By now almost everyone has heard the term Niche Sites. It is a very popular, and manytimes overused buzz word amongst internet marketers. It seems that almost everyone who wants to build a site is jumping on the bandwagon an building niche site in hopes of dominiating the search engine rankings for their particular niche and making tons of money. And for good reason. Before I go into that lets define the term a bit further. A niche site can be defined as a site that focuses on a narrow subject or market. Examples might include pets, fishing, landscaping, parenting, etc. The biggest advantage of focusing on a particular niche is that big businesses usually don’t bother and the competition is less fierce. The trick to finding a good niche is to find one which is rich in keywords that people search for, has high monthly volume, and is not satuated by big competition. 

With that said, so what is an Authority Site? Is there much of a difference between an authority site and a niche site? Authority sites are built around niches and usually dominate that niche. They are the authority for that niche. However, I see one big distinctive difference between a true niche site and an authority site. An authority site is in the game for the long haul. People that build authority sites are passionate about their sites. The purpose of an authority site is to provide valuable high quality content in their given niche. The information is updated frequently and the articles or posts may include experts in their given field, whereas a typical niche site does not have to be as original and may be mainly populated with PLR and less original articles. An authority site is truely an authority in its niche and receives a lot of repeat traffic and is often cited by others.  People who are building these types of sites are building a true Internet business.

The classic example of an Authority site is About.com, which is a collection of niches, but an authority of each niche. My own authority site in the making is More4kids Parenting, a parenting and family resouce located at www.more4kids.info. Like About.com, it is a collection of niches in the areas of parenting, home schooling, pregnancy, childrens health, babies and child safety that I am very passionate about and plan to dominiate. I try to make the articles not only entertaining, but also very informative. My friend Melissa is developing her site, Craftyplaces, all around Crafts. On my site I have included articles not only from myself, but also from experts such as mothers, psychologists, law enforcement professionals and professional educators. This site more than likely will be the only authority site I will be working on over the next few years as I continue to develop it and dominate my choosen niche and sub-niches. I promise to keep people informed as to how it is development. Right now I receive anywhere from about 800 to 1200 unique visits a day. Not bad when considering the static site I had before at the most only received around 500 visits tops after 3 years of work.

So, what is the diff between an authority site and a niche site? Hopefully the difference is a little clearer now. My difinition centers around the level of seriousness one has towards their site. I see an Authority site as a niche site on steroids aimed at dominating their given niche. People that are looking to develop a true internet business and presence are development authority sites. In the coming months I will continue to write about the tools I use and some of the techniques I have very successfuly used in generating good consistant traffic.

In the meantime, the best place to learn more about how I built my site and learn about the many tools I use at the Authority Site Center ASC is dedicated to helping people develop authority sites such as mine.

Tags

Internet Business, Blog Marketing