Link Building for extremely niche industry
-
I understand that when getting links into your site, they need to be good authority but, importantly, also relevant to the information on your own website.
I've seen examples for people to find guest posting opportunities on many sites, but these have been for popular industries with mass amounts of people discussing it (travel blogs, fashion blogs), making guest post opportunities more readily available.
The company I work for provide doc storage, scanning and paperless solutions. As you can guess, when following these guides to find blogs on our industry, I have come up short with places to ask to guest post on!
So, how would SEOmozzers approach building quality, relevant links for a very niche industry such as ours?
Also, we'll be building pages for extremely specific types of files (e.g. Microfiche Scanning, A0 Scanning....). For these pages, how will I be able to find relevant pages on these topics to get a link to, because these will obviously be even more niche than doc scanning?
Thank you!
-
Can you write case studies of how a business improved x and increased efficiency and reduced costs by having their company records scanned and available in a digital format? Perhaps subscribe to HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and look for reporters writing about topics where your service could be of assistance.
-
B to B is tough. But there is always a way. Is there a trade magazine or website you can identify ?
If so, the secret is cultivating relationships with the editors. You might start by following them on Twitter and perhaps answering questions. Or you could comment on blog posts.
The idea is that when you ask to do a guest post or send in a press release, it won't be your first interaction.
For one B to B client, we started with a target list of about 10 websites and publications. Initial results were disappointing: no response or rejection. But last week, we kinda hit the jackpot. A guest post was accepted and they asked for a whole series on other topics. And one of my client's experts will be doing some related webinars.
Another often neglected idea is speaking engagements by company executives. I actually look at the SEO value of trade shows and even local business roundtable sites and make suggestions with those in mind. Another client is a graduate student and fitness expert. i suggested he arrange a lecture at his own university that would be listed on the university website.
And what about profiles of company employees? It doesn't have to be the usually sucky profiles of Mr. Big. A sales or customer service rep who has been with the company for years often has great stories to tell about the changes he's seen. Write this up for your own blog, them send it to your new trade pub buddies. They will often do their own interview and story.
Hope this helps.
-
How we look at the site in steps:
A)Relevancy - the site must be as relevant as possible for users (similar terms on the site)
B)Back Links/Natural Linking - then we check to make sure the site has a natural linking profile and not over optimizing.
C)Authority/Page Rank
D)Social Media - does the site have a blog with real interaction, comments, likes and shares.
A and B must be done first and if they are not good proceed to the next link.
If A and B are good, steps C and D will help you evaluate the links actual value.
-
Keri,
Thanks for your input!
The problem is we don't sell scanners, we are a B2B company selling the service of scanning records for companies and turning them into a digital format. It is because of this which makes posting tricky, because we can't post about 'Top 10 Scanners' or 'Top Scanning Companies'.
-
Who uses your services? Libraries? Law firms? Newspapers? Do any businesses and individuals use it for keeping track of their own paperwork?
If newspapers used your services to scan their old issues, seems like you could make your site become the best resource ever on scanning. How to choose which scanner to use, how to hire someone to do it versus doing it inhouse, etc. Make it the place that everyone in that industry would go to for information.
I can empathize with niches. My husband runs a business that sells kits for model warships that shoot and sink each other. The number of people in the world who participate in this hobby is in the hundreds. We do have the "cool" factor going on, but really understand about the fun of being in a niche.
-
Thanks Bryan.
I have read that competitor link analysis is important, and have begun making a list of their back-link profile of competitors ranking highly for the most sought after keyword terms.
That being said, what would be the criteria for a link which is good enough to have coming into us?
(e.g. Minimum PR, Minimum Page Authority......)
I'm asking because high ranking competitors may have links which we could get a link from which on their own might not be very good to have coming into us.
Thanks
-
Maybe you just need to think a little outside of the box. For example, an article about scanning could be an useful resource for students, in a design blog, or even in a photography one, just think of all it's possible uses and stay creative!
Also googling the terms will get you a good place to start, check the SERP for 'Microfiche Scanning' for example, I'm staring at a few good linking opportunities right there.
Good luck!
-
Hi,
Spying on your top competitor, can help. Find out what they are doing that is working, and see how you could add value to the same users.
Find out what social networks they are in (if any) and where they are earning links from.
There are many ways to buld links, have you checked out: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building
Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Internal Link Building and Link Juice Quality
Hi There! I manage the website for a law office that covers many geographical locations. For very specific niche content, we would prefer to create one piece of content and link to the various geographic locations where we would handle that topic instead of posting multiple variations of the same content for each specific geographical area. If we put a button on these pages that has links to each location, will that have the same "link juice" effect to the pages we're linking that linking directly in the text would? (example: the Where can we help you? button on this page : http://www.zdfirm.com/volkswagen-recall/) Thank you!
Link Building | | ZDAdmin0 -
I want to design SEO link building strategy for my website? Is wordpress.com, squidoo, tumblr, blogger, typepad - Good option for link building?
I am currently concentrating on 8 keywords, for e.g (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H). I will be writing blogs with 2 of any related keywords present in it. I am thinking to post 5 blogs on 5 different platforms as (wordpress.com, Squidoo, Typepad, Tumblr, blogger) respectively. I am thinking a strategy as: Monday: Keyword A,B on Wordpress/ C,D on Squidoo/E,F on Typepad/G,H on Blogger/ A,C on Tumblr. Tuesday:C,D on Wordpress/E,F on Squidoo/ etc.... and will rotate these keywords through out the week and the cycle restarts on Monday. The URL for every keyword will be different and relevant to that keyword. I need quick suggestion on this topic..Please..
Link Building | | Christain0 -
How many days/hours a month should I dedicate to link building ?
I realise that the more time you dedicate to link building the better, but what would you say is the ideal amount of time that I should spend link building to see a significant improvement in rankings? The keywords I'm trying to target are medium to difficult. So far, I've been spending one day link building but since I'm making all link submissions manually, I haven't seen great results, even though I've been link building for a couple of months. How many days do you spend link building? Thank you in advance for your help! 🙂
Link Building | | SEOBunny_0 -
Most effective method for link building?
From your experience, what have you found to be the most effective method for link building? It's starting to look like the only way to receive good links is by writing great content or offering great services and allowing the links to come in naturally (which is obviously the most important thing anway), but are there still any effective methods of getting valuable links through link building, apart from having personal connections and relationships with site owners?
Link Building | | eli.boda0 -
Two link building proposals, which one is better?
Hi there, Our site has a DA of 73, MozRank 5.40, MozTrust 5.88, and over 45,000 external links. We haven't done any offsite SEO before, we got to where we are today organically. We're thinking about hiring a link building firm to help increase our rankings and we've received two proposals. Firm A offered to build us 30 links from DA 50+ sites over 3 months. The anchor text will most likely just be our domain name. Firm B offered to build us 90 links from PR2+ sites over 3 months. They have control over the anchor text. Given our site's profile, which proposal makes more sense for us? Would either of these initiatives move the needle for us? Thanks.
Link Building | | anonp1 -
Reciprocal linking with same niche in another country
I was wondering if it was still a viable strategy to pull up 'your keyword' on google.uk or google.au, and email all the top ranking sites or call them and personally ask them to reciprocally link to you. Do these links still hold any value in google's eyes? Or is this a well known strategy that no longer holds any weight and is a waste of time?
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Link Building Through Blogs
A client of mine wants to look into new areas of link building after convincing them that their current link building strategies (purchasing multiple links from god knows where) was not working well for them. Essentially I felt they were spinning their wheels. Now, we are looking into content related blogs to get some honest links for their site. They sell sports equipment and we are looking at sports blogs to get links/partnerships. Most of these blogs want sponsorship fees or advertising fees. From an ethical standpoint I understand buying links is not the best idea. But because these are blogs that earn traffic, have relevant content, and can be helpful for the advertisement aspect to link to people who might be interested in their products as well. There shouldn't be a problem in acquiring a few of these links if the budget allows for it, correct? Also are blogs a good source to acquire links from?
Link Building | | USHoleInOne0 -
Is it important to have a geo modifier for local SEO link building?
If anyone here is familiar with local SEO, you may have noticed that there are different local results for: "city + Keyword" and just the "keyword". When building links will you end up targeting both with a geo modifier in the link, or is it beneficial to build links without the geo modifer for the keyword?
Link Building | | dignan990