Niche Site Project #2 (Month 13 Update)

November 2022 Niche Site Summary

Having now been hit by a second Google algo update, the “kitchen sink” approach continues to apply.

I’m leaving no stone left unturned and for me, that means making every effort possible to remove any technical deficiencies on the site. The current reality is, despite my efforts, I was unable to obtain passing mobile Core Web Vitals scores with Ezoic.

And so, as traffic continued to slide throughout the month of November, I made the decision to disable display ads on my site for the time being.

In addition to disabling ads I scaled up my Cloudways server, replaced my old theme with GeneratePress, removed all custom CSS accross the site and added Cloudways’ Breeze plugin.

After over two months of failing mobile CWVs, performance scores are now in the mid-to-high 90s. The site is officially back in the green.

It’s worth noting that Cloudways‘ one-click scaling and staging area made increasing my site’s server size and updating the theme genuinely seamless. To make both updates, the site was offline for only 20 minutes.

I also added one new post to the site with the sole intention of seeing how quickly it would index. It indexed right away and all old posts continue to get crawled at the same frequency as before.

Phase 1 of shoring up the technical side is now complete.

I plan to give these updates some time to marinate before implementing phase 2. Phase 2 will be 100% content focused and entail updating older posts.

I am still in the process of researching my competitors who now sit in the top SERPs and strategizing as to what specific content changes I plan to implement. I expect this process will be very time consuming, so I want to get it right.

More to come on this in my December update…

Traffic

From October (44,219) to November (13,606) the site had a 69.23% decrease in pageviews.

Google Analytics – November 2022

  • Users: 10,600
  • Sessions: 12,310
  • Avg. Session Duration: 00:40
  • Pageviews: 13,606
  • Avg. Time on Page: 6:20
November 2022 Google Analytics Audience

Google Search Console – November 2022

  • Total Clicks: 10,800
  • Total Impressions: 85,400
  • Avg. CTR: 12.6%
  • Average Position: 10.6
Google Search Console November 2022 (Month 13)

Earnings

Ezoic Display Ad Earnings – November 2022

  • Total Ad Earnings: $340.18*
  • ePMV: $29.77

*Display ads disabled on November 27th.

Historical Data


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Discipline = Freedom
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1 thought on “Niche Site Project #2 (Month 13 Update)”

  1. I have a good feeling this will bounce back. Google is really all over the place just now with updates. I’ve had sites drop and surge throughout the year. Fingers crossed for you.

    Did you notice any movement with the most recent Google update, on the 5th of December?

    Reply

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