Content Ideas in a limited market

[kadesmith]

I've hit a road block of sorts and my mind is having trouble thinking out of the box.  I'm in a relatively small niche with a roofing product called snow guards.  I am struggling with ways to build links and content for my website at www.roofthings.com.  I've used some forums, blogs, and directories.

After going through my competitors link data, it seems that one of the biggest links they have that I don't is a DMOZ listing, but that can take awhile and I have submitted about 7 months ago.  It also appears that a lot of their links I cannot get are coming from construction magazines they paid to be in.  I don't have that kind of budget at this time and so I'm trying to compete via organic rankings.  My biggest thing I am struggling with is how to gain more back links.  My biggest competitor has over 40,000 links compared to my 2700.

I'm somewhat new to SEO and am just looking for a couple suggestions.  Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[KeriMorgret]

Great answer from EGOL! I'll add in my two cents as well, based on a little personal experience.

I'm a California girl, I've lived here all my life and have never lived in snow. I don't know how to deal with it, what questions to ask, etc. My parents have retired to Virginia, where they do get varying amounts of snow in the winter. At Christmas I often look for things that could be helpful for them to have around the house, what could make things easier for them, etc. I need the explanation as to why this will be helpful, what conditions it's helpful in (great for Minnesota snows, but not as needed when you only have a couple of inches), is it good for someone in the AARP age bracket, can I use it on a slate roof, etc.

I'd also have someone look over your pages and make sure there are no spelling and grammar errors. On one page, I spotted a sentence starting with "His" instead of "This". If you copy and paste your pages as plain text to Word, it can help with spotting some of these typos. This will help your user trust a bit more.

A final note about your roof rake. On the roof rake page itself, I don't see how to order extension handles, yet the video (which really helped me understand how it worked) talked about you can order them to extend the rake up to 40 feet.

[EGOL]

I have a couple of retail sites and of the time that I spend working on them.... 90% of it goes to content about how to use, features, benefits, how it works, how to repair, comparisions..... 10% goes to standard product writing and none of my time is spent on link acquisition.   none... the content generates links on its own.

[kadesmith]

Thanks EGOL.  This is exactly what I needed.  Ideas to get me moving.

Sometimes it is difficult to get out of your own thinking box when you are the only SEO person in the house (or the only person in the house for that matter).

[EGOL]

It is really hard to get links when your site is nothing but a sales platform.

I suggest creating some great content about your products.

What are their benefits?  Get up on the roof with a video camera and show what they look like installed.  Get video of snow melting around them and show how they work.  Explain all of this in a great article with photos and diagrams.

How are they installed?  Do the same as above.

How do different products compare? Do the same again.

Make your site the best on the web for these snowguards.  The best - not second.

These videos should not be chest-thumping promotion of yourself, your company or your products.  They should simply be unbiased informative content that anybody anywhere can learn from without feeling that you are trying to get into their wallet.

Now you have something linkable, likeable, tweetable, emailable.  Promote it to people who install your product, encourage them to use your video and include it in a blog post, promote to manufacturers because you have made better content than they have.  Ask them to post on their blog about your site or on their FB site.

In addition to improving your site these videos / articles will improve your credibility and make your site the go-to place for  snowguards.  That will increase your sales.