The Future of Event Based Niche Blogging (The End?)

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Every blogger at some stage of his/ her blogging career, must have done a niche blog. From the past 5 months or so, event based niche blogging has been the trend. Why? You might hear many answers when you ask someone whose niche was successful, but the common reason would obviously be “money”. Ranking a site in just a week or 10 days on the first page of Google and driving huge traffic and there by huge income is not a joke! It’s damn exciting!When I started my blogging career, I first knew about this event based niche blogging, on New Year when Imran has ranked a site in the first position and earned huge bucks. I was perhaps amazed and eager to learn that skill. And later I along with my friends have done the same thing for Valentines day niche blog and ranked it on top of Google in just a week. That was my first and huge success in blogging.
niche-blogging-end-in-future
The idea of niche blogging was great so I didn’t stop there, and have done many more niche blogs and made huge income out of them. But, we shouldn’t ignore the context that niche blogging is spamming and varying Google search engine ranking positions. The content which we write is not genuine, its copied from various sources and we are also bringing down the rankings of highly authoritative sites like HuffingtonPost, Brainy Quote, etc.
I have already written an article where I have clearly described about how Google works and ranks websites, so you must be knowing that Google just wants to provide genuine and relevant content to the users. And it does not encourage over SEO and manipulation of the SERP.

What are we actually doing to rank an event based niche blog? (The Background)

There are many ways, especially black hat, to rank any website on top of Google. But the rankings won’t last long due to the effect of  various algorithms like Penguin or due to some kind of manual penalty on the site. Contrary to this, the concept of event based niche blogging is such that, it isn’t meant to last long! The site should rank on top of Google only during the event days and no one cares even if it gets penalized the next day too.
Google already has enough resources to track and penalize a spam site, but even that takes time. So the main trick is not to get identified by Google. That is the reason why it is suggested not to do vigorous link building long before the event. Ofcourse, huge link building campaigns have to be  implemented to rank a blog, but it should be done in such a way that Google’s algorithms will not find your site. So selecting optimum time to start link building is a key factor.
Most of you already know, for a event based niche blog, all you need to do is proper keyword research, effective on page optimization, smart and vigorous link building. It sounds simple, but people fail to be successful in it just because they don’t understand why they are doing all this, and how these things rank their site.
This was how event based niche blogging was done all these days. Even the person who didn’t know the backend of the process was able to rank a niche blog on first page of Google, with all the black hat techniques like blog commenting, responses etc.

Can’t you rank a site in 7 days anymore? (Observations and Predictions)

#1. Assuming a Beta version of what can be called a niche algorithm

According to the latest observations about niche blogging, I could see many changes in the Google’s algorithms. Though Google hasn’t officially announced any kind of niche algorithm yet, but the ever updating Google might have come up with some kind of calculations or a Beta version against niche blogs.

#2. Maximum niche sites not ranking in first pages

Even most of you guys who worked on recent events like Father’s Day, Friendship day, Ramzan, etc. must have seen many niche sites not ranking anywhere in the first 4 or 5 pages. Maximum percentage of them were ranking in the 8-10 pages of Google.

#3. Sites comparatively older (atleast 1-2 months) ranking better  with advanced On Page

Few niche sites made it to the first page and when I have analysed the sites, they were around 1 to 2 months old domains. And the on page optimization was not normal, few things like internal linking, keyword stuffing, removal of labels and also keywords above the fold were perfectly done.

#4. Smart Link Building campaigns atleast  3-4 weeks before the event

While checking the backlinks for few sites, I have also observed that the link building was started somewhere around a month before the event day. The link velocity was properly maintained and done smartly with changing anchor texts.

#5. Removal of Do-follow blog commenting systems

After people started to know all about niche blogging and blog commenting sites, they started spamming everything everywhere. This has made the blog owners remove the commenting system or change the system to no follow. And many newbie bloggers do not know how to find new do follow blog commenting sites, so they are spamming the already spammed websites. If this continues, there won’t be any good site left with do follow commenting system.

#6. Blocked trackbacks or responses

Responses or trackbacks are one of the most effective way of link building especially for niche sites to rank them faster and comparatively longer. But as the usage of these trackbacks has been dramatically increased over the last 6 months or so, they no longer work from the same IP address or Mac address if done many times continuously.

#7.  Over competition among the bloggers

As the concept of event based niche blogging has gone viral, bloggers of different levels are on to niche blogging to earn some quick money or to just give it a try. This has increased exponential competition for a particular event or for a particular keyword too.

#8. Authority sites ranking higher irrespective of the niche

Another important observation from the past events is that, sites of completely different niche are ranking in the first position. I would say its purely based on authority or the site is in Google Honeymoon. EMD is probably no more a ranking factor even for event based niche blogs.
After alot of research and observations, one question raises in my mind “Will niche blogging come to an End?”. I am not saying that we cannot target an event and rank on top of Google, but I am afraid we cannot do it in just 7 or 10 days anymore.

The strategy now has to be changed:

  • People should start building a blog from more than atleast 3 weeks before the event.
  • Start looking for good alternatives, without too much spamming, apart from blog commenting.
  • Start concentrating on building authority.
  • Target events which are unique and has less competition.
  • Learn advanced ways of on page optimization, as it effects blog’s rankings alot.
  • Build links which are worth.
  • Maintain link velocity and quality of the link backs.

I would like to stress on the point that all the above mentioned points are my observations and predictions, these are the changes I have observed in the last 6 months of blogging. Few might still be able to rank a site in short time, but the question is “how long?”.
I would love to know what you think about this. Do leave a comment and we will further discuss on the same. Let us make it an effective conversation!