17 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
17 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Niche or Micro Niche?

by ManAbout
14 replies
I am new to this site and internet marketing and this is my first post.

I have already come upon my first stumbling block and that is on defining my niche. I have some ideas for niches, but I am unsure as to how I should approach them.

Here is my question, say I have topic, let us say "health foods" for the purpose of illustration. Now, assume "health foods" has 10,000 google searches a day and has 4,000,0000 pages listed when I type "health food" in google. This is obviously a competitive niche with a lot of searches. Now within health food there are smaller niches say "health food store", "health food recipes" etc.. which have smaller searches and much less competition.

Should I target the larger niche and base the site around "health food" for example and use the less competitive keywords within that segment to drive traffic to my "health food" site? So have articles on all aspects of those smaller health food micro niches to make one site. Or should I forget about the "health food" as a whole and base my site around the micro niche which could be "health food stores" or "health food recipe" but not both?
#micro #niche
  • Profile picture of the author kristinecpa
    I have had better results with micro-niches. You narrow your target audience when you use a micro-niche, but you also get higher quality leads.

    It's also easier to get traffic with micro-niches because they generally have less traffic than broader niches do. Looking forward to other Warriors' responses to this question...
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[421118].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Alex Sol
    I would go for micro niches - mostly because I am all about SEO and the smaller amount of sites compete with me the easier it would be to rank high in Google.

    Also, micro niches are usually easier to sell to since you know exactly what they want. As you mentioned "Healthy Foods" - could mean so many things! But when you go into healthy food recipes, you already have a better idea of what they want. You can dig even deeper: Healthy Meet Recipes, Healthy Desert Recipes...etc

    Alex
    Signature
    Alex Sol, Full time online marketer since 2007
    The Extra Paycheck Blog | Extra Paycheck Podcast
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[421144].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author ManAbout
      Originally Posted by Alex Sol View Post

      I would go for micro niches - mostly because I am all about SEO and the smaller amount of sites compete with me the easier it would be to rank high in Google.

      Alex
      OK, and this is the part I am confused about. I understand that "health food" for example is very competitive. But, I am not targeting the "health food" keyword anyway, even I am going for the larger site. If I am targeting the "health food supplements" and "health food recipes" keywords for example on my larger "health food" site, would I not have the same lower competition as I would have if I did one seperate site about "health food supplements" ONLY? In the larger site I could break it down by categories and be able to include some of those keywords in the url even though it will be at the end of the url. Would that in itself make a huge difference to SEO?
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[421156].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Alex Sol
        Originally Posted by ManAbout View Post

        OK, and this is the part I am confused about. I understand that "health food" for example is very competitive. But, I am not targeting the "health food" keyword anyway, even I am going for the larger site. If I am targeting the "health food supplements" and "health food recipes" keywords for example on my larger "health food" site, would I not have the same lower competition as I would have if I did one seperate site about "health food supplements" ONLY? In the larger site I could break it down by categories and be able to include some of those keywords in the url even though it will be at the end of the url. Would that in itself make a huge difference to SEO?
        You are right. You do not need to make a separate website for each micro niche. Build one site in the INDUSTRY, then you divide the stuff within the site. Great for SEO as well
        Signature
        Alex Sol, Full time online marketer since 2007
        The Extra Paycheck Blog | Extra Paycheck Podcast
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[421212].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author TheInternetWorkshop
        Originally Posted by ManAbout View Post

        Would that in itself make a huge difference to SEO?
        Although I don't profess to be an SEO expert, I'll give you my personal experience. When I try to target a bunch of keywords for a "universal site" like your "health foods", my conversion rates for each keyword go way down.

        When I create what your calling a "micro-niche" site focused specifically on one keyword, like your "health food supplements" or "health food recipes" I get MUCH better conversion rates.

        Remember, it's not only about how much traffic you get, but what kind.

        From my experience, if you give someone too many choices they're going to get easily confused. And a confused mind will never make a decision. Personally, I think you'd be better off created micro niche sites focused on each keyword, use a squeeze form and then start marketing other options.

        Just my 2 cents for what it's worth.

        Good luck either way.

        CID
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[421238].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author Benjamin Eddy
          In order to answer your question, how about we start with this.

          What are you trying to accomplish?
          Signature
          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[421335].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author vicone
          I find that a useful way to approach it is to have a 3 tier strategy:

          Broad Niche - Upper level - Suitable for a newsletter covering sub-niches. Eg: Health Foods ("Health Foods For Successful Living"). Also acts as a directory to the sub-niche sites that you build.

          Sub-Niche - 2nd level - Excellent for Hub sites and plenty of content for blogs; eg, Health Food Recipes, Health Food Supplements. Contains money pages - sales and pre-sell pages - as well as blog. Attracts lots of search engine traffic. Fairly targeted but often lots of competition. Very good for content site that grows over time and gradually improves ranking. Set up structure with different categories.

          Micro-Niche - 3rd level - Product site - targeted to specific products like "Glaxo Vitamin C", "Wheat Germ and Avocado Recipe", etc. Very targeted visitors with high conversion rate. Also easier to rank highly in search engine pages. As well, a good source for opt-ins to the newsletter maintained on the Broad Niche site.

          By having an overview like this it helps you to plan your marketing strategy. This way approaches your related sites like an Architect who plans a house ahead of time and so has the different parts working together - bathrooms, hallways and bedrooms all well-placed. An alternative is to build a new bedroom every time you have a child and attach it wherever you can get it to fit.

          Ivan
          Signature
          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[421373].message }}
          • Profile picture of the author T.I.M.
            Originally Posted by vicone View Post


            By having an overview like this it helps you to plan your marketing strategy. This way approaches your related sites like an Architect who plans a house ahead of time and so has the different parts working together - bathrooms, hallways and bedrooms all well-placed. An alternative is to build a new bedroom every time you have a child and attach it wherever you can get it to fit.

            Ivan
            I like this analogy!

            Is the new bedroom a new site or new category within the site?
            Signature

            {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[421525].message }}
          • Profile picture of the author ManAbout
            Originally Posted by vicone View Post

            I find that a useful way to approach it is to have a 3 tier strategy:

            Broad Niche - Upper level - Suitable for a newsletter covering sub-niches. Eg: Health Foods ("Health Foods For Successful Living"). Also acts as a directory to the sub-niche sites that you build.

            Sub-Niche - 2nd level - Excellent for Hub sites and plenty of content for blogs; eg, Health Food Recipes, Health Food Supplements. Contains money pages - sales and pre-sell pages - as well as blog. Attracts lots of search engine traffic. Fairly targeted but often lots of competition. Very good for content site that grows over time and gradually improves ranking. Set up structure with different categories.

            Micro-Niche - 3rd level - Product site - targeted to specific products like "Glaxo Vitamin C", "Wheat Germ and Avocado Recipe", etc. Very targeted visitors with high conversion rate. Also easier to rank highly in search engine pages. As well, a good source for opt-ins to the newsletter maintained on the Broad Niche site.

            By having an overview like this it helps you to plan your marketing strategy. This way approaches your related sites like an Architect who plans a house ahead of time and so has the different parts working together - bathrooms, hallways and bedrooms all well-placed. An alternative is to build a new bedroom every time you have a child and attach it wherever you can get it to fit.

            Ivan
            Interesting strategy. So, let me understand this, we are talking about 3 layers of sites, the Broad Niche(which is one site) and then the sub niches and micro niches which will be multiple sites each. What would be the best linking strategy for such a structure? Do you link them all up the chain to the main niche site? And would you have each layer on separate hosting accounts?

            Also, where would it be easiest to start? The main niche site and then build your way down or vice versa?
            {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[423032].message }}
            • Profile picture of the author vicone
              Manabout wrote:

              Interesting strategy. So, let me understand this, we are talking about 3 layers of sites, the Broad Niche(which is one site) and then the sub niches and micro niches which will be multiple sites each. What would be the best linking strategy for such a structure? Do you link them all up the chain to the main niche site? And would you have each layer on separate hosting accounts?

              Also, where would it be easiest to start? The main niche site and then build your way down or vice versa?
              The easiest way to start:

              1. Having chosen the broad niche, run the keyword through a tool like MicroNicheFinder, Keyword Elite, or Google's free suggestion tool and it will identify the sub-niches which have the strongest demand. List these with the figures for competition and searches.

              2. Check the buying trends for the sub niche as reported by Google. This is also included in MicroNicheFinder. The advantage with this is that it tells you which months have most demand for that sub-niche. Give preference at this time to those which have strong demand throughout the year or within the next few months. Those with high Christmas demand can wait until later. You want sub-niches with high demand and as little competition as possible.

              3. Consider a name for your newsletter as you'll be registering this domain and it would be good if it had elements in common with the names you'll be registering for the sub-niches. For instance "Health Foods For Successful Living".

              4. Select 1 or 2 sub-niches (to begin with) and register names that have the keyword for that sub-niche as well as elements in common with the name you've chosen for the broad niche (the newsletter). For instance, "SuccessfulHealthFoodSupplements" or "SuccessfulHealthFoodRecipes". These are fairly easy to find and provide a visual connection with your newsletter. Probably about 20 sub-niches will stand out but select one or two to start with.

              5. Set up a core site for one of your sub-niches. At this stage, it would consist of an index page which describes the categories for that niche plus category pages. Also have links on the front page to various Category Pages.

              6. Category pages are basically lists of say 10-12 products you are recommending along with features for that product. It is basically a pre-sell page for those products. Each product on a category page links to a sales page - either on your own site or at the merchant's site. Category pages have titles like "Health Supplements For Children", "Health Supplements For Diabetics", "Health Supplements For Women". Running the sub-niche keyword through a keyword research tool will give you an idea of the key areas of demand and the sort of categories required - as many as you want.

              7. The newsletter site and sub-niche sites are registered as com domains. They are being built for the long haul and content will be added to the sub-niche sites.

              8. Add a blog to each of the sub-niche sites with daily posts for the first month to build up content. Weekly thereafter. A mixture of original and public domain (eg articles from directories) can be used for this. Some of the material for the blog can be set up to post automatically with a plugin such as ZipPoster. This reduces a lot of the work required to maintain the blog.

              9. Start building individual mini-sites (micro-niches) for each product you wish to promote. These will naturally have links to a sales page - either your own or the merchant's. These are targeted at specific products, such as "GlaxoVitaminC". They can be info domains if cheaper as there will be a lot more of these. They get high rankings fairly easily.

              10. For linking, avoid the appearance of a link farm. You don't want to be sandboxed by the search engines. One way links from product sites A -> B ->C ->D. Also one-way links from product sites to sub-niche site.

              11. 2 way link between sub-niche sites and the broad niche site (newsletter). Keep links down between sub-niche sites. Connection can be from sub-niche -> broad niche -> sub-niche.

              12. They can all be on the same hosting account - you aren't attempting to build a link farm.

              I think that gives a good overview of the design I was referring to.

              Ivan
              Signature
              {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[423362].message }}
              • Profile picture of the author ManAbout
                Originally Posted by vicone View Post

                I think that gives a good overview of the design I was referring to.

                Ivan
                Thanks for the detailed response. I posted this over on the SEO forum but didnt get any response, so the structure you are recommending is number 3 below and then those linking up to whateverhealthfoodside.com :

                1) whateverhealthfoodsite.com/health-food-recipes/
                whateverhealthfoodsite.com/health-food-supplements/

                2) health-food-recipes.whateverhealthfoodsite.com
                health-food-supplements.whateverhealthfoodsite.com

                3) some-health-food-recipes-site.com
                some-health-food-supplements-site.com

                What are your thoughts on Number 2? If we are talking about completely distinct content?
                {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[423634].message }}
                • Profile picture of the author vicone
                  Remember that each sub-niche (hub) site will also have a blog for promotional purposes and additional content. Putting it all onto the same domain could become cumbersome. You'd have to check that your host would allow 20 or more blogs for sub-niches.

                  My preferred structure would be:

                  Level 1. SuccessfulHealthFoods.com

                  Level 2. SuccessfulHealthFoodSupplements.com
                  SuccessfulHealthFoodRecipes.com

                  Level 3 GlaxoVitamiinC.info
                  WheatgermAndAvocadoRecipe.info

                  Level 3 sites are quick and easy to set up. You may have 20 or more of these for each sub-niche. You won't need nearly as many Level 1 and 2 sites as Level 3. A level 3 site on its own domain and original content gets indexed quickly and holds it provided you progress slowly with promotions during the first few weeks and are careful not to get it sandboxed.

                  A variation of having Level 3 sites as sub domains on a Level 2 (sub-niche) site would help to keep costs down. It would also lose some of the advantage of linking from the level 3 sites to the level 2 site, which normally helps with related back links for the level 2 site.

                  Ivan
                  Signature
                  {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[423682].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author creativemark77
    Banned
    Go Niche, then microniche.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[421197].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author brettkbrett
    my opinion micro-niche.
    Signature
    My journey to an amazing memory.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[421346].message }}

Trending Topics