What is a niche?
A niche is a focus on a specific topic or branch of internet marketing. This means that your niche can be anything with a blog or business website. Whether your focus or main topic is skating or selling your self-written book. It doesn't matter if you are commercial or just for fun. Your website will have a niche or main theme. In this blog post, let's look at what that is and how it works.
Internet marketing and niches
Internet marketing is an increasingly broad concept that more and more people are getting involved with. Whether you are setting up your own websites, websites for clients or for your business. Internet marketing has become a profession in its own right. This can be broken down into many different professions, such as social media marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization, and so on. Niche is a term you will quickly come across in various forums and sources. They are frequently asked about and explored in more detail.
A niche of your website or business is the industry you are in. For MijnHostingPartner.nl, for example, it's web hosting. For a blog about skating as a hobby, it's about skating and everything related to it. And at Albert Heijn it's daily shopping and everything related to it. So one main theme is almost always the case for any business. And it's no different on the internet.
What niche do you focus on?
For many, this will already be clear when you start working on your website for your existing business. If you like to travel the world as a hobby, then you can define travel as your niche. If you are a carpenter and want to have a website to be found locally and to make appointments, then that work and your location are the niche.
However, with any niche, it is important that you are clear with yourself and your team. You don't want content posted on your site that has nothing to do with the main niche. This can be confusing when a hobby website about skating suddenly determines the best laptops of 2021. The adage shoemaker stick to your last applies here as well.
Can you target multiple niches with one website?
If you want to create a more general website on many different topics, there is often the question of whether you should. Search engines like Google need to show your content in search results. And a specific topic with a niche is often easier to rank for. A website gains some authority in the niche over time. This is especially the case with older websites that have been writing about a topic in the niche for a long time. Therefore, they are linked to by others, mentioned in various external sources, and discussed on social media. These are signals used by search engines to rank a website better than others. This is easier with one particular topic than with many different niches and therefore topics on one website.
It is not impossible though, with a few case studies I have read from others, a website with multiple niches can be managed. However, this is not possible when dealing with new or smaller businesses. Think of the big websites like Wirecutter (now owned by the New York Times) and the Dutch website Tweakers. It takes a large team to publish daily content on the various topics.
Assigning a niche to a domain name
The domain name has to do with this, as with many other things. A domain name can be set up in a number of ways, of course. Either you make it your personal brand and give it a name or abbreviation. Your company name or concept. Or something that is trending in your niche. Or you can limit yourself with the domain name. To stick with the skating example, you can use the domain name deschaatser.nl (still available at the time of writing, get it!) to promote your hobby. But if you want to expand this later to other topics within winter sports. Then the domain name may restrict you a bit more than a general domain name within winter sports. So it's always a decision that you have to make right at the beginning of your website. And therefore, just like the other things, it comes with some homework.
To get started with any website at the best price, you can go to MijnHostingPartner.nl. For example, start now with a WordPress website with a Total SSD hosting package, for less than a week you will already have a website, email and database for a year. Sign up for your package now and take your first step on the internet!
