The power of a good domain and a niche market.

[Slowdive]

So after a few months, my little niche site is now ranking between 1 - 5 on Google for every search term I have targeted. The great part it did not even take much work or effort, so I thought I would share my steps towards tackling a specialist niche site in the hope it helps some one else.

Picking a Niche is a huge topic which has been much discussed but for my purposes I want maximum impact with minimum work. If I have to tackle a major SEO campaign then I may as well tackle a competitive niche, no?

Has some one beat you to it? If a site is charging up the listings with a great mailing list in place and a growing link count, well that's going to get competitive so possibly time to change tact.

Is the proper domain available? I cut out so much work by finding and frankly over paying for a 10 year old domain which has never dropped with a small set of quality back-links. My site was indexed in a day and with just content addition has been charging up the rankings.

It does not matter what the competition is doing its what they are not doing that is going to bare fruit in this exercise. Make sure your interface is slicker, easier to use and more robust. Offer services or products relevant but different to the competitor.


So assuming you manage to secure a quality domain in your niche I can highly recommend installing a woo commerce theme. Its not only fully featured but it just does such a nice job of long tail keywords and each product you place is basically performing inline SEO for you. If you do not sell products find some to affiliate to and make sure your description and reviews are quality, original quality. In essence each product becomes a page of if your doing it right quality content and as far as I can see has done me the world of good.
The downside of this is its hard to if not impossible to manage your link juice as it just kinda splatters site wide, but once again we are not tackling an overly competitive market.

Get those google + 1 rolling in, not too worried about what they are admitting to but it certainly has done me no harm at all.

Splurge out and buy a few decent articles. May be hard to source for your niche but be inventive or write them yourself. Keep in mind in many under utelized niche you are competing with sites where people have not cottoned on to the H1 tag. So your likely to beat them out just by having the right keyword density and proper headings more over if its a good article on a Niche your likely to get backlinks.

And that really is that in my case its selling products so just by updating the inventory its keeping ticking over. However even for a affiliate product it would work just as simply. I know I have not actually shared much but it is just that simple.

Now of course finding an under developed niche is tricky at best and probably the biggest hurdle to climb. So a few tips:

Find a problem and solve it, this may seem a nearly impossible task but if you have a special set of skills or relatively unique knowledge this may be easier than you would think. Your knowledge could be as simple as knowing the best pubs in a specific city or where to get a killer hamburger, if it has not been done its waiting for you.

Downsize...pets...cats....abyssinian cat....health issues...grooming? As specific as you can without running out of content. (Pet market is done and over subscribed but I did not have to think too hard). Then liase with the cat protection society in your city and find out how you can support them and leverage the good will and some of their traffic. It should be win win for everyone and it works.

The using any of the tools or all of them from this this thread ensure people are searching for specific item.

Although I should add I have had niches where there is little to no data available and still pulled in traffic via other means that search engines. More over perhaps some search terms only get 50 a month but they are 45 of them buyers. Such terms do exist and sometimes serving a rare or small niche is also profitable. Experiment, experiment, experiment.

So what is the moral of all of this, I have shared nothing astounding given away no big secret and not actually told anyone a single secret. Well the message is the basics work and if you know how to find a niche domain can be very profitable.

[Clinton]

Get those google + 1 rolling in, not too worried about what they are admitting to but it certainly has done me no harm at all.

How much are you paying for them?

[Slowdive]

Unlike Xrumer I have not had enough time to test this to any degree so this one really comes with a be it on your own head warning....

I have noticed as we all have google is making some pretty extensive changes to its privacy policy and that cute diagram of you in the centre of all your online activity sums it up nicely. Google is trying very hard to get to know you, it makes me cringe however they are pretty transparent about it. Google knows what domains you associate yourself with, google knows what you like to do with your time and google is tracking your on-line activity.
Up shot of this is google is begging to weigh the value of +1 against user, location, activity, domains and interests. It is the logical step as they cannot penalize my .com if you buy me 10k +'s but they can reward you and I liking each others blog posts on flipping.

So when one is looking at working the system.....lets start by doing it organically.
Treat your google plus button like any other conversion, place it beneath your sweetest special, get it up next to your download free link. Associate it with content that has some chance of getting set free in the wild.
Have an awesome picture of some amazing art that is for sale and just plain looks great, get the google sticker in there it may just pay off.
Begin exchanging plus's like one would links, you cannot really go and ask to exchange them but go like people in your niche. Comment on why you liked them so they are more likely to notice you, its going to become a new secret handshake.

When that fails and you opt to part with trivial sums for a few thumbs up, well be very cautious. A lot of the people selling them are just using proxies to run a myriad of accounts, these will become worthless. A lot of people selling them are going to dirty up your neighbourhood with a lot of Russian associates and its pretty transparent your guided tour of the old Irish copper mine is not their main interest.
Pay more and buy 30 pluses for a boost to your most generic product from preferably English speaking users, now your getting closer. Time it with your latest back linking rush and buy accordingly....
I am starting to sound a little paranoid here I suppose

Be aware of your market if your are where I am and no one is using googles rather perplexing social network just leave it be on your local sites, unless it garners facebookes popularity its never going to take of for certain sites.

Until how best to game this all becomes more clear, one may be better of just using Xrumer, oh and around $ 0.35 and up to $1.00 is going rate for what I would want to have.

Once again though as this is leading of a good domain for a niche market aimed in part at newer people, there is a lot to learn about doing things properly before one knows enough to take chances with their traffic. Be very careful engaging in grey areas of SEO unless the site and its traffic are pretty disposable.

[visegrip]

Slowdive your article beautifully described the subject that's been a pain in my buttocks. I have a hard time passing the niche and domain plateau due to over thinking and over analyzing. It won't work, I'm no good at it, I don't know much about the subject, it's a losing campaign, I'm not doing right, I'm throwing money into the fire. Clinton describes it best

Once again though as this is leading of a good domain for a niche market aimed in part at newer people, there is a lot to learn about doing things properly before one knows enough to take chances with their traffic.

I sleep on the idea and come up with another related niche and start the whole process over again. I can't seem to pick any niche or domain without success. When I do pick a niche it's a total lost from the get go. I'm doing everything right by failing, but it's hard getting knocked out and getting back up to get your behind beat again. I'll just keep trying to it becomes muscle memory.

[Chabrenas]

Slowdive, thanks for introducing me to woo commerce. It does seem to be a pretty comprehensive plugin, with a useful set of extensions that soup it up even further, However, it's going to take me quite a while to learn how to use it and see if it handles all the options I need. Could you point me to one or two sites that are built using it, so that I can get an idea of what it can do from the user's point of view?