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Home » The Famous Blog » 3 Hard Facts About Niche Sites SEO

3 Hard Facts About Niche Sites SEO

November 2, 2011 - Last Modified: March 28, 2013 by Pawel Grabowski

Niche Sites Development

I love niche sites. They are quick and easy to create, rank, at least if you did your homework well, and provide a nice return on investment. Sure, you can’t build a empire on them but that’s OK. There are better ways to achieve that.

It’s quite amazing to see the amount of people dipping their toes in the niche sites developement. Not only is this a great way to kill your time in a more productive way and earn some extra cash but also get a start in entrepreneurship, business thinking, planning and more.

However, it’s a very unfortunate fact that when it comes to technique, the only thing you can really develop with niche sites is SEO, and at a basic level at that. People like Hesham work really hard to build their authority, popularity, create good content not to mention working on their position in the market. They do so only to not have to rely solely on their search rankings when it comes to traffic. They build a loyal audience and, regardless of whether they have good rankings or not, they get constant traffic to the site.

3 Hard Facts About Niche Sites SEO

Niche sites, however, leave you with SEO as your only weapon to get anyone to look at your site, let alone buy from you. And, as with everything in life, there are certain things that might cause you problems with achieving that, or expanding your business in the future.

1. No matter what you might think, the most powerful SEO techniques are out of your range.

Web 2.0, article syndication, link directories or blog comments are all great but in reality they are not the best SEO techniques out there. They are only the most basic things used by professional SEOs to rank their sites. Guest posting is much better, yet still, the best places that you would want to guest post on will be closed to you anyway. Face it, no respectable blog will have a link to thebestpinkandshinylaptopbagswithsuperprotection.com in their resource box.

Big businesses gain links from professional organizations, their clients and business contacts, get on high quality resource lists, have press releases published by key publications in their industry and lots more. When it comes to niche sites though, all this is out of your reach, relatively lowering the strength of your efforts.

2. If Google catches you, you are done.

Because rankings are your only way to get traffic, Google is your master. If at some point it decides that your linking techniques are spammy, or targets you in its algorithm update, you are done. You have no other way to gain traffic and your website is pretty much gone. Even worse, if all your sites were set up and promoted the same way, all of them might be slashed in one go.

3. You will never be able to use your niche sites to your professional advantage.

Once in a while I meet a niche sites developer who discovers that since he or she knows some SEO, they may as well go after either their own clients or full time employment in the industry.

Here is the problem though, they lack skills. Especially the ones you need to work in an agency setting, analytics and research, link building outreach, reporting and even sales. They are a must have if you want to work in a professional SEO environment. The good news is that they are relatively easy to learn and master but without them, you are not going to make it.

Another thing is your portfolio. If the only thing you have to show for it are niche sites, then you might have a serious problem down the line. Face it, mygreatwonderfullaptopbag.com does not make a good showcase item.

Niche sites are a good way to get  first hand experience in running an online business. You don’t have to spend much to get started and there aren’t that many difficult things to learn. On the other hand, there are many things that might cause you problems down the line once you get going. The things is, that’s typical for almost everything in life anyway.

 

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{ 25 Responses }

  1. Katherine Lindholm says:
    Thanks Pawel, the post gave me some ideas regarding niches. Keep it up!
  2. Adam says:
    I see a lot of EMD that are ranking very well but only have 2 or 3 articles on them. I think within the next few months all of these sites will start dropping off the search engines.
  3. Vijayraj Reddy says:
    Yes no one has all the best SEO techniques, because Google is like a sea and you can only guess what's inside... but we should try our level best to optimize our blog...
  4. Jeanie says:
    Does Google decide everything in online business? Because this is probably the 20th article after reading which I understand it!
  5. Srini says:
    Agree. Niche is best for SEO, Great article Pawel.
  6. Amit says:
    Heh, very true facts. Indeed, hard facts but sadly true facts. I always thought about having niche websites but always thought it was a problem to SEO this kind of websites. If Google 'bites' your website, you're done - it's true......
    • Pawel Grabowski says:
      Indeed Amit, and I am saying that from a first hand experience.
  7. James Debono says:
    Hi Pawel, I agree with you on the following 1. Having your entire income stream in the hands of "The Big G" is a frightening prospect however there are many marketers that rely on this mammoth to line their pockets without diversifying. 2. Those that do diversify don’t research and educate themselves in the area they are moving into thoroughly enough before making the jump. Great post James
    • Pawel Grabowski says:
      Thanks James :)
  8. Elaine from Mattress Reviews says:
    I used to be of the niche website train of thought but have recently started building out my websites with more than 3-5 pages. I am going to expand my websites where possible and have them sitting with solid and more importantly relevant content. As they say 'content is king' and I hope to go that route now as (for me) the niche route was ok, but authority sites are the long term view.
    • Pawel Grabowski says:
      You know what, I am trying now to marry the two. I think it's possible and so far the results I see are quite promising.
  9. GreenLava says:
    Great article Pawel. I totally agree with no. 2. Let's just hope Big G doesn't misbehave any time soon :)
    • Pawel Grabowski says:
      Haha, I think it will, that's the main problem ....
  10. David Walker says:
    Great points about niche marketers trying to run out and land a big-time SEO position. I've seen this happen a lot and while a few are able to showcase their abilities and quickly master analytics, research and sales - a lot of them don't. It's much more a data research and sales position with some SEO tasks involved to get a corporate or competitive site to consistently rank. That being said, a lot of people make a nice living with niche sites though! ~David Walker
    • Pawel Grabowski says:
      Yeah, but you know what is kinda funny, many professional SEOs don't get IM :) And, I understand them, IM requires from you to forget a lot of what you know, it's difficult sometimes.
  11. Jamie Northrup says:
    I can't disagree with any of the three facts your wrote Pawel. I have a few niche sites that bring in good money, but I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket, so I have bigger websites, blog, and a corporate presence, along with other web money making techniques. As tushar wrote a lot of niche sites aren't ethical, and are horrible, but I make it a point to make mine have relevant up to date information on the topic covered, and they fill a need for the people searching for it, so everyone wins.
    • Pawel Grabowski says:
      Thank you Jamie and you are right, diversifying is the key to survival on the internet. Just like you I have niche sites, blogs and my small SEO company. And if I was to lose anything here, by far I would prefer a niche site. Small income stream means a small loss :) As for niche sites, yeah, some are really bad but I think the main thing is in what you sell. If you promote crap products, it's totally unethical. However, being an affiliate offering good products only means that you are making easier for many people to access those. Nothing wrong with that in my view.
  12. gracia19 says:
    Thank you Steve for laying it here and sharing your thoughts and tips about this subject. I haven't really thought about Google being the boss.But now that you mention it, It makes perfect sense.
  13. Tory McBroom says:
    Agree. Luckily, I was able to turn two sites that started out as just niche sites, into authority sites overtime with a little love and hard work. All the hard work has paid off ten fold too. I make way more with my few authority sites than when I had a portfolio of niche sites.
    • Pawel Grabowski says:
      Well done Tory. By the way, your blog is quite nice too :)
  14. tushar says:
    Although niche sites can be considered as a good money maker in the short term, I have never considered it a ethical way of money making. No offense intended but I though that way is not the best way. It is a shortcut and there is nothing worse than that. For a good and satisfactory experiences, hard work is too good
  15. Pawel Grabowski says:
    Thanks Steve, and yeah, leaving all that you own in the hands of G is not really a good thing. But there's a good side (always look at the bright side .... ). My niche sites are usually pretty small and bring microincomes only so the loss of one is not a massive drama.... to a point of course.... ;) Thanks for the comment mate.
  16. Steve says:
    Pawel, You are definitely laying out some cold hard truths here. I've been building authority sites for years now. they take a lot longer and a lot more work than niche site blogs, but I've recently begun playing with niche blogs and my fears are exactly what you brought up. Particularly #2. with niche blogs, everything relies on Google. It is conceivable even to do nothing wrong and to cross over the googles bad side. It is just too much to base an entire living off of.
  17. jeffkgross says:
    We all know that G decreases influence on EMD in SERPs, niche sites are mostly EMD. It will be much harder to get G page 1 with niche site. Therefore you must build natural authority and connect with similar sites to get traffic. Nice post Pawel, totally agree with all your facts.
    • Pawel Grabowski says:
      Thanks Jeff and I agree, I think we will see less of EMDs in SERPs soon. This will weed out a lot of wannabe IMs and SEOs but that's good :)

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