1. The Focus (vertical) or Breadth (horizontal) of web content topics should depend on the site’s purpose and the interests of its stakeholders. Say you have a pet store. You could focus on only the “pets” that you provide services or products for – keeping it vertical within that scope, which would be very rich, OR this site could also expand horizontally to encompass topics on “People with pets”, “Other pets”, “Unusual Pets”, “Veterinary Vocations and Careers”, best “Zoos to Visit” or on conflict issues, like “Farm animals – pets or livestock?”

2. Give your visitors more of what “they” want. Content focus or breadth should be to provide supplemental information to one’s readers. Surveying your current viewers is a great way to learn more about their interests. Another would be to monitor your web stats to find out which articles were selected the most and had more viewing time — and then add more articles/info that following those topic areas/themes.

3. Provide content on a consistent basis – and on a schedule that matches your ability to make contributions on a continual basis. After a while, viewers will grow to expect new info and return more often (as long as the value and quality are relevant to their needs, of course)!

I’m one of those web marketers who is definitely in favor of providing fresh, great content – for the benefit of the web visitors, as well as for building credibility.

The fact is, Google has been destroying content on the Internet for years by rewarding sites with the most limited, narrowly defined vertical content, which makes it much easier to rank for certain keywords. That’s what has driven the trend toward “Niche Marketing” over the last several years, and I see nothing in Google’s ranking that would suggest a move toward more horizontal content will improve your ranking for specific keywords.

The reality is, the more horizontal and general your website, the more difficult it will be to rank in Google and the more difficult it will be to monetize. In my opinion, Google is destroying the quality of content on the Internet in their greed for advertising revenue, which forces content writers to conform to their limited keyword optimized view of the world. I believe Google has a dangerous and damaging monopoly on search and Google should be boycotted to destroy their monopoly, which is the equivalent to censorship of quality content.

The best blogs in the world with the most interesting, creative content often have the most difficult time ranking well in Google.

In fact, the trend toward niche marketing is accelerating to the point that people are now manufacturing entire websites around one specific product. That’s the new trend: “buyer keywords”. The bottom line is, if you want to make money, stuff your website with the most limited, narrow keyword niche as possible, fill it with garbage respun content that targets different long-tail keywords (given the pompous scientific sounding name “Latent Semantic Indexing”), and focus on one or two products in that niche.

Google rewards vertical marketers, period. Unless you have the resources to publish hundreds of thousands of articles, get hundreds of thousands of backlinks and utilize every source of modern media such as video, etc, horizontal marketers will lose out to vertical marketers every time.

Hello, from Indy Medical Supplies LLC. Horizontal content sites are a great idea for businesses that want to grow like us. Please visit http://www.indymedicalsupplies.com Small business owners need to help each other by spreading the word for available services.

In theory, the idea of horizontal web content sounds good – if you have a large staff to research and update your content continually for the vast array of subjects/products/services that you provide. For an individual, small business owner like myself, it seems like it would be difficult (not impossible) to manage THAT much and do it WELL. “Jack of all trades” is usually the “master of none.”

As our company’s websites have grown over the years, we have needed to broaden our horizons to offer new or improved products but also provide DEPTH that in turn provides VALUE to what we offer. The real shame of too many sites is that they rely more & more on “slashing prices,” rather than provide product support – by way of better details, providing “outside of the box” solutions, etc. In short time, great products with potentially good, long lasting profit potential, become commoditized.

Aside from just broadening our site with the usual or expected stuff, we chose to “accessorize.” What else MIGHT customers also be wanting or thinking about – the complimentary stuff. On top of all of that by blogging – http://www.parpoolsblog.com, additional “knowledge base” websites – http://www.pool-care.net & http://www.spacareonline.com, Facebook, Twitter, ezine article writing, etc., that is all a part of the horizontal content that the author is trying to expose.

It makes sense! Why not put a larger, more vibrant target on our backs? On top of all that, the organic nature or relevance should be increased.

Does this take effort? You bet – my hands are killing me! I believe the long-run payoff is there. Good article.

Horizontal is absolutely fine as long as you have the resources. I have struggled for a year with a website that is too broad for one person to do in their spare time. A few weekends ago I literally threw together a different niche website in a similar field with probably similar readers with similar needs.

The niche website is already producing half the traffic of my broader website, and double the google ad clicks. Considering I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on the broader website, vs the niche, the ROI speaks for itself.

Never choose a subject that is broader than you can cope with. It’s an absolute success-killer, since you never get to deal with any sub-topic in sufficient depth so your website always seems too thin either vertically in each sub-topic or horizontally where you have too few topics.

Well, I didn’t assume what is better, but made couple of tests (websites). That’s where the methodology comes to effect. Facts are following:
1 Narrow, focused blog can be catapulted to first 10 positions in Bing/Google within a week! You need three pages with 500-1500 words, focused on targeted key phrase. New posts unrelated to the phrase will move you nowhere. You DON’T need hundreds of back links.
2.Horizontal web site is near to impossible to bring under top 100. You can have as many back links as you want. It’s a myth. They simply misbehave with SEO optimization.
3. Horizontal web site is much better for social media marketing. You can write INTERESTING posts and then drive traffic from twitter, Facebook or other social web sites W/O problemo…

So, depending on your marketing strategy, you can use what you like. Only the method of bringing traffic is different.

Facit: Vertical – good for SEO ranking, Horizontal – good for Social Media ranking. On the bottom line, CONTENT decides will you monetize traffic or not.

I have built up a significant amount of horizontal content, most of which is at least somewhat related to my main keywords. I write about things that interest me. Some of my content (mostly blog posts) has turned into hits.

For me, it’s somewhat valuable to add content like that – it’s a little bit like linkbait – and I also enjoy writing new things.

I think that the use of horizontal content depends on what type of feel you are going for with your website. If you are primarily in the business of finance, I think it is a good idea to have a well-rounded selection of content instead of focusing on one vertical (e.g. loans). If you are going for a more social website, you would want to include other verticals as well as finance information.
We are about to incorporate a blog into our website: http://www.maketodaypayday.co.uk. While we will at first focus on information related to short term loans, eventually we will expand to provide more information about finance.

If your main niche is very competitive, having a spread of related horizontal content will complementary and bring more traffic.