How to Do SEO for Niche Markets Step by Step
Key points
- Building backlinks from relevant sources can improve your website’s authority and increase visibility in search results.
- Long-tail keywords can be highly effective in targeting niche markets and improving search rankings.
- Creating high-quality content that addresses the specific needs and pain points of your niche audience can help establish your website as an authority in the niche.
Certain services or products serve a very narrowed-down market. The tricky part is to market it to the right group—and that’s where SEO for niche markets comes in.
When you’re in a competitive niche market, battles are often won by those who are well-versed with search engine optimization and the concept of niching. Compared to other lead generation techniques that you have to pay for indefinitely, such as ads, SEO is an upfront investment that pays off down the road.
But what do you need to keep in mind when your product or service is in a niche segment? Read this post containing SEO tips for niche markets to get started.
What is a niche market?
What is a niche market? To figure it out, let’s first think about what a niche market is not. Basically, it’s a very large segment, for instance search engine optimization. Many SEO agencies specialize in this specific service without catering to a specific market or group of people. Those who want to niche down could look for providers of luxury yoga retreats, for instance.
Analyzing your search volume potential
Tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs allow you to search for keywords in a niche, giving you access to estimates about the monthly search volume. While this is not an exact science, it can give you a general idea of what to expect. Keep in mind that the search volume can vary greatly from one region to another; often a keyword variation might be very popular in a country.
With that said, if you target a specific customer group, for instance U.S. based businesses, make sure you pick the right keywords. There’s no point optimizing your niche content for keywords that someone in India searches for.
Another thing to note are so-called zero volume keywords. They aren’t really zero volume because someone is obviously searching for them. Otherwise, Google wouldn’t be aware of them. There’s a huge potential for these keywords because they are often very specific keyword queries, something like “how can i use SEMrush for free.”
A good tool to research and find zero volume keywords (and generally easy keywords) is LowFruits.io. Not only does it help you find the keywords, it also shows you metrics about the competition, and how big your chances are to rank. You can also create clusters and build an entire network of content that is interlinked.
Checking out the competition
When you’re active in a niche market, there’s a good chance you’re not really alone (or at least not yet). As with any other business activity, you should always analyze the competition. Ask yourself: who are my main competitors, where are they falling short, and how can I compete with them?
Simply copying their strategy rarely brings in the results you’d expect. Instead, check SEO data analytics to look for weaknesses, and use them to your advantage. Your competitor might have good content, but has significant issues with technical SEO. Or it’s the other way around, their website is great from a technical standpoint, but they struggle with their keyword research.
There are a lot of opportunities when researching competitors to find strategies in order to position yourself at the top of the search results page, and be seen by potential customers.
Going above and beyond content writing
One major mistake many marketers make when it comes to SEO for niche markets is focusing on simply creating content. Then they hope it ranks in the top 10, and the job is done. Not quite.
In order to rank in the top 10, and have a chance at securing the first position (or featured snippet), you need to spend a lot of time on your SEO strategy. Long-tail keywords require quite a bit of research, so always analyze the search results page (SERP), and ask yourself:
Why are these posts ranking?
What information do they include that makes them valuable?
How can I contribute with new information or fresh takes?
Simply writing a longer content piece for the sake of providing seemingly more information doesn’t always work. Try to find a new take on a topic that has been discussed already by your competitors. For instance, there are many keywords where something is well-suited for a specific business. Instead of creating yet another piece detailing why that is true, write why the product might not be the best choice. That is something we’ve done with our ClickUp for agencies post.
Tapping into your network for EAT
Expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (EAT) is something a lot of businesses forget about. They churn out new content without backing it up with new sources. If everyone links to the same sources, there’s no point for Google to prefer your content over existing one.
Try to talk to industry experts about your niche business, it could be a business partner, your own client, or maybe you if you’re a well-known person with demonstrable knowledge. At SPP, we try to include our clients when we write about certain topics they are experts in. A quite goes a long way to prove to Google (and the reader) that your content is backed up by experts.
Doubling down on technical SEO
Once your website drives traffic, you’ll notice how important technical SEO becomes. A slow website, or individual pages, broken links, and other issues need to be fixed. Neither Google nor website visitors will be impressed by those issues, causing you to lose your position in the SERPs.
Use tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush to perform a website audit, and start by fixing the most critical issues. In Ahrefs, these are highlighted as errors, while less important things to fix are warnings or notices.
Other than fixing issues, also implement advanced SEO techniques, such as FAQ Schema. By answering questions people ask on Google, there’s a high chance these will be included on the search results page.
Starting building strong links
Quality content alone might not be enough to get your posts to rank, depending on how competitive your niche is. Which is why you should invest early on in link building. Either hire a freelancer or agency (like Amplifyed) to do the link building for you, or train someone to do it via partnerships, guest posts, and other popular methods.
The sooner you begin your link building strategy, the more you increase your chances of ranking your content quickly. With that said, make sure that all backlinks are relevant, come from authoritative websites, and don’t get removed. If they do, make sure to replace them with equally strong links to keep your link profile strong.
Keeping an eye on results in Google Analytics
When you do SEO, you’re participating in a marathon, not a sprint. While you might’ve secured a few featured snippets, those are not guaranteed. Plus, you should check regularly in Google Analytics if those top positions actually turn into leads or clients. If not, find out why. Is your click-through rate not good? Are you attracting the wrong customers? There is always something you can optimize in your SEO campaigns.
SEO for niche markets FAQ
What is niche SEO?
Niche SEO is the process of performing search engine optimization for a niche, a small market segment that is often very competitive. Those trying to get ahead of the game need to apply all SEO techniques available, from creating authoritative content to performing technical SEO audits.
How do I find SEO keywords in my niche?
You can use tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, or LowFruits to research keywords. The latter focuses on long-tail keywords and allows you to pick keywords that you have a good chance of ranking for.
How do you promote a niche market?
In order to promote a niche market, the business needs to know their ideal customer well, who their competitors are, and be able to produce fresh content with a twist. A lot of resources will also have to go into technical SEO and content marketing.
How do niche markets attract customers?
Niche markets need to create content that their target audience can easily find via a keyword phrase. They can also pursue content marketing and social media marketing strategies.
Closing thoughts
Every business wants to reach potential customers. But some have it a bit harder than others, namely those in competitive niche markets. With a solid content and SEO strategy, there’s hope at the end of the tunnel. And I hope that this post has been of help in kick-starting your niche marketing strategy.
