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11.29.06
Quality Niche Content Websites
 By
Aaron Wall
Niche websites:
You can't create a site about what's going on in the plastic industry unless you learn how they think. You gotta pick up some trade papers. Talk to some people inside. So that when you do create you will be authentic and loved. So that you get it. You can't be f***ing pedestrian and set up a site and hope they will come. They may visit but they won't come back. And if they don't come back you have lost.
Danny Sullivan is launching Search Engine Land in 2 weeks. NickW is podcasting web dev stuff. Both will surely be great niche websites, although it remains to be seen what sort of brand strength and share of voice SearchEngineWatch.com will have without Danny Sullivan at the helm.
Videos (Google has a clear lead in packaging and aggregating that niche content): You are What You Say and All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Google are both interesting, via Rough Type.
Via Blogoscoped, Google has a clear lead in scanning books
Google, for instance, is digitizing some great libraries. But their contracts (which were actually secret contracts with libraries - which is bizarre, but anyway, they were secret until they got sued out of them by some governments) are under such restrictions that they're pretty useless... the copies that go back to the libraries. Pretty much Google is trying to set themselves up as the only place to get to these materials; the only library; the only access. The idea of having only one company control the library of human knowledge is a nightmare. I mean this is 1984 - a book about how bad the world would be if this really came about, if a few governments' control and corporations' control on information goes too far.
Why Aggregation & Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment [PDF] - a good piece of research showing why and how Google is gaining leverage daily. Key quote: Value of aggregation and brands increases with exponential increase in content choice. Which is another way of saying that it is going to be better off for small players to own a niche than to be a choice within a larger marketplace.
If you own a niche the aggregators NEED you. If you are just another player in a crowded market then it is going to be tough to build much of anything as quality algorithms suck the life out of your market.
About the Author:
Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, an ebook offering the latest
search engine optimization tips and strategies. From SEOBook.com Aaron
gives away free advice and search engine optimization tools. He is a
regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and runs the
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