May 2022 was a big month in the SEO world, with Google rolling out a significant update to its ranking algorithm.
All those in the industry were nervously awaiting it as these updates can have a big impact on their site performance, and therefore earnings.
In this monthly update, I’ll give the usual updates on the two case study sites as well as some guesses as to the impact of the recent algorithm update.
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Outdoors Site
Monetization: affiliate
Site Recap
Affiliate site, in ‘Outdoors’ niche – established in June 2020. Approx 270k words of content over 200+ posts.
See full site history, content publishing breakdown, and traffic history here. Built with this approach.
May Statistics
In May, the Affiliate Site saw a significant drop in both traffic and earnings.
Total income for this site dropped from $1308 in April to $739 in May.
Likewise, traffic also dropped significantly from 18k pageviews down to 13k pageviews.
In part, this decrease is due to the seasonality of the niche. This niche really booms through December-April and does dip down in the other months.
If I am honest it has slowed done more than was expected, so I am digging deeper to try and understand other potential causes of this. It does like this site has had a very small decrease in traffic and rankings from the recent Google Core Update.
May Activity
Throughout May there was little activity on the site from me.
I have been slowly preparing to merge another site with this site, becoming a new category. I bought an expired domain due to the content and backlinks present on the domain. I rebuilt the site to its previous state and re-indexed it with Google.
The impressions and clicks came back really quickly, in part due to the strength of some of the backlinks, so next month I’ll officially merge the two sites in Google Search Console and do the 301 redirect to this case study site, I’ll be sure to update you on the progress and impact of this.
Entertainment Site
Site Recap
Ads site, in ‘Entertainment’ niche – established in January 2021. Monetized with Ezoic advertising.
Approx 220k words of content over 230+ posts.
See full site history, content publishing breakdown, and traffic history here. Built with this approach.
May Statistics
May 2022 saw the ‘best ever’ traffic and revenue statistics on this site.
Page views crossed 7k, and income from the Ezoic ads crossed $70 for the first time.
Still very humble statistics, but heading in the right direction.
At one point, it looked like traffic had taken a hit from the Google Core Update, then it bounced back, and now it has dropped again.
So I am not yet sure what impact the update will have on the site trajectory, but wouldn’t be surprised if it has also taken a small hit, but doesn’t look too serious at this point.
May Activity
Monthly activity on this site is always pretty straightforward. I have one writer dedicated to this site and she writes 4-6 articles a month, depending on her study schedule, and I’m just letting it grow organically in that way.
In May though, she managed to get 8 articles done though, which is great.
I also bought some expired domains that are niche relevant, planning to re-establish them and then merge them with this site for an authority boost.
