Owning Your Niche

May 11th, 2006 Nick

The key to having a successfull website comes down to identifying your niche. Every website out there has a niche target, even Amazon bootstrapped themselves with the book niche.

The goal is to identify your niche and become the epicenter for all things around that category. It’s not easy, believe me - even with a blog where I post 1-2 articles per day around my niche (hot sauce) it has taken just over a year to really gain decent rankings in the engines. By decent I mean #3 in Google for a 30,000,000 plus competitive keyword term. And mind you, thats without any external link building - I’ve relied solely on the content of the site to bring in the links.

Content is a hard concept for many online retailers to understand, after all a product page is content to a search engine spider, right? Of course it is, but that one product page is not going to keep the users coming back to your site. And it’s not going to draw in the links. Retailers need to give people a reason to come back and a reason to interact with your site. Here’s a hint: Let your customers write product reviews. Good or bad, they provide perspective on the item which may lead to more sales (customer confidence) and it also provides the search engine spiders with “spider food” (and no work on your part).

But to really own your niche online, it takes a lot more work. I didn’t become the guru of hot sauce overnight, I took a risk by putting myself and my business out into the ‘public’ eye - but it’s paid off. Everyday I get to interact with my target market and they tune into the site on a daily basis. Yes, my competitors are also tuning in and watching my every move but thats the price you have to pay. And it’s definately a small price when you own your niche.

Entry Filed under: E-Marketing Advice