11 Ways To Completely Evolve Your Niche Site Into A Real Business

No one wants to partner with a typical “affiliate” site. Authority is key to attracting links and partnerships. I cover tactics. to make your site a real business

After I buy a website, I take time to make my niche sites more professional with these 11 tactics. Most of these things are aesthetic but mimic real-world businesses.

These tactics set you up with the foundation needed to attract backlinks if you are doing link-building campaigns and partnerships and help you obtain the trust from Google’s EAT process.

Let’s get into it!

Tactic	Description
Real Authors (or Personas)	Have real authors or consistent personas behind each article to establish trust and credibility.
Author Boxes	Use author boxes to showcase credentials, promote other resources, and link to social media to appear more like a business.
Active Social Media	Maintain active social media accounts to engage with the online community and gain social proof.
Improve The Footer	Optimize the footer by adding email collection, contact information, social media buttons, and links to important pages.
Add Phone Number, Address	Include a phone number, email, and address to demonstrate that the site is a legitimate business.
Multiple Contact Information Options Based on Need	Offer different email addresses for specific purposes to enhance professionalism and convenience.
Detailed About Page	Create an in-depth About Page that covers site details, mission statement, team members, and press mentions.
News Category	Maintain a brand assets page that showcases logo and custom designs and allows limited permissions for others to use them.
Third-Party Verified Reviews	Obtain reviews from customers and external sources to showcase a reliable and reputable business.
Brand Assets Page	Maintain a brand assets page that showcases logos and custom designs and allows limited permissions for others to use them.
Get a Trademark	Consider trademarking the site’s brand to add legal protection and credibility as a business.

Why Is This Important?

Making your affiliate niche site look more legitimate and professional is necessary. Other websites are more likely to link to a website that looks professional, legitimate, and focused on the brand.

They are less likely to link to an obvious “copy and paste” affiliate site format.

When you follow these steps to make your niche site website look and function more like a business website, you have a far better chance of getting backlinks from your outreach. More and better backlinks mean higher earnings and a more profitable site!

11 Tactics That I ALWAYS Do For Niche Sites

1. Real Authors (or Personas)

People want to know there’s a real person behind each article. Who are you? Who is your guest poster? Why should anyone care? By having a real author, or at least a consistent persona, you look much more like a real business and not just another affiliate site.

When people can see the face and read the person’s bio behind the post, it is much more trustworthy. This is also an opportunity to give Google information that improves your EAT with the search engine.

2. Author Boxes

Author boxes are a major part of this strategy. This can be easily achieved by a simple WordPress plugin like Simple Author Box if your theme doesn’t already have that functionality built in.

Not only does this make your niche site look like a business, but it allows you to build your credentials, link to other posts or resources you want to promote, or link to resources like LinkedIn or social media for your blog.

All of these are signs of a business as opposed to a one-trick pony affiliate site.

3. Active Social Media

Active social media accounts are one of the best ways for a niche site to look like a business. Not to mention gain social proof of Google. If a viewer checks out a Facebook page and the last post was 4 years ago, it looks bad.

But an active Twitter account, Pinterest, or Facebook (or whichever social media is appropriate for the niche) gives your online audience more ways to connect with the community and gives you a great resource to see what people are looking for.

Even signs of private groups or communities can work, but the key is active accounts. 

It is better to have one or two very active accounts than a dozen social media accounts with only one showing signs of life.

4. Improve The Footer

An empty footer is a lot of missed opportunities. Most niche sites skip it since it’s not a heavy place to monetize. This is a great place to collect emails, leave contact information, link to important pages, add social media buttons, or even examples of big-name sites where you’ve been featured, if applicable.

Take a look at the screenshot below and see how much better this filled-out footer looks:

That is the footer of a professional-looking business site that gets points with Google for EAT and social proof while collecting emails and connecting visitors to important pages and social media.

If your footer looks bare, that fix needs to be made.

5. Add Phone Number, Address

Contact information is necessary if you want to be seen as a business. This includes having a phone number, email, and address. This information signals to Google that this site is a real business.

It’s also very reassuring to readers who like combing the fine details before making buying decisions.

Here is what I do:

• Phone number: I use NumberBarn.com service to rent a phone number in the U.S. The cost is about $3/month. I use Fiverr voice artists to record a voicemail, which gets added to the NumberBarn phone number. When someone calls (if they call), the voicemail gets played.
• Address: I use a UPS P.O. box. Depending on your location, the cost is about $200-$350/year. I only add an address to my successful sites as it may be cost-prohibitive otherwise.
• Email address: You can create an email address using Google Suites or your hosting provider.

6. Multiple Contact Information Options Based on Need

The above screenshot is an excellent example of having multiple email addresses. This gives a very professional local and is common practice for many companies. Many professional email packages come with multiple addresses. 

Having a different email address for media, advertising, general information, or sales makes sense and looks extremely trustworthy and professional. You can even set up all these addresses to funnel to the same email box for easy management.

7. Detailed About Page

A brief two paragraphs will not cut it for a good About Page. Many niche sites have just 3-4 basic sentences about the website that doesn’t tell much.

A detailed About Page should include:

• Who’s behind the site?
• Mentions in the press
• An in-depth look at what your site’s about and what topics are covered
• A clear mission statement
• Recent company/site news
• Team Members (Editors, Writers, Experts)

You don’t want an About Page that glosses over all these details in a sentence or two. This should be a full deep dive available for anyone who wants to know what your site/business is about. 

8. News Category

A news category builds credibility for your site as a business. Not only is news a category that commonly only exists on active company sites, but it also allows for great content that is not necessarily purely keyword-based.

This alone will set you apart from many poorly put-together niche sites.

Having articles on related topics or with professionals in your field for your news articles also has the benefit of adding some serious EAT in the eyes of Google, not to mention content that is easier to gain attention via social media.

Having a news category is also a great excuse to reach out and make contacts and connections. This is good EAT, good for SEO, and just good for business.

9. Third-Party Verified Reviews

Do you offer direct products or services? Does one of your monetization methods lean into being able to get reviews? Giving away a free newsletter or email lessons can give others something to review.

Getting 3rd party reviews sets you apart as an actual business with customers who think enough of you to review your products and/or services.

Obviously, good reviews are much better than bad ones, but the occasional average review shouldn’t be shunned. 30 perfect reviews look suspicious. 28 perfect reviews with 2 average ones. It looks like a great, reliable company.

The best sites to acquire these 3rd party reviews depend greatly on your site and business. There are several to look at, including Trust Pilot, Google Local, and Facebook Reviews. Many others can also work based on niche.

Get some reviews so that when someone searches your brand, actual trusted review site names come up.

10. Brand Assets Page

A brand assets page is often overlooked and can do some significant things. This shows you care about your logo and custom designs while also giving limited permissions for others to use your logos or art in a way that can get your attention.

This is an essential legal page that many legitimate businesses have, and Google may value it when crawling sites.

Something as simple as the screenshot above shows what a good brand assets page can look like. Check out my brand asset page here.

11. Get a Trademark

If you’re getting a logo anyway (and you should be), why not trademark your site’s brand? This not only gives major legal protection but also adds to your business credibility. 

Once I got my trademark, I placed the trademark symbol (®) in the footer.

Here is the trademark filed at the USPTO.

When a business gets a logo, they get a trademark. They want to protect their name, logo, and brand, and getting a trademark protects you.

Final Word…

There are other tactics I always use to shift from an obvious niche website to an online business. They apply to every site, make it look more professional, and provide great SEO & EEAT benefits.

I would highly recommend applying these to your niche sites, as well.