Niche sites: how to optimize them?
-
Dear SEOmozzers,
I am focusing on those keywords I find using the "Keyword Analysis" tool that are not too competitive (among 20%-30% competitiveness). I then buy domains that include those keywords. The sites are in Italian and targeting the Italian search engines, so the competition is lower than it would be in the US. Basically, I'd like to build niche sites and I'd like to ask a few questions that I hope somebody with a good experience in this field can answer:
-
How do I optimize a niche site. Specifically, how do I go about link building? How many backlinks should I get to see some results?
-
How long does it take for a typical niche site to start appearing in the search engines for a certain keyword, after launching an effective link building campaign?
-
Please kindly provide any recommendations you believe to be important when building niche sites. For example, is there a company/professional you know that specializes in this field and who is trustworthy/reliable?
Thank you very much for your help.
All best,
- Sal
-
-
I do however agree with what Ryan wrote - in that domains with keywords (unless a valid part of a brand) is not a worthwhile focus. Google particularly likes brands, so build a reputation based on quality content in your niches and you should be okay.
There's no harm in building a good niche sites, i.e. filling a gap the main competition aren't in, but do it genuinely and do it well - remember you're building a quality site and everything affects your reputation - oh and finally, remember there are no short cuts
-
Hi Martin,
Thank you for the great reply. I'll follow your recommendations.
Cheers,
- Sal
-
Hi Ryan,
Thank you for your feedback and honesty. My idea is to build sites in fields that I am interested in, so that I can write good content about and try to earn links. I would like to create them focusing on keywords that are not too competitive, otherwise I will not stand a change to compete against the big guys.
Al best,
- Sal
-
Hi there,
You don't have to do much differently for 'niche' sites in terms of SEO than any non-niche site, to be honest. You will still need to choose your keywords, put together some great content, manage your site structure and on-page optimisation well and ensure a great user experience.
After that your link building efforts are fairly simliar in that you'll need to look for good linking opportunities. Look at your competitors for the keywords you're targeting and then maybe look at some advanced search queries:-
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/9-actionable-tips-for-link-prospecting
Niche Communities The thing I would suggest is getting involved in communities based around your niche - maybe hook into some blogs or forums, or other community types and be of use to the people there - get to know people well (don't just see it as 'link building'). If you're in a niche then you want to get known in that niche.
Social Media Look up some communities through social media or do keyword searches in those site to identify people you could get involved with or get to know.
Backlinks How many links it takes to get you noticed? How long is a piece of string? It depends on the quality of the sites linking to you and what your competitors are up to - that will change niche-to-niche.
Web Designer You should be able to get any web designer to create your niche site but I would suggest you go with a designer who understands SEO in order to get the site structure and content right before the site goes live. Ensure you get an Italian Copywriter to look over the content so that keywords are inserted in a natural, linguistically acceptable way - i.e. it reads well.
Hope this is of use to you
-
Sal, if I may be blunt that is a horrible plan from a SEO perspective.
Search engines have matured. They are far from perfect, but they are getting better at filtering out sites like the ones you mentioned. The sites which make it to the first page of results (i.e. receive traffic from search engines) are increasingly becoming the authentic, legitimate sites to which companies or individuals focus their full attention. The idea of throwing up a bunch of sites and receiving traffic to all of them is dying. Why?
The penguin update is focused on eliminating sites which "built" links. Going forward you need to EARN links. The best guide on doing such is here: http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/future-of-link-building.
The idea of ranking with your domain name (i.e. buy-viagra.com) has also taken a hit. It is less effective and will likely continue to decline.
If you want to earn a living online my recommendation is to pick a single niche you love and throw all your focus, time and energy into it. If you pursue the path you are on, I predict a fiery burnout in a short amount of time.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Mobile site crawl returns poorer results on 100% responsive site
Has anyone experienced an issue where Google Mobile site crawl returns poorer results than their Desktop site crawl on a 100% responsive website that passes all Google Mobile tests?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MFCommunications0 -
Launching a new website. Old inherited site cannot be saved after lifted penalty. When should we kill the old site and how?
Background Information A website that we inherited was severely penalized and after the penalty was revoked the site still never resurfaced in rankings or traffic. Although a dramatic action, we have decided to launch a completely new version of the website. Everything will be new including the imagery, branding, content, domain name, hosting company, registrar account, google analytics account, etc. Our question is when do we pull the plug on the old site and how do we go about doing it? We had heard advice that we should make sure we run both sites at the same time for 3 months, then deindex the old site using a noindex meta robots tag.We are cautious because we don't want the old website to be associated in any way, shape or form with the new website. We will purposely not be 301 redirecting any URLs from the old website to the new. What would you do if you were in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd0 -
Multiple Ecommerce sites, same products
We are a large catalog company with thousands of products across 2 different domains. Google clearly knows that the sites are connected. Both domains are fairly well known brands - thousands of branded searches for each site per month. Roughly half of our products overlap - they appear on both sites. We have a known duplicate content issue - both sites having exactly the same product descriptions, and we are working on it. We've seen that when a product has different content on the 2 sites, frequently, both pages get to page 2 of the SERPs, but that's as far as it goes, despite aggressive white hat link building tactics. 1. Is it possible to get the same product pages on page 1 of the SERPs for both sites? (I think I know the answer...) 2. Should we be canonicalizing (is that a word?) products across the sites? This would get tricky - both sites have roughly the same domain authority, but in different niches. Certain products and keywords naturally rank better on 1 site or the other depending on the niche.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Mobile version of my sites: What is better?
What is the best approach to make my sites ready for mobile, in terms of SEO ? Is it better to create a subdomain called "m.mydomain.com" and redirect mobile users to that domain with a lite version of my sites? Or is it better to just keep the same domain as for my desktop version "mydomain.com" and use a WordPress theme that fits for all gadgets, for example Twenty Fourteen WordPress Theme, that adapts to each device? I see that most big sites use a "m.mydomain.com" subdomain for the mobile version, however, I don't see any sense in creating a subdomain of the site, when you can just use the WP adapting theme in the main domain. Any insight please? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BloggerGuy0 -
Recovering from a site migration
Hi. I've been working on http://www.alwayshobbies.com/ for a number of months. All was fine, but then we had a site migration which involved a huge number of redirects. There's been a couple of similar moves in the past. As a result, rankings have plummeted. To resolve this, we're considering letting all the old pages 404 by turning of the redirects, and removing all links to them where we can. Some key pages could have canonicals added, but basically we're looking to purge as much as possible. Does this sound like a reasonable tactic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Our quilting site was hit by Panda/Penguin...should we start a second "traffic" site?
I built a website for my wife who is a quilter called LearnHowToMakeQuilts.com. However, it has been hit by Panda or Penguin (I’m not quite sure) and am scared to tell her to go ahead and keep building the site up. She really wants to post on her blog on Learnhowtomakequilts.com, but I’m afraid it will be in vain for Google’s search engine. Yahoo and Bing still rank well. I don’t want her to produce good content that will never rank well if the whole site is penalized in some way. I’ve overly optimized in linking strongly to the keywords “how to make a quilt” for our main keyword, mainly to the home page and I think that is one of the main reasons we are incurring some kind of penalty. First main question: From looking at the attached Google Analytics image, does anyone know if it was Panda or Penguin that we were “hit” by? And, what can be done about it? (We originally wanted to build a nice content website, but were lured in by a get rich quick personality to rather make a “squeeze page” for the Home page and force all your people through that page to get to the really good content. Thus, our avenge time on site per person is terrible and Pages per Visit is low at: 1.2. We really want to try to improve it some day. She has a local business website, Customcarequilts.com that did not get hit. Second question: Should we start a second site rather than invest the time in trying to repair the damage from my bad link building and article marketing? We do need to keep the site up and running because it has her online quilting course for beginner quilters to learn how to quilt their first quilt. We host the videos through Amazon S3 and were selling at least one course every other day. But now that the Google drop has hit, we are lucky to sell one quilting course per month. So, if we start a second site we can use that to build as a big content site that we can use to introduce people to learnhowtomakequilts.com that has Martha’s quilting course. So, should we go ahead and start a new fresh site rather than to repair the damage done by my bad over optimizing? (We’ve already picked out a great website name that would work really well with her personal facebook page.) Or, here’s a second option, which is to use her local business website: customcarequilts.com. She created it in 2003 and has had it ever since. It is only PR 1. Would this be an option? Anyway I’m looking for guidance on whether we should pursue repairing the damage and whether we should start a second fresh site or use an existing site to create new content (for getting new quilters to eventually purchase her course). Brad & Martha Novacek rnUXcWd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNovi0 -
Looking for guest blogging sites
Hello, Does anyone have a list or a few good guest blogging sites like Myblogguest.com and guestblogit.com (is this a good on?) where you get a link back in return for a quality post? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
The Site: search and Flow of PageRank
It is my understanding that if I do a search for site:mydomain.com the results are like every other SERP in that the most authoritative pages are ranked higher. So obviously I would expect my homepage to be first (in most cases), then followed by main category pages, etc. My question is has anybody ever seen disturbing results when doing this (i.e. pages that should have no authority outranking main category pages)? Is this always an issue with site structure or can you think of other factors that may cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | purch0