How to Build a Niche Hobby Website That Ranks

Building a niche hobby site that has a chance of ranking is harder than it used to be. However, when following a solid plan, it’s perfectly possible with some hard work and time. Here is a good process to follow in pursuit of this goal.

Pick a Great Niche

Choosing a great niche is especially important, otherwise, all your efforts may be in vain. You may not discover this until 6-12 months later after you’ve written – or paid for – many articles. So, it pays to plan well.

Niche Selection

Start with a list of hobbies to choose from: here’s one from Hobby Help that’s a go-to page for website builders. While we cannot tell you which hobbies people are emotionally invested in, it is a terrific starting point.

However, if you want a niche filled with excitement rather than it being like watching paint dry, consider promoting Mobile Casinos or Sports Betting. Click here to find out more about this topic.

Marketplaces and Affiliate Commissions

Also, think about whether you’ll want to refer sales as an affiliate. It can be a good supplemental income source when allowing your site time to grow. However, there must be enough products to sell and at a good price where the 3-4% commission will add up. Alternatively, you can create a marketplace to allow people to purchase directly from your online store.

Use WordPress

Adopting the free WordPress platform is a faster way to get your site up quickly. It is a content management system that lets you launch a site in no time at all. Match this with powerful web hosting (the service that puts your site online). Siteground is good, and WPX Hosting is also popular. Pick a catchy domain name too. If your site will only ever be about a single hobby, then choose something related to that. If it may broaden out eventually, niche up a little more.

Also Read: What Are Google Ads?

Publishing and Promotion

Publishing often will help increase the number of search phrases that the site will rank for. Think of it like fishing and putting as many lines in the water as possible to catch more fish in a day.

For promotion, once you have 30+ articles, it’s a good idea to actively promote your content. Use sites like Quora to post answers to related questions. Find relevant forums to answer questions and link to your site (where this is permitted). Also, see if there’s a relevant subreddit on Reddit.com and promote there too.

Use HARO to answer questions for reporters on the topic. There’s a chance you may get the site mentioned or linked to when the article goes live.

When you pursue a hobby niche site as a passion project where you invest considerable time and energy into it, it shows. People will begin to respond to the energy that you put forth and refer to you because of your deep knowledge. This is the point where you begin to see inbound links pouring in, Google responding with higher rankings, and the traffic increasing accordingly.