Niche Market without impartial authority for links

[EscaladeSports]

We've had trouble with one of our brand websites for years now in SERP rankings.

When I first started working here 3 years ago I stated that the site lacks a content foundation to build on. A large number of our pages do not have proper text content or had duplicate content, there was no consideration of keyword usage in any title or body copy, and there was absolutely no reason for anyone to want to link to the site.

I'm not a copy writer so I've pushed to get one hired, if even just on a freelance basis, to at least get some kind of content on the pages that I could work our keywords into. I'm hoping that soon they will finally start listening to me and we'll get that content in place.

However, even with the content we have the problem of our market not having an impartial authority site that we could be linked from to help us build our own authority. The current authorities for our keywords are competitors. They've been doing a better job with their SEO and for a lot longer than us.

The nature of our business restricts us from displaying pricing on our site which I feel is another major strike against us when it comes to organic link backs. We do not sell direct, all of our sells are made through authorized dealers and each dealer has their own territory that does not compete with each other. Additionally we do not have a MSRP and even if we did our dealers would explode if we advertised it on the site since there is such a wide range of dealer pricing.

The only good thing we have going for our site currently is a new redesigned layout that makes it easier for users to navigate and get the information they need. I feel it is still to cluttered but I have to make the brand manager happy and that person insists on adding clutter that is not necessary.

Additionally we added a new tool to the website, a custom tool that uses javascript and canvas to allow visitors to build their own product and request a price from their local dealer.

The links we have to our site right now are from PR sites and sites that do not have any authority in regard to our target keywords. A while back we asked our dealers to help out by adding a link to our site from theirs. This was initiated by a third party company who had delusions of understanding SEO and so the links our dealers have work great for ranking us for our brand name but not so much in regard to the keywords we want to place for. Plus not every dealer is doing it.

Our top competitors have over 3x the links to their sites than we do so we have a lot of catching up to do in that respect. And when I look at the sites that are linking to them it's, again, news and PR sites mostly.

My line of thinking currently is to get our content issues under control and get all of our dealers linking to our site with properly constructed anchor text. I'm also trying to push to have more and more frequent press releases sent out to a wider range of sites than we currently target.

I want to submit the customizer tool we developed (6 months of work and improvements/additions to be done in the future, so we're kinda proud of it) to sites that like to link to such things but so far I've not been able to find any. I'm just not searching for the right thing to find them is my guess.

A few other ideas I've had is to reduce the page depth of many of our pages, mainly our product pages since they're 4 levels deep right now. I'm not sure if that's worthwhile though. How important is the url structure and keyword usage in them and how many levels should I try to keep from exceeding?

We have an infographic on our site that generated a few links, are things like that really worth the time and effort though? Would it be better to focus our attention on something else instead?

What I want to know is if my thinking is right and if there is anything else we should be doing that I haven't thought of yet. Or if I'm off base with all of this and we need to be focusing on something else entirely.

Thanks in advance for any help/insight!

[EscaladeSports]

We cannot market our product outside of residential use. I asked about that once before and I can't remember the details, I just remember that it's not an option. So we're restricted to individual consumers.

The other groups that I'm currently aware of would be groups interested in: then environment, child safety, redwood specifically, and child health. Not sure what else we could aim for. This has been gone over for the past three years now.

One of our competitors has links on their state government site having something to do with recycling. I've attempted to find something similar on our own state site but haven't had any luck yet.

But again, the root, I believe, of our problem is a lack of valuable text content on our pages. We're ranking #1 for a bunch of keyword phrases that are nice, but not widely searched. However, the pages that rank well are all pages that we have recently spent some time adding content to and are using those keywords well.

I can't help thinking that if we would fix the content issues with the site that we would be more "linkable" and would take care of this concern in the long run. Unfortunately they're looking for an instant fix which just doesn't exist.

Anyway, thanks for all the feedback and info!

[LynnPatchett]

Keep brainstorming! And show how this process is going to be the engine that moves you up the rankings to the rest of the team.

Think about audience groups. Swing sets for the house (ie individual consumers) ok sure, but how about playchools and similar? How about municipalities for parks and things like that? Brainstorm to expand your potential audience and why they would be interested in your information and products, then you have a number of different avenues in regards content creation, link building outreach and potential sites for cooperation on blogs etc. If your competition is mainly based on news and pr links, think what that could mean if you find even a few strong links that are not in that group!

If possible watch that video I mention above with the whole team, I think it is really relevant to your situation and will help a lot.

[EscaladeSports]

Thanks for the response!

I've looked through our competitors link profiles and the main difference between us is that they more links. The source types (if not the sources themselves) are the same.

The product is swing sets (wooden playsets, the big ones with all the different extras like climbing walls, monkey bars, various slides, etc...). It's a big purchase item which means that the consumer wants the best deal. That's one of my reasons for thinking that not having pricing hurts us. But out competitors also don't show pricing either so maybe it isn't, who knows.

As for guest blogging and blogs in general, we attempted that once before but had a terrible time finding a relevant blog and then finding one that was willing to help us out. The main source for links for us and our competitors is news and PR. From what I've read those sources aren't the best anyway but so far we've not found any other solutions.

Our brand uses US redwood which has a big list of benefits including sustainability. So I've been trying to find ways to use that to generate links.

We've had brainstorming sessions repeatedly to figure out how to handle the link back issue. Every time I repeat that we need content, good and valuable content that is worth linking to. And every time they wave that away like it's stupid and come back with "there's gotta be something we can do to move up higher in the search results".

We're out of ideas for sources for links and now I'm to the point of considering that we help improve our dealer's SEO so they rank higher and get more authority in some hope that it will in turn improve our own.

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

In regards the links and authority sites, I am sure there are places you can find! Digging through the link profiles of your main competitors might flag up a couple of common sites that link to your type of content. Thinking creatively about who uses your products and in particular different user groups that would be interested in your products should also open up new ideas on potential sites that you could approach, The fact that there are no 'authority sites' beyond competitors in your niche does not mean there are not solid sites with relevant related content that you can approach for guest blog opportunities, links, social mentions etc. Your new tool that you mention could also be a good outreach subject, if you are proud of it then let that pride shine through!

Have a look at this recent mozinar (I really liked the bit on brainstorming for different audience segments, it is great stuff!).

http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/link-smarter-not-harder