🗒️ Overview
- What to consider when selecting a niche
- The importance of UX design
- Monetization and cross-platform strategies
In this week’s episode, Mark and Gael take a look at the sites who are acing the latest Google paradigm, analyze what worked for them, and adapt the business model so everyone can grow and thrive.
A special thanks to our sponsors for this episode, Digital PR Agency Search Intelligence.
Niche Selection Strategies
The niche selection approach has shifted from being purely opportunistic to one that emphasises generating high-quality, valuable content.
The focus now is not just on finding a profitable niche, but also on building authority through credible, well-researched content, especially with the increasing competition from larger publishers. It’s wise to niche down, and consider the monetization potential when selecting a niche.
There’s also an increasing opportunity for content collaboration, where you can partner with niche experts who add actual authenticity to content rather than slapping a somewhat credible reviewer onto articles.
Monetization Strategies
It’s important to plan your monetization from the beginning of the niche selection process. Starting a niche-related community or participating in sponsorships are both viable strategies, as well as white labeling and e-commerce, which can all work well even when traffic is a bit lower.
Collaboration can also extend from content creation to the monetization process as well. Collaborating with individuals or companies who have an established product offering in your niche could be equally as profitable as creating your own products.
Concise Content
Prioritize building succinct, high-quality content, using page templates, and creating reusable elements. Research shows that Google’s latest helpful content update favors shorter, focused content over longer ones, which is probably attributable to shortening attention spans and the need to enhance user experience.
The Importance of UX Design
With everyone’s notoriously short attention spans, user experience can make or break a site. Keep your design simple and interactive, and pay special attention to UX on mobile.
Focus on building complete web pages rather than merely blog posts, and don’t be afraid to hide content. Toggles, galleries, tabs, accordions, and tool tips are just some elements that can be used to enhance engagement and the overall user experience.
Forbes’s “best credit cards” page is a great example of well thought out UX design, which includes many creative ways of hiding content without resorting to dodgy CSS code.
Using Content Templates
Using content templates for certain keywords allows you to create valuable content that takes user experience into account. Utilizing UX Design and custom development means you can satisfy search intent and provide value quickly to users.
And Google is starting to reward user experience more and more, especially on mobile.
Plus, monitoring the performance of different versions of templated pages, learning, and applying changes across all your content is so much easier and more scalable.
