Too often we’re stuck with general advice and one size fits all ideas and methods when looking to increase our search positioning. Wouldn’t it be great to simultaneously be more effective and spend less time? Welcome to the world of niche specific marketing and search engine optimization.
What is niche specific marketing? In a basic sense, niche specific marketing is about utilizing the specific channels available to a particular niche that aren’t available to others. There are often certain types of links or sites that will be more likely to link to your site, for example, it’s much easier to get a link from a guitar hobby website to your guitar strings website than it would be to get a link from a medical website to your guitar strings website (unless you had some clever linkbait about medical conditions developed when playing the guitar for instance, but that’s another article).
Why should I engage in niche specific marketing?
- Spend less time – Links and coverage are easier to come by.
- Make more money – Traffic sent from related sites has a higher conversion rate, in general.
For the first example let’s pretend that we have a web design company. Our website isn’t ranking as well as we’d like for our various keywords and we’d like to get some incoming links with minimal effort. Here are some ideas for niche specific SEO:
- Put a link to your site from all of the sites you design.
- Submit your work to design aggregators and directories of standards compliant sites.
- Get listed in directories of web designers.
- Give testimonials to creators of products you use in your day to day business in exchange for a link back.
- Submit sites created with third party scripts or software to them as example sites.
- Release a theme and include a backlink requirement.
While some of these can be done with other niches, most of them are only available to web design sites – such as getting links from the sites you design, directories of web designers, testimonials, etc.
For the next example let’s say we have a website that sells blue widgets. Here are some ideas:
- Contact blue widget hobbyists and request a link.
- Get listed in blue widget site directories.
- Look for the “experts” in blue widgets, maybe teachers that teach you how to play the blue widget? Get them to link to you as a resource for their students.
- Become a member of the blue widget sellers association and get a link from their site in the company directory.
- Start a blog about blue widgets, do interviews with blue widget experts and cover industry news.
The trick here is to think creatively about your niche and figure out your potential link targets – that is, the sites that are most likely to link to you. I’ve yet to see a niche that didn’t have certain opportunities for links that weren’t available to non-related sites. So the next time you’re scratching your head and looking for new ways to get links, think about niche specific SEO – but be careful, it just might be easier than you thought 
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Terry! Good stuff man