Back in the Niche Site Game! A New Case Study

Update: Although PBNs still work, they now have a history of being targeted by Google and therefore may not be the safest option. This is why we now focus on creating online businesses that are independent of SEO traffic.

Since becoming one of the first interns back in July, it’s been a turbulent ride for me in the IM world!  Like a lot of people, I started out by trying my luck at building micro-niche sites on expired domains… only to discover that sites with minimal indexed pages no longer held up it the SERPs—my first ‘hard knocks’ lesson in IM.  Not all was lost, however.  :)  The learnings around finding and leveraging expired domains proved valuable as such sites could be used for more than just housing micro-niche sites or for a Private Blog Network (PBN) to link build.  These domains could also be launched, filled with quality content and soon possess enough PageRank and related metrics (Domain Authority, Page Authority, Linking Root Domains, etc.) to monetize through link sales (either directly or indirectly).  Building out this related IM monetization method over the past few months has restored some of my IM optimism, and re-enforced the importance of diversifying ones IM portfolio (so as not to be 100% reliant on ranking in the Google SERPs).  So now that the ‘monetization through text links’ stream is out of startup mode and into scale-and-maintain mode, that leaves me with a little more time to experiment with other IM-related ventures.  I’m excited to say I’m throwing my hat back in the ring developing niche sites!

As I embark down this path again, I intend to record my assumptions, approach and progress on the NoHatSEO blog to help others learn from my mistakes and/or successes… and to foster a healthy discussion with readers around what is or isn’t working.  This will hopefully serve as a useful and timely case study by which everyone can learn.

There are still some details to be sorted out around how we hope to conduct the case study, but we can at least start with some underlying goals:

• Confirm that niche sites are still a viable, semi-passive business model.  Anecdotal evidence as well as other recent case studies in the IM-isphere still show quite a bit of promise–all the more reason to get back in the game!
• Test out niche sites on both exact match domains as well as expired domains.  Some theorize that there is not so much an EMD penalty now, but rather the bonus that used to exist for EMDs has simply been removed.
• Re-visit Keyword and niche selection strategies.  Besides the standard low-competition/ high-value KW targets, investigate other potential success factors such as number of indexed pages.
• Evaluate alternatives to Google Adsense for monetizing traffic.  Although Google is king in many regards they are not the only game in town.  Relying on Google for organic traffic and for monetization may be doubling up your risk.
• Experiment with various content sources (write content myself, use paid writers, use tools like Content Creature)
• Validate link-building strategies (such as use of a PBN) as well as other signals of site authority used by SERPs

Feel free to check back every so often for updates on the case study.  Also, add comments with any suggestions on how to approach this in a way to make it most valuable to you and all the NoHatSEO readers!

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