How to Utilise SEO in a Niche Market
Operating in a niche market means that most people won’t want or need your product or service – but if you can find those people who do want what you are selling, you will hit a goldmine. This is where SEO comes in, and if you do it right you will have the people who make up your niche coming to you!
Due to the fact that your pool of potential customers is so much lower, traditional methods of reaching people should be on the backburner and instead you should look for new and innovative ways to market your business. The internet offers a great way to accomplish this.
So many different people use the internet in so many different ways. By having your business active and online, you have a much greater potential to reach your target market. There are a number of different ways being online can help your niche business, but one you should be taking a very close look at is SEO.
When it comes to a digital marketing campaign, SEO is a must. Some businesses tend to avoid SEO as you can’t see results straight away. But if you do SEO right then it is more likely that your business will thrive in the long term. Even though your business offering is niche, it doesn’t mean you won’t have competition.
All businesses will have competition in one shape or another, so it is important that you are deploying all the tactics you can to ensure your business stands out. SEO is a great way to do this and ensure potential customers go to your website and not a competitors.
SEO is important because it helps your website’s rankings in search engine result page rise. Many people use search engines (like Google) to find out the information they are looking for. If your website is not in the first couple of listings (or not even on the first page) then you are virtually invisible.
Obviously, you don’t want your brand to be invisible, so that’s where SEO can help. Deploying quality SEO tactics can push up your ranking for the keywords you are targeting. The more people that search for a certain keyword, the higher the competition, but when operating in a niche market you’ll find that there isn’t as much tough competition, but less people are searching for those keywords.
Effective SEO will help to get your website to stand out from the rest and can really help you ensure your niche market business thrives. Have a look below at some of the important aspects you need to include in your SEO strategy to ensure better chances of success for your niche business:
Keyword Research
Keyword research is critical in SEO, and it is especially the case for those in niche markets. This is because if you don’t perform proper keyword research and end up targeting the wrong keywords it could have a very detrimental impact on your business.
It could mean that no one finds your website because they are searching for different terms that you aren’t targeting or you can’t rise in the rankings because you are focusing on terms with too much competition. Nailing down the keywords you are going to target isn’t a one and done type of job either; you will need to develop your keyword list over time.
Different keywords have differing competitiveness, so it is important to include a mix in your list. Now, how do you define competitive in your individual niche market? But no matter where you operate you’ll likely discover terms that hold a high level of competition compared to others.
It is a good idea to include a mix of competitiveness keywords in your list, as it tends to be easier to rank for low competitive keywords. This means you can still get the satisfaction of seeing your website rise in the rankings, and benefit from that traffic. While highly competitive will take longer to rank, but will provide a lot more traffic to your site when you do.
Doing keyword research can be a bit of a time consuming job and at the end of the day you aren’t entirely sure if you’ve got the right bunch of keywords in your list. This is where it could be beneficial to use a keyword research tool. Tools like SEMRush offer a lot to customers, not just keyword research assistance, however this particular tool does cost money. There are other tools available online for free.
Analyse Industry Keyword Search Volume
One of the first things you need to do after keyword research for your own brand is to analyse industry keyword search volumes. This will allow for better understanding of the industry you are operating in, as well as who your competitors are.
Having a good idea of who you are competing against is important and you should perform a competitor analysis to see how fierce your competition is, and it will help you find different ways you can beat them. Find out what they are doing, which keywords they are ranking well for, and take the best parts of their strategy and make it your own.
You shouldn’t just blatantly copy your competitor’s strategy, as that will probably get you nowhere. But finding the insights are important and then being able to apply them to your own website, to make yours even better. When analysing competitors you can see where their weaknesses are and focus on building up your website in those areas.
Looking at search engine results pages themselves is another great way to get industry keyword knowledge. Look at the type of features that are displayed in the results page, think about what you can do on your own website to try and get those features for yourself!
It is also important to look at the intent as well. Google is focusing a lot on intent lately and trying even harder to ensure it connects users to the right website through looking at the intent of the search. The type of content you create on your website should match one of the three different intents; informational, navigational and transactional.
Informational intent is where the user is just looking for an answer to a question, just simply information. Navigational intent is where a user knows what they are looking for, like searching for a brand for example. Transactional intent is where a user is looking to make a purchase or perform a transaction.
Include Keywords Correctly
Once you’ve got your keyword list, it is important that you include keywords on your website in the right places. There are a number of different places your keywords should sit on your website. But you must always remember to include keywords naturally on your site, do not keyword stuff as this is not best SEO practice.
Some important places to ensure you’ve included your keywords are:
- Meta data – this includes the meta title and meta description. This is what a user will tend to see in search engines and is known to have a significant influence on whether or not a user actually clicks onto your website.
- URL – having keywords in the URL is a great idea but many companies actually seem to forget about it. It helps search engines recognise what is on that particular webpage better.
- Heading – the title of your page needs to have your keywords in it. It is one of the first places search engines and users look. Having the keywords here ensures both search engines and users better understand what is on the page.
- Body – keywords need to be included in body content as well to ensure the message is really driven home about what this particular webpage is about.
Engaging Content
You know you need to conduct proper keyword research and you know where to place those chosen keywords on your website, but now the important thing is to actually create that content. The content on your site needs to be highly engaging and meet the users intent.
Quality content is probably one of the most important things when it comes to ranking a website. So, if you have thin or poor quality content, you probably won’t see high rankings in search engines.
This is why it is so important to know who your target audience is. Understanding how they behave, what they are interested in, what they want to know is vital. Once you have a good understanding of all this, you can then develop the right type of content for them.
If your content is highly engaging, is it likely that positive engagement data (like time on website, pages per session, bounce rate) is sent back to search engines. They can see that your website is what users are looking for and place your website in a higher position (or continue to hold your website in a high position).
There are different types of content as well, not just words on a page. So understand what type of content your target audience likes to consume the most and try to create the bulk of your content in that format.
Technical SEO
Another important aspect of SEO is the technical side. So, think about how easy it is for people to use your website as well as the functionality. There are a whole heap of things to consider here, and it can become quickly overwhelming.
If the technical side to your website is not your strong suit, there are SEO tools that can help in this area, like Moz for example. Some tools do cost money, but a great place to start is Google Analytics and Google Search Console. There is a lot of data provided here to assist in improving the technical side of your SEO.
You should be looking to conduct a technical SEO site audit on a semi regular basis to ensure there is nothing majorly wrong with your website. This site audit should look at different areas such as, mobile friendliness which means ensuring your website compatible with mobile devices as well as site security which means your website’s data is secure.
In Summary
Having a niche business can offer a lot of challenges but less competition. A niche market business needs to be thought about in a different way to that of businesses that operate in a more typical market.
Being online is vital for niche businesses, and with the use of SEO, your business can thrive and become much more visible in search engines. There are a number of different aspects to look at when it comes to SEO for your niche business.
Keyword research becomes even more vital, as your overall pool of potential customers is smaller. You also need to ensure you include your chosen keywords in the right place, and create content that is highly engaging. Every once in a while it is important to perform an SEO technical audit on your site to ensure it is in tip top shape.
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