Many, many years ago when the Internet was still in its infancy and few had even heard of the World Wide Web I was given, what was then, some very sound advice:
“If you want to be at the top you must narrow your focus and be the best in covering one topic.”
You see, at first I tried to have as much varied and diverse content as I could, thinking that there would be a myriad of possibilities for someone to stumble upon my site.
Instead of getting more visits, the site just languished alone and unrecognized by search engines.
After getting my good advice, I tried to decide what kind of content would separate me from others. I enjoyed the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and had a few film photos and “SmokyPhotos.com” was born!
To this day, any Google search using the term “photos” and any permutation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park returns SmokyPhotos as the number one Smoky Mountains Photo site! Even the former President of the United States used SmokyPhotos as a source for background photos for a speech!
But alas, the days of the “boutique” websites are numbered. As more and more mega-sites continue to gorge on all kinds of content, the “little guy” must be content to scavenge the crumbs that fall of the table.
The “Superstore” sites that offer everything AND dominate the search engines and it will not be long before many of the smaller sites fade into obscurity.
I have lived through the entire evolution of the Internet and have seen many changes for the better, and some that I don’t like very much.
But I will continue on with my “boutique” sites as long as it is economically feasible to do so.
Which, at the rate we are going, may not be much longer at all!
Comments(46)