Google: You Don't Need A Niche Site To Rank On A Topic
Google's John Mueller said on Twitter, "You don't need to have a niche site in order to rank in Google; in fact, sometimes that's a good way not to rank." He explained that "A page doesn't have to be on a site that's "related to the niche" in order to be useful & helpful."
Here are those tweets:
would be wonderful to see that actually be the case. I keep hearing this from Google and keep seeing parasite sites completely unrelated to the niche dominate the rankings with fluff pieces that don't actually say anything
— Ron Walter (@ronlwalter) August 5, 2023
Here is the second part, if you want to see it:
Real 'Helpful' wisdom there, John.
— Harvey Meale (Niche Whisperer) (@harveymeale) August 6, 2023
@JohnMu the important part from his tweet is not "unrelated sites" but "fluff pieces that don't actually say anything". Unhelpful articles that dominate the serp just because they are on a high authority (backlinks wise) website.Would love your take on this.— Firas (@firas_online) August 6, 2023
The funny thing is, in December, Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison said the same thing. He said your content does not need to be on one topic, one niche topic, for it to rank well. So you might ask, what about topic authority?
This was added after I wrote this:
This would seem to directly contradict Google's official guidance. Would love to see @searchliaison clarify here. pic.twitter.com/5h24AHmuG7
— Mike Futia (@mikefutia) August 8, 2023
I think the problem folks have is that the likes of Forbes can get away ranking for completely random keywords with crap content like this, which again, goes against your supposed HCU guidelines https://t.co/l08j3Mzmpv pic.twitter.com/Fd6FAH8gXH
— Mike Futia (@mikefutia) August 8, 2023
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