on my mind for the past several weeks (since Rank Theory number 10 or something—whatever number where I talked about affiliate sites and brands):

How does one turn a humble affiliate site into the kind of brand that gobbles up keyword rankings with each subsequent drunken Core Algorithm Update?

Today I wrote a post at Rank Theory (the website!) about this, I call it:

Your Affiliate Site Looks Like a God Damned Affiliate Site, Or: How to Become a Brand - Part 1

I know you won’t read it today—sending so late in the afternoon like Iam, so def. put it in your Pocket app to read during your Morning Ritual on the throne, or while you’re standing in line at the grocery store behind the only person still left on this sweet spinning cinder of a doomed planet writing a check to pay for $11.38 worth of groceries screaming you idiot, you doe-eyed infant, how dare you not be using crypto for this transaction, do you even have a Wallet?

Oops, got off track.

Go read my post, and tell me what you think!

And please tell other people to read it so I can become a rich and famous SEO (finally).

Also in this newsletter: A Site For Sale!

It took nearly three decades, but I’m finally focusing on one single thing for the foreseeable future, and that is cannabis industry related stuff.

So I’m getting rid of some digital assets that I’m clearly just never going to work on.

Here’s how it works: make me an offer, I’ll give you a ball park, and if you’re the only offer (or the highest offer) on Monday, it’s yours. Just trying to keep this super low-key.

MetalDetectorDirect.com

This site got crushed in the December 2020 update, and I bought it of someone before I decided to move to Vermont to do an experiment: 301 redirect it to another domain I bought (MetalDetected.com) and see if I could get the rankings to come rushing back, as I heard they might.

However, I am never going to do this as I haven’t already, so someone can take this combo off my hands if you’re keen to try it for yourself.

The site is actually a pretty solid affiliate site, built very nicely, not updated at all since I took over.

I paid $1k for the site, so hoping to get something at or over that amount, but we’ll see how it goes!

Email me sem AT hey.com with your offer.

Traffic:

Not amazing, but a solid base to start from.

Not In This Newsletter:

Anything else, this week.

Told you it’d be short.

I’ve got nothing left in the tank, it was a short night and a long day.

So go read that piece about building a brand, and talk about it on Twitter and tag me, cuz I only do this for those fleeting dopamine hits.

~

Until next week… or sometime, at least.

Sean

Rank Theory #11

in which I finally weigh in with my position on cannibalism

Hello old friends and new subscribers!

Prepare for another week of disappointing SEO content that says a lot but, at the end of the day, doesn’t fill that empty space you carry in your heart always.

What’s new? Not much much, I guess?

Here’s a picture of some pigeons on my barn in the heavy early morning fog.

Sorry there was no newsletter last week.

I’ve got a few big projects I’m now working on and the newsletter just wasn’t happening. PS if you need SEO help in the canna/cbd industry, holler at me. I’ve got a whole agency thing going.

In This Week’s Newsletter:

• What I learned from the previous newsletter

• Google really really hates your small, niche-specific site in an area you are super passionate about

• Search Intent Snapsssssssssshot

• Two sites for sale

Reader Questions:

This first question is from my friend Mushfiq, who runs a site called TheWebsiteFlip.com. He is the real deal, y’all. If you follow me but aren’t subscribed to his newsletter—highly recommend you sign up. If I was a normal person without a broken brain and an inability to follow a straight path to success, I’d have a site like his, full of helpful guides and case studies and shit. But instead, all you have from me is this fucked up newsletter. Oh well.

Check out The Website Flip here.

Question 1:

• I bought a site built on an aged domain. This site has about 30 articles and is bringing in some good traffic. It also has another redirect in place pointing to a press release type page. Chugging along nicely.

• I now want to build a bigger brand out of this. I plan to buy a branded domain with no backlinks.

• I want to move the content and redirects from the aged domain site to the fresh branded domain. Of course, will do proper 301s, and also site move in GSC.

My question for you: any major issue rebranding like this assuming everything technical is done right?(Note: I’ve done site build outs and redirects with aged domains in the past. Not new to this. New to just moving everything to a fresh domain for branding reasons).

Answer 1:

LOVE TO SEE IT!

I’m a sucker for a good brand, so moving aged authority sites to a fresh, fantastic brand is close to my heart.

I’ve done this a few times. Once or twice it was disastrous! Like, traffic dropped by 90% on the new brand for weeks. Scary! But I rolled back the redirect and traffic went back as before.

YMMV, but I usually skip the GSC part (the only time I’ve used it is when I lost 90% of traffic, as referenced above.). I just put in the 301s and let God sort them out (aka Google’s algorithm).

The way I’ve done this:

Move all the content/pages/site structure over to the Good Brand and 301 everything URL by URL.

Keep the current 301s from site 2 going to site 1 in place. It just forwards along to the old URL, through to the new URL.

Maybe there is a reduction in the authority it passes? But probably not enough to matter—at least in my experience. It’s the easiest AND most natural way to play it, so it is what I advise based on my experiments with this.

But yes, this is a good move, and though it could take a little bit for the traffic and everything to catch up to where it was, it probably will (and if your brand is really awesome and performs well in the SERPs, looks more trustworthy etc., it’ll exceed the previous site’s performance soon enough.

Question 2:

Affiliate site to a brand is something I've been thinking about for a few months. I own <Redacted Site> which is an affiliate site and a brand in the same space, <Other Redacted Site>. 

Been debating rolling the affiliate site into the brand although they are different audiences and I'm not the most technical SEO person. 

Curious what you would do? 

Answer 2:

These sites are in the same niche, which is a good thing.

It looks like the content of the “affiliate” site would be at home on the blog of the product site.

This is some good synergy! I’d suggest moving all the content from the affiliate site over to the product site, 301 each post URL by URL, 301 the home page, blog, about, etc. the the /blog of the product site.

That’s what I would do if I had these two sites and thought that combining them would maybe be a 1+1=3 kind of situation.

You don’t need to be technical, just redirect each URL by each URL using a redirect plugin (if Wordpress) or something something technical in HTACCESS or something, IDK, I’m not very technical either. :)

What I Learned From the Previous Newsletter

Is this:

If I could come up with a productized service that turns affiliate sites into brands, I’d be able to retire to Denmark and, I dunno, eat 24K gold leaf Danishes for the rest of my life (the pastry, not the citizens of Denmark, which I know are called Danes, but I’m just being super clear about any cannibalistic tendencies you might think I have because of your poor understanding of either pastries or demonyms GOOGLE IT THAT’S WHAT THAT IS CALLED).

But seriously, I got a ton of mail about that particular thing.

I’m going to share a few thoughts from some of the people that wrote to me—and who I got permission from to do so from:

Scott Finney Says:

I agree with your advice to transition a website into a brand. I'll add to it and say we all need to go above and beyond a website. We must use local seo to build confidence in Google that we do exist in the world and our customers will find what they are looking for with us because we are a "legit" business.

My theory is Google is flushing out affiliates, lead generation sites, and businesses that only exist online.

The  affiliate sites and lead generation sites are to better position Google to take paid spend directly from mom & pop brick and mortar businesses(Look at the GMB updates over the past year).

The businesses that only exist online are getting hurt because they look too much like the affiliate/lead gen sites Google wants to squash.

Google will continue to keep the local businesses in the game. Google can monitor the stuff a business that exists in the world would do. Have job listings, mentioned in local media/events. Have a physical address. Get brand search in certain regions and see random brand search pops.

The more Google filters out affiliates and businesses that only exist online. The more marketing spend they can take from brick and mortar "exist in the real world" businesses. These businesses might SUCK at digital marketing, but they do have existing cashflow for paying Google for more customers.

Matt Oney shared this with me and I love it:

Typewolf (a font website) has this on what is essentially their footer, so every page:

Building that branded search traffic like a boss.

Not sure how well that works—but I love that outside-the-box thinking.

Google Hates You So Bad (if you’re not owned by IAC or Red Ventures or a Newspaper that accepts sponsored posts or Something) Part 374

Here’s me, talking about this topic again:

Not gonna lie, that it probably the greatest gif I’ve ever seen, except for this one:

I was doing some keyword research in the last two weeks and wanted to share some of the SERPs with you.

Here’s one for “Desktop Aquarium”

• amazon

• amazon

• chonky video feature

• people also ask

• chonky product feature

• local pack

• image carousel

• brand carousel

• petco

• petco

• walmart

• walmart

• ecommerce site

• "best of" affiliate site

Google sez Amazon, Petco, and Walmart can have some traffic. No one else though.

Here’s one I found when researching some niches for an upcoming guest post (do you want me to guest post on your dumb SEO site? Holler at me if it has traffic) about parasite SEO.

This KW is very lucrative and competitive:

• newspaper

• newspaper

• newspaper

• newspaper

• newspaper

• expired domain rebuild

• niche site

• newspaper

• small affiliate site

• newspaper

Wow.

What is Google’s algorithm doing??? Haha.

IDK, but it fucking hates your thoughtful affiliate site, like:

Good talk, Google’s algorithm.

I guess the question to ask is this:

What niche are YOU in that’s not filled with slightly rewritten versions of the same newspaper sponsored post?

Time to fill those SERPs with slightly rewritten versions of the same newspaper sponsored posts.

Profit.

Search Intent Snapshot

Just an interesting thing I was thinking about.

If you really want to see a keyword’s search intent change over time, keep an eye on the SERPs for “psilocybin therapy.” Should be some really drastic changes in the next 2-5 years.

(Side note, I just want to brag, but I own the domain PsilocybinTherapy.com and this fact makes me quite happy. Wasn’t cheap tho…)

Sites For Sale

A friend is selling two sites. If you’re interested in these hit reply and let me know.

TPHblog.com:

^ home improvement niche.

RVMagOnline.com

^ RV niche, obviously

Look at This Tweet

I feel like this tweet was overlooked on Twitter, so I wanted to put it here as well.

sean @seanmarkey

#SEO tip: Piggyback on popular trends by writing timely content to ride the wave of attention and virality!

October 8th 2021

4 Likes

Are you following me on Twitter yet? @seanmarkey

~

That’s it for this week!

Hope you enjoyed this edition of the Rank Theory newsletter.

If you did, please forward this to someone and tell them to sign up or you won’t give them the antidote. Try to have as threatening an aura as possible. Will also accept tweets about it.

#TheAntidote

#GetSome

#ViralMarketing

Thank you,

Sean
sem@hey.com