Niche Site Case Study

August 14, 2007

Well I promised you that I would be creating a case study on building a niche content site from the ground up so that you could see exactly what it takes to create a profitable content site. I wanted to have the initial details in front of you last week, but I was having some work done on the house (which, as is usually the case with contractors, resulted in one disaster after the next). So I finally had the time to sit down and put it all together so you can see exactly what I'm doing.

For this case study I am using the following tools (all of which I highly recommend):

  1. Niche Inspector - This desktop software tool helps you find profitable niches to create sites around.

  2. HypreVRE Gold - This desktop software tool is what I'm using to create the niche site for the case study. I'm using the Gold (paid) version, not the free version.
  3. Instant Article Wizard - This desktop software tool is what I use to create all of the content for the site super fast. You need unique content if you really want to rank well, and IAW is the tool I use to create it (even if I know nothing about the subject).
  4. 3WayLinks.net - This is the service that I'm putting the site into to get it ranked in the search engine by building up link popularity while I sleep.

Here are the steps that I've taken so far.

  1. Step 1 - This video shows how I used Niche Inspector to select the niche I have created the content site around, and also shows how I used HyperVRE to build the site itself. The niche that I decided on is "rowing machines".
  2. Step 2 - This video shows me creating the headliner article for the site in just a few minutes, using Instant Article Wizard.

  3. Step 3 - Now, in the video for step 2 I said I would create a video on getting links to the site using 3WayLinks.net. Afterwards I realized that a video isn't necessary, since there's really nothing to show. So let me tell you what I did.

    I added the new site to the 3WayLinks.net network so that it would start building links to its home page to get the site ranking for my target keywords. You won't get anywhere in the search engines without links, and my sites in the 3WL network are doing phenomenally well (as are the sites of hundreds of other people).

    I didn't stop there, though. I wanted to get links to the home page, sure, but I also wanted to get links to the inner pages of the site. This helps not only rank the inner pages, but also reinforces Google's "trust" of the home page, which in turn will cause it to rank better as well.

    To accomplish this, I had 10 articles written that I have distributed to EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com. Once those articles start to get picked up and spread across a variety of other sites, those links will begin to help the site to rank in the search engines.

For posterity's sake, here's a screenshot of the traffic the site is currently getting. This also helps you know that I'm starting from zero here:

All of the "traffic viewed" is from me working on the site. The "traffic not viewed" stats are from the AdSense bot crawling the site.


All in all, I spent about 5 hours building the site, including writing the on-site articles and submitting the second set of articles to EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com. I will post an update to the site's progress once a week so that you know how well this system is working.

In case you were wondering, I'm not revealing the domain name to prevent skewing the stats by having everyone go to the site to "check it out."

Please post your comments below, letting me know what you think, and if there's any information about how I'm doing these things that you'd like to know. Ask your questions and I'll post my responses in the comments as well.

UPDATE: This case study is now complete. Here are links to all of the case study follow-up posts:

  1. Week 1
  2. Week 2
  3. Week 3
  4. Week 4
  5. Week 6
  6. Week 10
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Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Web Design, Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, AdSense, Blog | 128 Comments 

Does PageRank really matter for ranking in Google?

August 9, 2007

PageRank has been all the rage since Google first introduced that little green line on the Google toolbar. Links are bought and sold at a premium based on how far that little green bar stretches to the right.

But is it really wise to pay a premium for links on high PageRank pages? Are sites with the highest PageRank the ones that are ranking better in Google?


I decided to test that theory, so I ran 500 very competitive keywords through Google and checked the PageRank of each of the top 10 ranking sites for each set of keywords.

Here's the average PageRank for the top 10 ranking sites across the board:

1. 6.722
2. 6.866
3. 6.292
4. 6.234
5. 5.968
6. 5.88
7. 5.73
8. 5.662
9. 5.656
10. 5.604

Now, just looking at the averages, you might say, "wow, I guess high PageRank sites do rank better!" And you wouldn't be entirely wrong for saying that. Yes, overall, sites with higher PageRank are ranking better in Google.

But the question is: is it the PageRank that's causing the high ranking, or is it something else? I decided to dig a little further and find out.

Here is a list of the number of times for each ranking position that the ranking site has a lower PageRank than the site beneath it in the results. For example, if a site with PageRank 5 ranks #3 for a set of keywords, and the site ranking #4 has a PageRank higher than 5, that adds one to #3 in this list.

1. 155
2. 133
3. 148
4. 152
5. 167
6. 178
7. 165
8. 187
9. 178


So about one-third of the time sites are outranking other sites with higher PageRank, demonstrating that higher PageRank doesn't always win.

Here is a list of the number of times for each ranking position that the ranking site has a PageRank at least 3 points lower than the site beneath it in the results. For example, if a site with PageRank 4 ranks #3 for a set of keywords, and the site ranking #4 has a PageRank of 7 or higher, that adds one to #3 in this list.

1. 85
2. 64
3. 68
4. 55
5. 64
6. 65
7. 60
8. 72
9. 62

So (roughly) 14% of the time sites are outranking other sites that have a PageRank a full 3 points higher than theirs. Google must be looking at something else to rank these sites.

Let's take a look at a few specific example of this happening, then I'll talk about why this is possible.

As of this writing, the site that ranks #7 on Google for the phrase "play games" is playrelax.com. This site has a PageRank of 4. Care to guess what ranks #8 for the phrase? Yahoo! Games — a site with a PageRank of 8!

Let's take a very competitive phrase as another example. As of this writing, the site that ranks #4 on Google for the phrase "airline tickets" is traveldiscounters.com. This site has a PageRank of 5. The site that ranks #5 is travel.aol.com, with a PageRank of 7.


One more example, just for fun. As of this writing, the site that ranks #1 on Google for the phrase "newspaper obituaries" is newspaperobituaries.net. This site has a PageRank of 4. The site that ranks #2 is legacy.com, with a PageRank of 7!

Are you stunned? Does it seem amazing to you that a site with a PageRank of 4 can beat out a PR7, or even a PR8 site, ranking ahead of the much higher PR sites in Google?

Don't be stunned. It's not really amazing.

To understand why this happens, you need to understand how a site gets PageRank. A high PageRank can be achieved two ways:

  1. Getting a lot of links from low PageRank pages.
  2. Getting a few links from high PageRank pages.

So if you got a million links from low PR pages, you're going to have a high PageRank, or if you get a few links from very high PR pages, you're going to have a high PageRank.

But you see, it's not the PageRank of a site or page that Google focuses on primarily when ranking a site for a set of keywords. It's the keywords that those links contain that is of the greatest value in Google's algorithm.

For example, the PR4 site (playrelax.com) has 1,231 links (according to Yahoo!), whereas Yahoo! Games has a boatload of links (1,212,619). How is it possible that playrelax.com is winning the game if it has so few links in comparison?

I can gurantee you that most of the links pointing to Yahoo! don't contain the keywords "play games" as often as they do in the links pointing to playrelax.com (and many of Yahoo! Games links come from their own site). But the owner of the other site, playrelax.com, probably realizes that in order to out-rank the others, his site must have links that contain the right keywords. He gets the right kind of links, and he wins the game.

No doubt this is the case with almost all of the lower PR sites that are beating out their higher PR competition.

Now, generally speaking, the sites with higher PageRank are focusing on the keywords in their links, which is why (on average) higher PageRank sites are holding the top positions. But this is not always the case. As I said, about one out of three ranking sites have a lower PageRank than the sites they are out-ranking.

So does PageRank matter? No, not really. What matters is that you get quality links from other sites that contain the keywords you want to rank for. Do that, and you might just find your site outranking the big boys, too.

I and hundreds of others are using 3WayLinks.net to get the right kind of links and rank our sites, and at a price that won't break the bank!

Please post your thoughts on this below.

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Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Search Engine Optimization, Blog | 64 Comments 

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