How to You Can Find Quality Content for Your Niche Website
This is the third part of a six part series titled “Up and Running with Niche Sites for Beginners“. You can follow along with all six articles from my blog start page.
Once you have figured out what type of niche you want to market, and after you have done your in depth keyword research to figure out exactly what people are searching for, it is time to develop the actual content for your niche website. The content is arguably the most important aspect of the site; proper keyword research is vital but without the appropriate content it is next to useless.
There are typically three routes you can take to get content:
- Write it yourself
- Hire a freelance copywriter
- Use a PLR website
Using Content from a PLR Website
A private label rights website is a directory that sells pre-written articles and website content. If at all possible, you want to avoid using these. There’s a good chance that whatever content you purchase has already been used multiple times on different websites, and the new Google algorithm that seeks to crack down on ‘content farms’ may end up punishing you for using duplicate content on your site. If you must use a PLR website, be sure to rewrite the content enough that it becomes a completely different article.
Tips for Writing Your Own Content
Of course, if you’re going to rewrite the content anyway, you might as well just utilize Google and the free article directories such as articlesbase.com and ezinearticles.com as your source material rather than paying for it. It’s fairly easy to write content on any topic; just brainstorm a bit and search for the information that you need. Then, simply rewrite it in your own words. You can use a free program like DupeFree Pro to make sure that it is less than 5% similar to the original article.
If you are still stuck and having trouble rewriting content, then it might be time to turn to some type of spinning software. I use the Best Spinner. It’s simple to use and they constantly seem to be updating their synonyms database, which makes writing unique articles even easier. They’ve also recently added a free article directory, which you can automatically submit spun articles to for other authors to use on their websites (free backlinks).
Using this method it’s a fairly simple process to write ten or fifteen short, original articles to put on your niche website. You want to be sure to put your money making keywords into the article several times, making sure your main keyword is in both the first sentence and the last sentence, and once or twice in between. A tendency with newcomers is to try to stuff the keyword in as many times as possible, but this can actually do more harm than good. The best selling content looks and feels natural. Even when using a spinning software to write your article, you should be able to make them sound natural if you put in a little bit of up front effort.
Outsourcing the Work to a Freelance Writer
Your last option is to just outsource the website content to a professional freelance writer. Writing your own content is free of course, but you may not have the time to write several pages worth of content, or you may just not be that proficient at writing. In the event that you decide to hire a freelancer, you have a lot of options to choose from.
Using a Freelance Job Board
The easiest way to find freelance work is to use websites like Elance.com, Guru.com among others. The way these sites work is employers (you) post a job that you need completed. Freelancers then have the option to “bid” on your project, leaving you to choose the proposal that works best for you. You can set a budget on your project to give the freelancers some idea of what you are working with, and you can even simply state a per-word price in your project description.
So how much is this going to cost? Surprisingly, extremely high quality content can be had for a very reasonable price using a freelance website. Typically, you can expect to pay as low as $5 to $ 8 for a 500 word article, although if you want the highest quality writing you should expect to pay closer to $20 to $ 25 for the same size article. All said and done, it’s easy to get high quality copy for your niche website with just a small investment, and most importantly it frees you up to work on other aspects of your site.
I’ve also mentioned in a previous series, that you can find article content using Amazon Mturk. In most cases this content will not be as professionally written, but it will most likely be much cheaper. It all depends how and where you want to use the content.
How Much Content Do You Need?
The amount of content you need for your website depends a lot on the selling quality of the content, what you’re selling, and how effective your SEO is. A good rule of thumb for your first niche site is to start with at least five articles of around 300-500 words. Seven articles are better. You’ll have enough to post once a day for the first week, and after that you can get smaller posts of 250 or 300 words up, with a keyword in each title.
It’s important to get a good amount of quality content up in the beginning, but when do you stop? How large does the site get? The answer to this is -it varies. There are thin niche websites that have 2 pages of content and make a lot of money, and there are sites that have over 15 pages that don’t make that much. You need to remember that you don’t need to be an authority site, and in fact you shouldn’t try to be. A niche website is small and compact, and readers get there because it’s the only site offering exactly what they need. You’re setting up shop in your little corner, or “niche” of the internet.
A Word About Keyword Sniping
If there’s one SEO practice you want on your site, it’s a method called “keyword sniping.” Keyword sniping is where you take your primary keyword and place it into every article you put on the website. On each keyword, embed a link back to the homepage of the site. This is not only a good SEO technique but an extremely effective one.
Again, PLR websites aside, the two methods that you want to seriously consider for your niche website’s content are:
- Doing it yourself
- Hiring a Freelancer
If you have the time, it’s always best to write the content yourself, just so you have complete control over what it looks like. If you hire a freelancer, ensure that they understand how you want your keywords placed within the article.
Once you have the content for your niche website, you’re just about done. You only need a few techniques to monetize the website before you’re making an income with it. Check back next week when I talk about How to Effectively Monetize Your Niche Website.
So what do you think? Write your own content, outsource, use a spinner, or some combination of all three?
Related posts:
- How to Start Researching Your First Niche Website
- Can I Niche Duel Like Pat Flynn? – Part 1
- How to Find Network Partners
Did you like this article?
Mike, nice write up about writing Content. Content is the king and Google loves great content and honor your effort.
Writing concern is not my strength and recently, I got on hold with my friend who could write well. Will see how things go. I hope I could improve my writing skills and write by myself more.
Kent Chow recently posted..5 Creative Ways to Make Money Online
practice makes perfect.. keep on writing and eventually it will feel more natural for you.
Hey Mike,
I’m looking forward to the next installment. this was the best one of the series so far. Extremely informative. Keep up the good work.
Andrew
Andrew Handley recently posted..How Article Directories Were Affected By Google’s Content Farm Update
Just got started on your series today. Great work. Curious to your Best Spinner & Spinner software but the links do not work.
Wow, thank you! The link has been fixed.
Wow, such an informative piece of information. Myself i have a niche website and am looking to employ these tips and tricks for success in my business. Thanks a lot!