Doing SEO for an Obscure Niche
SEO is a digital marketing practice that helps businesses reach more people. For the uninitiated, SEO is the practice of ranking your site higher on search engines – particularly Google.
The most important thing for an SEO campaign is to know the audience. Marketers need to know who’s going to be reading the content they’re creating. If they have zero knowledge of your niche, you need to make them feel like they belong in it. This can be done by making the content relatable and personalized for them, using language that isn’t too complex, and considering their online search behavior.
How Content Benefits You
Why is content important? Content ultimately helps your website “attain” keywords from Google. Allowing increased visibility and higher web traffic. This would, in turn, lead to more sales and improved reputation.
With content, you can then ultimately build links. Links are like “political votes” in the SEO business. Many marketers strive to get the most popular websites to “vote” their site through various methods – from research content to guest posts.
But with an obscure niche, the number of big sites tends to be disturbingly low. More so, if your niche has “difficult” content like cannabis or death – you would face an uphill battle from the get-go.
Below, we discuss four simple steps you could take to secure
1. Add Content and Optimize Like Crazy
As mentioned, content is important to achieve greater visibility. However, with an obscure niche, your content has to be extra good.
With a limited capacity to build relevant links, marketers have to compensate by creating content that is highly competitive. Not only that, the content will have to be highly optimized in order to compete with already established sites.
A tool you can use is SurferSEO, or if you do not like monthly fees – the SEO power suite is a good option. However, with a tool like Surfer, you could identify what is working for your competitors, and how you can improve your content.
It is these tools and initiatives that could drive performance for a new website in a small niche. You will have to take every advantage you can.
2. Niche “Up” For Links
If your niche is too small for your business, perhaps trying to niche up could help. For example, focusing on dumbbells in the fitness niche would entail few link opportunities. Thus, you should instead look for links from general fitness websites, or fitness equipment sites.
Additionally, going too “high” up a niche could not be very helpful. However, if the site’s power (authority as SEOs like to call) is strong, it is very much worth getting a link.
Still, the golden benchmark for an obscure niche is a relevant and powerful link. If you are doing this as a business, links that are local would make it even better. Though, those are extremely rare.
Because links are hard to acquire, you will have to work extra hard to hone your link-building skills. Just because your focus is content, does not mean that you should neglect links.
A good link builder is inherently a salesperson. One must pick up some Email copywriting skills, along with losing the fear of rejection.
3. Guest Posting Is Still The Most Reliable
Skyscraper or HARO can work for obscure niches. However, they still require marketers to up-niche. Ultimately, there is still a luck factor to this as well.
A reliable strategy most marketers could adopt is guest posting. As old as the internet, guest posting is a timeless SEO strategy that can consistently provide links. All you have to do is prospect for potential sites, contact them, then upload your content on their site.
This is easier said than done, however. As this strategy is a “no-brainer”, a TON of marketers are contacting sites for guest post opportunities. Hence, one has to either produce better content or improve their prospect process.
Another issue is the production of content. Content production takes time, more so if your niche is academic. Just to earn one link may require you to write a 1000 word article that is chock full of information. Even more terrifying, some web owners could reject your article if it is not up to par!
But this method is still the most reliable way to acquire links. Especially for obscure niche sites. Owning a funeral service in Singapore, the opportunity to perform outreach for HARO or skyscraper is greatly reduced. We have been relying on guest posts thus far.
4. Team Up With Other Stakeholders
Links opportunities are actually abundant if you have the right mindset. Sometimes, you could request links if you are donating to a charity – or ask for links if you have a supplier.
These are additional tactics you could adopt on top of your current link-building efforts. They just require a thick hide.
Also, by collaborating with stakeholders; you could leverage their connections to other businesses. As long as they have a vested interest in your outreach, you could work together to acquire more links for both parties.
This, of course, is easier said than done. One would technically be moving into the realm of PR with such link-building tactics. PR can work well if you are a local business, however, it would not be overly helpful for E-commerce type sites. Still, PR tactics tend to attract powerful websites that are atop the food chain. However, the issue is whether they actually provide do-follow links (links that can pass on a “vote”).
Bonus: Outsource your mundane tasks
One cannot do everything for SEO. It is a field that requires inter-disciplinary knowledge. Hence, it is wise to outsource certain aspects of SEO you find boring.
Content production could be streamlined with AI writers, or outsourced to human writers. Linkbuilding can be a trained skill for virtual assistants. Alternatively, one could also buy guest posts through a service like TheHoth. If you run a local business, you can hire link builders to create directory listings (i.e citations) that improve your Google maps ranking as well.
This gives you the necessary time to focus on strategic tasks – like analytics or content planning. Being a digital marketer is already tough, with the amount of work that one needs to do. Hence, offloading should be a core skill any marketer should master.
Over to you!
So what are your thoughts on SEO? Especially for an obscure niche? We hope you find this article useful and informative!
Bio
Nicholas works to preserve local and regional traditions through writing. He and his Father run Buddhist funeral services in Singapore.
