Daily Niche Site Ideas

One of the most important parts of starting a niche site, is getting it some attention from the search engines. This can sometimes be pretty frustrating though because of all the “ranking” rules that Google, Yahoo and Bing have, but by following a few simple guidelines on your homepage layout, you should rank well without too many headaches.

This post is based on a situation I found myself in last month with one of my sites. It took a while but I was finally ranking number 1 in all the search engines for the term, “distortion pedal reviews”. (If you didn’t already guess, I have a site that sells these items)

Upon realizing this, I thought it would be a good idea to modify the home page in order to get some more sales, but in return I made some changes that knocked me out of my number 1 spot, and into the deep depths of Google’s index. Not a good idea in the long run. ..

We are going to be using the site I mentioned above as an example: http:www.rockdistortionpedals.com

Google Ranking

What I did wrong:

• Decided to monetize the homepage more. I think this conflicted with the primary intent of the site, which is to provide reviews for pedals.
• I removed approximately 250 words of content to make space for current auctions on EBay for distortion pedals. (This was my main downfall)
• I added an EBay feed that displayed only around 3 items on sale, but I think it was what kicked me out of the top spot.

Upon realizing what happened, I reverted many of the changes and got the homepage back to the state it was in when it was ranking well. After about a week or so, I was back on top and I had learned my lesson.

Here are a few guidelines that I follow when I am designed my home page which usually helps them rank well.

Home Page Design Tips:

• Your homepage should directly reflect the overall purpose of your site. Try to keep it clean, professional and relevant to your niche.
• There should be around 500 words of keyword rich content that provides general information about the “niche” you are marketing.
• Add visual links, or image links to some of your best product reviews of guides.
• I like to add a YouTube video in hopes that it will make visitors who hit my home page decide to stick around.
• Finally, DO NOT add EBay auctions to your homepage.  (This is primarily relevant for those of us who are members of EBay’s Partner Network)

Here is an example of one of my latest sites that implement these guidelines: http://www.hybridgolfironsets.com

Homepage ranking takes patience, and sometimes some experimentation. Hopefully this article has given you some ideas to try out to improve your ranking. It is important to mention though, that without great content on the rest of your site, ranking well will be pretty unattainable.  If you start with the content, then make a homepage that reflects the authority of your information, you’ll have no troubles ranking well.

A lot of people may find find themselves in the same boat that I was in when I started blogging sites dedicated to niches; I was writing good, useful content, but I was not attracting many visitors.

This happens a lot of the time because sites with similar content may have a higher page rank than your newly established sites, and it may be hard to appear before them in the search engines. Below is the process I normally take when I write a new article for one of my sites. It is really just a starting point, as there are many ways to promote your articles, but this method is quick, easy and it works for me.

Following these 6 steps will help get your blog some well deserved attention.

Step 1: Write some Great Content

You want to write informative articles on your site that are related to your niche. This type of content is really what your visitors want, and it is what will keep them coming back.

You can view a detailed post about writing niche site content that I posted a while back here.

Step 2: Submit your Article to Reddit.com

Once you sign up for a Reddit account, you’ll be able to post links to them on the site and have thousands of people hopefully check them out. Readers are able to vote your link “up” if it is really good, which will result in more visits.

Reddit also has a high page rank, which means that you’ll get a good backlink from the site.

Step 3: Submit your Article to Digg.com

Digg is a lot like Reddit and you’ll experience the same benefits from posting on this site as well.

My “Digg Links” will almost always show up on the front page of Google when searching for a term directly related to my content. These links will re-direct visitors to the whole article on my site.

Step 4: Submit your blog to Zimbio.com

Zimbio is basically a high ranking article source that will post all of the updates on your blog to its site. In my experience, search engines like Zimbio, and a good amount of content I have written appears high in searches because of Zimbio.

Another great thing about Zimbio is that it will update itself automatically when you post new content on your blog.

Step 5: Submit your blog to BlogoWogo.com

This site shares a lot of similarities with Zimbio. It is also an online “blog directory” that will host small samples of your article which link back to your site.

The update process for this site is also automatic, so once you post a new article on your site BlogoWogo will detect it and display an associated post.

Step 6: Submit your blog to BlogCatalog.com

This is a great way to get your blog content some attention. It will add your blog to a community of others so it can also result in some great link exchange opportunities.

BlogCatalog also displays links to all of your content that you add to your site which helps out in the search engines as well.