Knowledge base

Research before you build

Practical guides for choosing a niche, building a focused site, understanding search data, and testing monetization without pretending any tool can guarantee rankings or revenue.

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Strategy

What is a microsite? A plain-English beginner guide

What a focused website is, when the format makes sense, how it can create value, and what building GetNicheIQ taught us about the work behind a small site.

Updated August 2026
All articles
Case Study

What I learned building a small website with AI: the WordRanger experiment

A first-hand case study of building WordRanger with AI, GitHub and Cloudflare Pages, including what was easy, what broke, and what still required human judgment.

August 25, 2026 · 12 min read
Strategy

How to sell a microsite: what buyers actually look for

A practical guide to selling a small website: what buyers inspect, how valuation works, which assets must transfer, how due diligence works, and how to decide whether selling makes sense.

August 18, 2026 · 11 min read
SEO

Google Core Updates: How to Audit a Small Site After Traffic Drops

A practical small-site audit for Google core updates: diagnose traffic drops, review search intent and query coverage, add original value, and avoid generic SEO fixes.

August 11, 2026 · 11 min read
Tools

The AI and no-code tools used to build a microsite

A first-hand build log: what AI helped with, where it failed, and what still required human judgment.

Updated August 10, 2026
AdSense

Best AdSense niches: what actually affects earnings

Why fixed RPM rankings are misleading and how to evaluate audience, intent, advertiser demand, risk, and business fit.

Updated August 10, 2026
Strategy

10 microsite ideas worth researching in 2026

Ideas, risks, validation questions, and a worked example showing how to pressure-test an idea before building.

Updated August 10, 2026
Strategy

How to validate a niche before you build

A practical process for testing audience need, competition, content depth, and monetization assumptions.

Strategy

How to build your first microsite without coding

Planning, building, testing, and publishing a small site with no-code and AI-assisted tools.

Strategy

Microsite vs. authority site: which should you build?

Compare scope, maintenance, content depth, risk, and business goals before choosing the format.

Strategy

How to choose a domain name for a microsite

Choose a clear, memorable domain without boxing the site into a phrase it may outgrow.

Strategy

Affiliate marketing for microsites

Where affiliate offers can fit, what disclosures matter, and why relevance matters more than link volume.

Strategy

Email lists for microsites

When an email list adds value, what to offer subscribers, and when it may not be worth the complexity.

Strategy

Social media for microsites

How to decide whether a social channel fits the audience instead of creating accounts everywhere.

SEO

Writing useful search-focused articles

Match search intent, answer the real question, add original value, and avoid writing to a formula.

SEO

Keyword research using free tools

Use search results, Trends, Keyword Planner, and related questions as evidence rather than certainty.

SEO

Internal linking for microsites

Connect related pages so visitors and crawlers can understand the site's main topic clusters.

SEO

How to earn your first backlinks

A beginner approach to relevant links without buying links, spamming communities, or chasing scores.

SEO

Site speed, usability, and monetization

Why performance matters to visitors and how to improve it without treating speed as a magic ranking switch.

Tools

Set up Google Search Console for a new site

Verification, sitemaps, indexing reports, and the limits of what Search Console can tell you.

Tools

Set up Google Analytics 4

Basic measurement for a small site, with attention to consent and what the data can and cannot prove.

Tools

Deploy a static microsite

A beginner deployment guide for getting a small static site online and testing the production version.

AdSense

Google AdSense approval checklist

What to review before applying, without pretending any checklist can guarantee approval.

AdSense

How long does AdSense approval take?

What Google says, why timelines vary, and what to check while an application is pending.

AdSense

Common AdSense mistakes

Policy, usability, traffic-quality, and measurement mistakes that can create avoidable problems.

AdSense

What is AdSense RPM?

Understand the formula, what RPM describes, and why it is not a fixed value assigned to a niche.

AdSense

AdSense vs. Ezoic vs. Mediavine

Compare publisher options by eligibility, control, support, economics, and current program terms.