How To Build A Niche Website
You know something, don't you? Think about it. You do. What is your passion? Your interest? What do you already know a lot about? This is your niche. This is the foundation for building a niche website.
Behind every successful website is a "webmaster" (that's you) who knows a lot about a certain topic and is passionate about it. The unsuccessful websites... well, those are sites that are built on the premise of trying to make money. They have little substance behind them, and human visitors can tell right away. Click! They're gone.
There are five basic steps to building a niche website:
Choose a topic you are passionate about
Choose a topic that has high demand and low supply (a great domain name!)
Choose a topic that has at least 250 high quality key words (this will give you traffic)
Decide where you will host your site (one that provides support, SEO services, links, graphics, etc)
Write great content
But don't we want to make money on our niche website? Of course, but that will never happen until you have enough quality content and traffic. Without those two pieces, you are behind the eight ball already.
Let's look at each of these steps a bit further.
1. Choose a topic you are passionate about
My website is about primary education. I am a teacher, I love what I do, and I know a lot about it. It is a natural site for me to develop. I learn more about my topic every day simply because I am in the trenches with it. I have to keep up on the latest educational research, laws, teaching strategies and state/federal requirements. But it is not a chore for me. Why? Because I am passionate about it.
Think about what you love to do. Often people want to start a website because they do not love their job - they want the potential financial freedom site ownership offers. That's okay. I just happen to be one of the people who does love what I do. The successful sites are focused on the webmaster's niche - a very specific topic that they love to learn about and share with others.
The search engines will also "pick up" on your great content. Spiders recognize when human visitors are pleased with your site by how long they remain on it and where they click within it (or out of it!).
Your passion = great content = happy search engines = more traffic = monetization!
2. Choose a topic that has high demand and low supply
A fatal mistake in building a niche website is that people forget about the "niche." Some people rush into building a site about something they love, but forget to check basic supply and demand. Even if you write great content, you will likely never be able to get to monetizing if your topic has more supply than demand.
Your topic must be winnable at the search engines. You don't want too much competition for what you have to offer. You don't want to be the only one out there, but if you build a site on, say, physical therapy, you will likely never be found at the search engines.
Make that broad concept into a niche: traveling-physical-therapy...pediatric-physical-therapy...aquatic-physical-therapy...All these concepts have great potential to become a niche website that makes money. Check Google Adwords to see if I am right - that's where I got them from!
3. Choose a topic that has at least 250 high quality keywords
Your niche website should not be so narrow that you are left with very little to write great content about. Your goal will be to eventually have at least 150 or more pages on your site. You also want those pages to be winnable at the search engines, so you must have high quality keywords for them.
This is where you will have to do some more research. There are many tools out there that can help you do this. You must have something to help you find the absolute best keywords to write your great content about. Remember, your great content pleases the search engines which brings in the traffic that eventually will make you money!
4. Decide where you will host your site
There are many hosting services for web sites, but they are not all of the same quality. Again, you must do your research to get the results you want (which is a great niche website that will make you money). The free hosting services are extremely limited in their support. You are pretty much on your own. Most free hosting services are not geared towards sites that will eventually dominate a niche market (and that's where you want to be!).
Some would-be-webmasters try to go the route of blogging. The reality is that very few bloggers make any money on their site. A blog is not viewed as a reliable, trusted source of information. It is better to include a blog as a part of your niche website.
There are other hosting services that cost a bit of money up-front, but at least get you into the game. For most of them, you have to know some HTML and CSS. You can build your pages using Dreamweaver or another web design software, but if you don't know how to put the "language" in, you will have just wasted nearly $250.00. If this is you, then you probably need something with more guidance.
You want to look for a hosting service that gives you more than just hosting your site. The best places offer you tools to guide your web-building process. For a successful website, you will need great content, but in addition you will need graphics, file managers, linking services, submissions to search engines, and tools to analyze your pages for optimization...and so much more.
Once you decide where to host your site, it is time for step 5:
5. Write great content
Everything up to this point has been your research and preparation. Now you are prepared begin your site and share it with the world.
You have at least 250 key words that have solid potential to be found at the search engines. You have a great niche concept that is winnable. You have a hosting site ready to go that supports you and will help ensure your chances of success.
So what are you waiting for? It is time to start writing that great content and make your knowledge sell!
Oh yes, money... once you start getting at least 30 visitors a day to your site, you can start to think about adding monetization options like Adsense and affiliate links. Don't even think about going there first. Get to building a niche website that people and search engine spiders want to visit and come back to. If they like you, they will eventually reward you. Click!
http://www.primary-education-oasis.com
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