According to some estimates, there are almost two billion websites on the internet. Thousands more are being created every single day.
But out of all these websites, most never receive a single targeted visitor and end up going under before making any impact on the web.
The truth is, the internet is a harsh place – most conceivable niches are already dominated by at least a few prominent niche sites, so to break in and have a shot at competing, you need to have something of true value to offer.
That means that just putting together a WordPress website in a few hours isn’t going to cut it – you need to have a clear business plan and establish goals that you want to achieve if you’re even going to have a chance of making it.
Still, there are things you can do to increase your odds of achieving success.
Most successful niche sites share certain elements that make them much more likely to reach their goals, and if you know them, it can contribute to your site’s performance as well.
So read on, and learn a few of the critical elements that go into developing a great niche website.
Excellent Web Hosting Provider
Before you can even start thinking about what to include on your website, you need to make sure that when people visit your site, they’ll be able to reach it without any issues.
And that means that you have to choose a web hosting provider that has a track record for delivering a reliable service that doesn’t suffer from frequent interruptions.
Unfortunately, not all of the more popular hosting provider meet this basic requirement – a lot of bigger hosting companies are infamous for their poor connectivity and various errors.
So how can you choose the best website hosting for your business?
Well, the first thing you want to look like is their reputation – website owners are vocal people, so if a hosting provider doesn’t deliver, you’re likely to find a lot of negative reviews on the web.
Another thing to consider is simplicity – if you’re not an experienced coder, you want to spend as little time as possible in the control panel, and be able to install a simple WordPress site on your server with a push of a button while also being able to choose from a wide range of responsive WordPress themes.
Finally, make sure that the hosting provider has servers that can load your website at a good speed so that you don’t suffer SEO penalties for a slow loading site.
A Profitable Niche
Putting together a niche website is hard work.
Setting up the site, researching and writing content, and promoting it will take a lot of time, so you don’t want all that effort to go to waste.
That’s why perhaps the most crucial aspect that determines your success is your ability to choose a niche that has the potential to bring you consistent returns on your efforts.
Obviously, you want to look for a niche that’s interesting to you, so the process of building it isn’t a complete chore, but at the end of the day, you need to know before starting that it is possible to make money, or else it’s just not worth to get started.
Here are a couple of things you should look at:
- How competitive is your niche
- How many people are interested in it
Luckily, finding this out is really simple – you can figure out both without having to step away from your computer.
By doing simple keyword research using a tool like Keywords Everywhere, you can quickly look through some of the most popular sites in your niche and figure out if there are a lot of niche websites already in place.
This will also show you numbers of searches for various keywords, revealing if there are enough people interested in the niche for your effort to be worth it.
Finally, you should look at the sites in the niche and see if they are making any money – try to see if they’re promoting any products, and if so, if you can find an affiliate program for them.
You should also use a tool like KWFinder (not free, but you can do five free searches per day) to determine if it’s realistic to attain rankings for the most popular keywords. Sure, it’s possible to find long-tail keywords that will be less competitive, but having a rough idea of how hard you’ll have to work is always useful for setting clear expectations.
High-Quality Content
There’s one thing you need to understand before even considering opening up a website – you will need to work hard at creating the best possible content in your niche, or else you won’t be able to achieve any satisfactory results.
Long gone are the days when you could stuff your content full of keywords and expect Google to get you to the top of the rankings.
And even if by some miracle you do cheat Google and climb to the top, poor content will drive away any readers that do stumble on your site.
How can you create high-quality content?
Luckily, it isn’t impossible, even if you’re not an experienced writer.
If you think about it, people searching for solutions online aren’t looking for the next great novel, but just want to find reliable and in-depth information that helps them solve their problems.
That’s why your main focus should be on doing thorough research and attaining in-depth knowledge about your subject so that you’re able to provide genuinely valuable content and help your readers move forward.
This will help your niche website in a number of ways – if you do it right, you will become the best source of information in your subject and people will be naturally inclined to share your articles, which will send Google signals that you’re trustworthy and provide a huge boost to your SEO efforts.
And since the information that you provide is useful, your readers will be much more likely to trust your recommendations on products as well.
If you’re still hesitant about writing the content yourself, you can always hire writers for niche sites that can create everything for you.
Sound SEO Principles
Niche websites depend on SEO for most of their traffic, so having a deep understanding of how to get your site to appear on SERPs is the most effective way to grow your business and maintain a steady stream of leads.
But that can be difficult, especially since Google is consistently updating its search engine algorithm, which can be hard to keep up with.
However, no matter how many rules and guidelines change, you can bet that one thing will remain consistent – if you want to achieve and maintain your search engine rankings, you need to try to provide the best possible experience to your site’s visitors.
That means not only having a fast, easy to use, and responsive website, but also writing the best content in your niche and making sure that it provides an objective and valuable coverage of the subject.
But even if you understand all of that, you should still keep your finger on the pulse of the SEO world, follow the top bloggers, and read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Following the best current practices of both on-page and off-page SEO can help you stay ahead of your competition and ensure that your site doesn’t disappear once the next big Google algorithm update comes along.
