Starting a site with broad range of topics instead of a narrow niche

Hey! I am making a blogging/review site and I find that all the guides are about picking a narrow niche and sticking to it, maybe expanding at some point. I do imagine that this is for a good reason. Thus I am here to ask how much harder would it be if I am to start not with a very narrow niche, but with a large range of topics? Is it even possible?
Here is an example of what I have in mind: Most guides or success stories go on about picking something very narrow. As this example goes, let us pick PC Monitors. Therefore the whole site is going to be about PC monitors. Cool. However now, in contrast, what I would like my site to start with is the entire PC hardware gamma -- so this will feature, CPUs, GPUs, RAM, cases, keyboads, monitors, etc. This is not actually the niche I am going to go for, but it is more or less the same in terms of structure.
It is not a problem if I have to wait more until I see any monetary gains as a result. 12 months is the limit I have setup for myself. I am expecting to be able to write about 200 high quality and very detailed articles in the first 3 months or so. I do not have a huge budget, probably around $1000 for PNBs and/or whatever else might boost me (Feel free to add suggestions/recommendations!). I am still pretty new with these things, thus I have not done my due research on what options I have for promoting the site, I believe it will be better if I focus on building it and writing the content, at least until I have a sizeable amount.

I dare say that I am passionate about the topic and writing about one small aspect of the whole thing feels... Limiting. But feelings aside, I want to weigh in what is best for business.
As previously mentioned, I am quite new at this, thus if I have missed anything important to note or to overall grasp -- I would highly appreciate someone pointing it out.

Start with narrow niche.

You will have topical relevancy that will give boost to ranking.

Once you start ranking and making money, launch another narrow niche related to first narrow niche.

Yes, I am aware of that, however my concern is that things in this broader niche are very well interwoven.
Maybe I will focus on one part and have some other parts but not as well developed as the 'main'?

I hope you are hiring a writer, because that open post was hell to read, lol.

To take your example, the PC monitor site.

Make the site about PC monitors first. Just make sure you don't limit yourself with the domain, but picking "monitorheaven.com" or something like that. Take a more general approach on the domain name. So that you can expand to GPU, CPU, RAM later on.

However, I would advice you to go first with only monitors, especially if you are new to IM. Just writing about monitors could potentially be 1000's of articles. Ones that is finished, you move on to keyboards, CPU or whatever. Then when you have a fair amount of articles you'll move on to the next category.

What you don't want is empty categories, or categories with only 4-5 articles. It looks bad and might affect the relevancy of your site. As a started, it's better to have laser focus on one thing - once that category is somewhat filled out, then continue with the next.

I have myself tried starting 3 big sites with very broad category pages. A big problem is that every niche/category could contain thousands of articles. Which would be time consuming and expensive. Because you really don't want 9 random health articles, 12 articles about how to take care of a computer and 2 articles about fishing. It's too broad, too much emptiness.

Just make sure that you don't restrict yourself through the domain name. Even if you for the first months, or even year, would write about monitors - pick "allaboutPC.com" instead of "allaboutmonitor".

I hope that helps somewhat.

@Zbigniew
Thank you for your feedback!

How many articles would you say is 'sufficent' for one given niche? I do realize that this is subjective and the niche itself would be a factor, but having a number in my head helps.

Also, did you manage to get your big sites to where you wanted them eventually? Just curious.

Hard to say. As you said, it depends. But I’d say 20-30 articles before filling another category.

Some failed and some succeeded. The biggest ones failed in the way that they didn’t reach my initial goals. But they have still made a lot of money.

My most successful sites have been niched. I.e sites about fishing, mobile phones, basketball and things like that.

I tried making sites with several different, unrelated, topics. But it’s simply too big of a project.

Good luck with your site man

If you have the budget then go for the authority site but i suggest you "Don't put all your eggs in one basket".

No you want to stick with writing about monitors first (as per your example) But then what you could do is write something like:

Top 10 gaming monitors with the best refresh rate

Or something (clutching here)

Then in that post mention graphic cards and CPU has an element to play on how those factors come into.

Once you get that post ranking and you have built up a few posts on monitors if you decide to start writing about graphics cards you can then go back to the post I mentioned above and link to the relevant categories and posts giving the new subjects/topics bit of internal linking weight.

Id focus on one area become the "expert" in that and then slowly venture into it but if that is your plan as I said id find a way to start introducing a internal linking structure from day one without actually linking. I hope that helps.

EtherealSteelCarapace said:

@Zbigniew
Thank you for your feedback!

How many articles would you say is 'sufficent' for one given niche? I do realize that this is subjective and the niche itself would be a factor, but having a number in my head helps.

Also, did you manage to get your big sites to where you wanted them eventually? Just curious.

Click to expand...

Google likes websites that cover a topic area authoritatively.

So rather than thinking about numbers of articles, think about what would be needed to be the authority site.

You don't need to cover the topic exhaustively. You just need to cover it in more detail than anyone else.

Nor do you need 5,000 word articles. You need articles that cover the subject. If 5,000 words are required to do that, that's the requirement. But if only 500 words are needed, write for that number.

You can venture into other topics, but you run the risk that those articles don't add to your being a subject specialist.

Big sites become big by being a specialist in one area, then gradually becoming the authority in a related area.

In my opinion and in my experience, @EtherealSteelCarapace, you are thinking in the right direction.

Covering the entire genre as opposed to a segment of that genre is a site that will get traffic for a bazillion KWs if done correctly.

It is work to keep the structure upright so you need to interlink properly, build out the silo, be sure to keep at it on a regular pace and not be willy nilly when building it out.

You also want to target your inner pages with your SEO as opposed to your main page (90/10 or so) as you are targeting specific KWs on your inner page and your root url is not the money page.

Not all that long ago a client of mine started building out a site that will target over 3K KWs that are in a certain industry and each page will target one of those KWs. I know this as I generated the KWs for him and am handling the SEO while he and his team build out the site.

I've done that myself in the past and it is a really solid idea but you do need to be disciplined as to the onsite being Google friendly as well as being consistent in the build out.

Thank you all for your feedback! I really appreciate it!

The idea to slowly branch out to other related niches, like @t2van said, really does sound solid, I think I am going to go with that.

@BassTrackerBoats what you mentioned about 90/10 -- you mean to focus 90% on the inner pages, or did that I get that totally wrong?
Also: 3K KW? Isn't that A LOT? I am guessing that the site in question eventually 'made' it?

BassTrackerBoats said:

In my opinion and in my experience, @EtherealSteelCarapace, you are thinking in the right direction.

Covering the entire genre as opposed to a segment of that genre is a site that will get traffic for a bazillion KWs if done correctly.

Click to expand...

This is similar to a journey that I'm on, and I'm starting to see so many new keywords popping up into the To 100.
@EtherealSteelCarapace, I will tell you this...
It's a LOT of work. Chances are, it will get expensive (relatively speaking and depending on your budget, of course).
You mentioned your budget being $1,000. With this budget, you're going to be doing a lot of things yourself, which is fine, but you're going to need to be very selective with the link-building.
My recommendation would be to start building your content. Save as much of that $1,000 as possible for maybe the first couple months.
Track your keywords. As you start to see your keywords pushing up into the results pages, you'll have a better understanding of which pages you should send some good backlinks to.
If you stick to it and keep at it, I think you will get the results you're looking for.
My journey started at the end of June and I'm slowly starting to see things evolving in a good direction.
You're on a path to build some real authority, but it will take time, effort, commitment, resources, hurt feelings, frustration, and maybe even a few tears, but don't give up.
Keep going.
12 months is the timeline you've set for yourself. Just take it day by day, week by week, and month by month. I tried to give myself an artificial deadline to receive X results by, and as I quickly learned, some things will just not be in your control. Stay focused.

I wouldn't even focus on lnikbuilding (if it's even needed) if the site is new id rather get the content done, get the site out of the sandbox and just see where it sits on it's own.

IF the OP is going to writing 200+ articles in a short space of time I guess some of them are going to be close to specific searches and "long tail KWs" which might end up ranking on their own anyway...

t2van said:

I wouldn't even focus on lnikbuilding (if it's even needed) if the site is new id rather get the content done, get the site out of the sandbox and just see where it sits on it's own.

IF the OP is going to writing 200+ articles in a short space of time I guess some of them are going to be close to specific searches and "long tail KWs" which might end up ranking on their own anyway...

Click to expand...

I agree. For that budget, I wouldn't even think about paying for any links until at least 4 or 5 months in. He can manually build some, himself, but I definitely wouldn't recommend paying for one, yet.
One thing he may want to look into, is using KGR keywords in his content.

@BassTrackerBoats what you mentioned about 90/10 -- you mean to focus 90% on the inner pages, or did that I get that totally wrong?
Also: 3K KW? Isn't that A LOT? I am guessing that the site in question eventually 'made' it?

Click to expand...

Yeah the 90/10 is links to the site - 90 to inner pages but like others are saying you need to build out the site a bunch before doing any off site.

3K is a lot but I've built larger ones back in the day. This guy has staff to write s he will do just fine with it and I am sure that after a few months we will see KWs on the first page of Google with the KWs I have generated,, the content his team is producing and the off site I am doing.

Do listen to those that are saying not to do any real SEO too early so you can see what you actually need to do as to off site SEO.

I'm attempting to do the something similar @EtherealSteelCarapace. What tool are you planning to use for keyword research?

Has anyone used an all-in-one tool? I'm thinking about using KWfinder because of simplicity. Any suggestions are appreciated!

I was thinking of a similar approach @Tetsuo88 , however I really haven't done my due research on that topic as of right now.

Thanks for the additional info and encouragement, guys!