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Anyone ranking any micro niche sites on 1st page any more?

by mrtrance
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
So I used a search string in Google to find 100's of micro niche sites (these are mostly exact match domains in .com/.net/.org) with their main keyword that they were trying to rank for in the domain as well as the title tag of the site..i.e. "smallbluewidget.org" and title tag of home page is "Small Blue Widget".

So before when you did a search for that main keyword ("small blue widget") most of the time the site would be ranking on the first page of Google at least for their main keyword (which is also their exact match domain). But now going thorough many of these sites and doing a search for their main keyword they are no where to be found on first page or even the first 5 pages. Many of these sites were targeted towards consumer products and it seems now only the big retail sites are dominating the first page (even for obscure 3-4 word keywords) whereas before you could see 2-3 of these sites mixed in there as well (some even ranking at the #1 spot).

So is anyone having any sort of success with ranking these sort of sites now? Is it even a viable option these days to start up such sites with such setup with exact match domain, relevant onpage SEO (not over optimized like before) and offpage SEO that is Google friendly?

How about sites that were hit with the updates? Any reason to get those site moving again or are they dead and it's best to start fresh?
#1st #micro #niche #page #ranking #sites
  • Profile picture of the author mgreener
    Google doesn't really want these sites, unless they are the "best" information for a particular search.
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  • Profile picture of the author derfootmarcus
    Wait are you joking? MNS sites are still effective, and still very effective, just slightly less effective than they were before in regards to spammy and duplicate cntent... they still have a huge bonus over other non EMD domains. First page? First 5 pages? You must not be looking very carefully or probably didnt look at all in all honestly, a lot of the most difficult keywords have EMDs on the first page.

    Eg. Weight Loss <- for me ranking just over weightwatchers and other actual companies
    Credit Cards < 1st spot over Visa and others
    cheap car insurance <- 2 EMD's in the top 3 over national car insurance brands

    I have plenty of EMB's and near EMB's ranking that saw not even the slightest ranking disturbance by any update.

    The updates took away the absolute garbage EMD's, not even that bad EMD's and trust me there are still some crappy ones ranking over much better content and linking for tough niches. If you can find an EMD in a good niche be sure to get it as soon as you can because you will find it much easier to rank those above a branded domain.

    If you were hit by an update, get some unique content written by an English speaker on that domain and take down your duplicate content and you will be back in no time.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
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      Originally Posted by derfootmarcus View Post

      Wait are you joking? MNS sites are still effective, and still very effective, just slightly less effective than they were before in regards to spammy and duplicate cntent... they still have a huge bonus over other non EMD domains. First page? First 5 pages? You must not be looking very carefully or probably didnt look at all in all honestly, a lot of the most difficult keywords have EMDs on the first page.

      Eg. Weight Loss
      Credit Cards < 1st spot over Visa and others
      cheap car insurance <- 2 EMD's in the top 3 over national car insurance brands

      I have plenty of EMB's and near EMB's ranking that saw not even the slightest ranking disturbance by any update.

      The updates took away the absolute garbage EMD's, not even that bad EMD's. If you can find an EMD in a good niche be sure to get it as soon as you can because you will find it much easier to rank those above a branded domain.

      If you were hit by an update, get some unique content written by an English speaker on that domain and take down your duplicate content and you will be back in no time.

      The #1 ranked site for the keyword credit cards isn't even remotely a micro niche site (+9K pages indexed) - site:www.creditcards.com.

      They're also working with sub-domains for international sites (see their footer links), like Wikipedia does.
      1. hxxp://www.tarjetasdecredito.com - (159 indexed pages)
      2. hxxp://uk.creditcards.com - (1,120 indexed pages)
      3. hxxp://australia.creditcards.com - (395 indexed pages)
      4. hxxp://canada.creditcards.com - (461 indexed pages)
      5. hxxp://blogs.creditcards.com - (4,300 indexed pages)

      Your focused on EMDs, but there's a lot more to that site/setup than a simple EMD.

      That's a network going on.
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      • Profile picture of the author derfootmarcus
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        The #1 ranked site for the keyword credit cards isn't even remotely a micro niche site (+9K pages indexed) - site:www.creditcards.com.
        They're also working with sub-domains for international sites (see their footer links), like Wikipedia does.
        hxxp://www.tarjetasdecredito.com/
        hxxp://uk.creditcards.com/
        hxxp://australia.creditcards.com/
        hxxp://canada.creditcards.com/

        Your focused on EMDs, but there's a lot more to that site/setup than a simple EMD.
        ok ok, i guess I was thinking about EMD more than MNS so I suppose that that is a bad example. Thanks for correcting me, but MNS sites are still ranking very well if they have good, unique and well written content for obviously less competitive niches is the point I suppose that I am trying to make. You agree?
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        • Profile picture of the author mrtrance
          Originally Posted by derfootmarcus View Post

          ok ok, i guess I was thinking about EMD more than MNS so I suppose that that is a bad example. Thanks for correcting me, but MNS sites are still ranking very well if they have good, unique and well written content for obviously less competitive niches is the point I suppose that I am trying to make. You agree?
          Well I went thorough quite a few of those sites I found and just did a keyword search using their EMD (which is also their main kw) to see if they rank on page 1 or not. None of these sites show on page 1 or even top 50 results. And I am talking about real non competitive keywords that are 3, 4 or 5 words in length. For example before you would see sites targeting kws such as "portable kw1 kw2 kw3" or "small kw1 kw2" ranking high when they had that keyword in domain and title as well. Now when I check for similar competitive kws which do have the EMD are not ranking whatsoever.

          So I'm just wondering if all these sites that I was able to find if they all got hit with updates and have not recovered or the site owners just have stop working on them all together? This finding of these sites really makes finding which niches are good to go into even if the EMD is not there, we can do a PMD and start ranking. The research has already been done since these folks already believed it was s good niche to go into and it also gave me ideas into niches I would have never thought about.
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        • Profile picture of the author TuNguyen
          No. I think you've missed the point of the OPs question.

          Originally Posted by derfootmarcus View Post

          ok ok, i guess I was thinking about EMD more than MNS so I suppose that that is a bad example. Thanks for correcting me, but MNS sites are still ranking very well if they have good, unique and well written content for obviously less competitive niches is the point I suppose that I am trying to make. You agree?
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  • Profile picture of the author pspro
    Originally Posted by mrtrance View Post

    So I used a search string in Google to find 100's of micro niche sites (these are mostly exact match domains in .com/.net/.org) with their main keyword that they were trying to rank for in the domain as well as the title tag of the site..i.e. "smallbluewidget.org" and title tag of home page is "Small Blue Widget".

    So before when you did a search for that main keyword ("small blue widget") most of the time the site would be ranking on the first page of Google at least for their main keyword (which is also their exact match domain). But now going thorough many of these sites and doing a search for their main keyword they are no where to be found on first page or even the first 5 pages. Many of these sites were targeted towards consumer products and it seems now only the big retail sites are dominating the first page (even for obscure 3-4 word keywords) whereas before you could see 2-3 of these sites mixed in there as well (some even ranking at the #1 spot).

    So is anyone having any sort of success with ranking these sort of sites now? Is it even a viable option these days to start up such sites with such setup with exact match domain, relevant onpage SEO (not over optimized like before) and offpage SEO that is Google friendly?



    How about sites that were hit with the updates? Any reason to get those site moving again or are they dead and it's best to start fresh?
    I came across a EMD that fell from Google grace because it was the typically thin EMD site. I'm trying to see if I can make my way back by adding some quality content. I'll let you know how it goes in a couple of weeks.
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    • Profile picture of the author mrtrance
      Originally Posted by pspro View Post

      I came across a EMD that fell from Google grace because it was the typically thin EMD site. I'm trying to see if I can make my way back by adding some quality content. I'll let you know how it goes in a couple of weeks.
      I've noticed that I can't find any of these EMD micro niche sites that target product keywords on the first page any longer (and I have gone thorough a lot of the of those sites that I found from my search). It just seems now that for any of these sort of keywords "cheap kw1 kw2" , "best kw1 kw2 kw3" , "portable kw1 kw2", etc. for which they had the EMD and optimized for that keyword the big retail sites are ranking once again such was walmart, target, amazon, etc.

      Before if we saw these retail sites we know it would be easy to rank and get our sites on first page with little work. But now it seems all those sites are completely gone from the first page and replaced with those retail store websites once again.

      Just trying to figure out if I want to jump back in with micro niche sites with either EMDs or PMDs (of course changing the way we optimize onsite and offsite due to the recent Google changes) and see if we can rank once again for low to mid competition keywords that I've seem to discovered from finding all these micro niche sites.

      Anyone still doing these sites, but now building your microniche sites out further with more content, etc.?
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      • Profile picture of the author pspro
        Originally Posted by mrtrance View Post


        Anyone still doing these sites, but now building your microniche sites out further with more content, etc.?
        update: I added 3 pages of content to the site in question has made it's way back into the "Hot 100" - I'm just going to let it simmer for a while now and see what happens. Lot's of other fish in the sea to go after.
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  • Profile picture of the author squadron
    Originally Posted by mrtrance View Post

    ...

    So is anyone having any sort of success with ranking these sort of sites now? Is it even a viable option these days to start up such sites with such setup with exact match domain, relevant onpage SEO (not over optimized like before) and offpage SEO that is Google friendly?
    For what it's worth, I have a site that ranks pretty well for fish funerals. It might just be luck, but it's an exact match domain with pretty loose onsite SEO, 49 links and a few Facebook likes.

    I guess the site is seen by Google as the authority site in it's niche
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  • Profile picture of the author patco
    I find it a little more harder to rank those sites. Don't know why exactly. But if you provide UNIQUE and USEFUL content, be sure that everything will be OK!
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