As a writer you will often think about starting new websites. After all, a new website is a new place to publish, and writers love to publish, especially to places where they have total control that won’t disappear or become irrelevant (Tumblr). What should I start a new website about, however, is the big question?
These days folks are calling them niche websites, or even micro-niche websites. When I was coming up, we just called them websites. The idea is that by focusing on a narrow niche, you can focus on a topic that you can rank for, thereby ensuring that all your writing is rankable and monetizable. (Back off spell check, I’m riffing here.)
If you are not a writer, this is a critical concern because website content isn’t free if you won’t be writing it yourself. Even if you do write content on your own, if you don’t enjoy it, or it takes away from other work, then you also need to focus on only what has the potential to rank and by extension make money.
How To Choose a Niche Website Topic
There is a lot of great information out there about how to check keywords to see how good they are, how easy it is to rank for them, and how much traffic they might generate. What is missing from a great many of those discussions is how to get a topic that even lets you get to the keyword researching stage.
Generally speaking, as writers, we are often told to write what you know. We are also often told to write for our passions or to write about things that interest us. This is great advice for writers in general, but when it comes to building a niche website, there are some gotchas.
Are You Sure You Want To Build a Website About That?
The biggest gotcha in picking a new niche website topic is competitiveness. Many topics are covered very well on the internet. Many of those topics are covered very well by websites willing to pay for an army of writers, a phalanx of SEO experts, and a brigade of link builders. Those websites may be decades old and well respected by those in and out of the field. If you want to write about one of these topics, more power to you, but ranking for almost anything and then making money off of that traffic can be an exercise in futility. Obviously, as a writer if the articles just flow out of your fingers, do it anyway. Maybe you’ll get lucky.
The idea of a niche, or micro-niche website is that you can avoid these powerhouse websites by drilling down on long-tail keywords that they wouldn’t necessarily cover. You’ll never rank for “dog food,” but maybe you can rank for cheese flavored organic dog food treats. Of course, ranking for something with no traffic isn’t worth anything, which brings us to the second issue.
No matter how well your website ranks for various topics, if no one wants to read about those things then you won’t get any traffic. No traffic equals no money. Again, as a writer that won’t always matter to you. If you want to crank out article after article about 18th century Irish haiku, them more power to you. Just don’t go put that Ferrari on hold just yet.
Your Money or Your Life
Finally, there are entire topics that Google basically locks newcomers and small websites out of. In SEO circles we refer to this as YMYL, or Your Money or Your Life. For many years, hacks who were good at gaming Google’s algorithm via SEO, or force of volume, would rank highly with dubious advice about health and finance. This was both embarrassing for Google, and more importantly, a potential liability. Imagine someone who forgoes cancer treatment on the advice of an essential oils webpage that managed to rank number one for alternative cancer treatments and ends up with Stage 4 Prostate Cancer. It’s not a stretch to imagine the lawsuit that could implicate Google.
There was even more quackery when it came to financial topics because of the sheer amount of money that could be made. A webpage ranking number one for ‘real retirement advice’ directing the reader to a page about soybean options (which paid $100 per sign up from an affiliate link, not to mention the ad payout from tens of thousands of visitors per month) that then bankrupted our poor retiree could maybe have a case as well.
Unfortunately, no matter how good of a writer you are, nor how well qualified you are to write on the topic, ranking in the YMYL categories can be tough. Even worse, if you manage to rank and get some traffic, it can be very easy to push you off as soon as a “real” finance or health website eventually covers the same topic.
If Not That, Then What
What should your niche website be about then?
The old writing advice still stands. Write what you know. Write what you are passionate about. If those things are very competitive or YMYL, then you will face an uphill battle getting any traffic and making any money. There are some things you can do to help. I’ll cover these in-depth in a later article, but for now you can just take my word for it.
- Niche Down – This is a way of saying to specialize more on your topic. If you love biking, it’s a competitive area. Even seemingly smaller niches like mountain biking, road biking, or bike racing are still competitive. Even Colorado mountain biking trails is still pretty solid competition. Maybe there is an even smaller focus that still has enough traffic but not so much attention. You can type keywords into keyword research tools until you are blue in the face, or you can pick something and see what if anything brings traffic. Colorado mountain biking trails is competitive, but if you start writing about all your favorite Colorado trails and experiences, maybe one day you’ll accidentally find out that Colorado mountain biking trails waterfalls brings lots of traffic with little competition. (I don’t know if that is true. I just made up an example and went with it.)
- Authoritize – Yeah, it’s not a word. Google is in a constant battle with SEOs, both black hat, white hat, and everything in between to get the best content ranked, not the best SEO tricks ranked. One of the latest things it is trying involves seeing who the author is and assigning that a value, or not. So, if you are say… a former Certified Financial Planner and you like writing about personal finance, investing, and retirement planning, you should say that, on every single page you publish. Then just maybe, someone, person or algorithm, will decide that has a value.
- Link Yourself – You’re a writer. If you aren’t new to the internet, chances are you already have a website or two out there. There is nothing that says you can’t “like” yourself, you can’t link yourself, or you can’t mention yourself. Enough websites, with enough clout, pointing at your latest passion website might be just the ticket. At its heart, Google is nothing more than a link counter with thousands of adjustments layered on top to avoid cheating.