[?] Niche Testing - Post Payday Loans Update

Before the above mentioned update, I used to test niches, before diving into them. The way I did this was create my website with some placeholder articles for content, do the required ON page SEO and then hit it with a couple of PBN links. The results from this initial link push would then tell me how competitive the niche actually was. The reason why I did this was, because no matter how thorough the KW research I'd sometimes still get surprised or even overwhelmed by how competitive the allegedly easy niche actually was. And when I noticed that it was usually already too late to pull a 180 and abandon the project (without noticeable losses), because I had already spent a lot of time/money into the project. Hence the niche testing.

Unfortunately the new 30 day sandbox period pretty much kills this method. Before I'd actually see real results, I'd have to wait 30 days and within these few weeks big G might actually pick up on my PBN links and either penalise my money site, or worst case take down my PBN (very unlikely though).


So, I was wondering if any of you guys used to have a similar approach or are maybe using a niche testing approach that's still working for them.


Cheers

You are totally right. It is a hit and miss these days. Especially that new rank depressing algo which drives you nuts. Interesting to see other member's though on this.

I was curios to know about the 30 day sandbox, it seems not to hit my aged sites.

The problem with the presumed new algo is that you cannot basically tell what triggers the sandbox. It could be new links to an existing page, or a new page on an existing site, but for new sites its just pretty obvious.