Adding/correcting a niche on an old site or a new site

[dannyx]

I am wondering about a certain issue.

Almost 3 years ago I made a niche site related to sports betting. I went narrow and within the niche there were only a few operators 5-6. Generally most turned out to be not honest or not working. Ended up working with 1 solid and 1 average partner. I remove the rest from the site.


I no longer have alternatives to cooperate with someone else within a very narrow niche.


And here the question arises. Is it better to increase, gently redirect the theme of the site and go wider, so I can promote bookmakers and casino games on the site with traffic?

Or set up another site in a different niche and start from scratch?


Both solutions have their pros and cons. Starting from scratch can be scary these days. On the other hand, expanding a niche can be more difficult.

[universal4]

Difficult to make the decision of the direction to take the site.

In some ways it is similar to some of the discussions we have had here over the years of what to do with pages when specific operators close or go rogue. (not completely the same in all cases but similar enough to possibly glean some ideas seeing some of the suggestions)

If you have say 5 outgoing links going to operators that have closed or are rogue you might want to consider redirecting them to an operator you trust, even if the brand is not the brand promoted. Understood it might not serve the market targeted but it is possible some visitors are not that market. A visitor that clicks through to a brand that will not give you credit or not pay is lost traffic/revenue regardless.

Putting statements on the pages about a brand no longer being approved/promoted and removing the links to the brand is likely prudent. But due to pages being cached etc, changing the redirect or /visit/ link might seem logical at first to handle cached pages etc.

Deciding the long term solution is more difficult and you might want to weigh a number of factors.
Age of domain/site
TLD of domain
Whether the market is close to or shares similar characteristics to other markets (such as language that is also spoken by other countries or other factors)

If the question is simply whether you can also start promoting casinos and or poker or similar niche without a complete overhaul of the site, that seems like it is a logical step, but closer study of traffic numbers and the feel of general acceptance of the brand in the geo will help with that decision.

Rick
Universal4

[universal4]

Here are a few discussions we have had concerning removing pages for various reasons, such as operator going rogue or general pruning of pages.

https://www.gpwa.org/forum/negative-...on-262002.html
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/content-p...ts-261999.html
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/removing-...te-249854.html

While there may be reasons to remove a page completely, there are many reasons and opinions where you may want to keep them and just remove links that you may no longer want to use, or add a disclaimer or explanation of why a point previously made in the article is no longer pertinent.

Here is a discussion more similar to your question about whether to redirect or not, if the decision is made for a new site, might also inspire more ideas.
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/redirect-...te-261323.html

Rick
Universal4

[chaumi]

This is tricky, Danny. Particularly so because, if the niche is what I think it is, there are not many that will have direct experience with it. So, to an extent, although viewpoints will be useful, they might fall short of giving you a true/valuable direction.

I'll try and tackle it, though...

If you have a narrow niche, and you are already a reasonable-level authority in it (which there is some evidence you are) then in theory if there are ways to make conversions in it, and those conversions will potentially result in good returns (ie enough value that it means something to you and is worth your continued time and effort), then you would seem to have good prospects of increasing your authority, potentially getting high(er) up in SERPs, and increasing the returns.

I guess the big questions here are...do those 2 operators you can work with actually have potential for conversions (that give you sufficient return) and, perhaps more to the point, do they have longevity? A 3rd question might be....even if you covered operators you can't earn from, is it possible that you would increase the site authority/value by doing so, even though you won't earn anything from them (but at the same time, you may be able to steer visitors to those 2 or 3 that will work for you).

My instinct is you will struggle to go wider with the site into other areas. I think you'll just be at risk of diluting what you have and ending up somewhere in the middle (but a long way from offering the overall value you have to offer). But I have little doubt you could go wider within the niche itself and its related topics.

If you think it through carefully, it might be possible to go wider/deeper in the niche but bring a few extra operators into play with some clever topical/structural work. Whether that (if it worked) would ever result in conversions with those (non-niche) operators/sportsbooks you probably won't know until you've seen what happens.

I'm going to say...if you want to extend into other areas away from that specific niche, then starting new is probably the best way to go. And doing that is even tougher now than it was a year ago. That doesn't mean don't do it, though. Just be prepared.

But (if search engines see some value in the current site and it gets traffic), I personally would still try to maintain it focused on the current niche (because on paper it's very likely you can grow it further from a 'value to users' perspective). But, as I said before, that's only if there is some real chance of getting something back for the effort - either in the near future or further away. Remember that affiliate income isn't the only way of making a financial return, depending ofc on what your desired level of return is to make it worthwhile (to you specifically).

I might guess what you're thinking - either one is time consuming. But that's always been the case. There are more ways now to speed up what you have to do - but lot's of people know that Having said that, many of those might be missing some tricks.

[dannyx]

Thanks for help and opinion

That's what I was thinking about, to add content as close to the niche as possible, presenting new operators as alternatives that offer an option most similar to what players in that niche are looking for. This seems like a safer option for expanding the subject matter.

I've also encountered opinions that it's a good idea to add 1% casino-related content, for visitors to sports content, not to have casino-related rankings. However, won't that make the site less niche in the eyes of a search engine?

I have another idea. My site is multilingual. Perhaps an option would be to stick to the theme (with the additions described above) in the English language version that is the most important and competitive. And go much more general in less competitive languages. However, I still wonder what the search engine would think of this. The language versions are in folders /es /pt etc.

[chaumi]

That's what I was thinking about, to add content as close to the niche as possible, presenting new operators as alternatives that offer an option most similar to what players in that niche are looking for. This seems like a safer option for expanding the subject matter.

Yes, I'd say spot on. If you do it so that the (new) content is obviously related in some way to the main niche, there are chances it will work. There are lots of ways to create sensible relationships.

I've also encountered opinions that it's a good idea to add 1% casino-related content, for visitors to sports content, not to have casino-related rankings. However, won't that make the site less niche in the eyes of a search engine?

Yes, this makes sense for a well-trafficked sports betting-related site (probably highly aged and already authoritative). I'd say mainly because you're adding content that visitors to the site might click to out of interest, rather than it's likely to get search engine traffic in its own right. ofc some sportsbooks have casinos as well, so the association is already there. That's what I'd probably focus on first if going down that route. But yes, there could be some danger of dilution in your case.

I have another idea. My site is multilingual. Perhaps an option would be to stick to the theme (with the additions described above) in the English language version that is the most important and competitive. And go much more general in less competitive languages. However, I still wonder what the search engine would think of this. The language versions are in folders /es /pt etc.

You know a lot more than me at translations, Danny. And I need some help with that on a different matter, I'll hit you up on it another time. My instinctive thoughts are the SE's would see it and might not like it, but that's really just guesswork and no experience to back it up. I could easily be wrong.

[baldidiot]

If you have say 5 outgoing links going to operators that have closed or are rogue you might want to consider redirecting them to an operator you trust, even if the brand is not the brand promoted.

Depending on the geo there could be compliance issues with this. I'd add a note, or change the link to an intermediary page that has a "brand a is rubbish, we recommend brand b instead" either with a link or a meta refresh after x seconds.

That would cover potentially some bottoms if it's a regulated geo.

[baldidiot]

Almost 3 years ago I made a niche site related to sports betting. I went narrow and within the niche there were only a few operators 5-6. Generally most turned out to be not honest or not working. Ended up working with 1 solid and 1 average partner. I remove the rest from the site.

How narrow are we talking... Womens over 70's badminton?

Tbh I think I would personally probably try and either:

1. Just push hard to that one operator if they converting well, not worry too much about it and start a new larger site
2. Absorb the micro-niche site into a larger related site where it can form a whole sub section

[chaumi]

2. Absorb the micro-niche site into a larger related site where it can form a whole sub section

This is a workable option in your case, Danny. And, in theory, you might be able to 301 the whole current site (page by page) to the new site where you've reproduced the set up (ie newsite .com/niche and all the current niche site pages - newsite .com/niche/subpage.

There would be dozens of ways you could focus a new (broader) site where your niche will sensibly sit within it and make sense to be there.

But (I think) you'd need to have got the new site up and running, with strong on-point content (and well populated, not just some high level place-holders), ideally ranking and at least getting impressions in its own right, before you tried to do it.

It's likely that at the moment you're ranking because of a combination - exact match domain, reasonably good coverage content, site displays strong enough knowledge of the subject, enough links (and acquired spread over time with no obvious rubbish), and a reasonably lowish level of (good) competition.

You'd hope the EMD isn't playing the biggest part, but ofc there would be a risk in stepping away from it. Appropriate naming on the new site +all the other signals might be enough to maintain the positions or build a strong enough new base from which to advance.

On balance, still your best prospects seem to be to keep the current site going and build out on it. Again, with the proviso that it can pay you off in time.