According to John Mueller, it is true that Google algorithms handle different content differently but it is not true that Google treats niches differently.
Let us first know about Niche.
What Is a Niche?
A niche is a specific topic or category that serves as the foundation of your online marketing strategy.
Without a clearly defined niche, your website or online business will lack direction and will have no way of knowing what to do and how to do it.
So a niche is a topic, subject, category, or specific idea around which you establish your entire marketing strategy.
Is it true that Google has different algorithms for different niches?
During the submitted Question and Answer segment, one SEO professional inquired John Mueller, Is Google has different algorithms for each niche.
They inquired whether Google has different algorithms for indexing and ranking different niches.
They have two websites that are both of the same types. And they built them using the same method.
The only difference is that the two sites are in different niches, and one is currently ranking well while the other has lost all rankings.
John stated that he does not believe they have anything specific to different niches.
Different types of content are less crucial for Google’s search results than others.
John refers to the quality raters guidelines, where they discuss YMYL, your money, or your life sites.
In this case, Google employs more critical algorithms for crawling, indexing, and ranking the sites.
For example, it is not the case that a toy shop has entirely different algorithms than a shoe store.
They are both e-commerce sites. But, as they also mentioned in the question, these are content aggregator websites that are created using the same process. Some of them work while others do not.
According to John, this appears to be a low-effort affiliate site where you’re simply taking content feeds and re-publishing them. And this is where Google’s algorithms are less invested in this content in terms of crawling and indexing because it is the same content that Google has seen elsewhere.
From this point of view, if you believe this may apply to your site, John would advise focusing on creating fewer better websites.
This way, you’re not just aggregating content from other sources but also offering something unique and valuable.
Would people miss a website?
Consider the scenario presented by John, in which people would miss a site if Google did not rank it in search results (SERPs).
People don’t miss a site because the content used is unique and non-plagiarized in comparison to other websites.
People will remember a website if it publishes content that is unique in some way that makes it more useful than other websites.
That way of looking at content could be useful for updating older content that is no longer performing well or for planning a website’s content strategy.
Niche-Specific Ranking Factors
Based on the types of websites that are top-ranked. There is an idea that ranking factors differ across niches.
For example, studies published by some SEO tool sites measured different qualities of top-ranked sites across a variety of niches to determine whether ranking factors had varying degrees of influence across the numerous niches they examined.
The studies discovered differences in the types of content, link qualities, and other factors among the top-ranked sites.
According to the findings, the top-ranked sites in some niches have longer content or publish more videos.
The conclusion reached is that Google ranks sites with more content or videos in those specific niches.
However, those similarities and patterns do not indicate that word count or video content is the reason, Google ranks those websites in their respective niches.
Those patterns are either random or exist because users’ needs demand longer or video content.
These studies can help you understand the content and marketing trends that different niches are using.
The trends, however, do not reflect “ranking factors.”
Now a question arises, How to do niche-based SEO for excellent results?
Here are a few key strategies we employ in niche-driven SEO campaigns:
1. Improve your on-page SEO: Check that your title tags, meta descriptions, and other elements are properly formatted and optimized for the keywords you want to target.
2. Generate high-quality content: Your content should be engaging and exciting for your target audience and include your target keywords.
3. Boost your visibility. Ensure that your website is listed in all major directories and search engines: You can also submit articles and blog posts to well-known article directories and social media platforms.
4. Create high-quality backlinks: Locate websites in your niche that are willing to link to yours, and then provide them with quality content to which they can link.