Online Marketing for Niche Businesses
Can SEO Work for Your Niche Business?
Ironically SEO (I prefer Web Presence Optimisation or WPO) often works best for very niche business that think it can’t work for them.
WHY? Because the more accurately you can define your audience, the more easily you can target them. Simple really.
Here’s a Perfect Example
I’m an engineer by trade and I love helping the manufacturing and engineering sectors, especially as they in in difficult times at the moment.
These businesses are niche areas that you wouldn’t necessarily go into your pigeon-hole labelled “exciting businesses”. But let’s consider what these companies do.
They build machinery and components that can be used for a variety of industries, from the military to the medical profession to science laboratories. If you can’t find something interesting to write content for in that industry, you really are going to struggle!
You just have to ask what “are the key objects of the business” and “who they are trying to reach”. Once we understand this two things there are huge opportunities for some great content. Using the right keywords in your content and making the content of interest to your target audience will get you great rankings in the search engines. Your goal should be to become THE authority in your profession.
It CAN Work For Any Niche
No matter how small a niche your business falls into, there will be an audience for it, we just have to find it! There’s no such thing as a boring niche, so as long as you can find an angle to tell an interesting story about your business or niche, then WPO (sorry to all you SEO fans) can work for it.
Great content sells. Think about how you use the internet for research and selecting a product. Just define your USP (Unique Selling Point), create great content, and put your best foot forward. Give people the information and comfort they need to make a decision and you’ll win their trust. There’s no trickery here just an honest consultative approach. If you can use images and video then even better. The people who visit your site want to be engaged by what you have to offer the moment they click through to you via the search engines. Don’t let them down.
WPO (sorry SEO) can work for any business. Here’s a bit of background on the last very chaotic 18 months in Google’s world
Search Engine Optimisation has changed a lot over the past 18 months, with so much more emphasis being placed on the quality of content, how your website looks and the quality of the link portfolio that your site is obtaining. Two updates, bizarrely named after cute animals, Panda and Penguin, were released into the wild by Google in 2011/2012, and they soon became gremlins, demolishing poor quality sites in their wake.
Suddenly, SEO had a dirty reputation. But here’s the great thing about this, the updates only hurt the people who were using dodgy methods to try and trick Google. The good guys are winning so watch this space for Google’s next furry animal update.
Always remember Quality not Quantity!
