Defining a niche for my SEO company
-
Hello,
I realize that in order to get business in SEO, you really need to specialize.
The most experience I have is with the nuts and bolts of small business E-commerce and and many types of small business web design. I've run several online stores for about 9 years and I've been doing small business web design (and a bit of development) since 2001. I've had several other SEO clients over the years.
I'm in Boise, Idaho at this site
What would be a profitable approach? I'm thinking I could mainly build and market small online stores for locals. Maybe something like 'Ecommerce Web Design and SEO in Boise, Idaho' for a home page title. Or I could learn Local, but I have less experience with that. Or I could try to get national clients in an even smaller niche. I'm trying to find a good approach. I only charge $75/hour and I give generous quotes when appropriate, so an 'affordable' approach would be good
Thanks,
Bob
-
Mariam,
You've got great points there! I will definitely network for E-commerce and bridging the gap.
What's the quickest way to be excellent at Local? I wouldn't want to do a Local SEO project for someone unless I could see clearly how it would be profitable like I can often (though there's no way to know for sure) see with E-commerce. How do I get there fast?
Thanks.
-
Hey Bob!
Good for you for being open to constructive feedback. Given what you've described, I'm hearing two things:
-
You know e-commerce
-
You have an interest in Boise
Have you considered specializing in doing the e-commerce functionality for physical stores in Boise? And I mean everything ... setting up online shopping on their sites, setting up beacons in their stores, getting into mobile commerce, etc. Just a thought that struck me. What if you became 'the' company bridging the gap between on and offline for the major stores in Boise? The future is mobile. A plan like this could mean good work for you for years to come.
-
-
Hey Bob,
I hope you don't mind a little constructive feedback, but I would lose the video on the homepage as a starter. It seems like you are really unsure what you are talking about, keep looking away from the camera, not sure what to do with your hands, and this is all bad for when someone visits - you need them to feel comfortable with you and know you believe what you are saying - and I know this is all because you are not reading from a script, so maybe a new one where you have a screen and presentation to remind you what you need to talk about? Use bullet points and try not to 'umm' or 'erm' too much - keep that eye contact with the camera too and don't look away.
I would also spend a bit of time / money and have a nice new site developed. Whichever way you decide to go, you need to not cover too much generic information on one page, and make good use of big, bold messages to catch the eye.
In terms of the route, I have been a consultant for many years now and find it most profitable. I specialise in a few areas and make sure these are covered clearly on my website. I back this up with pages that talk about what I do and how I do it - basically, I try to answer the questions I would be asked on a phone call or in a meeting. Of course, you can't hope to cover everything, so I try to give a good grounding.
Carving a niche is all well and good, but you need to be able to back this up so that when someone comes along and asks for examples of 'Local SEO' that you have performed, that you can show them. If you haven't done too much, don't be afraid of offering work in return for a testimonial that you can show.
Best of luck,
-Andy
-
Hi Bob,
I have developed a few niches, and maybe the ways I found those will give you some ideas.
Back in the late 90s, I worked on a few medical practice websites. Based on that experience, I began to develop a niche building websites and doing online marketing (including but not limited to SEO) for medical practices. We have worked with many medical specialties, but along the way we began working with many urgent care practices, and thus developed an even stronger program for this specialty. We can do a great job for just about any type of practice; for urgent care, we can do even more. We are now looking into replicating this deeper focus with other medical specialties.
So, the lesson here is to examine your own current client base, and look for industries where you can replicate what you are already doing. Or if you don't yet have a client base, focus on your past work experience. Based on the options you come up with, I'd consider things like the level of competition for others focusing on that niche, and how much you like working with that type of business.
Of course, one thing about medical practices is that they are local businesses. We generally don't take on 2 clients in the same market, because then we'd just be competing against ourselves. That said, still have an a huge number of prospects when you consider all of the medical practices out there.
And this leads me to the 2nd niche that we have. By working with medical practices, we learned how to do local. I would occasionally get clients in other industries, and began to realize that local marketing techniques are pretty similar for many industries. So, our 2nd niche is local marketing. On that side of the business, we have a strong focus on our home city of Portland, OR. In addition, since we are already doing local marketing in dozens of other cities around the country, we are learning to target other businesses in the cities where we already have clients.
In general, I think there is a big need for more people to specialize in local SEO.
Hope this helps you find your direction!
Ira
-
Bob
You should have a feel for what you clients want from you - a gut feel for what area to develop and specialize in. Your URL has you limited ie it is a person. So it makes you look and feel like a one man band. If this is the case the work you get will be limited to small business & mums and dads type operations. Unless you can turn yourself into a Consultant to oversee the agencies retained by larger companies. Call that a pivot.
So I would sit down and work, out what past customers will support you with ie testimonials and work out what works for you now. You may want consider a pivot - to consulting as your long term goal - but at present you need money coming in.
Also your website it could be argued looks a little outdated, not modern and fresh - to attract the new young ecommerce up & comers. Have a look at squarespace for some modern sites.
On your actual title & H1. If you know your niche then the words will come natural - ecommerce website design is a competitive phrase - so the local factor and city or suburb will be key to ranking well.
Hope this gives you something to think about.
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
-
Local SEO for a business serving multiple small cities
We have a local business that has a showroom in one city, and serve other 5 different small cities (in total 6 small cities). Search volume for the targeted keyword is very low (around 100 each plus minus) with a variety of competition levels. The product is expensive so this justifies the low search volume with a serious user intent.
Local SEO | | Nadiamo44
My question is given the low search volume for each keyword, what would be the best local SEO tactic for this. The website has a DA of 20 with competitors who has similar and higher DAs. Options I am considering: 1. Create unique pages for each location with unique content (no address available so I will have to use a city name postcode)
2. Create pages with the same content (but changing the area of service on the URL, H1 and mention the postcode and the radius of coverage twice in the content) and using a canonical tag to solve the duplicate issue.
In this scenario, I will create the main product pages with the address of the showroom, and mention the area of service covered for the other 5 cities.
3. Given that the 6 cities are part of a greater area, use the greater area to target them all. The keyword of the greater area has a lower search volume than the city keyword. This might work for keywords with low competition but not for ones with high competition levels. Not sure how well search engines will rank the keywords that include the greater area and show the pages for searches in small cities. Any advice on which option to go with or any recommendations for other solutions?0 -
What's the best way to create keyword tracking lists for local SEO?
I have a question for the local SEO crowd: when it comes to creating keyword tracking lists, what are your best practices in reference to tracking from a set location? Do you typically create national keyword lists that include the location operator in each term or are you better creating a list of locally-tracked keywords around a business' location and dropping the location operator from the keyword? Or some combination of the two? To clarify, if I had an example business of a realtor in Chatham, MA, would I want to track -"realtor in chatham ma" (national)
Local SEO | | formandfunctionagency
-"realtor in chatham ma" (with the location set to Chatham, MA)
-"realtor" (with the location set to Chatham, MA) Or some combination of all of the above? Right now, I track waaaay too many keyword variants on my local campaigns! Hoping there's a better way from some more-seasoned Moz users. Thanks in advance!2 -
Most useful things to do without developer resources on SEO
Hi fellow Moz users! I am managing SEO at our company. Perhaps some of you out there also have the problem of wanting to make SEO changes on your website but lack the developer resources to make significant changes? What are some of the things I can do in my power (can't do any backend work) to make SEO better? Currently, I have: Social media (including Moz local tips of business listings) Blog site Refining pictures Google analytics to see where we can improve Internal and external links Please feel free to expand on the above but ideally it will be new things that I could get on with! Many thanks,
Local SEO | | Eric_S
Eric3 -
Spaces between Letters and Numbers SEO question
This is a fun one - Example: Mercedes Benz is pushing to have all of there vehicle models to coincide with the world branding such as the "C300" is supposed to be "C 300" and the "E300" is supposed to be "E 300"... I have a few issues here as when I use Voice Search for "Mercedes Benz C 300" there is no way (that I know of) to add a space between the number and letter. In addition, when searching for the "C 300 for sale" Google corrects the text with "Did you mean: C300 for sale". I am seeking a way to accommodate both versions of the models WITHOUT adding the both C300 and C 300...etc. to the text on web pages. OR will Google eventually change the model names over time as Mercedes-Benz regulates the new U.S. naming convention. Tough question - any thoughts? Thank you for your help -
Local SEO | | MBS-MBA0 -
Is there a benefit SEO and ranking-wise in putting a free SEO audit tool on your homepage?
Hi everyone, I work for a digital marketing agency in Australia. Our team noticed some businesses similar to ours use a free SEO Audit tool on their homepages. We are considering having one as well but, but want to know how it would benefit us. Will adding this tool on our home page help us rank better in Google? If yes, can you please tell us how? Thank you.
Local SEO | | nhhernandez0 -
Local SEO?
Hello everyone, I've just been through the Moz Local learning area, which is pretty informative. However, a lot of it seems like good practice for general online marketing (mobile friendly websites, goals per page...). I'm new to all this - am I missing the point? William
Local SEO | | Seabrook0 -
Is my link structure hurting my SEO?
Moz says I have too many links on the homepage - could this be hurting my SEO? I have a lot of links on my homepage - especially from the services menu. I also have a few in the intro paragraph that are unnecessary but are linked to other pages using keywords - such as "veterinarians" which go to Meet our Veterinarians, etc. I'm afraid to make changes as I don't want to go overboard and actually hurt our rankings further. Any thoughts on this? Brant
Local SEO | | BCB11210