Image via CrunchBase
By Scott Spooner
The goal of niche marketing, and niche marketers, is to identify a niche with both plenty of search traffic and an acceptable level of competition. There are plenty of tools available – both paid and free – to help you uncover these niches. But, what do you do after you have discovered your own perfect niche?
This is where “rank building” strategies come into play; the goal of which is to rank your site, blog, or post, high enough in the search engine rankings so that you will be found. These strategies range from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Pay-Per-Click (PPC), and everything in between.
PPC gets you on top of the search engines quickly, but you have to have a considerable ad budget to keep you there. SEO won’t cost you anything but time (unless you outsource the activities), but it could potentially take you a long time to obtain a high ranking (for a competitive keyword), and longer still to maintain that position.
Following is a summary of how I am able to take competitive keywords, focus them on a blog, and achieve #1 ranking positions in Google. I’ll assume that you don’t have an advertising budget, are willing to learn a little about SEO, and can afford to spend some time to develop your rankings. I’ll also assume that you have a blog, or similar platform with which you can post your content.
The Five Steps
- Keyword Research – This is a very important step; and one that many fail to do correctly. Once you’ve picked your niche (or potential niche), grab your favorite keyword tool (depending on my needs, I use Market Samurai, Micro Niche Finder, or Google’s free keyword tool), and do some keyword research. Look for keywords that are getting at least 80 searches per day (2400 per month), with no more than 30,000 competing web sites. Once you find 4 or 5 of these keywords, build your blog around them. The trick here is to narrow your focus; I try and develop niches that are “narrow, but deep”. You are trying to get a foothold in the search engines, and not “be all things to all people”.
- Content Creation – With your keywords in hand, it is time to start creating, or gathering, your content. Remember to focus on the keywords that you found in step #1 above. If you are having trouble coming up with your own content, consider searching the content of video sites (e.g. YouTube), article sites (e.g. EZine Articles), and other blogs in your niche. Whether you create the content yourself, or repurpose it from other sources, make sure that it is focused on your keywords. Again, narrow, but deep.
- Blog Posting – As you gather content, you’ll want to post that content on your blog. The secret here is to post consistently and on a regular basis. Give your readers a schedule to look forward to and, at the same time, give the search engine spiders something new to crawl each time they stop by. Obviously, the more you post, the quicker your site will develop, and the faster your rankings will occur. But don’t get hung up on it: whether you post once a day, or once a week, pick a schedule that you can maintain. Finally, make sure you are using your keywords in your posting tags. This will help the search engine spiders better understand what you are posting.
- Social Book Marking – After every post, bookmark your post throughout the social media sphere. I will typically bookmark my posts on Digg, Propeller, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. I’ll also create links on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. This step is very important because each of these bookmarks creates a back link pointing back to your blog. SEO experts will tell you that the number one “off page factor” in improving your rankings is the quantity and quality of your back links. Social book marking sites offer these quality links for you. Pick the social media sites that you like and start book marking. One last note here: use your keywords as your “anchor text” (the text that you see) when creating your back links.
- Rank Tracking – Install an analytics package on your site (I use Google Analytics, which is free). Keep track of the traffic arriving at your site and monitor: 1) where that traffic is coming from; 2) how they find you, and; 3) what keywords they are using to search for your topics. You can not fix what you haven’t been measuring. So, measure how well your keywords are performing and use those measurements as a guide for improving your long term ranking.
The above will take some time – and that is O.K. The search engines give a certain amount of credibility to sites that have been around for some time. This all works to your advantage. Just focus on your keywords (remember: narrow, but deep), and think about creating, or gathering, content.
In summary, you don’t need expensive tools or programs; in fact, you can complete each of the above steps using free tools available on the web. What you do need is to be prolific, persistent, and patient. Remember always that Internet marketing is a process, not an event.
The only question that remains is: when will you begin that process?
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