THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN COMPENSATED LINKS. PLEASE READ DISCLAIMER FOR MORE INFO.
Niche sites. I talk about them a lot on this site and that’s because they have been so successful for me.
In my Niche Site Case Study 2, I walk through the steps I take to build a niche site and share how my own new niche sites are ranking and making money.
In this post, I’m going to do something different. I’m going to walk through the 4 steps you need to concentrate on to create your niche site.
When you first start out in the niche site world, it can seem very complicated and overwhelming. There is a lot of information out there.
The good news is that it is not complicated and overwhelming at all IF you breakdown all the steps and take it one step at a time. Below, I will walk you through the most important steps.
You will learn...
- What is a niche site
- Step 1: Picking a money making niche
- Step 2: Writing a high converting buying guide
- Step 3: Having a trustworthy site design with great SEO
- Step 4: Creating good supporting pages
- What next?
What is a niche site?
In this context, a niche site is a site based around a product or set of products. It is built to earn money from affiliate marketing, usually from Amazon.
It works by using SEO to get traffic from Google. Once readers are on the site, they are passed on to an affiliate partner where hopefully they spend money and we earn a commission.
You can read more about what a niche site is (and see some examples) in this article.
Step 1: Picking a money making niche
The most important step by far is to pick a great niche that has the best potential possible to make you money.
You can change other aspects of your niche site later, but it is hard to change the actual niche.
Your niche will be a product or a set of products. For example, your niche could be steak knives, knives, cutlery or kitchen equipment depending on how big a site you want to build.
You want a niche that is a combination of the following:
- The product costs over $50 on average.
- The product has a good commission level in the Amazon.
- There are plenty of people searching in Google for this product (more than 1000 a month). The more, the better.
- When you look at the top 10 pages currently ranking for the main keyword (more about this below), it looks relatively easy to rank.
It’s important that when you are picking a niche and you are looking for the number of searches and the top 10 pages that you don’t search for the product name itself.
Niche sites work by attracting people that are looking for buying keywords. These are keywords that people use in Google when they are researching what they want to buy.
Examples of these keywords are things like best knives or knife reviews.
I recommend looking at the search volume and top 10 for the keyword best <ProductName>.
You can read more details about picking a niche here.
Step 2: Writing a high converting product guide
Once you have decided on your niche, it’s time to start concentrating on your main product guide.
This is the guide that will tell people who want to buy the product everything they need to know about picking the best one.
It should have a comparison chart, reviews, a description of the types of products and what things to look for when buying one. The best way to understand what you need to do for a buying guide is to look at one. A good example of one is here.
There are three main steps to this process:
- Finding keywords for your article and writing a keyword plan. Read how here.
- Writing the buying guide. More on this here.
- Adding affiliate links that will get people to Amazon. More on affiliate marketing with Amazon here.
Step 3: Having a trustworthy site design with great SEO
This third step takes into account two elements:
- Making your site look good and trustworthy
- Optimising your onsite SEO
This basically means installing a good theme to make the site look good and making sure you have a good internal linking structure.
I recommend a theme that has review functionality for a niche site. I prefer themes from My Theme Shop for this. You can read more about selecting a theme here.
A good internal linking structure means making sure the pages on your site link to each other in an optimal way. This is so when someone links to your niche site that all pages on your site get maximum benefit from the link, especially your buying guide.
The main thing I recommend is writing a static home page that links to each of your buying guides. You can read how to do this here.
Step 4: Creating good supporting pages
The final step is to add good supporting pages. This is to help ensure your site looks trustworthy and to give you more chances to rank in Google and make more money.
The first step is to add the usual pages you see on all websites such as:
- About
- Contact
- Disclaimer
You can look at other websites to get inspiration.
Your site should have a personality so it’s important to write a good About page which introduces the creator of the site (they can be made up) and explains why they built the site.
The second step is to add some more content. Product reviews can be a great way to do this and I recommend you add 3-5 product reviews at the beginning (and more over time).
You should review products mentioned in your buying guide. These can be the best products you write about and/or the ones that most people are searching for in Google. Read more about writing product reviews here.
What next?
After your niche site is created, the next steps are to concentrate on link building and to track the site’s progress in search rankings and income.
Find more posts on my case studies and niche sites here.