Using categories for SEO

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I was listening to a podcast the other day about a women that had 40 web sites in different niches and was earning $10,000 from her blogs.

The podcast speaker was saying this was too many websites and asked the women why she didn't just make each niche site a "category" on one web site. So, for example, instead of her doing a web site with 20 articles on about "automatic coffee grinders", she could have started a generic domain name with different categories and one of them could have been "automatic coffee grinders"

I hadn't thought of this strategy before, but now I ask what would be the benefits or negatives of this strategy with SEO?
Does Google rank "categories" as well as websites, etc etc?
#search engine optimization #categories #seo
  • I think the point is that it is easier to rank well for a niche site than it is for a general website. When you sell a lot of totally unrelated products from one website, it is much harder to rank for any of those types of products because the entire site is not laser-focused on one central thing. That makes it harder to get links and harder for search engines to determine what the site as a whole is an "authority" on.

    Can it be done? Sure, with a ton of time, many, many great backlinks and a whole lot of advertising budget. Wayfair.com and Hayneedle.com started out as dozens of different niche sites that they eventually combined into one site. In the case of Wayfair, although they do sell some unrelated things, the vast majority of what they sell are products for the home so even those "unrelated" individual sites that were combined into the Wayfair site were really part of a much broader niche.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Because when you start a site with many categories just think of your competitors. Who will be yours.


    Certainly, if you are targeting all electronics products then most evidently you will be competing against sites like Amazon.
  • It looks weird and not so professional if we combined websites of different niches.
  • Sure, categories are a good way to organize things but this is NOT what the women does. She doesn't put her assets in order, she makes money! Google doesn't care if the site is well organized, it looks for sites with consistent content about a specific topic and will rank it if people search it. There is no category in search results. The results are articles, photos, videos, sites !
  • @mikeb222 what was her name?
    yes its hard to rank and what she did is perfect!
    Its much better to rank one website separately from others than mixed one.
    • [1] reply
    • Claire Smith
      Podcast was from Niche Pursuits about a year old
  • Having 40 blogs is really unbelievable to me. How can she manage those? Anyway, having a niche site is better than a generic sites focusing on many niches. It helps in ranking and gives more authority.
    • [1] reply
    • It involves a little management work and it is doable though I only recommend it when the owner automates publishing articles that are SEOed before they are published.

      Example: The work is done online or offline, your choice, and uploaded to the sites one at a time. The work entails writing 1,000 word articles with on-page SEO and takes about 30 minutes for each article. The software to upload the articles takes one or two minutes per site.

      To break it down:
      1. 10 Articles = 5 hours
      2. Publish = 20 minutes
      =================
      Total: 6 hours (breaks and interruptions)

      Now. say you have 40 sites and will publish 1 article per site every 5 days. That is 40 articles published every 5 days for 40 sites. Since 10 articles = 6 hours it will take 24 hours to create the 40 articles.1 hr and 20 minutes to publish the 40 articles to 40 sites.

      Total: 25 hours and 20 minutes.

      Conclusion: Say you round off the 25 hrs and 20 mins to 26 hours. That is a 26 hour work week. The woman is earning $10K weekly for 26 hours work. Of course there are other factors such as paid traffic if any, hosting expenses, online tools if any etc.

      Not to shabby!
  • I usually use categories to do proper silo structure other than that I havnt thought of using it in any other manner.
  • Ok, I see your points, what about related website with niche category topics.
    So your site is called "coffeemakersdotcom" then you have different categories like
    1. Coffee Machines
    2. Coffee Grinders
    3. Coffee Tables
    4. Coffee Makers
    5. Coffee Spoons
    40 articles on each.
    What do you think?
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    Using categories for SEO

    I was listening to a podcast the other day about a women that had 40 web sites in different niches and was earning $10,000 from her blogs. The podcast speaker was saying this was too many websites and asked the women why she didn't just make each niche site a "category" on one web site. So, for example, instead of her doing a web site with 20 articles on about "automatic coffee grinders", she could have started a generic domain name with different categories and one of them could have been "automatic coffee grinders"