Did a round of 25 niche edits for an affiliate site in the fitness space early this year. Checked them all last week:
– 17 still live
– 5 gone completely (sentence removed or page rewritten)
– 2 now marked nofollow
– 1 page 404s
So about a third have either died or been neutered within six months. The site owners who did the edits mostly don’t reply now. A couple offered to “replace” with a new placement on another page, which kind of defeats the point since the whole value was the existing page with history.
I’m not asking about whether niche edits work, I know they can. I’m asking about how you deal with the churn. Do you just budget for 30% loss and overbuild? Do you only work with owners you’ve done repeat business with? Screenshot and chase?
Curious what a realistic survival rate looks like for others after 6 and 12 months.
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