successful niche sites

Successful niche sites like Pat Flynn’s securityguardtraininghq.comÂ have been built fromÂ their keywords. Before creating the site, Pat researched keywords and found “security guard training” was a highly searched for term with little competition. These are the key elements to finding a successful niche idea from which to build a site on. See my previous article creating niche sites.

Successful Niche Sites – Keyword Research

Successful niche sites are built on keyword research. As you can see, Pat’s website has his main keyword in the domain name. Google is paying less attention to keywords in the domain name, which in its time was a big factor. However, Pat’s site wasn’t a great success due to one factor alone.

He built a good site and there wasn’t anything like it at the time. As a result it ranked and got linked to. It built authority over time and now it still ranks on Google. Pat’s site is a great example of what successful niche sites should be. Take a look at Pat’s other site and read his story here.

Successful Niche Sites -Â Traffic

Traffic, or lack of it is probably the main problem for anyone looking to create successful niche sites. Creating a site and ranking it for your main keywords is not that easy any more. Maybe 10 years ago it was fairly simple but today you have millions of websites to compete with. Also Google uses a number of factors to rank a site and focuses more on authority now. This means the domain name has less weight to it, partially due to all the affiliate marketers jumping on the domain name keyword band wagon.

Successful Niche Sites – Organic Traffic

A niche site is built to get free traffic from Google. If it doesn’t rank highly for it’s main keywords, it doesn’t get any traffic. Of course there are other ways to get traffic to your website. You shouldn’t rely on Google alone to bring your visitors and you can also target long tail keywords with your blog. If you only reply on one source of traffic you leave yourselfÂ very vulnerable. But free traffic is great. Free traffic keeps on coming. If you can make money from your visitors and those visitors are free, it’s mostly profit if you can monetize.

Monetizing Your Website

How you monetize your site has a great deal to do with how successful it is. Get it wrong and your site won’t make any money. You can monetize with Google’s Adsense or with an affiliate program. With Adsense you need a lot of traffic and with an affiliate program you need the right kind of traffic. The right traffic comes from creating content with your audience in mind. See why is target market important.

successful niche sites

Other Methods Of Building An Online income

Building niche sites takes time and is risky. You may not rank your site on Google. If it ranks it may drop off the search engines results. You can’t guarantee it will work. There are other methods of building an online business which are much more straight forward and which are proven profitable models. Access this video series which will explain how to build your own internet business from scratch.

patt-flynn If you’re wondering whether it’s worth creating niche sites or not, read on. I followed Pat Flynn for some time and his Niche Profit Duel competitions he ran online. If you haven’t heard of Pat, he created the website smartpassiveincome.com and ran a competition based around his success with a site:Â securityguardtraininghq.com. He built the site and was earning more than $1200 a month in less than a year.

The site still ranks for the keyword he picked, you guessed it (security guard training). So can anyone do the same thing and how easy is it to build a profitable niche website and earn a regular income from it?

Creating Niche Sites – What Is A Niche Site?

A niche site starts with keyword research. Using the Google’s keyword planner, or even one of the many research tools you can purchase, you can find untapped keywords to base a website around. In the case of the aforementioned site of Pat Flynn’s he found the keywords “security guard training” were a highly searched for term which had little competition on the search engine Google. He didn’t know anything about security guard training before this and learned all the knowledge he shared on the site after having chosen these keywords. The two elements for keywords research are:

Find a keyword which gets a good search amount every month and
Which has few competing pages in the organic searches.

I talk about this same strategy in more depth in my ebook Niche Blogging For Profit.

Niche Sites Today – Is This Still A Good Strategy?

Pat’s site wasn’t just a throw up site which he forgot about. He put a lot of work in to it. It worked because he made it an awesome site. One page niche sites with very little content and stuffed with affiliate links won’t rank on Google. You need to create something which is better than what is on offer. The same strategy still works but there is much more competition online now than when this site was created. Also Google has changed a lot since then too.

It ranks great content but places more value on authority now. Small sites with little or no back links, social media presence or traffic simply won’t rank well. Aged domains gain authority over time. Google has multiple signals to decide on a website’s value. You have to create value and the best way to do this is with an authority site, rather than many niche sites which all require a lot of work to keep them ranking.

Creating Niche Sites – My Experience

I spent a good couple of years creating niche sites.Â They ranked in the early days but you need to keep on top of them. Unless you are continually adding content and building authority, there will be someone out there who is, and who will outrank you. Pat’s site worked well because there were no other sites like his at the time. He found a great niche. I worked long and hard and was mostly disappointed with the results from my sites. The key really is to provide something of quality.

Don’t chase the money. You need to think into what Google wants. Trying to ‘trick’ the search engines is a losing game. Quality content and good keyword research is a good start. Then promote and keep promoting your site. I ran into problems because I spread myself too thin. I was juggling several sites, none of which I could maintain interest in. Choose a topic you love and you have a good start. That way you will always have something to write about.

Successful Niche Sites

If profit is the goal then there are quicker and easier ways to build an online income. Taking your chances with Google can leave you very disappointed. It also leaves you very vulnerable. If Google changes something it can dramatically affect your business. Many websites have dropped from the rankings following an algorithm change by Google. This can be devastating for your business, especially if your income depends on it. There are other ways to build traffic and stability to an online business:

Advertising – Adwords, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.
List Building
Offline Advertising

But you need a product to sell which will cover your expenditures. How you make money money from your website is Â as important as how you get traffic to it. Paying for traffic means you need buyers and you have to be careful as to how you do it. Otherwise you could end up spending a lot of money for nothing. Go after the ‘free’ traffic from Google and you could end up spending a lot of time for nothing. Which is worse?

Creating Nice Sites – A Profitable Online Model

Access a profitable online model which you can use to leverage tools and technology and reach a global audience with high ticket digital products. Access a free video series and get my ebook too here.