Narcis Bejtic Provides Tips and Case Studies On Growing Organic Traffic From Written Content

In today's episode of the Niche Pursuits podcast, Jared (our host) chats to the business manager at Content Refined — Narcis Bejtic.

Content Refined was founded in 2016. It provides content, keyword research, content strategy, and related advice for website owners (mostly affiliate websites) who want to grow their traffic organically.

Narcis has worked with many website owners and has a wealth of knowledge on the various types of content that work best for affiliate websites and websites in general. In addition, Narcis talks about the optimal kinds of content and keyword research to do at different stages of your website development, i.e., beginner websites, sites within the first year, and of course, more established sites.

Narcis talks about the best time to branch out of the core niche and add different content if you have a website outside of the beginner stage. He offers advice on becoming unstuck and getting the traffic rolling again for those struggling with a stale website.

It's an interesting interview, including case study website examples to back up his strategy. If you like these kinds of real-life examples and want to learn more about content creation, this is an interview that you should enjoy.

Some of the other things discussed during the interview include:

• Narcis background journey
• When to update content and the criteria behind it
• Why and when you should delete content
• The best content strategy right now
• Best keywords to target for new websites
• Specific niche vs. broad niche
• Internal linking 
• Best keywords to target for new websites
• Following the keyword research
• When to move on from your site

Links And Resources Mentioned In The Podcast Interview:

• Content Refined
• Market Muse
• Content Refined Facebook
• Content Refined Instagram

You can see what current deals or special discounts Content Refined is offering right here.

Try Content Refined Here

If you'd like to book a call with Narcis to discuss your content strategy, you can book a time here.

Watch the full interview:

Read the full transcription:

Jared: Today. We are joined by Narcis Bejtic . Welcome to the podcast.

Narcis: Hey Jared. How's it going?

Good. Good. Good to be here with you.

Yeah. Great to be here. I'm excited. I have to

Jared: I like your setup. You have created quite the contrast back there with a, is that a black wall and then a white wall?

Narcis: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so like, COVID hit. And even before that, you know, still worked from home, but it's just going to hit and it turned into, you know, 100% work from home, always on zoom. The, I remember the first time I had a call, I was like, oh, my background looks not so great. And so you have to kind of everything in front of.

Crap. Like it doesn't look good at all, but behind me, as long as that looks good, then, then we're fine. You will up the game. I think

Jared: all I did was add a lamp back there, but you really, you really up the game. It's very nice. So anyways, we could talk about that on and on all day. Let's let, let's get into a little bit when you're with content refined, you're the business manager at content refined.

We're going to, you know, I look forward to hear more about exactly what it is you guys for SEOs and for website builders. Why don't you give us some background though, on your journey to where you're at today, especially from the business managers.

Narcis: Yeah, for sure. So in terms of, you know, how I got here today, I think that every affiliate site owner probably has a crazy story or like a big gap of like, well, I was doing this and then I jumped into this and it's like, you know, polar opposites, similar to myself, you know, went to university, got my bachelor's in political science with the kind of objective of doing something within that space.

And potentially I was also looking at like going to law school, maybe ended up taking a year off, worked at a law firm. When did my master's after that worked for a, non-profit doing mainly like grant writing and a lot of business management side of things, and it was a smaller non-profit. So it was great to kind of like great hands-on work, worked with the municipality a lot and all that stuff.

Really good experience. And then shifted my focus over to working with John who's the owner, along with a few other businesses that he runs, we initially worked on something completely different, but I was again helping with like the operations management side of things, and then opportunity opened up within Connor fine, which I was already familiar with with Matt or, you know, working with Maddie's.

She was the previous manager. So jumped into this kind of knew the space a little bit, but not, you know, not as in depth as I do now, but like the. Obviously it didn't come from any type of background, like that had a bit of experience and then more so of the experience with like management project management, stuff like that.

That's kind of where I tied in, but yeah, jumping into this world was just, I think for anyone, I think I, you know, anyone at that point when they jumped into it is like, what is this? Like, what is going on here? Like, you know what I mean? Like, how does this exist in the, and then like the more you dig into it, the more you realize like, oh, this is, you know, huge, it's a small niche, but then within that niche, it's massive.

So yeah, that's kind of my background and journey. And since then, I've just been. I mean every day, every week, every month is like a different learning experience with, you know, sites change the world, changes, Google updates, come and go. And so there's always stuff to learn. And there's always like little things that you can kind of like up your game by a little bit, each time, which I really enjoy.

So kind of figuring that system out. It's like, you're trying to figure out the perfect science, but we all know there's no perfect science to any of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a fun chase.

Jared: You come from a grant writing background, I guess maybe it's just a general, like a poly PSI, a major university, a grant writing background.

I think it's maybe more rare to hear about people having a solid writing background before they get into SEO website, this kind of stuff. Do you think that had an impact on kind of the angle you're able to bring to, to, to this space right now?

Narcis: Yeah, I think it did a bit. It is a lot different, right? Like.

That, that kind of writing versus like call it, you know, SEO writing, let's say like just a, to put a phrase on it, right? Yeah. Google, right? Yeah. It is way different. Right. But I think it does, you know, bring a bit of skill set into it. I think more so it helps with. Kind of just understanding and like communication with people and being able to convey like what this is to them and how it can help their sites and like how it works and keyword research and the strategies behind it.

So, yeah, I would say a little bit, I've actually never really thought of it that way before, but yeah, I'd say. Then, yeah.

Jared: Well, give us a little overview and content refined and what you do there, who is, you know, who is content refined, target market? Who do they serve? You know, of what do they

Narcis: do? Yeah, so I contract to fine, you know, to put it simply we, we provide.

Content services for really anyone that has a website, mainly, you know, a good chunk of our clients are affiliate site owners. Sometimes it's someone with one or two sites. Sometimes it's someone with a big portfolio of sites that they kind of offload to us and we help manage those. That's kind of the simpler version of it.

The more in-depth version of it is we, you know, we have a team of project managers, myself, project managers, and editorial team that kind of gets everything done. And there's some very. Specific and detailed procedures that we try and follow to kind of systematize that, the approach to this, right? Cause like kind of like I mentioned, you know, it's not a perfect science, but there are steps that you can take.

And as long I find, as long as you can systemize systematize it, proceduralize everything and follow those steps and, you know, end up with some high quality articles. You can kind of get to where you're going, which we'll cover a little later. But yeah, I mean, that's essentially what we do. And like I said, majority of our clients are affiliate site owners.

We still get, you know, every now and then your e-commerce store is SAS businesses, or really just anyone with, with some sort of like, Hey, I have a website online presence looking to increase my organic traffic or keyword rankings.

Jared: Yeah. So you guys can almost sit on top of her above, you know, you don't just do keyword research or article writing, but you know, it's really more about the planning, the content planning side of things, and then the execution

Narcis: on.

Yeah. At a hundred percent, I think that's probably, you know, if I have to give ourselves like a USP, that would kind of be a, it's not just like, you know, toss some keywords that you write, some articles. Here you go. It's more so like, you know, me jumping on a call with someone, Hey, what's your website?

What's your approach here? What have you been targeting before? Where are there gaps and opportunities within the keywords and topics currently? You know, looking at the site, seeing like. What kind of categories we can focus on. So yeah, the strategy plays a big role and I, and again, I think that's kind of where the like, personal touch, if you want to call it comes from with.

Jared: Well, perfect. This is going to be fun. If you're, if you're in charge of content strategy, then I have some questions. I have some great questions for you. I'll hit you with the hard one first. What's the best content strategy right now for a for website and especially, I mean, we've got a lot of affiliate marketers listening.

Now, a lot of people focusing on just a straight content play with ads, like what's the best strategy, right?

Narcis: Yeah. So, so are you, do you mean like, in terms of like, like the actual content or like overall, like what, you know, do I go affiliate? Do I go out or have new do like,

Jared: yeah, I was thinking content, like the content strategy that you guys are seeing work well, or, you know, strategic insights you bring to the table as it relates to the type of people listening.

Narcis: For sure. Yes. So it depends on where your site is that in the site. But that being said, I will give a more straight answer. So, and again, take this with a grain of salt, because again, each site is unique, each niche is unique and you kind of have to approach it differently. But what I've always found in the past, If you have, so let's say like scenario one, you're a brand new site, right?

Fresh domain, getting some content up on there, trying to get out of the sandbox, get indexed. I always find the best strategy is go for like the lowest hanging fruit. Like the fruit that's like almost on the ground might not even look that great. And by that, I mean, like, Keywords that have like almost no, like no one really ranking for them.

Don't worry too much about obviously, you know, check to see if there's some volume going to it. But you know, you're not looking at keywords that are going to have like super high volume game, but just like low volume, low competition keywords, obviously. Long tail. If you can find long tail keywords, that's a bonus as well.

And just get as much content around those keywords on your site, as you can, you know, make sure that they're good quality articles. Don't just be posting stuff for the sake of posting stuff, but that's, I find the best approach and the kind of the strategy with it is like, get your site out of the sandbox quickly, get things indexed in the short term, you should see like a good spike in traffic in the longterm.

That's not a great strategy. You kind of. You know, advanced beyond that and focus on maybe some pillar content things down the road, but great, like great starting point to get you like out of the finish line with more, let's say higher authority sites or well-established sites really varies. It really just depends on where you're looking at, what, where you want to target sometimes, you know, a good strategy.

So sometimes I, you know, sometimes that the low comp strategy can be good for those sites as well. If you're looking to expand into different categories, but, you know, usually we like to do like pillar posts with some supporting kind of silos underneath things like that. Always having a good backlink strategy is great.

Yeah. Yeah. But that's kind of the, again, that's very general. But

Jared: I liked how you broke it up. Actually, I probably should've, should've asked it that way, you know, because there is such a distinction between say a brand new site that is still stuck in a sandbox, you know, hardly get any traffic. Then maybe we move into a site that's still at the beginning stages of it's, you know, still in the infancy of its lifespan, but it's still not ranking quickly and Google still trying to figure out what it is and isn't an authority on.

And then you move into maybe a site that's successful, but still not, you know, One of the go-tos in its niche, right. Not an authority yet. And then you kind of have maybe sites that are just authorities, everything, they publish ranks there, you know, as long as they stay somewhat on topic or maybe even a little off topic, they can rank almost instantly and produce really large volumes of content that could a lot of keywords.

But I like how you did start off talking about a brand new beginner site. I mean, I think the big issue and the big rub these days, if we can go back to that example, a lot of people have is that their sites just take so long to get index. Their content takes so long to show up in Google. So many people are turning to age domains or anything they can do to help quit a haste in that process.

What do you see helping that in terms of what type of content you write and what type of content you publish? I mean, is it all about. Low competition and long tail to do that. Are there some other

Narcis: strategies? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely not a hundred percent on that. I think personally I'm probably biased because I manage a content company, but personally, I really think that strategy does work.

I've seen it work a number of times that being said that also involves, you know, getting, trying to get a lot of content. Not everyone has the time or effort to do that. And not everyone has the resources or money to throw at that. So I completely understand if that's not, you know, the one that you like, the strategy that you want to approach having, you know, as I'm sure as, you know, like having a good backlink strategy is always great, whatever that may be, whether it's like a manual one that you just have to go out and do yourself.

It still helps. Right. Even on a small scale for a smaller site. The, but yeah, I think the age, like, you know, if you do want to start a new site, finding some expired domains is probably a good bet. And that's something that you can like, yeah, it might take a bit more time and effort to do. You might not be able to do it right away, but it's not as difficult.

It doesn't take as many resources and time to do, right. Like if you're going to say, if I said, Hey, you know, invest in a hundred posts on the site or go search for an expired domain for a week, the ladder is probably a bit easier to do so. Yeah. I would say like the expired domain backlinking and then just like, And I know people don't love to hear this, but like you got it.

You really do have to try and get a good chunk of content consistently up on, on the site, as best as you can, or as kind of as quickly as you can initially. And then from there having, let's say more like staggered posts is a bit more realistic. I'm

Jared: curious to get your take on this, especially for maybe newer sites.

You know, I guess the question is how important is really narrowing down on a specific topic cluster, you know, When you have, when you have a brand new site, you're still not really sure which of your articles are going to take and which ones aren't, you know, so some people will say, oh, let's publish some articles that are obviously in my niche, but are maybe touching different topics.

We'll see which one does, which ones kind of take off quicker and then we'll go more down that road. Others, maybe I've heard them talk about, Hey, if you want to rank out of the gate, you've got to, you've got to win on just being so specific and narrow in your topic. Clusters. I'm curious from all the sites you guys work on in this strategy, prepare what you think is maybe the best way to go.

Narcis: So I, and I'm probably gonna be a bit wrong about this at some point when Google tells me otherwise, but I really think it's the latter. It's like the more narrow you can get, the more like the more kind of call it like topical authority you can have in not like super narrow niche. I think it's better, at least in, you know, your ceiling is probably lower.

To get there. You'll probably get there quicker and max out. And if your goal is to let's say, build and sell sites, for example, that's probably a really good strategy, right? Like you might hit that ceiling, but your site is going to look great and you'll have some good content on there ranking really well for that specific niche.

So I think that's the better approach. And it seems like just based on. Recent Google updates. And I think like in the last year or so maybe a little longer, it seems like they're giving a bit more value to those types of sites. That's what I've seen. At least not to say that, call it more. Let's say broader niche sites don't do well or can't do well.

If you start from scratch, I just think those take much, much longer. And the approach to those might even be like, okay, well I want to focus on. You know, pets like a pet site, but I'm going to start with this specific breed of dog and then move to this one and this one, and then slowly start to expand again.

That can take a long time, but I've seen, you know, using the same example, I've seen sites that are like, this site is on. Black shit shoes, short

Jared: hair and German shepherds.

Narcis: Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, how much content can you get? Like, you know what I mean? Like how much value can you get around that? And then you look at this site, you're like, oh, I guess a lot.

So, yeah. So I think that's my answer. But again, this is, you know, all our answers are, it will probably change a year from now.

Jared: Do you have any, like, do you have any examples of, maybe it would be easiest to kind of work with an example or two of sites you guys have worked on that you've seen you have a specific strategy go in for, and then you've seen results come in.

Narcis: Yeah. Yeah. So, so I do have some really good examples. So one is, I have examples on kind of both and strategies on both. If you mind, if you wouldn't mind

Jared: sharing, I'd love to hear. Maybe we can talk through those.

Narcis: Yeah. A hundred percent. So, so one of them pretty specific niche. It was in. Call it, like, I don't want to get too into it cause I don't want to kind of share client details, but it was a site on, you know, like a certain urban vegetable, very specific.

And then the types of keywords where we were targeting were like this, it called like breed of a vegetable or like exact, you know what I mean? Like the Latin version of, and things like that. I like

Jared: tomatoes, then

Narcis: we be like celebrity tomatoes. Yeah. That's pretty much exactly what it was. And so we were just focusing on those like really specific ones, a bunch of long tail keywords that were within that niche that, that looked really good and had good volume going to them.

And then we always on a monthly basis, we would just set up like some pillar boasts as well. And so what we did was, you know, we just set up a monthly plan with them, got content rolling out monthly, and then each month we would just schedule the post-sale, but we tried to get, you know, be consistent. I think we were doing around.

I think we were doing around 12 posts a month. Yes. Something like that. Very depending on the word length. And we did it for about a year, a little around a year, a little under a year. It was a fresh site when we started, I think he had a few posts on there, but nothing too crazy. Traffic was almost zero keyword ranking zero.

And so the strategy was really good. It took a long time. Like it took almost like that year of posting to kind of start to see a few bumps. And then we ended up pausing their plan. They just, you know, they had other things come up, but, you know, since then the traffic has basically gotten, you know, it's gone like dude, and then like some big jumps up and and I'll throw some numbers here I use.

So it went from, you know, pretty much. But you know, traffic. So January, 2021 traffic was around three 50. Now it's around 14 and a half thousand keywords were around 700 in January, and now they're around 7,000. So, so some pretty big jumps authority jumped up a lot. And a lot of those initial articles that we were posting, what were, we're all ranking within like some top five, but a lot, top 10.

So, yeah, so that's, I would say a good example of the kind of, you know, fresh site. And so just to

Jared: recap, that was a site that basically it was about a year of consistent publishing. We said like 12 articles a month, some pillar topics, but mostly these long tail, the, you know, really, you know, celebrity tomato as our example, you know, like pretty niche down and stuff, and you got to have to have it, like, I think you said almost 15,000 pages a month.

Narcis: Yeah. Yeah. And this is also all on getting this data from H refs too. So that could number could even be a little higher. Probably it probably is. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah. Yeah. I was actually. I mean it, you know, happily surprised at it, but yeah, I think what really worked there was the, because when I looked back on the strategy, I was kind of going through it before this to, to, to just, you know, get a feel for it.

I really think it was like the specificity of the keywords. And even after like, I'm looking at some of the data now, even after the recent Google update, it didn't really take a hit because I think that like topical authority that. Within this, with that content is just kept it really strong when

Jared: you, with this site, as you're building out, these, this we're talking about pretty pretty narrow niche, right?

Like, you know, in terms of the type of content you're publishing, what's the, what's the internal linking strategy to try to make sure that Google understands what a pillar post is, what the long tail, you know, articles are. How are you internally linking all those?

Narcis: Yeah. So, so with those it's w. With any strategy, we always kind of try and think of internal linking beforehand and not afterwards as well.

Cause you, you don't want to, let's say you have a good cluster of keywords to get them up all up on the site. And then you realize afterwards, like, oh, there's we can't really link to each other here. Cause there's there wasn't. So we try and kind of think of that beforehand as well. And that's kind of where that like pillar supporting stuff comes in with internal linking we'd like if you have a pillar posts, we always do.

Almost everything we try and link back to that. And then within other articles, we usually try and include like two or three links internal links within each article. But again, that can vary some, I know some people like to link a bit more, some people less, a lot of people just throw like link whisper on there or something and just, you know, what, whatever pops up they take.

So internal linking is definitely important and we try to incorporate as much as we. And have a bit of a strategy around it in terms of like, yeah, this makes sense to link back to this. Right, right.

Jared: Yeah. Let's see anything else on the topic of like a newer site before we transitioned, maybe into working on more, you know, more established.

Narcis: Yeah, for sure. So I'll throw another example at you here, cause this is you've got multiple examples. Yeah. So this is another really good one for for a numerous site. So a bit of a different approach. This is closer to the approach I chatted or I talked to a little while back. So again, fresh site brand new, the strategy here was let's so more broader niche D DIY home Renno style niche.

And we just thought, okay, you know, this is huge. Like. Literally probably a million keywords around those niche. You can go in any direction you want. We said, let's focus on just like one. Specific section of DIY stuff. And it was more so like, it was like bathroom stuff and things like that. So we just focused on that and with the keywords we just went like, like I said before, we just went, let's just find like the lowest hanging fruit, like the absolute lowest hanging fruit.

So it was, you know, like I'm trying to think of like a weird example. It was like how to glue up PVC pipe onto it. Septic tank or something like that. Like it was super, super specific. Interesting. That septic is the first thing that came to mind for you. Sorry, I don't know. Probably an awful example,

Jared: but yeah, they were the

Narcis: clear picture.

There were these really like long tail keywords that I was shocked to see again, not a lot of traffic going to them. So, you know, sub a hundred, but I was shocked to even see they were searched terms and they were being, you know, like there was even any traffic going to them. And then again, going back to like the specificity, there were a bunch of key terms around like a specific appliance code of like how to put that code in or something like that.

So we just went, let's find all the keywords, let's see how many there are pulled up a bunch of them. Obviously they were all, you know, somewhat relatable within the same niche. They weren't kind of like all over the place. And luckily again, I'm going to throw a little side note in here. Y the niche you might be focusing on might not be as lucky as this, right?

Like you might not have as many of these random keywords that you can find that are super specific, but in this case there were, and we went, let's just hit these hard for the next few months. So we worked on it for, I think it was about four months and yes, three, 300 posts created a little more than 300 post graded over the course of four months.

So a lot. Yeah. So this is, again, going back to what I said, like we just, you know, put everything we cut on it. Yeah. So four months of. Publishing essentially. And then a few months after that things started getting indexed and traffic currently has 366 pages indexed. Again, these are all like shorter informational articles, not being like super, super extensive.

A lot of like step-by-step guides. How tos may have zero traffic now has 2,400 may have zero keywords now is ranking for 5,400. So again, like the pros of this, you get to see that quick. Sand out of the sandbox index quickly, the cons great short-term strategy, but long-term you gotta, you know, we'll have to end up doing something else and moving on to some, some, maybe like higher difficulty, higher volume keywords, but that's okay.

Right? Like once you get past that starting line, it gets a little easier to keep the momentum going. I think a

Jared: lot of like the mistake of writing really high volume keywords out of the gate, and then that had never ranked those or they take years to rank I'm speaking from experience. I

Narcis: did that. Like, like three years for one

Jared: of those initial articles to rank, because I went after like one of the bigger keywords in the niche.

Do you ever write though articles that are clearly out of reach for a brand new site, but are so relative? Like, do you ever write those because you just feel they're necessary to kind of complete the topical

Narcis: silo, if you will. Yeah, so a hundred percent. And I don't think it's a bad strategy to do as long as it's not like your only strategy.

Cause let's say, you know, let's say you have like a DIY site and you go, okay, well, I have like these three pillar articles that I really want to rank for. It's really going to be the pillars of my site. Let's do them now. That's fine. As long as you realize that you're probably not going to rank for them really quick, but that's okay.

Because having that call, if you have some really good, like let's say pillar, evergreen content on your site, and it's sitting there for a long time, that's probably good. Right? Like Google is going to pick that up and notice that. And then as your site grows, at least that's my opinion. I think that's from my experience, that's kind of what I've seen.

So I don't think it's a bad strategy as long as it's not. You're only one. Yeah. Yeah. As long as they're not banking

Jared: on those articles will be the ones that bring you your initial traffic. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so you talked about, you know, kind of, you kind of led into maybe a transition into some different strategies or some different strategic approaches you guys have on more established sites.

Let's maybe shift over and talk about those. I think. Maybe talk about some of the things you guys see working that are different than this more long tail, low volume, low competition approach that you guys take on the newer sites. What are some different things you're able to do on sites that have a little bit more

Narcis: authority?

Yeah. So. My approach has always kind of see if we can dive into different categories within that niche. Cause sometimes, you know, you have a higher authority site. That's kind of want to say exhausted, but you know, close to exhausted, maybe like the keywords that they want to be ranking for can rank for within a specific category in that niche.

So it's like, okay, well, what else can we focus on? You know, if you have a DIY niche and you've hit everything on kitchens and bathrooms like, okay, well maybe. Do outdoor space or something like that. Right? So, and again, when you have that higher authority, it could potentially be a little easier to move into it.

The other thing I've seen with higher authority sites is like, And I think this is more relevant today than it was five months ago. But I think with the recent update, having that kind of like expert review for a specific product reviews or buyer's guide seems to have really taken a big step forward with the recent update, at least from what I've seen.

So, so, you know, potentially having, you know, I've seen some clients go to like, oh, I need TV. Review, I'm going to go have like a, you know, a tech expert, right. Or something like that, because that kind of like expertise and knowledge behind, it becomes a lot more important. And to give you an example of one where we had a site within a niche was doing pretty good, like oh, okay.

Authority, but had lost. It's like, Path of like, okay, well, where is it going here? So another example here, so travel related site was kind of all over the place, had a lot of like personal stuff in it. I'm like, you know, personal travel where you review stuff, kind of wanting to shift folks away from that and focus on some more evergreen content and stuff that didn't rely have to rely on like a single person writing it versus like, you know, outsourcing it, traveling.

I had a bunch of very specific stuff around like Europe travel stuff. We found a cluster of keywords around like specific, you know, things to do in areas around the U S and north America. So we just went and let's just hit that heart. And there were, again, there was just like, when you fall down a rabbit hole of keyword research, it can either be super frustrating or like really great.

Cause you're like, oh man, this. And so we just like, we bashed together a ton of these keywords started writing articles. I think we were doing around 10 articles a month right now, very like very review oriented, trying to include as much detail as possible. They're very like long, longer articles. Not they're like, you know, 2000 words, plus sometimes I'm really hitting it hard.

And then again, the, the kind of like interlinking opportunities within those is really easy and great, cause they're all relatable. And so. We yeah. Since doing it, we've had about 30, 30 of those posts, index and ranking traffic has jumped up about 1800 per month. And. Four months. So not like it used to jump, but, but pretty significant.

And where was it at when you guys started? So is that around 2000 and now it's at 3,800. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, almost doubled actually. And then keywords went from 8,800 to 15, just over 15,000. So

Jared: almost doubled. Yeah, that's good. That's quick. And one, one

Narcis: could say that's quick. Yeah. Yeah, no, and it definitely is.

Yeah. So really happy with that. And, and again, something like, you know, sometimes looking at traffic is great. Looking at keywords is great, but what I like to look at is like, okay, like, let's actually see what that post we wrote for you actually dead. And so looking at specific posts, and there was a bunch that I saw that were ranking in the top 10 and some even newer ones that we've gone up in.

December. I think that, you know, not ranking significantly, but like index started to rank and I'm like, oh great. That's a great sign. If we can move that needle up. That's awesome. And for

Jared: context, what kind of authority is aside maybe in Dr. Da terms or something like that?

Narcis: Yeah, it was a. Okay. Now you have a middle of the road kind

Jared: of, you know, it's not like a BR 70 or

Narcis: something, but yeah, no, not crazy, but it was doing all right.

And it had been around for a long time and the traffic was just kind of like depths in, but it was like super straight.

Jared: So I have a question for you on this topic, because you gave the example of maybe, you know, in the DIY niche, maybe you've exhausted bathrooms and now you move outdoors. And then with this, I hear the guys were working on large concentration of content.

Yeah. You moved to USA. So we're talking to these kind of topical clusters. How do you know when you should pivot to a different.

Narcis: Topic

Jared: or when you should continue to dive deeper and maybe let's go back to that example of your Percy's United States. Like I'm going to guess that this site probably hadn't covered every topic in Europe yet.

Right? So you guys chose the United States, like what's the evaluation process

Narcis: and how

Jared: does someone maybe start to get their mind around what to think about when they want to maybe switch or dive deeper, you know, like what are some things to think about and evaluate to make that

Narcis: decision? Honestly, great question.

So usually what I like to do is take, and this is something that you can do with your own site, right? So take a look at your posts. See. You know, see which ones do really well. And then maybe you can try and find some sort of like overlap or comparisons between those, right? So let's say you have a bunch of travel posts and then you see one that you did on a different location.

You go, oh, that one randomly has a ton of traffic going to it, or it has a lot of. Click through rate or if you're an affiliate, you know, has I'm getting good conversions from it and then see if there's any like, correlation to like, oh, well I can shift this over to a different category. I know that sounds, that's not a little bag, but like, see if you can basically see within the call it category cluster that you have, that you're ranking for.

See if there's specific, like outliers that you can go, oh, well this actually, you know, I can dive into this. From this one, if that makes sense. Right. So, so that's a good approach. The other approach is, I mean, it's kind of, it, this might sound silly, but if you're, let's say, you know, you do you do keyword research or you're finding new topics to rank for, and then you get to a point where you're like, you know, okay.

I can't, well, I've looked at these keywords, I've looked at these ones, I've looked at these ones, I've looked at these ones and you just feel like. You maybe can't find any more or maybe you just can't find any more that are relevant or they're just way, way too competitive. And you're like, well, there's no chance I'm ever going to rank for that.

Then maybe it's time to move on to something else. Again, I think that's a little, probably more rare now because those are going to be sites that are like. Massive sites that just run out of topics. But you know, if you're in a very specific niche, maybe you will eventually get to a point where you go, well, I've covered everything on tomatoes and I can't find any more tomato keywords that I haven't written about then.

Yeah, you can move. Probably a little more, that's probably not going to happen, but yeah. Yeah. I

Jared: feel like if you went super narrow in your topics, so let's say you only read about celebrity tomatoes. Yeah. You could probably once you've written every celebrity tomato article, which may be, there is a possibility you could have written everyone, you know, I don't know.

I don't know much about celebrity tomatoes. That's kind of, my dad

Narcis: grows until I know he has good luck with them, but maybe

Jared: then you just, you don't switch to. You know, cucumbers, maybe you just go up to now tomatoes in general and you start writing about what are that big boy tomatoes or what is that another figure in there or something like that.

And you can maybe not cross niches, but cross just into another specific one. I, I liked what you said though, because it made me think like, maybe if I'm going back to the Europe or the United States example, maybe you dig in and you find like, oh, I write about a lot of topics of travel in Europe, but the ones that are doing really well happened to be, you know, consistently maybe I see a pattern in a wine tasting, you know, I write about, you know, top wine tasting, and now maybe I can start writing about these different wine topics in different parts of the country or different parts of the world and stuff.

I hadn't thought about that way. That's, you know, that was the, that was kind of the example maybe that came to my mind is that I know a hundred

Narcis: percent and sometimes you might, you know, you might be so like the first example, you brought up a hundred percent of your, like in a super narrow one, there's a good chance that you can.

I'd be like, oh, well I found 50 key words on this, and then I'm going to move on to this next tomato. And they're really talking about tomatoes a lot, decided not not, but in the other case, let's say. We shifted focus like geographic focus, but maybe we didn't need to. Right. Like maybe there's a ton of other ones that we could have stayed within that location and found a bunch of other ones.

So I'm not saying you have to go complete polar opposite, but just like, almost like. You know, hop on the path and then see where it takes you and then keep following it. Right? Like see where the keyword research takes you. Once you find that cluster that you're looking for follow that path. And sometimes there's 20 different clusters that you find that are like, oh wow.

I found a bunch of low comp key words and this and this. And then it, you know, then it comes down to a decision of like, okay, well, which way do I want to go for. Yeah, again, going back to what I said, like maybe see what your audience is telling you, right? Like if, or your traffic, I guess, is a better way to put it is telling you, you know, maybe do a post on each and then go, oh, well, this one is doing really well after a month.

These ones, not so much, I'm going to keep going this way, which I know, you know, it's like Spencer, I think he was chatting about that. I was watching a podcast the other day and like the squirrel article here he goes again, like that could be a good example, right? It's like, well, well, okay, go down that way.

So.

Jared: Yeah, you write one article on squirrels and next thing you know, you have 20 on them on your website,

Narcis: but they're all doing well. And that's why sometimes, you know, I get a lot of people who say, oh, I like, this is where I want to focus on. And then I go, it's really hard. You know, I looked into it, I looked at the research.

It's not going to be easy. What about this? And I don't want to do that. It's like, you gotta, at some point you have to kind of, and it can be a mix, right. It doesn't always have to be one or the other, but like, Go where the keyword research and the volume and all that good stuff is taking you versus like trying to force your way.

You know, this door is open. Just walk through it, stop trying to like bash your head into that door to get through. I a hundred percent

Jared: agree with that. Yeah. I, for my, my site, if you look at the top keywords that it ranks for. When I started four years ago, there's absolutely no way I was looking to rank for any of those keywords.

I would be blown away at the thought, like what, that's the stuff that's getting the most traffic like it just, but I just kind of was following what was working and it's a bit shocking. It's kind of like the squirrel example. It's just like, okay, here we

Narcis: go.

Jared: Yeah. So you talked about when you guys started working with this travel site specifically, it was kind of stuck or it's kind of plateaued, and I don't want to, you know, use the wrong word or terminology for it, but it leads to a question that I think you're, you'd be the perfect person to answer.

What do you recommend? What are some tips for people whose sites are kind of stuck and I'm not talking about the ones. Nothing has been put on it in a year or two. And so it's plateaued just out of attrition. Like what about for people who are publishing content and they're just not seeing growth right now.

What are some tips to get a site on site?

Narcis: Yeah, that's a great question. And sometimes it can be, so I get a lot of those from clients because they'll go like, oh, like, you know, can you take a look at my site and like, tell me what's going on. And sometimes it can be really obvious, right? Sometimes it's like looking at like the, you know, the matrix code of just like zeros and ones and like, Decrypt it, and you're like, I don't know, but I like in here, like there's always, usually some sort of answer, right.

Maybe it's not really obvious, but digging into your site, like, see, what's going on. Like, go look through your posts, have, have certain posts that were doing well lost traffic. What's going on. If you're an affiliate, like go look at your conversions. What's going on with your conversions? Is the Nisha.

Maybe just not as popular, you know, maybe doing some quick, just like Google searches to kind of figure out where like the demand of your niches. Is there a seasonality to your site which maybe that might not be a plateau that might be more like up and down, but kind of just doing a content audit of your own site.

Usually it can usually can give you the answers to see what's going on. But if you're, if you're constantly posting doing a good job, but you've just gone up and then plateaued, I don't know. It can be tough. It can be tough. Like, I dunno if it's sometimes it's like, well, just keep I've I've had people who've just like, yeah, I applied to it, but like just kept going.

And then all of a sudden it, you know, it went back up again. It's like, well, yeah, that starts with. Yeah. So it's it honestly, it's, it's tough to answer and it's again, obviously on like a case by case basis, but like, I would just say, I think the best thing advice I could give is just like dig into your site, like really dig into it and try and see what's going on because there's gotta be something or maybe, you know, maybe like, Maybe the keywords you're ranking for you're not researching enough.

And you're realizing that they're way more competitive than you thought they were. So maybe, you know, maybe there's something kind of behind the curtain there that you're just not seeing, but yeah, it is a tough one to answer for someone. Cause you kind of, especially when they come to you or to me for it and they let, it's like, you know, you have the answer.

I hope I do.

Jared: We had a client, I run a marketing agency. We had a client come to us and they were, they were an e-commerce brand, but they were pretty new and they were big. They came to us because they had a huge traffic

Narcis: drop-off right.

Jared: And they were like, what happened? You know, we, we kind of dug into it and we used Google trends and realize that they have a massive seasonality component to their niche.

And so they really didn't have any drop off that just nobody was buying their product or searching for their product at this time

Narcis: of year. Yeah. And it can be, and sometimes it can be like, as simple as that. Right. It's just like, oh, it's seasonality, but yeah. You know, so it's yeah. A good example, actually.

Yeah. It's tough. It's

Jared: tough. Let's see. So you guys are strategic again, going back over, like you're very strategic clearly about how you guys deploy content and use content across. What about updating old content? And does that ever play into something you guys do? Is it something you guys just hate to say recommend to a site owner or you guys really kind of bullish on, on publishing the new content as a priority?

I'm just curious how updating old

Narcis: content works into Austria. Yeah. So, so, so it is something we do and it is something I recommend what if it's the right approach? So yeah, we do content upgrades, which is essentially, you know, upgrade. I like that name. That's a good, yeah. Yeah. So it's kinda, it is, it is what it sounds like we go in, we, the first thing we do as we go through your site and see like, okay, you know, what do we think needs to be updated here?

If anything, and sometimes. Old content. Sometimes that's content that that's lost a lot of, you know, dropped in ranking, but dropped in volume. Sometimes that's a content that's really thin and, you know, maybe like ranked really well when that was okay. And now is having a more difficult time. Sometimes it's content, that's like, you know, oh, all of these products are irrelevant or out of stock and we just need to completely revamp the article.

So yeah, it can be another number of things, but we kind of go through and see. Needs to be upgraded if anything. And it's definitely something I recommend or not recommend in some cases, because sometimes people come to me and say, Hey, I need to do all these content upgrades. And I look, and I go, no, you don't like leave.

These will be fine. You know, it's like a two month old post. Like, why are you leaving? Like get more, you have 10 posts on here. Get more posts up. Or sometimes, yeah. Or sometimes it's, you know, a site where it's like, oh, I have so many like. But like general posts on like a ton of stuff I need to like filter this down.

And so sometimes it's a matter of like, okay, well let's remove these ones, replace them with some more relevant ones. You know, things like, like picking and choosing kind of what we want to do. And sometimes it's, you know, people come to us and saying, Hey, I need new content. And I go, oh, you got some really good stuff on here.

Quickly update these, and I think you can get ranking for them and then we'll focus on some new stuff. So, yeah, and it's, again, it's all it's case by case basis, but it's all about kind of going in and seeing where the opportunity is for potential upgrades of if any, what are you guys doing

Jared: typically when you,

Narcis: when you upgrade articles, what are maybe

Jared: the top three things you guys

Narcis: end up doing?

Yeah. So, so we re optimize it mainly using market muse, which we've been utilizing. We've been using for a little while now. Really great for a number of reasons. Like, not just optimizing like content, but like subheadings, adding FAQ's, things like that. Adding content, and that comes along with kind of the optimization process, but we usually add 500 to a thousand words of content, mainly because a lot of the content that we upgrade is then.

And so we need to do that and then updating any. Anything that's broken essentially. So like images, links, any type of like formatting that wasn't set up properly and tables, you know, things like that. Because at the end of the day, you know, like the product links are huge, but like the user experience and the flow of it is important.

Yeah. How, how important is deleting content in a content strategy these days? It's obviously

Jared: not obviously for a new site, not important at all. Hopefully not to the content that you're recently publishing, but maybe for sites that are year two, three years older, or even older than that, like where does, where does deleting content

Narcis: enter in.

That's a great question. I think, excuse me. I think it's, I think it's important if, you know, let's say you have a DIY site and it's a year or two old and you have a bunch of bathroom stuff, really ranking really well and a bunch of kitchen stuff ranking really well. And then you have like 30 posts on.

Outdoor stuff. Not like no traffic, like almost nothing index, but not really getting things. Maybe you just get rid of those and then you focus on the stuff that's doing really well. So I'd say that's probably a good scenario where you do that, where like, see, you know, you have this niche three different paths.

These two paths are going well, this one's not really doing anything. Stop focusing on it and maybe get rid of those two focus on that. That's that topical authority that you have. I'd say that's a good scenario. But that being said, I'm always weary a little weary of deleting content. Cause it always feels, it feels weird.

It's painful. It's even like, it's not even my site and I like feel bad, like suggesting it sometimes. So. I always,

Jared: I have deleted content. I spent a lot of money to get that written and it's really well-written. Why does Google not like this content come on? Yeah. Yeah. That's tough. It's tough. Yeah. It definitely has a debate as it should be, because it's so tough to figure out, I guess there's some obvious circumstances, but generally speaking, it's very nuanced to try to understand when it's best to delete content.

You know, a lot of people take a really hard line, like. You know, if it hasn't gotten at least X number of visits in the last, you know, 12 months, like it's gone send it to the thing that's been a pack. And then a lot more people are like only deleted if it's really off topic or, you know, maybe when it's like, you had a personal blog that you're transitioning to more of an evergreen blog or something, but,

Narcis: you know right.

You know? Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And it's a no, yeah, it's just at the end of the day, it's just difficult to do. And like, you know, you just kind of touched on. We're trying to, like, it's not a perfect science, but we're always trying to make it into like, okay, well, what's like, what's the best way to do this, even though we're not, none of us are really a hundred percent sure what the best approach is, but like if you piece it together, you can kind of figure it out.

So yeah. I was like, what if I delete this post? But like tomorrow starts ranking. Well, it does happen

Jared: sometimes it does goes from nowhere to here

Narcis: to here. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. So let's

Jared: talk a bit about content refining, how you guys organize all this stuff you do. I'm just curious, like, what is the, what are the offerings and how do you guys group together?

All the things we've talked about into these offerings

Narcis: for people. Yeah, so it's kind of split into two offerings. So there's content creation and then content upgrades, content upgrades are pretty simple. You know, we usually sell them in batches of like 5, 10, 20, or if there's a custom quote, I can get someone that's always easy to do, but those are pretty simple.

We kind of look at your site, see what needs to be upgraded, and then we'll base the package off, off of that. It's content creation. Complex, if you want to call it, but you know, we do everything on a thousand word basis. So if you wanted a 5,000 word package or a 10,000 word package or 50,000 words, and then we kind of just try and the number of articles within that word count as best we can.

Sometimes we go a little over, which isn't a big deal. Sometimes we go under, in which case we can just, you know, we always add more content to fill that, that a word length. And then, you know, usually what I like to do is we have specific packages on our site. Well, I always like to talk to someone beforehand and kind of figure out like, okay, what's your budget?

What's your goal in terms of like X amount of posts per month over the course. However many months and then figure out like, okay, how can we fit that, that goal within that budget? And then usually just create a custom plan for them. Sometimes it's four posts per month. Sometimes it's 40 posts per month.

It really just depends on what they're looking for and, you know, try and guide them through that as well and give some suggestions, like here's what I think we can do. And then I'll, I always try and work around people's budgets. Cause I hate. You know, I don't want people to be spending way more than they have.

Cause I know w you know, site owners, sometimes it's, everything's on a tight budget and tight resources. So I try and make it work for everyone. Is it

Jared: is a strategy that you talked about the kind of the content strategy is that inclusive in all of these different content

Narcis: creation? Yeah. Yeah. So, so it is so, so we do have ones where we don't include a keyword research or conduct strategy.

And that's really just for someone, if, you know, if you feel like, you know, I get it, I get people who have a trust and SCM rush and use it a ton and go, Hey, I have a spreadsheet full of keywords, and I know what I want to do. Just need you guys to do it. And that's no problem. We can do that. But Mo for the most part, everyone likes to have a bit of content strategy coming from us and us doing the keyword research and digging into it.

So yeah, that's all included and definitely something I like. I always go over that with everyone beforehand to make sure we're on the same page. I think

Jared: I would want that too, on the strategy part of this conversation, where can people catch up with you and where are we? You know, where's

Narcis: the, where's a good place for people to fall along with what you guys are.

Yeah. Yeah. So condor and find.com go there to check out our packages. You can book a call with me if you just want to chat through this site. And I truly mean that if someone just wants to have a 20 minute conversation about a content strategy and that's it, and we reviewed their site, I'm more than happy to.

I love nerding out on that stuff as we've done over the last hour here. And then, yeah, that's probably the best place to reach us Facebook and Instagram as well. But we posted a lot of good content on our site and that's the best way to get a hold. Good.

Jared: Good. Why? I do feel like we could have gone into a lot of other case studies that you have, but in the interest of time, we'll have to put that off for a part two sometime.

Narcis: I'd love that. I'll get you some juice here, ones next time.

Jared: Oh man, you saved the juicy ones for next time. You're teasing us here and I, but we did cover a lot though. I think there's something here for everyone for kind of more on the brand new. If you're just starting your. Really good stuff about how to, how to focus your content efforts.

And then, you know, try to get your site out of the sandbox quicker, more established sites, plateauing sites that are a bit stuck. I think there was really something for everyone here. So thanks for that. And thanks for bringing so much research, you came prepared. I liked that

Narcis: you had no problem. Yeah, no data.

You had examples and everything. I appreciate it. Anytime, man. Anytime. No problem.

Jared: Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining us. And double-checking.

Narcis: Sounds good. .

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