I built the broad site and the micro site side by side

I built the broad site and the micro site side by side

Month 1: two domains, $11 each, same week. Site A: "home fitness" — broad. Site B: "resistance bands" only — micro. I wanted to settle the debate for myself.

Month 6: Site A (broad) had 40 posts spread thin across treadmills, weights, yoga, everything. Traffic 3,000/mo, ranking for nothing in particular — too shallow on each topic. Site B (micro) had 25 posts ALL about bands. Traffic 6,500/mo and climbing, ranking #1-3 for a dozen band terms.

The setback for Site B: I hit a ceiling. By month 10 I'd literally exhausted the topic — there are only so many things to say about resistance bands. Traffic plateaued at 11,000/mo, revenue $1,400.

Site A, meanwhile, slowly found its footing once I forced it to go deep on sub-clusters. Month 14: 14,000/mo, $1,700, but it took twice the work to get there.

The verdict: micro won early on topical authority; broad won on long-term ceiling — but only after I treated it as a cluster of micro-niches, not one vague site.

The takeaway: micro-niche ranks faster because authority concentrates, but it caps out. Start micro to win, then expand into ADJACENT micro-niches — never a vague broad theme. Depth first, breadth second.