Happy 4th of July everyone!
Today I would like to pose a question for discussion.
When building Niche Stores, especially in the early going, a very difficult question to answer is:
Should I build LOTS of Niche Stores quickly and optimize later? Or build them more slowly while optimizing at the same time?
It is a question I myself am daily struggling with. There are several different trains of thought when it comes to this topic.
On one hand, if you get a large number of stores launched quickly, perhaps by the time you come back to optimize them they will already be indexed with Google and be getting a few organic search hits. But on the downside, you must decide if you wish for an un-optimized store to be "seen" by Google!
On the other hand, if you go slowly and work on a small number of stores, but give them detailed attention right from the get go, there are other pro’s and con’s. By the time Google sees your site and indexes you, the site will be in better shape. Hopefully this will translate into a better search engine rankings and better conversion on your site.
However, if you chose a poor niche and spent all that time optimizing the store, you may have wasted lots of valuable time and effort on a few "nicely optimized" sites that make you very little money.
So it is a tricky balance to strike. There are of course things you can do to avoid the very scary example illustrated above. For example: Do proper niche research! (We will talk about this soon here at Niche Store Journey)
This post talks about the next step after our previous discussion of Quantity vs Quality .
So I am very curious to hear all of your opinions. Should we, as Niche Store Builders, risk leaving un-optimized sites "out in the web" before they are ready? Or should we insist on putting out Stores more slowly, but fully optimized as we go?
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
a good point.
If the niche research had Bern done well and you have added some basic content – then I would say “build”.
You can then gauge the organic results you get from there after a few weeks/months.
However, going back to tweak and seo lots of sites is a real pain!
Personally I build a store, seo it, build a few backlinks and then move on to the next one. Also I limit 10 stores to one IP or hosting account to minimize detection of store clusters.
When an individual store starts to make more than $50 a month I move it to its own IP or hosting account with a different host. When I’m happy with these stores I repeat. That’s a quick summary, obviously there’s more to it than that.
I find it important to go back to stores that are doing ok and analyse the logs for keywords that are bringing in the traffic and converting. Then I create optimised pages around those keywords. There’s a gold mine in your log files of sites that are doing good.
Being somewhat new to all this, I’m not sure I fully understand the harm in letting Google “see” an incomplete site. Won’t it be crawled again soon anyway (and more often the more backlinks you have)? Is it fear of having a thin site banned? I would love a little more explanation of this.
I’d also like to know more about Duane’s practice of moving stores to their own IP. What happens if Google detects a store cluster?
Thanks for any pointers you can give me!
I have really mixed feeling about this topic. It seems that my BANS stores do really well for the first 1-2 months and then die out. If I choose a really good niche, I can make a good bit of money during this first 1 – 2 month period. So, it can be fun to create a ton of stores. However, for the long haul I would like them to stay active in the SERPs. But, I have not had any luck yet in getting a BANS store to come back after the first 1 -2 month period.
Anyone else experience this? Any tips to help me out?
Bunny, the thing with having your stores in clusters of 10 or less is just a safe guard so that you don’t loose all your sites if any outside influence decides to interfere be it google or someone wanting to copy your niches. If you have all your sites on one IP then anyone can do a reverse IP lookup tool and find all your other sites. Like the old saying, don’t keep all your eggs in one basket.
Hosting is so cheap it’s stupid not to separate your sites when they’re earning you good money. It’s a bit more work but just make a spreadsheet of where everything is including passwords etc.
When you create a new domain google tends to give it a bit of boost, this is why you get 1 or 2 months of good traffic. I believe it’s a way for google to give you a head start whilst you build links and create content. Also I believe that google needs time to run your site through more tests, people seem to think that everything is instant and google is so powerful, google only has so much processing power and need time to run your site through all the algorithms and such. This is just how I see it, I’ve no concrete evidence if that is what is really happening or not.
Generally it takes about 6 months to a year for the site to settle down, up until that time you will see your search engine rankings go all over the place. One hour you might be on the main page and then the next hour you’ll be on page 16. Just hang tight, keep adding content, keep building links and all will settle down. I’ve never seen a site not settle down after this period and I’ve built a lot of sites over the years.
Keep building good sites and in a year from now you’ll be laughing.
This is what I do.
Before I do anything else I write a good description of the site on the index page first. Because deep crawls happen somewhat later, I just put a good solid description on the main page and work on the rest fast. Then comeback to optimize later.
Bo
Niche Marketing Blogs last blog post..Why I Don’t Like BANS Default Search Box
Wow, some *great* comments overnight! Thanks everyone!
A few things:
@Duane: I really like your suggestions to use many different hosts. The only concern for that I see is that, obviously you need to be a bit of a veteran with an established Niche Store “bankroll” to accomplish this.
If you have just began Niche Store Building, and just plunked down 97 bucks on BANS, and another hundred or so on domain names, a year of hosting somewhere, etc… It may be tough to justify spending another few hundred dollars on multiple hosting accts.
I think that for an established site builder, who has made some good money on Niche Stores, this is an *excellent* tip however!
@Bunny: Yes, what I was implying is that perhaps it is not wise to let Google “see” your site in a completely un-optimized and “ready” state. Of course it will come back and re-crawl at a later date, but some people may not want to risk Google taking a closer look at the “Thin affiliate site” version of our page before we can clean it up.
Thanks for all the great tips everyone — Looking forward to more!
Thank you very much, Tyler and Duane, for the follow-up explanations. Very helpful!
@ Bunny: Of course! By getting all these great questions I get a better feel for what future posts should discuss to help you all out!
I actually spend 5-10 hours at the beginning developing the keywords, setting up the template and other things on Rochelle’s list to optimize the site. At that point I continue to post to the blog (if I have one attached every 3-7 days) but I leave the store alone for 2-3 months. My stats don’t bounce around as much as when I develop a quick site and don’t optimize it.
Pauls last blog post..Get Your Craftsman Safety Keys NOW!
Hello,
My visitors and stats seem to be dwindling, but on the other hand I’ve made more this month than any other. Should I just leave things be for now? My site has been up for about 3 months now. I hear it takes 6 months to a year before you really make any money?
Duane, do you mean you go in and change the keywords around occassionally?
I have two sites now and I probably will after I have about 5 sites start spreading them around to more than one host.
Angela