8 replies to this topic

[lister]

Happy New Year to you all.

I am very pleased with my website and SEO. If PR is a guide worth rating ours is PR 4 which is great for us.

Guess I have a couple of questions.

My question is, the site currently sells, for example "apples." All of the sites navigation and links are designed to sell apples. But now I want to sell pears, bananas, melons etc so. Is it better to leave all the links in place and redirect them as 301? (If that is the correct term?) rather than simply unpublish them?

If I start adding new content to existing ranked pages will that harm SEO? In other words, my page was ONLY talking about apples, now I am talking about pears and other fruits - that a problem?

THANKS ALL

REGARDS< Lister

[Jill]

Are you getting rid of the apples all together or just adding additional fruits?

If you're keeping them, then just add new sections to your site for the new fruits.

If you're getting rid of them, then it seems you might as well just shut the site down all together or sell it to someone who still sells apples.

[SelfMade]

In my opinion a 301 redirect is relatively drastic.

In your example you say your site is designed to sell "apples"

Apples can be considered a sub-niche of a FRUIT niche if you will.

Now to me if you want to also sell pears, bananas and melons, you can still appeal to the same target groups as those interested in "apples" due to the generic niche factor.

The SEO may need tweaking a little...but then every site needs tweaking due to serp fluctuation..so just normal stuff really...

Just tweak it, so that it doesn't throw your customers off completely. The last thing you want is to confuse them, but given the examples you provided, there is not a great deal of risk of that.

[chrishirst]

Just a bit of pedantism

"niche" means "A small opening".

Anything "generic" is NOT going to be a "niche".

[SelfMade]

Just a bit of pedantism

"niche" means "A small opening".

Anything "generic" is NOT going to be a "niche".

Niche to my knowledge means:

A gap in a market for a type of product

When I say "generic"...FRUIT is GENERIC...an apple, melon or banana in their singular form is "SPECIFIC"

I could have used a better descriptive term like "Umbrella category".

Pendantism I have never heard of before...blame my former teachers! (who are still doing their paltry job..despite them calling me a mouthy git who would never achieve anything!)

[chrishirst]

A gap in a market for a type of product

Nope! That's just what is has been bastardised to "mean" by "marketers" who seem to speak English as a fifth language.

"Pedantism" is the demenour or actions of a pedant. A pedant being one who is (overly) concerned with precision. However in a world (SEO) that is overrun with misconceptions and misunderstood information a little precision should not go amiss, and the English language is one thing that I am pedantic about.
(mis-identifying tags and attributes is another)


A small gap in a market would be correctly termed a "niche market" or a "niche in a market"

[SelfMade]

Nope! That's just what is has been bastardised to "mean" by "marketers" who seem to speak English as a fifth language.

A small gap in a market would be correctly termed a "niche market" or a "niche in a market"

Ok then chris,

How would you describe a "niche within a niche" or AKA....."sub-niche"....

You can have a small niche that some might consider a massive gap in the market...difference being..most people, Internet Marketers included are too dumb to spot a small niche that is actually a massive gap in the market until someone comes along and fills that gap..only then do people realise how big a gap it is..thats where those most savvy win the prize!

In my opinion and it is only an opinion...Niche has absolutely NOTHING to do with market size full stop!

[rolf]

Back on the original point, I agree with Jill, but would add that if you're expanding to sell other fruit as well, then you have the option of a more gradual change.

Start by adding your new things, then change a few of the most obvious existing things or things that really don't make sense if you don't change them, then over a period of time adjust the rest of the site.

On one of my main sites I went from just selling 2cm red lederhosen buttons to selling red lederhosen and their accessories, and then on to all colours of lederhosen and associated paraphanalia and I have never looked back.

[chrishirst]

To use my favourite (and obvious) example.

Amazon just used to sell books at one time.