Optimizing your website is crucial in today's environment, especially with the level of on-line competition. A great way to the top is through niche markets. The main point, however, is that you must be optimized to appear within the top ranks of search engines. Finding a niche will allow you to capture highly qualified search traffic that is searching specifically for what you have to offer.
Focusing your optimization on a particular niche inside your overall business can help get you to the top of a particular market. Instead of trying to compete with a broad market as in ”cameras”, try going after a particular niche inside the over reaching category like action “action photography” or “specialty lenses”. This may seem like the long way to the top but if you can bring traffic to your site via a niche you can continue to find and build on other internal niches. Furthermore, if your product or service is too similar to a competitor's, price will always be an issue. When price is your only point of comparison, the existing brands will win every time. Targeting a niche market is a great way to avoid these issues and make your site stand out.
Niche marketing can be extremely cost effective by allowing you to pinpoint your ad dollars to a select demographic. Image you have a product that is just right for sports action photographers. You can run ads that target terms like “action lenses” or “mid-range lenses”, and not try to tackle the whole camera market in one gulp. By finding niches within your business can reduce the risk in ad spending and increase it’s effectiveness.
Before you start marketing your niche, research your competition. Start by doing a Google search using terms you think buyers will use to find your product or service. Then select the top ten results in your search and carefully study the keywords and phrases used by the top sites. Look at their ads, their promises, uniqueness and expertise. Analyze the words and phrases used by the top sites. What kind of features do they offer? Are they publishing a monthly newsletter? Are they doing direct marketing?
Sometimes I’ll collect all the keywords and phrases from all the top sites and put them in a spreadsheet and use that as a guide in adding more keywords to my site content. When approaching a new niche market, it's imperative to speak their language. People who discover your expertise will gain your trust and return to the site time and again. If your site is compared to other “known experts” in your niche, make sure your word content contains your markets “hot buttons”, along with as much expert language as possible. This is expert knowledge is picked up by Google search spiders and influences your ranking.
If all your going to do is list product and price, your site will be like all the others. You’ve got to represent the expert as much as possible.
Some good ways to spread some expert verbiage is by adding sections on tips & tricks. Tutorials are also something that keeps people coming back and a great way to ad expert word content that is easily read by search engines. I know it sounds like a lot of work but over time it will move you to the top of that Google search and increase traffic. Remember, content is king, on the Internet.
by Pat Mosca
Internet Marketing
