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My Microniche Sites Are Doing Better Than Ever

by Mosa
20 replies
  • SEO
    • |
At the moment my micro niche sites are not only surviving the update they're doing better! We currently have about 10 sites ranking at the top of google and rather than sink, they've climbed up a few spots. I'm going to be adding more on them, but some sites still only have a single page of content. So as far as the whole "are niche sites dead?" thing goes, I would have to say that it all depends on how you do you keyword research and how you build them.
#microniche #sites
  • Profile picture of the author mrtrance
    How did you rank your sites as far as backlinks go? What did you use? Are they all EMD? What sort of onpage SEO do you have on your sites? Did you use any private blog network for these sites?
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    • Profile picture of the author Mosa
      Originally Posted by mrtrance View Post

      How did you rank your sites as far as backlinks go? What did you use? Are they all EMD? What sort of onpage SEO do you have on your sites? Did you use any private blog network for these sites?
      On some sites we used web2.0, article directories, videos, and social bookmarks. On others we used high pr links. For the most part they are end. No blog networks were used. We just used good original content on the site.

      Good content combined with proper keyword research is enough to propel you to the first page of Google for some profitable keywords.
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  • Profile picture of the author webinventaekhlas
    Mosa, It's also happening for me. I have faced a good impact in google after penguine update.
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  • Profile picture of the author lexilexi
    I've noticed in general stronger presence of EMDs in serps in the last week or 2. Good thing to remember about the google updates is that for every site that goes down, another one goes up.
    In the last week, some of my sites took a dive (first time ever!) while others held solid. I think the ones that went down were those that had too much of one type of link building and not enough anchor text KW diversity. That's my current theory, will see what it takes to bump them back up
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      A dozen or so recent tests have shown that anchor diversity has no influence on rankings at all. At least not for brand new sites. I guess it's one of those things that people start guessing about after their sites dropped when Panda came by.

      Panda is about quality content
      Penquin is about spammy backlinks

      With over optimization they primarly mean that too many bad links is over optimizing and much less about keyword stuffing (which is there for ages already) and certainly nothing to do with variation in anchor txt's.

      Ofcourse it can't hurt to implent some anchor diversity right from the start cause perhaps they target that in another update in the near future.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mosa
        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        A dozen or so recent tests have shown that anchor diversity has no influence on rankings at all. At least not for brand new sites. I guess it's one of those things that people start guessing about after their sites dropped when Panda came by.

        Panda is about quality content
        Penquin is about spammy backlinks

        With over optimization they primarly mean that too many bad links is over optimizing and much less about keyword stuffing (which is there for ages already) and certainly nothing to do with variation in anchor txt's.

        Ofcourse it can't hurt to implent some anchor diversity right from the start cause perhaps they target that in another update in the near future.

        I should note that my top earning site was actually over optimized, but when I heard about the penguin update I went and changed a lot of things to make the site look more natural. This may have definitely been a contributing fact as to why it wasn't smashed and still holds strong today.
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      • Profile picture of the author cooler1
        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        A dozen or so recent tests have shown that anchor diversity has no influence on rankings at all. At least not for brand new sites. I guess it's one of those things that people start guessing about after their sites dropped when Panda came by.

        Panda is about quality content
        Penquin is about spammy backlinks

        With over optimization they primarly mean that too many bad links is over optimizing and much less about keyword stuffing (which is there for ages already) and certainly nothing to do with variation in anchor txt's.

        Ofcourse it can't hurt to implent some anchor diversity right from the start cause perhaps they target that in another update in the near future.
        What do you make of Micro Masters analysis then? They said that every site they looked at which got negatively affected by Penguin was using a "money keyword" for anchor text for over 60% incoming links.
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        • Profile picture of the author nik0
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          Originally Posted by cooler1 View Post

          What do you make of Micro Masters analysis then? They said that every site they looked at which got negatively affected by Penguin was using a "money keyword" for anchor text for over 60% incoming links.
          Okay, haven't read that post, might be an interesting read.
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    • Profile picture of the author WebPen
      Originally Posted by lexilexi View Post

      I've noticed in general stronger presence of EMDs in serps in the last week or 2. Good thing to remember about the google updates is that for every site that goes down, another one goes up.
      In the last week, some of my sites took a dive (first time ever!) while others held solid. I think the ones that went down were those that had too much of one type of link building and not enough anchor text KW diversity. That's my current theory, will see what it takes to bump them back up
      ^This is exactly what I was thinking.

      I think it's tough to say what is actually working right now, though. Just like before the penguin update, some people were succeeding with black hat spamming- others did well with white hat.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mosa
        Originally Posted by dylan09 View Post

        thx for sharing
        how many posts for your site？and how many backlinks for sites. you mentioned
        "On some sites we used web2.0, article directories, videos, and social bookmarks. On others we used high pr links. For the most part they are end. No blog networks were used. We just used good original content on the site. "
        Only about 2-3 posts on the sites. I'm adding more to the ones that are making money. The way I like to work is I find a low competition keyword then I see if I can get it to rank with a single page with a 1000+ word article. If it ranks I start throwing more content on. If it doesn't then I either re-evaluate the keywords worth, or I let it die.
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  • Profile picture of the author Blakers
    I bet all your sites are new....meaning, under 4 months old. Penguin seems to have left those alone.
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  • Profile picture of the author Laubster
    Originally Posted by Mosa View Post

    At the moment my micro niche sites are not only surviving the update they're doing better! We currently have about 10 sites ranking at the top of google and rather than sink, they've climbed up a few spots. I'm going to be adding more on them, but some sites still only have a single page of content. So as far as the whole "are niche sites dead?" thing goes, I would have to say that it all depends on how you do you keyword research and how you build them.
    Same here, higher rankings post penguin. I swear by 1,000+ words on the homepage theory; Google loves useful content, period.
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  • Profile picture of the author dylan09
    thx for sharing
    how many posts for your site？and how many backlinks for sites. you mentioned
    "On some sites we used web2.0, article directories, videos, and social bookmarks. On others we used high pr links. For the most part they are end. No blog networks were used. We just used good original content on the site. "
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  • Profile picture of the author Natlex
    Well big numbers of niche sites that rank based on having an EMD and low competition will still work... You barely need any backlinks so I doubt penguin's overoptimization penalty will hit you (unless you stupidly do WAYYY too many backlinks!).

    The only problem is that your adsense account is at risk by being used on (most likely) many very MFA looking websites. Even if the content/theme is great a manual reviewer might get annoyed at seeing so many EMD's in your account.

    Anyway, not a bad model at all but you aren't really in the target market for the penguin update atm, also your sites are new... Which as someone else has said, penguin seems to have a grace period for newer sites until it hits. It's definitely true of the few sites I have under 4 months. Also, I see very spammy sites ranking top 10 on some keywords and beating some of mine currently but I'm pretty sure they will get removed soon.
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  • Profile picture of the author googlepanda
    Thanks for the info, I'll consider for my next update.
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  • Profile picture of the author boxoun
    Yeah I have small sites that went up too. It was because I didn't have any backlinks. The more you backlink, the more vulnerable you are to getting hit. Seems like you are implying that you did something right where as my experience is telling me a random and luck factor is in play. My traffic got hit but my earnings went up. Things seem to be crazy and there has not been any conclusive information. Just my opinion. The true test will be your next set. Good luck.
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  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    Originally Posted by Mosa View Post

    At the moment my micro niche sites are not only surviving the update they're doing better! We currently have about 10 sites ranking at the top of google and rather than sink, they've climbed up a few spots. I'm going to be adding more on them, but some sites still only have a single page of content. So as far as the whole "are niche sites dead?" thing goes, I would have to say that it all depends on how you do you keyword research and how you build them.
    are these sites less than 1 - 3 months old?
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  • Profile picture of the author dp40oz
    Yep niche sites are very much alive. There are too many 1-2 page high quality websites out there for Google to ever crack down on small websites.
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