Have you tried looking at the SEOMoz recommend companies page here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended#link-building ?
I'm sure you are also looking for other references too - but this may be a good place to start.
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Have you tried looking at the SEOMoz recommend companies page here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended#link-building ?
I'm sure you are also looking for other references too - but this may be a good place to start.
I think EGOL pretty much hit it on the head. You need to figure out the intent of the terms you have. If you break down the typical customer buying process:
Say your niche product is "mountain bikes". If you are seeing an uptick in terms like "how to ride a mountain bike", "riding mountain bikes", "fixing mountain bikes", "fastest mountain bike racing times", you should expect to see a smaller conversion rate - assuming you are selling a product. These wouldn't be considered "buying" terms. Same thing as "mountain bike reviews" - that's more of a 'research' term.
If your goal is to collect email addresses, then maybe your 'sell' on why they should give you their email address doesn't make sense for the terms.
If you are seeing a dip in conversions, I would take a look at the highest trafficked terms that are not converting and see if there are other ways to 'make' them convert. Landing page modification here would be key.