If you’ve been considering an online business, you may have stumbled across the term “micro niche”. The question in today’s post, what is a micro niche site, may very well be yours.
The concept of a micro niche is both fascinating and potentially quite powerful. As such, it is definitely worthy of discussion as a potential approach to supplementing retirement income online.
In a prior post, we defined a niche as a group of people who share an interest in a particular topic. If you’re still unclear regarding the idea of a niche, you may want to review the discussion of a niche first.
Understanding the concept of a niche is critical because it’s our starting point in this article. So, please don’t skip over this first step.
What is a Micro Niche Site?
The difference between a niche and a micro niche is essentially one of degree. Where a niche is narrow, a micro niche has an ultra narrow focus.
Example of a Micro Niche
You may still be experiencing one of those “what does that mean moments”, so let’s continue with our discussion of the golf market.
All People Interested in Golf – As discussed, this is a mass-market comprised of multiple groups or niches with wide and divergent interests for products and services.
Junior Golfers – This is a niche market carved from the broader golfing mass market that represents a group of people with similar interests and needs. It’s one slice of the golf market pie if you will. The focus of this niche market is considerably narrower than that of the mass golf market. However, this group will have many desires for golf-related products and instructional services.
Junior Golfers with an Interest in Junior Golf Clubs – This is a possible micro niche with an extremely narrow focus targeting one specific need of the broader junior golfer niche.
Micro Niche Criteria
Is this a viable micro niche? What are some of the criteria we might examine? A micro niche typically targets a particular keyword. As a general rule, we want to look for a keyword that receives at least 1,000 queries per month with limited competition.
Our focus is narrow, but we want to be sure we have sufficient targeted traffic to ensure interest and profitability. Additionally, micro niches will often use a technique called EMD or exact match domain.
“Junior golf clubs” is a long-tail keyword that receives slightly more than 3,200 search queries per month. When you also consider very closely related keywords such as “Callaway junior golf clubs”, “Ping junior golf clubs”, “best junior golf clubs”, and “used junior golf clubs”, this is a substantial micro niche market.
As of the date of this post, there are 205 competing sites. That level of competition is a little high for me. I prefer to target keywords with less than 150 competing sites, but many website owners use 300 as a cutoff.
As it turns out, there is an exact match domain, juniorgolfclubs.com, that is operating within this micro niche. In case you’re wondering, I am not at all involved with this website :). I was merely curious and stumbled upon the site in the course of my research.
Why Choose a Micro Niche?
Focusing on a micro niche is certainly not essential to success, and it’s not for everyone, but these websites designed around highly pin-pointed topics may represent a profitable option. Has your research uncovered a group of eager buyers whose common needs for extremely specific information and products are not currently being well-met?
As discussed above, micro niches are often tailored around a long tail keyword. Studies suggest that the specificity of long tail keywords frequently indicate buyers who are very close to a purchase decision.
The Micro Niche Concept in a Nutshell
If you find a small (relatively) group of people whose specific needs are currently not well-served, you can:
- Develop a website around a highly targeted keyword;
- Answer the questions of your target audience;
- Solve the specific problems of this market; and
- Provide perfect products and services.
Additional Potential Advantages of a Micro Niche
The ultra-narrow focus of a micro niche limits the amount of content required. You may be able to create 4 or 5 pages of evergreen content that require minimal updating. This website may enter the passive income stage fairly quickly.
When crawling your website, Google may find it easier to assess the purpose of your site. This more straightforward assessment can potentially lead to quicker search engine rankings.
I suggest your content pages take the following forms:
- What is …..
- How to ….
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of ….
- Important facts to know about ….
Intriguing Use of Micro Niche Sites
Up until now, we’ve looked at a micro niche site as a simple stand-alone website which is perfectly valid. But my readings infer that there may be another possibility. Is it a viable option to create multiple micro niche sites that support a broader niche website?
Just for argument’s sake, let’s say we have a main niche website for Junior Golfers. Could we create supporting micro niche sites to cover specific categories? Possibilities might be topics like the following: junior golf clubs, girl’s junior golf clubs, best junior putters, and so on.
The main niche site might address general topics like golf rules for juniors, golf etiquette for juniors, and golf accessories. You could then link to the mini-sites covering very specific related categories.
This supporting micro niche structure allows for multiple ports of entry. Each micro niche site could link to the main niche site giving readers access to broader but related topics. This creation of links between related sites may be advantageous from a search engine optimization perspective.
I have not tried this design strategy, but I find it to be fascinating food for thought.
Finding Your Micro Niche in a Crowded Market
Finding a micro niche relies on conducting keyword research. There are various keyword research tools available. One excellent keyword research tool you might use is Jaaxy. Are you excited and eager to delve into some micro niche possibilities? Why not use the search box below to check out your ideas?
You can create a free Jaaxy account (no credit card required) that allows you to conduct 30 keyword searches.
Are You Ready to Create Your Own Website?
If so, make my Getting Started Online page your next stop. This page will provide all of the necessary details for creating a free Starter Membership today in an amazing online community that can make that dream a reality.
In Conclusion
I hope we have thoroughly addressed the question of what is a micro niche site. I would love to read your thoughts around this topic, or your ideas for a micro niche site, in the comments section below. As always, if today’s post was helpful, please be sociable.
To your success!
Hello Linda,
Thanks so much for a well written ,well explaining post on what exactly a micro niche website is.
Not only that, you went ahead and explained what a long tail keyword is in an easy way that anyone can understand.
Must say l was only disappointed that when l clicked a link on your website to junior golf clubs,the link took me away from your site, l prefer a link that opens in a new window so l can get back to a site l was watching/reading because we do not always remember the spelling/name of the site we are at presently.
The potential advantages of a micro niche is clear to understand reading your post,as you have well explained golf/tennis is a broad niche and it will be difficult to cover everything and in the internet,it will be like swimming with big fish.
Thanks so much for your post, learned something which i never really understood(micro niche)
Hi Roamy,
Thanks for the great comments. I’m glad I was able to clarify the concept of a micro niche for you. I particularly appreciate your pointing out that my link to the junior golf club site is not opening in a new window. I will get that changed as I too really appreciate that navigational practice.
Until recently, I thought that the micro niche website was a dead concept. I thought that exact match domains didn’t work anymore. But then I saw a case study a short while back where somebody managed to get an exact match domain to rank on the #1 spot in Google quite easily. So I have started developing my own micro niche website and documenting it as my own case study. I’m not in the #1 spot just yet, but I’m not too far off.
Hi Marcus,
Excellent! I’m very pleased to read that the micro niche concept is working well for you. I too have seen some successes with this approach. As with many other things, I think good keyword research is critical. Thanks for your comments!
Hi Linda,
Thank you for the knowledgeable insight on micro niches. We often look at the big picture and then forget about the smaller details within that big picture that may be more profitable and less overwhelming for us to tackle.
Thank you for the information on Search Engine Optimization strategies that you’ve tried and found to be successful.
Thanks for sharing,
~Kris
Hi Kris,
Thanks for your comments. I’m happy you found the discussion of micro niches to be helpful. I find the topic very interesting and intriguing.
What a coincidence. I was just searching about the topic of micro niche this morning and wondering if it’s worthy of building online businesses around it.
My concern is that some micro niche can be so specific that they don’t get a lot of searches (hence very little traffic) online.
Besides using a keyword tool, how can you tell the difference between a profitable micro niche and one that still needs time to prove its popularity with the crowd?
Thanks for your input.
Hi Cathy,
You’re right that a micro niche appeals to a smaller group and traffic will tend to be less. You do want to do your research carefully and choose a keyword that generates about 1,000 searches a month. Additionally, you want a fairly specific long-tail keyword because those searchers tend, in general, to be closer to the purchase stage. This may help you achieve higher conversion rates and more profitability even with less traffic. If you choose to go the micro niche route, I wish you good luck!
If I extrapolate this area of extra income could be applied to mostly everything.
Your part about searches and a cutoff confuses me a bit. If i find one of these micros and it has less than 50 for competition that’s good right?
The lower the competition the better as long as people are searching for it, correct?
How long might it take to complete one of these websites and how much can I expect to make?
The possibilities are endless sites linking all over the place.
Hi Barry,
Yes, I believe you are correct that the possibilities are endless and would apply to almost everything. It is certainly true that the lower the competition the better.I can’t say how much you could expect to earn because that varies greatly based on the nature of the site and individual effort. In general, a single micro niche site will probably earn less than a broader niche due to the highly targeted nature but many can be steady earners. Thanks for your comments and good luck with your efforts.
love the content on your page, seems to be a niche that i’ll write quality content for as well. this site needs a better interface design, other than that it has good information. has a plain design which doesn’t really appeal to my eyes as much. Design is everything. hope to read more content on your website.
Hi Eddie,
Thanks for your comments and feedback on my site. I’m glad to hear you found the information useful.
I’m glad that I stumbled upon this article, Linda.
I started a micro niche site two months ago. Although, I’m not getting any sales, the confidence level is so high as I know one day all my efforts will pay off. I liked your optimistic approach on the concept of micro niche sites. It’s so motivating for folks like me who are waiting for positive results.
I’ve read so many articles about micro niche site which reads “Why micro niche sites no longer work (and what you need to focus on instead)”, “Are micro niche sites dead? In a word, yes”, “How micro-niche sites used to work and not anymore”. But after attending Jay’s Webinar, I decided to go with it and I’m still optimistic of my decision. Going by your post, I’m sure I’ll succeed with my site.
Hi Sethu,
Congratulations on taking action and creating a site. I’ve read many of the same articles but I also follow numerous successful micro niche sites so I take exception to them. It’s all about providing value for your target market. Thanks for chiming in!