The mainstream return of the micro-niche?
Could we go full circle and see the Micro Niche return to the mainstream after Google shifts its algorithm in the May Day update
Google’s May Day update and the caffeine shift has now completed and with it come challenges and potential shifts in strategy for affiliates who operate huge data feed driven sites relying on their authority for rank.
According to recent blogs Google will no longer take the authority of the root into consideration when ranking internal pages that are more than a few clicks away from the homepage. Matt Cutts cites that these pages often serve duplicate content and offer limited value for the consumer.
This could be bad news for large ecommerce sites but also for affiliates, and could cause headaches and a huge shift on how affiliates embrace the long tail through SEO.
The adoption of data feeds by merchants has given affiliates the opportunity to create large scale value-add sites. So this change, without adaption could be seen as a kick in the teeth for them; however, the change could mean that we see the return or greater embracement of high quality, affiliate led micro-niche sites that are both very niche in nature and that embrace the long tail.
Micro-niche site examples
- Large Wooden planters
- Buddha head water feature
- Men’s white dinner jackets
- Childrens Hunter wellies
Taking any of these, if we used any network data feed we could easily incorporate around 500 products into the site. Coupled with some decent editorial and a link building strategy we have a micro-site which could be replicated on a mass scale and managed by either a lifestyle affiliate or a larger team.
Importantly this would be seen by google as being relevant, targeted and of value-add to the user.
Perhaps we should just ignore Google and build your site based on a combination of online marketing strategies. However you can’t deny that for the cost conscious affiliate, Google still provides the beef of the traffic for free.
If your interested in creating a new micro niche site a simple copy of wordpress alongside a datafeedr subscription will get you on your way.
Additional reading: Official Google Blog Vannessa Fox
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Matthew Wood
An affiliate at heart and founder of affiliates4u, a4uexpo conference series and the a4uAwards.
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This is from a consumer point of view first and affiliate second, but I think Google had to do something as its first page results for lots of searches was starting to look very silly at times. It did seem that if you had an authority site, all you had to do was stick up any old page mentioning a product and hey presto - there was your revenue, even if the page had absolutely ridiculous content. Also the ability to put up large me-too sites without much effort, tommorrow morning, in the hope of randomly collecting commission from clicks wasn't exactly creating a shopper-friendly internet.
It may turn out that Google has actually helped the long term future of AM, by removing the incentive for affiliates to just take feeds and create a massive site of no real value. Ultimately I believe this would have led to merchants backing out of AM, because of the sheer volume of unnecessary commissions paid to sites that offered no user value whatsoever. They would have rumbled it eventually. I'm sure no merchant wants the equivalent of made-for-Adsense spam sites, implemented by a mass of affiliates with no interest in the actual subject of the products.
I thought the semantic content issue was at best dormant, but presumably Google will have to have implemented something in that line to do what they are supposedly doing ? Long live the content affiliate etc. etc....!
I am so pleased that Google has made this Update, I know that many of you will hate me for that statement, however this leads back to the days of Quality Unique Content, that is in essence of why we actually surf the net rather than going to one site the tells us everything (Remember the days of Yahoo)!
Smart move for Google! Better news for the searchers who are using it.
Bad news for lazy affiliates who want to sit back on their laurels and let the feeds from the marketing team at some-referral-program do everything for them.
A good affiliate should be able to take the helm and adapt quickly to the changing environment of products they promote not be lead by a marketing team who don’t care about the actual affiliate as long as the feed they throw out makes them sales.
Best regards all Arran Wood