Advice on Content Marketing in a Tough Niche
-
Hello,
In our niche, nobody links to the content/information with rare exceptions. Do you guys have any good articles/ideas for cases like this? The content that is linked to is once removed in subject matter from the content of our site, like if we sold shoes and had to write on different types of clothing stores.
Looking for advice on what to do and how to figure out what to write about. We've probably got a descent budget this time but we're not sure how to go about this.
Any advice is appreciated.
-
Jane, do you recommend that we do a brand new study like Aviva did? It seems like that would make for a much higher quality article. If so, what's the minimum sample size and are there companies you know of that we can hire to do the study?
Thanks! Great ideas here.
-
I am in a hard market for links as well. I find that studies and reports on data work quite well. So what I do is identify a topic that is interesting, gather the governmental data and put it together in a way that I have not otherwise seen.
-
I have seen some companies commission interesting studies that are vaguely related to their niches, supposedly for research purposes, but if these are good enough and interesting enough, they are often cited in news sources.
Take insurance company Aviva - insurance is pretty boring, right? The company compiled a study on the amount of money new parents spend on their babies a couple of months ago - the article Aviva published is here: http://www.aviva.co.uk/media-centre/story/17298/first-time-parents-spend-492-million-preparing-for/
Here is some of the press that study got:
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/business/money/Consumer/article1411345.ece (also in print edition, hence brevity of online snippet)
http://www.covermagazine.co.uk/cover/news/2340859/just-one-in-five-new-parents-have-life-cover
http://www.futureproofinsurance.co.uk/blog/?p=397
Unfortunately, these articles don't link to Aviva's website - either the home page, the release or anywhere else. This is an action that should be followed up by the SEOs (disclaimer: I have worked with Aviva on projects in the past, but neither myself nor anyone I know was involved in this piece of content creation or distribution - I just liked the study and appreciated the attention it got, minus the links. I read about it in the newspaper).
Aviva has conducted similar studies in the past, as have a bunch of similar companies whose core product is otherwise both competitive and not a perfect candidate for "content marketing". The trick is to spin the market such that you find an interesting facet to research and write about.
If that market happened to be shoes, a study could focus on how many Americans suffer unnecessary injuries due to wearing the wrong footwear. For instance, running shoes that don't suit their running styles, high heels in jobs where people spend a lot of time on their feet, shoes that are too small, whether Vibram shoes are beneficial to foot and leg health or whether they're a gimmick, how much money per year Americans spend in health costs associated with foot / leg health that could be avoided by wearing better or correct footwear. I've made this up quickly, so please excuse the rough idea!
The key is to find something that resonates with a lot of people, not just your target market. Aviva doesn't really mind that the majority of the people who consume their new parents article are not going to take out an Aviva health insurance or life insurance policy. Whilst they're definitely raising awareness for these products, they're also raising basic company awareness and they should gain links because of that press.
The more obscure or dull the industry, the harder this can become - and consumer insurance does have direct ties to a large portion of the population's everyday life. Again, you're looking for an angle that outweighs the fact that "nobody links to the content/information with rare exceptions." The more you can tie your angle to both your basic niche and the general public's interest, the better.
You can also get more specific than "the general public" and target a group of potential linkers who would otherwise not be interested in your market - say you are a shipping / international logistics company. You might find that the music industry is very liberal with their blogging and link-giving. Research and write about the amount of money lost per year in damages shipping music equipment, providing insurance options and developing guidelines for safety in that specific market. Again, a very off-the-top-of-my-head example (and I doubt the music industry links like this at all, but you get what I mean).
Hope this helps!
Jane
-
Don't worry about the links, especially at the start. Just keep blogging. Over time you'll get to where you figure out what resonates with readers and drives engagement.
-
Is it a national, regional or more local site?
Perhaps you could find a national topic or even international topic which has a track record of being linked to, write an article about that topic, then start emailing the sites who have a history of linking to past content to let them know about your new piece of content.
If you keep trying, you will get the right kind of links even in a tough niche.
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
-
Advice needed on canonical paginated pages
Hi there. I use Genesis and StudioPress themes. I recently noticed that the canonical link for blog pages points to the first page on all paginated pages, which I understand is an SEO no-no. I found some code here that adds a unique canonical link to each paginated page but for categories only. It works fine. I only have one category for my site. My question is: is there a downside (or even upside) to not having a blog page and placing a link to my category page in the navigation bar instead, using the category page as the blog page? It looks good and works. What do you think? I find it odd that this seems to be an issue across the Internet and the only solution that comes up relies on the Yoast plugin, which I don't want to use (don't want to use a plugin for SEO). Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Subdomain optimization - advices
Hi, I need some specific advices on which is the best way to optimize the subdomain of a main domain. Besides meta title, description, etc. Br.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar0 -
Advice on Link Removal Services
Hello everyone, Due to the Penguin update my site unfortunately took a bit of a hit. A little while ago I submitted all of our questionable/bad links to the disavow tool, however I still wante to go back and delete any and all problematic links that are still out there. Ive looked into many services, however I haven't been too impressed. Removeem - The email addresses they provided weren't always valid, and their email tool didn't always deploy correctly - a lot of cross referencing and was not saving me any time. Link Detox - Free trial was a bust. They show you 10 links on the free trial, however for me, 9 of the 10 were all the same. Couldn't get a good feel of their system. Rmoov - Their tool is one where you upload your own links, and they help manage everything, however they DONT allow you to email through their system, so Im not sure how this helps my process if I have to do everthing manaully anyway. A lot of sites I see are also a full service approach that charge you based on how many links they remove, and this can get quite costly. I have also contacted:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lukin
Link Delete - No reponse from multiple email requests
Linkquidator - No response
Infatex - No response My questions to all of you are: Is there any company out there that you recommend that provide a self service tool [online or desktop driven]? Is this even an avenue I should explore, or should I compile my own list [as 3rd party algorithms are not always accurate] and reach out to sites manually? Is disavowing good enough and Im just spinning my wheeles trying to now get them all removed? Thanks!0 -
Wordpress and duplicate content
Hi, I have recently installed wordpress and started a blog but now loads of duplicate pages are cropping up for tags and authors and dates etc. How do I do the canonical thing in wordpress? Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
Wordpress Duplicate Content
We have recently moved our company's blog to Wordpress on a subdomain (we utilize the Yoast SEO plugin). We are now experiencing an ever-growing volume of crawl errors (nearly 300 4xx now) for pages that do not exist to begin with. I believe it may have something to do with having the blog on a subdomain and/or our yoast seo plugin's indexation archives (author, category, etc) --- we currently have Subpages of archives and taxonomies, and category archives in use. I'm not as familiar with Wordpress and the Yoast SEO plugin as I am with other CMS' so any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. I can PM further info if necessary. Thank you for the help in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BethA0 -
Avoiding duplicate content on an ecommerce site
Hi all, I have an ecommerce site which has a standard block of text on 98% of the product pages. The site also has a blog. Because these cause duplicate content and duplicate title issues respectively, how can I ever get around this? Would having the standard text on the product pages displayed as an image help? And how can I stop the blog being listed as duplicate titles without a nofollow? We already have the canonical attribute applied to some areas where this is appropriate e.g. blog and product categories. Thanks for your help 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CMoore850 -
Content that is split into 4 pages, should I consolidate?
I am working on improving a website that has each section split into four pages. For example, if Indonesia Vacation was a section, it would have its main page, www.domain.com/indonesia-vacation, and the about, fact sheet, and tips on three other pages www.domain.com/indonesia-vacation-1 www.domain.com/indonesia-vacation-2 www.domain.com/indonesia-vacation-3 The pages share very similar title tags and I am worried it is hurting the main page for placement.. So to conserve link juice, would it make sense to have them all one page? There is not so much content that it would affect load time. My strategy would be to have all content available and part of the main page and 301 the three URL's back to the main page: www.domain.com/indonesia-vacation Any insight would be greatly appreciated!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattAaron0 -
Duplicate Content from Article Directories
I have a small client with a website PR2, 268 links from 21 root domains with mozTrusts 5.5, MozRank 4.5 However whenever I check in google for the amount of link: Google always give the response none. My client has a blog and many articles on the blog. However they have submitted their blog article every time to article directories as well, plain and simle creating duplicate and content. Is this the reason why their link: is coming up as none? Is there something to correct the situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielkamen0