7 ways to carve out your own space in a competitive niche

7 ways to carve out your own space in a competitive niche

When someone owns a website, they soon realize they have to start doing SEO in order to bring in traffic and make some sales.  SEO definitely isn't a new thing anymore in the world of marketing, people all over the world are working to boost their rankings and sales, which makes it much more difficult for you to carve out your own space in a competitive niche.  There are actually big firms that specialize in SEO and clients pay them a great deal of money in order to boost their rankings, and it works usually.  Think about it, if a million dollar company is investing $10,000 a month into SEO and seeing a positive ROI after just a few months, it will likely get better and better so they will continue to work with the company doing the work.  This means you're not just fighting for top rankings against companies you think don't know about SEO, you're actually fighting against big firms who specialize in it.

Everyone wants to be in the #1 spot but will settle for somewhere in the top 10 because that's where the majority of the traffic stays.  How many times have you clicked through to the second page of the search results when looking something up on Google?  If you're just like 99% of the world, you probably don't click through because you get all you need on the very first page   But don't worry, there's still time for you to fight your way to the top since the search engines are like an equal opportunity employer, they don't discriminate against you if you are a small company in a fortune 500 niche

Now, there will definitely be a gap in the rankings and time it takes to claim your own spot, but there are a few things you can do to close the gap, and those things are:


Make your own niche
If you can do it, you should think about carving out your own niche and concentrate on a single part of the industry instead of looking at it as a whole.  You'll need to become a specialist in this area in order for people to trust you, and pay you for your services or products, but that comes in time.  You won't be going for the same keywords as the big corporations, even though the keywords will be similar, you'll still be targeting something else in order to siphon some traffic from Google.  A good example of this is if you were building and selling dressers.  You will be in a very general niche and it would be difficult to gain much traffic from these keywords in a short amount of time.  Instead, target keywords like dorm room dressers, custom dressers, handmade dressers, etc.  This will help you target specific keywords and not just "Dressers".  Sure, you'll make a lot more money if you rank for the keyword "Dressers" but it could take a couple years for that to happen and I'm sure you want to make money sooner than 1,000+ days from now
 
Target Local
People prefer purchasing from local stores or sellers.  You could be running your custom dresser business out of your garage and people will still come buy from you because they can come see the product first hand.  They will be able to see the craftsmanship and also know that you're actually local and doing quality work.  You can get people to come purchase from you by simply posting in Facebook's marketplace, which is getting bigger every day, as well as post on apps like letgo and offerup.  You need to think "High quality garage sale" and you'll be able to find a lot of local apps and websites that allow you to list your products for sale and you'll get local people seeing what you have to offer   I would also advise setting up a website so people can look at all your products, not just a single one, and also contact you directly.

Focus on Low Hanging Fruit
We touched on this slightly when we went over making your own niche, and this is where you'll target the low hanging fruit, which is the same as long tailed keywords.  Long tailed keywords are the search terms yo would add into Google if you're looking for something.  They tend to have 3 or more words within the search, which makes them long tailed, and not as many people are searching them which got them the nickname "low hanging fruit" because they're easier to grab   Think of the dressers, a "custom dresser" wouldn't really be a long tailed keyword, but a "custom made cherry dresser" would be consider long tailed as well as low hanging fruit because it would be easier to rank for

Ranking #2 is ok
Everyone is trying to take 1st place in the rankings because it gets almost 50% of the traffic clicking on it in the search results.  If you get to the second position, you get clicks, but not nearly as many because people don't like scrolling down for some reason.  Second place isn't bad if you're targeting a few dozen keywords, because the website ranking #1 might only be ranked for that keyword.  You'll get much more traffic across the board if you rank for multiple keywords instead of focusing on a single one at all times.  Don't to crazy over #1 rankings because you can still run a successful business being ranked #2 for everything

Perfect Linking
When you're building backlinks, you'll be using a lot of anchor text, which will show a word as a link.  You will need to use the correct word when linking to a specific page of your website.  If you're linking to a page that talks about custom cherry dressers, you don't want to use the anchor "cherry dressers" because it won't be perfect.  Sure, you'll get some benefits from the anchor text being similar, but not as much as if it were exact

One up your competition
You'll need to offer something better than your competition currently is.  If your competitors are selling a custom cherry dresser for $1,000 and it has a 5 year limited warranty, you need to sell the same thing for $800 and have a 10 year limited warranty.  You'll easily sell more dressers than your competitors if the person interested in purchasing has gone to your competitors website as well as yours.  They will see the $200 discount and the additional 5 year warranty and want to work with you because it's obviously the better deal.  If you can do this, you will get more people talking about you and that means you'll be seen on social media, blogs, forums, etc. much more than if you did the same thing as your competitors.

If you can't beat them, join them!
Many times in my career I've reverse engineered an SEO strategy from a competitors who I just couldn't seem to beat in the rankings.  It didn't matter what I did, I just couldn't get them to budge out of the #1 position until I started to duplicate their strategy and add in my own things as well.  What I basically did was continue to do what I was already doing, all while getting backlinks from the same websites they already had some from.  After a few weeks I noticed their website start to move around slightly, but it wouldn't budge for long out of that #1 spot, but I knew I had to be patient.  After a couple months of doing this reverse engineered backlink method, I was hitting #1 for most of the week and dropping down to #2 for a short while.  After a few more months I was solidified into the #1 position and kept the traffic for myself muahahaha!  Now, I told you not to focus on a single keyword, and that's true when you're not ranked for much.  My website was ranked for dozens of good keywords, but this GREAT keyword was just out of my grasp, so I focused on it to almost double my traffic in the end



In conclusion
The search results are riddled with competitors trying to get the top spot for the most traffic and hopefully capturing the largest amount of sales.  Be happy if you rank on the first page, then build up from there, and make more money over time.  There are literally billions of searches each day on Google, and you can carve out your part of those billions if you just stick with your marketing and SEO tactics.  Remember, if you're already ranking for a bunch of keywords, it's ok to work on a single one and try to get ranked as long as your other rankings don't suffer.  You can always settle for second place and run a very successful website   Obviously, do plenty of research prior to implementing any sort of SEO or marketing, it's easier to do the research than fix a problem or lift a penalty given to you by Google



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Razzy