I’ve recently been hearing about a number of major players in the AdSense and Niche blog business losing their Adsense accounts.
The consensus of opinion seems to be that one of the reasons for the AdSense accounts being closed is that google doesn’t like people who set out to earn lots of money from AdSense revenue by creating hundreds of niche blogs.
For a change I can actually see their point, from experience I know that once you start getting a lot of sites you struggle to keep them updated and fresh. That’s not to say that Micro sites don’t have a place, after all I still have a lot of 3 , 4 and 5 page sites but I do think that maybe you should carefully consider what you build in the future.
What I want to discuss today is which is better Micro Niche sites or Authority sites, … I say discuss because I want your views on this.
I wan’t to be as impartial as possible and I’ll put forward the pro’s and cons for each type of site. For the purposes of this I am going to call any site with less than 10 posts a Micro Niche site.
What is a Micro Niche Site?
Essentially a Micro Niche Site is a site that is quick and easy to create, You build it , get some backlinks and then move on to the next site the process is as follows
- Find a keyword with 1000+ searches a month.
- Find & buy exact match domain.
- Create or outsource some content
- Build backlinks
- Move on and repeat 100′s of times
- After that you sit back and hope that it makes a few dollars a day on each site
Micro Niche sites are quick and easy to build and you can take a shotgun approach if you wish. Generally speaking they will make you money and you’ll generally recover your costs in a few months. They can be easily scaled up, by outsourcing all the processes to cheap overseas workers.
Nobody should ever pretend that that Micro niche sites are built for any other reason but to make money and I think that this is why google doesn’t like them. Micro Niche sites should be looked on as a short term strategy, they still work but I do feel that they may soon struggle to be as effective as they were.
What Is an Authority Site
An Authority site is a site that has a lot of content, is frequently updated and focusses on a much broader niche than micro sites (think of the difference between a pamphlet and a magazine). You need to regularly update them and you should try to connect with your readers.
Find a group of 3-10 keywords with a large number of searches these are your main categories.
Find a generic domain name or brand type name you can use
Launch the site with 10 or more pieces of content in place
Post Content regularly and target every keyword in that niche
Build links to each post and have a social media strategy that you apply to each piece of content
Focus on a core of 5 -10 sites.
Authority sites are a long term strategy and take time and effort to get established, with a low number of sites you do run the risk of being more affected by any algorithm changes. However by building a list of subscribers and a strong Social media presence for each of your authority sites you can eventually become pretty much immune to Googles changes.
Building Authority sites does give you the ability to target every keyword in a niche over time, the main difference between them and Micro niche sites is that you would build a Micro niche site around “Dog Training Collars” but an Authority site around “Dog Training” and within the authority site you would plan to have 1 or 2 articles about Dog Training Collars at some point.
Authority Or Micro Niche Sites?
From a personal point of view I am now focusing on authority style sites, some of which are former Micro sites that I am upgrading and expanding. But I really want to hear your views on this debate as I do feel it’s extremely important and something that we all should be paying attention to.
Do you think that Google wants to kill off Micro Niche sites either now or in the Future
Should you have a Mix of Authority sites and Micro niche sites?
Is Authority Sites the best way forward?
Should we just do what we want and ignore Google?
Let me know what you think?