Broad Niche vs. Narrow Niche?

I don't think that's going to be a winnig strategy for many. The whe idea behind niche marketing is that it is easier to get results and you target people who want to purchase the product - trying to get ranked for a popular and general perfume keyword would be a possible nightmare.

This is a good topic and one that I have been thinking about a lot myself lately. I guess with more targeted niche's or long tail keywords you have less competition and so might have a better chance at ranking higher. Yes you have less people searching for that niche than for a broader niche, but you are ranking higher so should get a big percentage of those searches.

However, I too have been thinking more along the lines of a broader niches, bigger site, that covers many topics within the niche. More competition but also more searches, question is whether you can rank high enough to get many of those people searching in the broader niche.

I have some smaller websites, not small as in the 2 or 3 page sites you see so much off, I try to make mine bigger than that, but not huge and generally just based around a long tail keyword.

I have just started a new website that is in a broader niche, although I still got a reasonable keyword phrase, and I'm hoping to make this a much bigger site and cover a few of the sub-niches within this niche on the same site.

I guess I'll just have to work at it and see how it goes, then I can compare which does better for me - the smaller sites or the bigger one.

I have nothing against niche specific markets. It works time and time again and a great strategy, but I think that marketers are too scared to tackle a more broader niche.

For me personally i find manging 100 websites tedious, and I rather attack a broader niche on many fronts.

I dont know how Google operates or how they will in the future. Many of my niche sites attract traffic for totally unrelated keywords.

I really enjoy a much broader niche as a personal preference, and I have learnt if I don't like what I am doing then I am not going to put that much effort into it.

I also want the search engines to take me seriously as an authority site and not a flash in the pan.

But this all comes to strategy. I am in it to for the long term, cause they money is where the big boys are hanging.

If you go broad and you want a chance at getting a good amount of search-engine traffic, you'll still have to optimize your individual pages towards specific, longer-tail keywords.
It's either that, or spend huge amounts of time and effort trying to catch up with established authority sites that tend to dominate broad search terms.

However, competition is not the only reason to go after micro-niches.
There are two more things about going narrow that you have to keep in mind:

1. Commercial Intent:
As a rule of thumb, people searching for broad terms are less inclined to spend money. If I'm looking for "digital camera" I might be looking for some free info, or just want to learn a bit about the technology behind digital photography (think: Wikipedia entry for such a term).
If I'm looking for "Canon model such-and-such review", then I'm probably looking to spend money.

2. Appeal:
If you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. Take the perfume store example in your first post. I am personally not interested in perfume, at all. If I see "perfume store for men, women and teens" there's no way I'll even give it a second glance.
However, if I were to see "perfume store for 26 year old dudes who spend too much time in front of the computer and enjoy martial arts" I'd have to check it out. Even though I don't care about perfume, the latter offer is obviously exactly for me, so I'd be curious to see what it's about.

That's what targeting a narrow niche is about. It's saying: "I have a solution to your specific, personal problem" instead of saying "I have solutions to problems".

Hope this makes sense.

Glen,
Am interested in this silo structure you mentioned. Can I do this with wordpress? Any resources you can direct me too?

Would love to get some views on this really important topic.

I am glad someone has asked this question!

It's not too difficult to manage a dozen or so small sites. In fact it's actually easier to manage small sites than bigger sites cos you just plug away doing a little everyday. It's much more difficult to SEO a broader niche.

Ste

This is how we work - one big site in the main area of self help, and 200 pages covering everything from health to dating to the law of attraction.

It works... very well, for us and our affiliates. The potential for upsells, repeat purchases is immense - as are the possibilities for recruiting affiliates from a wide range of niches, and JV partners from all areas of self help.

I like the 1 page / long copy approach - the focus you get with thatis great, but this way has worked very well for us, and it is evergreen... I wouldn't work any other way.

Cryptone, there is a way to have your cake and eat it too. In some cases you can create re-usable domain names. While this is easiest to do with localities, it can work with other terms as well.

An example would be to buy the domain name "homeintulsaok.com". This is a broad niche that can be narrowed down easily with sub-domains.

HowToBuyA.HomeInTulsaOK.com
WhenToBuyA.
WhereToBuyA.
IWantToBuyA.
IFoundMy.
DoYouWantToMakeYour.

GolfScore.com
HowToImproveYour.
LowerYour.

You get the idea.

I hope this helps.
Buck

Anyone else having success with slightly broader niches?

Check out inlineseo.com

As far as I know, she works mainly with sites on broader topics and she seems to know what she's doing. Have a look at the "truth report" to get an idea of how darn much work is involved, too...

There's a few benefits to having multiple domains instead of a single, bigger one...

It's possible to own more positions in the Top 10, which can't be done with a single domain.

Each domain is an asset which you can sell individually. This aspect shouldn't be over-looked.

More linking opportunities. For example, some directories may only allow one link per domain.

Potential for more IPs.

Exploit the use of keyword specific domain names, which likely have good SEO benefits.

Good for trying to camouflage or hide your identity. There's the obvious reasons, but one example may be you may want to sell something but don't want it associated with your own site/brand. For example, an affiliate product that competes with your own stuff.

Diversity and protection. If you're dependant on SE traffic and get a big site banned it could be devastating. If you do SEO, spreading your "eggs" in many baskets may be a good choice.

Testing and experimenting. You may want to try and test some more aggressive SEO techniques, while eliminating risk to your "big" site.

More effective use of software and memberships. If you buy a program to submit to web directories, may as well use it 100 times instead of once. Same with memberships like Linkvana, which is probably too expensive for only one domain bot a good deal if you have a collection of domains.

These are just some of the reasons to have multiple domains. Of course, there's also disadvantages such as the cost of domain names and others mentioned above.

I'm not saying one way is better than the other. As a matter of fact, I believe you do BOTH...Or better yet, ALL.

Instead of having a big site with 1000 pages, I'd suggest a site with 350 good/quality pages, then use the other 650 pages to build smaller sites, blogs, wikis, etc.

Have the big site concentrate on content and quality and use the others in a variety of ways, some for linking, some for affiliate programs, some for Adsense, etc.

Start with an emotionally hot broad niche (lots of traffic and easier to convert)...then when you see success go DEEP and wide

Just read this article which should help answer your question.

http://www.localsurgemedia.com/broad...-narrow-niche/