This week I analyze a 7-year-old headphone website, Headphonesty.com. The site receives 114,000+ visits per month (Ahrefs estimate).
The owners of this brand have done a great job covering the topic of headphones with industry news, in-depth reviews, and troubleshooting tutorials.
The domain name is a clever combination of the words headphones and honesty. The name conveys their mission to provide honest reviews that point out any negatives they find when testing the products first-hand.
Despite very in-depth reviews with first-hand experience with products and many unique product photos, it has lost a majority of its traffic since the September Helpful Content Update.
We will look for possible reasons it was impacted and how they can overcome the large loss in Google traffic.
This is what I cover in this report:
- Website overview
- Major highlights
- Competitor overview
- Easy wins to increase revenue and/or traffic
- Actionable takeaways you can apply
Let’s get into it!
✅ Website Overview & Highlights
Like many niche websites, this site has seen a steep drop in traffic since the September Helpful Content Update.
Despite many in-depth reviews demonstrating first-hand experience with products, it has lost many top positions to sites like Reddit and Quora.
Ahrefs shows a sharp decline since September 2023 despite a strong link profile of 12,500 referring domains:
The website was started in 2016 and is owned by Unicode Media, a company based in Singapore.
They have a large team of about 13 writers and use cartoon drawings of the authors instead of real photos. Not using real profile photos makes it hard to tell if the author is a real person or a pseudonym/avatar.
One thing they are doing well is publishing interesting content that has the potential to be picked up by larger media sites. An example is the article “Over 1000 Artists Became Millionaires Due to Spotify Royalties in 2023” which contains a lot of interesting data that could help it earn passive links to build authority.
The design is well done with a vintage, flat design that looks very distinct and professional compared to other review sites in the niche.
Highlights
- About 1,200 well-written articles focused on the headphone niche
- 12,500 referring domains
- 16k followers on Facebook
- 4,000 email newsletter subscribers
Why is this site winning?
- Tons of unique photos and first-hand experience with products that set it apart from other review sites
- Lots of charts that provide useful information
- It has more links than most other headphone sites including authoritative links from sites like The Guardian, Mashable, Lifehacker, and more
Top 3 Competitors
Here are similar competitors ranking for several thousand of the same keywords.
- SoundGuys.com – An authoritative audio equipment review site with 570k organic traffic (Ahrefs).
- SoundCore.com – The website of the SoundCore headphone brand with 119k organic traffic (Ahrefs). They publish content about common headphone questions.
- Apple.com – The Official Apple Support Community forum has overtaken the site for many troubleshooting keywords.
Let’s get into the easy wins to grow this specific website.
🔥 5 Easy Wins To Grow This Website
There are opportunities to significantly grow this brand. I break down the following easy wins:
- Conduct a full content audit and remove unhelpful content
- Work on growing the email newsletter list
- Add clickable product images to comparison tables
- Remove dates from URLs
- Remove large featured image from the top of buying guides
Let’s get into it!
➡️ Win #1: Conduct a Full Content Audit and Remove Unhelpful Content
Due to the large decline following the Helpful Content Update, it is important to conduct a full audit of the content to find any issues that may make the site seem less helpful to Google.
I would identify any articles that get close to zero traffic and delete or 301 redirect those pages if they don’t provide value (like outdated news articles). I didn’t find any articles with “thin” content as most articles cover the main topic in-depth.
Many of their troubleshooting articles appear to have lost their rankings to Reddit, Quora, and other forums. It may be worth identifying topics where Google now favors forums and avoid those topics in the future (e.g., troubleshooting tutorials).
Review Google’s guidelines for “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content” to identify any tactics that may be hurting the site. For example, are the dates of articles being changed without substantial changes to the content? Are reviews providing enough “insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?” Are too many articles created mainly to generate SEO traffic?
One potential issue may be the cartoon drawings of the large team of authors which could make people question who is behind the site and whether they have real expertise. They could look for ways to better demonstrate E-E-A-T like displaying a bio in articles that explains the author’s expertise and credentials.
➡️ Win #2: Work on Growing the Email Newsletter List
Due to changes in the SEO environment, they could focus on growing their newsletter to increase their audience without relying on Google.
Currently, the email list is pretty small at 4,000 subscribers according to their newsletter page.
Their newsletter shares the top industry news similar to popular newsletters like The Hustle and Milk Road. People interested in high-end audio gear would get a lot of value from receiving their emails with news roundups and in-depth reviews of new products.
Currently, the calls to action for the newsletter are easy to miss. There is a text link for “Newsletter” in the navigation menu and a CTA in the site footer.
They could increase the newsletter signups with a sidebar CTA box and a popup window CTA.
As a Mediavine site, they can also consider using Grow to add Spotlight Subscribe to articles. Implementing Spotlight Subscribe will highlight in-content CTAs and darken the rest of the page which helps increase email signups.
➡️ Win #3: Add Clickable Product Images to Comparison Tables
Headphonesty includes comparison tables at the top of buying guides but they can be improved by adding clickable product images and changing the text of the CTA buttons.
Adding product images to the table will help improve the user experience by showing what the product looks like. Visitors are more likely to click on the CTA if they can see a visual of the featured products.
Their competitor, SoundGuys.com does a good job incorporating product images in their comparison tables.
It’s also a good idea to link the product images to the affiliate landing page for anyone who clicks on product images.
Additionally, the button text could be changed to “Check Price” instead of “Buy” because the visitor may not be ready to buy yet. The goal is to pique the interest of the visitor so that they click on the Amazon affiliate link.
➡️ Win #4: Remove Dates From URLs
Including dates in URLs creates an issue of making some articles appear outdated to visitors.
For example, a review of the “best IEM ear bud tips” has a 2018 date in the URL:
https://www.headphonesty.com/2018/04/ultimate-guide-selecting-perfect-iem-ear-buds-tips/
Google also displays the search result URL so the 2018 date appears above the title in search results.
When people land on the page and see the 2018 date in the URL they may click the back button to look for a more recent article in search results. Many visitors clicking the back button after clicking on a search result can send a negative signal to Google.
I would recommend using a category for the subfolder like /reviews/ instead of the date to help provide a logical and descriptive URL structure for both search engines and users.
There is minimal risk of redirecting to improved URLs because Google says 301 redirects no longer lose PageRank. However, they could instead choose to remove dates from the URLs of future articles only.
➡️ Win #5: Remove Large Featured Image From Top of Buying Guides
Articles on this site typically have a very large featured image above the fold on buying guides that take up a majority of the screen real estate.
The large featured image makes the article look more like a magazine but the downside is that it pushes their comparison table below the fold so users have to scroll down to see it (which hurts the click-through rate).
Another problem is that it can hurt your Page Speed which is a small SEO ranking factor. A large image can take longer to load which can increase the Largest Contentful Paint time above the recommended 2.5 seconds.
The page layout can be improved by removing the featured image, making it smaller, or moving it below the fold.
👉 Actionable Takeaways
Here are actionable takeaways that you can apply to your niche website today:
- Review Google’s guidelines for “Helpful Content” to find potential issues that may cause Google to see some content as unhelpful.
- Publishing an email newsletter with valuable information like industry news roundups can help sites grow their audience without relying on Google.
- Add clickable product images to comparison tables to attract more clicks than a comparison table with only text.
- A large featured image above the fold can hurt the conversion rate and cause pages to load slower.
