How To Create Niche Websites
Contents
A niche website caters to a specific audience and/or topic. It can really be about anything, from the basic and common to the more obscure.
Usually, niche websites are information-centric sites. Top-of-the-funnel content is the main focus, though eventually, there may be an e-commerce element added to it.
These types of websites also have a lot of earning potential. They may even be able to provide a full-time income.
How To Create Niche Websites: A Step-by-Step Guide
Want to be in the best position to earn money from your website? Select a niche with popular, high-ticket items; lay a solid foundation for your website; and put a lot of effort into your content and link-building.
Carefully Choose Your Niche
The niche you choose is going to determine everything else about your website, from the affiliate programs you can join to how difficult it will be to rank your content to how much money you can potentially earn.
When considering fruitful niche ideas, think about:
- Your personal experience
- Your interests
- Available affiliate programs
- Long-term potential
In terms of long-term potential, it’s not smart to start a niche website that revolves around a trend. You won’t have enough keywords to choose from to build your content around.
Seasonal niches are a bit different. While the seasonal “trend” will come and go, you could plan for this ahead of time. Knowing that there’s going to be a slump in traffic and income may be OK if you have a plan for filling in the gaps.
Should You Create a Niche Website Around Your Passion?
Some experts say pick your passion; others say definitely don’t pick your passion because you’ll be too invested.
But when it comes to your passion, that may be the easiest thing to get, well, passionate about. If it makes it easier for you to produce content because you’re sparked by inspiration, do it.
Consider the Profitability of Your Niche
Here’s another consideration: Is it a niche in which people buy things?
Dancing may be a fun niche to write about, but if there isn’t a big market out there with people buying related items, it’s going to be difficult to make money from your website.
The quickest way to determine if a niche is profitable is to see if it has competitors. If there’s competition, that’s because there’s money to be made.
Brainstorm a few ideas you’re interested in building a niche website around. Search on Google to see if there’s competition. You can search for something like “best [your niche]” blogs.” For example, best horror movie blogs.
If you find competitors, check out their websites to see how they’re monetizing. If it looks like they’ve posted about a lot of products — for example, they have hundreds of reviews of products in the niche — it’s a sign that it’s a profitable niche.
You can also see if there are other products being sold on their websites, like books, courses, programs, etc.
Build Your Website
There are a lot of steps to building a website. Here’s what to do:
Domain Name and Hosting Providers
Choose a domain name that’s memorable, self-explanatory and easy to spell. Don’t worry if it’s not clever.
Buy it, assuming it’s available. If it’s not, you may have to brainstorm a bit more until you come upon a domain name that can be purchased.
Your host is where your website lives — without a host, you can’t create a website.
There are a lot of hosting providers out there to choose from, and they don’t cost a lot of money. Shop around a bit, and if you’re going to use WordPress, look for a host that integrates with it.
Content Management Systems
WordPress is the content management system (CMS) of choice because it’s free to use and 100% customizable. Whether you’re new to web design or advanced, you can get a working site up with WordPress.
WordPress has a lot of plugins to choose from. To start, consider installing these:
- Akismet: This plugin helps control comment spam.
- Link Whisper: This is the easiest way to add internal links to your content.
- Yoast: This plugin helps you optimize on-page SEO.
WordPress is also a good CMS choice because it’s SEO-friendly, which means Google will have an easier time ranking your content.
Website Design
Choosing a theme with an easy-to-use page builder is key for a new designer. The theme isn’t just about how the site looks; it also determines how easy it is for you to build your site and make changes to it, plus how well it performs.
Google wants websites that apply the EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) principle, and these are the sites it’ll rank highest in results.
Your website should look high-quality, authoritative and trustworthy. It should also have calls-to-action (CTAs) so that visitors know which steps you want them to take. Your CTA will ask the reader to do something like sign up for your mailing list or download a free guide.
Perform Topic and Keyword Research
Even if you choose a niche you’re passionate about, you can’t just guess what people want to read about or choose topics that you like. You need to conduct topic and keyword research to hone in on which topics to cover.
Audience and Competitor Research
You can conduct audience research and figure out what people in your niche want to know about by getting involved in (or just lurking in) communities on platforms like Facebook, Reddit and Slack.
Once you’ve built up a mailing list, you can send out surveys to learn about what your audience wants.
The idea behind competitor research is that your competitors have already done what you want to do, but instead of getting annoyed or dissuaded by that, you can learn from them. Dig into their content, figure out what’s working and then apply that to your own strategy.
A tool like Site Explorer can help with competitor research. You enter the competitor’s domain into the search bar, look at the domain’s top pages (the ones with the most traffic), and then analyze what they’re doing to perform so well.
Keyword Research
Conduct keyword research to figure out what your target audience is searching for.
Keyword research tools basically work like this: You enter a target keyword, and then you’ll see a huge list of related keywords.
Ideally, you’ll optimize for keywords with low difficulty and high search volume. This means a lot of people are searching for the query, but there’s not a lot of competition out there to stack up against.
Free tools will have some info available, but a lot of important data is going to be missing or incomplete. Since keyword research is such an important part of marketing a niche site, it makes sense to pay for a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush.
Write Your Website Content
No niche website can survive without content. And organic search engine traffic is the way to go with a niche website, which makes your content even more important.
Yes, you could pay for ads, but when you no longer have an ad budget, your traffic will probably plummet.
You can also use social media to promote your website, but it can take a long time to build an audience, and it’s especially hard to get them to leave a social platform and click over to your website.
Social media may help build brand awareness, but it’s not going to help with traffic, especially at first. Save that for when the site is up, running and successful.
Search engine traffic doesn’t stop 24 hours after you post a new article, like an Instagram post might. It continues to work even when you’re not.
Your content should be:
- Detailed
- Engaging
- High-quality
- In-depth
- Unique
Also, you want to write for humans, not just search engines. Even a well-optimized blog post isn’t going to get the job done if it’s not written with the human reader in mind. Plus, Google likes content that’s written naturally.
Here are more elements of great content:
- Beautiful images
- Easy to read
- Flows naturally
- Interesting and entertaining
- No grammatical or spelling errors
- Solves a problem
Here’s another reason for picking a niche you have experience in and are passionate about: You can add your own point of view, which is what will make your content unique. People will want to read your content because they’ll get information they won’t be able to get anywhere else, as it comes from your personal experience.
Select a Publishing Schedule
You don’t necessarily have to publish every day. Quality is more important than quantity. If you can publish daily, great. But if you end up sacrificing quality for your publishing schedule, then switch to a routine that’s more realistic for you.
Promote Your Website Content
While SEO is a big part of the puzzle, you also have to be proactive in getting traffic to your site. Here are a few promotion ideas:
Promote your content in the same communities you used for audience research.
Avoid link spam, though. Be an active, engaged member at first — participate in discussions, ask questions and comment. Then, you can share your content because you’ll have an idea of what the community wants.
Reach out to brands and individuals you mention in your content.
For example, if you quote a source or link out to one in your article, let them know. Email them to say they’ve been featured in your article.
Send your article to others who have written on that or similar topics in the past.
They’ll be the ones most interested in seeing your post. You can search in Google for related content, then get the writer’s or website owner’s email address and reach out. Or, you can use a tool like Content Explorer to find pages with similar topics.
Build Your Backlinks
Getting backlinks from high-quality sources is a great way to show Google that your site is reputable. You can generate backlinks in a few different ways.
For example, earned media sites like Help a Reporter Out (HARO) let you answer media queries, and if your answers are used, you can get a backlink to your web page. This is a way to possibly get backlinks from high-caliber outlets like Forbes.
You can also connect with other websites that target the same audience as you and ask if you can contribute a guest blog post. Often, the site owner will let you add a link back to your website, which will add to your backlink profile.
Guest blogging also promotes you as an authority on the topic. To look for guest blogging opportunities, search Google for the following, leaving out the brackets:
- [Your niche] “write for us”
- [Your niche] “become an author”
- [Your niche] “guest post”
- [Your niche] “guest article”
- [Your niche] “inurl:contribute
If you decide to email people in your community to see if they’ll add a backlink to their content for you, make sure that the message you send hits these marks:
- Keep the email short
- Tell them what’s in it for them (their readers will get more value, for example)
- Personalize the email
- Gently suggest that your link may be a good fit for their content
Check out our article with the best free websites for backlinking for more ideas.
Grow Your Mailing List
Every successful site will have an email list. With an email list, you can:
- Send surveys to get ideas for what your audience wants.
- Ask for feedback to improve your website.
- Test out monetization ideas.
- Sell a product or promote an affiliate product.
Try several different mailing list strategies to find the one(s) that works for you.
Select Monetization Methods
Niche websites are appealing because you can earn passive income from them. That means your site can generate income even during the hours you’re not putting in any work or when you’re working on something else.
There are a lot of different monetization strategies to consider:
- Coaching or Consulting: You’re an authority on the topic, and you could sell coaching or consulting services to your audience.
- Google AdSense: Show ads on your website and get paid based on performance.
- Online Courses: It can take a lot of effort to create one, but it might be a viable option for your audience.
- Patreon: This is a membership platform where fans can support creators at different paid tiers.
- YouTube: Earn money based on video performance or when fans buy from your store.
The point is that you can test out different strategies and diversify how you make money. You don’t ever have to have just one monetization option.
How To Create Niche Websites for Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a popular way of monetizing a niche website.
An affiliate website promotes another brand’s product via content. Every time a buyer makes a purchase using an affiliate link, the content creator gets a percentage of the sale (the commission).
For niche affiliate websites, there are three basic types of keywords to create content for:
- Product Type Comparisons: best standing desks
- Brand Comparisons: Google Pixel Tablet vs. Apple iPad
- Product Reviews: Peloton Tread review
The most common type of content on a niche affiliate website is articles, and they’re often reviews. A review article will usually cover the following:
- The product
- Who needs the product
- Why the target audience needs the product
- A roundup of the top choices in the category (i.e., the product’s competitors)
- Pros and cons of each item
- Advice about how to choose the product type
The review will also have an affiliate link that goes to the purchase page for the product.
Final Thoughts About How To Create Niche Websites
Don’t be fooled by the name — niche websites aren’t necessarily small. Instead, the word “niche” refers to a small segment of the market, not the website size.
Niche websites don’t automatically generate money right away, nor do they immediately attract traffic. Like most things in the online world, you have to put in a lot of work in order to see results.
Once you do, though, you’ll be thrilled that you followed through.