SEO is tricky for any website owner, but especially those in a low volume niche. When nobody’s searching for your niche, how do you take advantage of chances to boost your ranking?
First off, let’s make one thing clear: it’s the Internet. Everything is searchable, and everything has been searched. Everything.
One way or another, there’s somebody looking for your website. Still, that doesn’t tell you how to use SEO effectively.
Follow me as we take a deeper dive into how to make SEO work for you.
What Is a Low Volume Niche?
You may think you know exactly what we’re referring to by “low volume” niches, but there’s more to it than just an off-beat topic. You may think you’re creating content for the weirdest, most specific thing in the world, but if people are searching it frequently, it doesn’t apply.
When we say “low volume,” we’re referring to the number of searches your niche actually gets.
Searches tend to happen in seasons or certain times of the year. It’s similar to how people search for certain TV shows while they’re on the air, and not so much during the hiatus.
Most keywords ebb and flow in search popularity, but a low volume niche won’t have peaks and valleys if it’s not being searched often. Now you begin to see the problem in dealing with low-volume SEO: it’s hard to figure out what works when there’s not a lot of interest to begin with.
How to Get Around It?
Luckily, there are multiple ways to get around it. It may take a little bit more strategy than tossing keywords around your content until they stick, but that’s not the only element of SEO.
“Normal” website owners (in quotes because, look, it’s the Internet. Nothing’s normal around these parts) have to use more than one tactic to ensure that they rank highly on Google and other search engines. Therefore, it makes sense that content creators for low volume niches would attach themselves to these other tactics.
If you’re dead set on using keywords, the easiest way to find relevant ones is to use Google AdWords, if you have an account. From there, you can use the Keyword Planner in order to find keywords that are both relevant to your content and getting attention.
However, how do you take advantage of other SEO tactics when you may be the only website of your kind on the web? Let’s take a look at some other things that may give you the upper hand.
Know Your Audience
As with any SEO technique, you need to make sure you know your audience. Know your demographic inside and out. Know what they like, know what’s trendy to them, know what’s being advertised to them so you can follow their lead – or deviate from the path, depending on what your marketing strategy is.
A great way to start is by doing standard market research. That can at least give you an idea of what demographic is reading your content and connecting with it.
However, you’ll need to dive a little deeper and uncover more things about your audience in order to make this most effective. You can uncover their search habits and regular content preferences in order to help tailor your own content.
This also has the benefit of dispelling any ideas you have about what they’re looking for. Rather than basing your content on what you think they’ll like (and in a low volume niche, that may be anyone’s best guess), you’ll be using what you know they like as a jumping point.
Love Your Long-Tail Keywords
Let’s be honest: traditional, short keywords are beginning to lose steam in the SEO world.
That doesn’t mean that they’re irrelevant. Quite the contrary; short keywords are still very powerful in ranking your site. As long as Google uses it as criteria for their rankings, they’ll always be useful and necessary.
However, the advent of voice search and other technology means that long-tail keywords are seeing their day in the sun. They’re especially useful if you’re in a low volume niche.
Long-tail keywords are important because the competition isn’t going to be much of an issue. You should have an idea by now of how big your audience is and what content will be relevant to them.
This gives you the ability to create more long-form content and therefore, expertly-crafted long-tail keywords, topics, and phrases. This frames you as an authority, which helps boost your ranking.
Originality is King
You’re in a unique niche. How much more original can you get?
However, just because you’re in this niche doesn’t mean that you get to skimp out on creating original content. In fact, the more original, the better.
This is a great time to take advantage of the evolving technologies involving video to get your content in front of the right eyes.
Your niche is actually a great opportunity to make content. You don’t have a lot of competition, so you won’t be riding the coattails of someone who did what you were thinking, just a tiny bit before.
Almost anything you do can be original! Do some research, ask some hard-hitting questions, create the content that you always wanted to see for your niche but never thought you had the power to create.
This is a fantastic way to establish yourself as an authority and a leader for your niche, which opens up fantastic doors of ist own.
Compromise
Here’s the thing: you can have all the original content in the world, great topics, and expert keywords, but for SEO to be successful for your low volume niche, you need backlinks.
Backlinks aren’t a mystery once they’re explained. They’re links that other websites make to your site. They’re counted in SEO because they make your website look authoritative and relevant – provided those links are in the right network.
However, in a unique niche, it can be difficult to find relevant places for backlinks. This means you may have to compromise by writing content that isn’t exactly relevant or working with conventional publishers.
Sometimes, in small niches, it’s easy to hyper-focus and reject anything that’s not completely pertinent to your topic. Rather than looking at this as a compromise, look at it as a chance to expand your network.
Love Your Enemy
I know, I know – I’ve been saying that low volume niches don’t have much in the way of competition, right? Still, that doesn’t mean that there’s absolutely nobody doing something similar to you.
Don’t look at your competition as someone that you have to beat. Naturally, you want to outrank them, but your competition can be your best bet in boosting your SEO.
Don’t be afraid to connect with them and get to know them. You may learn some tips of the trade that you hadn’t thought of before.
Small niches also give you the ability to collaborate and combine your powers for amazing content.
Crawl Before You Walk
This may be the key when it comes to SEO for low volume niches.
It’s tempting to throw everything up on your site at once. Why not hit the scene with a bang, right?
Still, since you won’t have a lot of data to work with or much to research, start small. Start with efforts that you can do yourself and see how they affect your rankings.
It’ll be slow-going to collect the data that way, but it’s better than a failed dive into the deep end.
Become a Social Butterfly
Small niches are very well-suited for social media, even if it seems counterproductive. If you’re in a unique niche, not many people will be interested, right?
Wrong! People invested in small niches are dying to connect with people who think in similar ways, so make sure you have profiles on all the major platforms.
This gives you the ability to connect with potentially influential figures while also giving you an outlet for more content.
Your fans will share it, you’ll meet other important figures, and your SEO will rise that way.
Community
Going off that last point, use your website as a place of bonding for your audience. Social media is fantastic, but you can create a whole community around your website.
Forums are great places to start, and they’ll encourage brand loyalty while helping you produce fresh content!
Don’t Fear the Mainstream
This one sounds like the devil, but it can help you in unexpected ways.
It’s pretty obvious by now that your topic isn’t mainstream. That’s okay. Nobody’s asking it to be.
However, it may be a good idea to produce a little bit of mainstream content – that’s also relevant to your niche.
People are more likely to search for the mainstream, and when they do, your site might just be there waiting for them.
It also gives you the chance to connect with those mainstream publishers you’ll need to build up backlinks, so it’s a win-win!
Conclusion
Regardless of what your focus is, using SEO appropriately for your low volume niche takes a little planning. However, the same could be said for most websites, so you’re not alone.
Having a unique niche gives you the opportunity to build an entire community around your brand. You can focus on fostering relationships and creating original, hard-hitting content simultaneously, and you don’t have to worry about major competition. You’re all friends!
Questions about SEO? Eager to make it work for you? Check us out!