How Does Getting Niche In Your Business Impact Your SEO And Your Website Itself? 135

Transcript For How Does Getting Niche in Your Business Impact Your SEO and Your Website Itself? 135;

Jesse Dolan: We kind of know for SEO, you have to develop your authority and be an expert on a topic in Google’s mind to show up in search results, right? And the more content you have revolving around that topic, the easier it is to establish your authority.

Welcome back to Local SEO Tactics, where we bring you tips and tricks to get found online. I’m your host, Jesse Dolan, here again with Sue Ginsburg.

Sue Ginsburg: Hi.

Jesse Dolan: Sue, it’s just me and you again. Bob won’t be here on this one, but just like the previous episode, we’re going to have no problem answering some questions here. Timestamp this one again. This is another October 2021. I can kind of tell that. I don’t know if you’re actually outside on this one, or is that a virtual background?

Sue Ginsburg: It’s a virtual background, but yes, it’s a very fall theme. And since our question today comes from many listeners in many locations, I thought I’d just go with the seasonal backdrop today.

Jesse Dolan: Nice.

Sue Ginsburg: So we’ve got colorful leaves and more coming soon as we get further into October. Okay, today’s question from many listeners, how does how niche, or niche, your business is affect the impact of SEO? How do you approach SEO differently, website SEO and GMB SEO, if you are a niche business? The quote of the day, “I don’t really need to stand out. There’s room for everyone. Although I haven’t built a niche yet, I’m just writing love songs.” And that’s a quote from Adele. Isn’t that funny?

Jesse Dolan: That is pretty good. Pretty fitting, too. I don’t know how you find these sometimes.

Sue Ginsburg: It’s a challenge. It’s a challenge. So lots of different marketing stories to tell on this one. This morning, we had a great conversation with a successful business offering piano lessons. They offer only piano lessons, and among other things, we talked about the benefit and the challenges both, regarding SEO when you have a niche business or a specialty business. This has come up with many of our clients who are in niche businesses of all kinds, whether that’s custom framing, trash shoot repair and installation, online equipment auctions, and many others. The question is, are there SEO strategies that work better or not as good for a niche business?

When I was thinking about this, I started realizing, what business isn’t a niche business? And it just got me thinking, if you’re a business owner listening, what if your business is more of a specialized service than one that everyone out there can use? Are there things that you do differently in your marketing and your positioning to emphasize your specialty and affect a more targeted audience, or to hide the specialty and go for the broader audience, and then reign them in once you’re engaging with them? Whether it’s SEO or any other part of your marketing tool, there will be nuances to the specifics of your business, whether it’s specialized or broader offering.

And whatever the case is, is there a marketing strategy that’s better for you if you are in a niche business versus a broader business? Do you work with the marketing tool a little differently if you have a niche business? What marketing tools are better for niche businesses? And lots of other questions that would be typical of a business owner considering what is the best investment to grow my business. So short of getting an MBA, going back to school for an MBA or getting certified as a digital marketing expert, what do you do when you know these questions exist, but you don’t know the answers?

You can ask an expert. You can ask a colleague who knows something. You can hire marketing experts. You really don’t want to spend the time looking into it, getting certified, et cetera, because you’re the business owner and you don’t have to know everything. That’s not your job. It’s somebody else’s job. So in this case, how do you best use SEO to get the best results if you are a niche business? And we have Jesse right here as the SEO expert, ready and willing to share. So we’ll make it easy for you today. Jesse, why don’t you fill us all in? How do you use SEO for the most impact if you’re a niche business?

Jesse Dolan: Yeah, first of all, I think we have to give an apology and make a statement to anybody who’s been triggered listening so far, that’s like, it’s niche, it’s niche. It’s not niche. And I’m going to say niche. I’ve made this disclaimer before on previous episodes. One of the reasons, I don’t know if I’ve shared this part before, but you can’t say the riches are in the niches if you don’t say niches.

Sue Ginsburg: Got it.

Jesse Dolan: So don’t come at us. Niches is what I’m going to say. I know you probably say it the other way, but it’s too late for that now. I’m 43 years old. This is something I’m not going to be changing on. I think I’m 43. I’m so bad with birthdays and numbers. That’s all. My wife is listening. She’ll know what I’m talking about. But anyways, riches are in the niches. There’s a reason that that’s an actual phrase.

And yeah, like you said, Sue, I mean to an extent, every business is kind of niched down already. If you just think about it, even Walmart, which is gigantic, well, they’re a store that provides home goods and things. You don’t go there to eat at the restaurant at Walmart. They may have a Subway embedded into it or things like that, but you know what I mean? They don’t do everything, even though they are about as gigantic as you can think of as an example.

So just to kind of set the stage, to your point, I think it’s a great point, every business kind of already is niched down, but the deeper question you have here is niching down even further within that, right? And I think that is important, in my opinion, at least, for businesses, not only for SEO, but being in business and as a business owner with multiple businesses, and if Bob was on, he’d be definitely elaborating on this. Being partners with Bob in multiple businesses for 25 plus years, you have to be niching, you have to be specializing somewhere, to be that expert, like you’re saying, Sue. Otherwise, you have no gravity. You have no authority. You’re just another also ran.

And if you’re another also ran, it’s really a race to the bottom on price point is where you’re at, and I’m pretty sure most people out there listening, business owners, aren’t interested in just slashing their prices to get more business. You want to cater to premium customers, larger audiences, charge more for your product, get more profitable, things like that. And niching down is a tactic that’s often used to be successful to guide your business. Now we talk about SEO, kind of bringing that into the digital marketing SEO part, I think it even magnifies it.

So in some of these, well, I should say all businesses, just to keep it simple, there’s going to be keywords that are niche specific, right? If you’re a dentist, there’s pediatric, children, family, maybe special needs, maybe sedation, pain free, right? If you just think about a dentist, there’s a lot of niches, even just within dentistry. You can talk auto repair, you can talk marketing services, really any industry, there’s specialized niches to the clients that they serve. Even us, with digital marketing, search engine optimization, things like that.

There are agencies that just focus on an industry, right? Like SEO for lawyers, SEO for dentists, and that’s all that they do. And there’s a reason for that. So number one is going to be when people are doing searches, we know for SEO, you have to develop your authority and be an expert on a topic in Google’s mind, to show up in search results. And the more content you have revolving around that topic, the easier it is to establish your authority. Google doesn’t know you’re an expert in marketing for dentists if you’re not talking about that on your website or online. If you’re just talking that you’re an expert in marketing, you’re not really having any gravity and probably not going to be shown for people searching for dental marketing experts or things like that. So if that’s what you want to really focus on, you have to niche down on that on your website, for the keywords.

Now if you’re out there listening, like yeah, I am pretty general, I don’t really have a niche, do some keyword research and find out what people are searching for, for your products and services, and have the lens of looking for the niches. Are there geographic niches? Like for us, we’re local SEO for Intrycks, our agency. We don’t operate in an industry vertical niche or something like that. What we do niche down on is local businesses, serving people in their backyard, one to 10 locations, things like that. We’re not working with Walmart. We’re not doing eCommerce. So that is our niche. It’s geographic relevancy and things like that.

That may be true for your business. Maybe you’re a Jack of all trades or a Jane of all trades, but you just work in a certain geographic area doing your services. Hey, that’s, niching down. New keywords that relate to that. Your landing pages are going to want to mention those things too. That’s kind of where you start to connect the dots. Not only are you going to do keyword research to find out what some niches are, the pages you create, the content on your website, should then speak to those same niches, as well. If we are Local SEO, you’re engaging with us, that should be evident that we do local SEO, not eCommerce. If you are a dentist that does pain free or sedation dentistry type stuff, when people are searching for pain free dentistry, when they land on your page that they found for pain free dentistry, it should be talking about pain free dentistry, not dentistry for kids.

So in that case, my point is, is niching down can get you found in search for those long tail niche specific keywords. Niching down for the content on your pages, then, can convert better for the clients that land on those pages, because now they were looking for a niche thing, they found you, they entered into your website slash store slash whatever, and were further convinced that you’re an expert in this area, that this is your niche, and that they’re in the right spot. And if those things start happening, that’s where you’re not really competing on that price point. You’re not racing to the bottom. You had somebody that was looking for something specific, they found you, you look to be a specialist in that area, and not all, but a good percentage of those patrons are going to be willing to pay a little bit more for you than they would somebody who was more general. Because they were looking for an expert, right?

I think we’ve all had something in our life where maybe something needed to get fixed or replaced or installed, and we didn’t just want some general handyman to maybe come do that repair, that installation you wanted. But if I’ve got an air conditioner that needs to be replaced, I’m not calling a plumber. I’m calling an air conditioning person. Things like that, which is a broad, but still example of niching down for home services. So you’ve got your keyword research. That’s important to niche down there. You can go where the fight isn’t. You can go where your ideal clients are. You can be establishing yourself as an expert. Your landing page is niched down with the content that’s on that to convince people and show people that you are truly a specialized expert in this area.

And then the last part, and again, this is where Bob would probably be chiming in even more, is you will also then develop the knowledge base to go along with that. So now somebody actually calls you or maybe contacts you via email, Zoom, stops into your store, whatever it is, they found you in search, your landing page impressed them that you’re an expert. Now they’re engaging with you. Guess what? You know their questions, you know what they’re asking for, you know their fears, their wants, their desires, whether it’s the good side or the bad side of what their needs and fears are, everything else, you’ve talked to so many people, you’ve helped so many people in this niche, that you truly are an expert and can engage with people in that way. And that becomes what you do then, right?

And if that’s all working for you and laid out as I’m presenting it there, again, this is where you can be charging premium prices now for your products and services, and your clients are going to be happy to pay it because they’re in good hands. They’re trusted. You got it right the first time. And they’re going to tell other people about you, too. So I know some of this isn’t exactly SEO related, Sue. It’s kind of how your question framed it up. But I think it’s important to present that as a bigger context, because the better you run your business, the more reviews you’re going to get, the more social mentions you’re going to get. So as you niche down and become an expert, not only are you attracting people on the front side for your sales funnel, you’re creating more raving fan clients because of all the things that we just laid out. I’m not going to repeat myself again. I repeat myself all the time already anyways. We’ll save that part.

And now you’re pumping this flywheel of being a niche industry expert, and your champion customers are going out, spreading the word, and attracting more people, and should have a pretty good business running at that point. So yeah, lot of reasons to niche down, most of which is to grow your business. You know what I mean? Really, at the end of the day, it’s where we’re talking here as business owners.

We want more customers. We want more clients. We want higher prices, or at least not having to cut prices for those clients, and repeat and referral business, which is the cheapest form of advertising, period. We like to talk SEO as being extremely cheap compared to radio, TV, billboards, things like that. Word of mouth and referrals, it doesn’t get any cheaper than that. So a ton of good reasons, I think, on where to niche down. And it really all does start with your website, your keywords, what you’re showing up for, what your image is, what you’re presenting, and things like that.

Didn’t really talk in that sense about Google My Business there. That was kind of all website driven, but just to round that out for you, Sue, and for everybody else, all that applies to Google My Business, as well. The things you’re posting online, the reviews that you’re getting on your GMB, your business description on your GMB, even the business categories you can pick for your GMB. You’re not a contractor. You’re a certain type of contractor. You’re not a retail store. You’re a certain type of retail store. Choosing those categories wisely there, too, and niching down as much as possible.

So yeah, great question. Great topic. And I think it’s something that a lot of business owners, whether they’re trying to rebrand themselves, or even if you’re sitting there thinking about a new business to launch, this is a great thought experiment to go through, and just start doing some keyword research. We’ve got other episodes. We talk about how to do keyword research. Check those out. And that’s where you can start to get exposed to niches you may not be aware of within your industry that you’re already serving. And yeah, maybe some light bulbs will go off.

Sue Ginsburg: You’ve said a lot of really good things, Jesse. One thing I think you said that may help people with a new way of thinking is there are lots of different ways that you can niche down. It can be, instead of Chicago area, it can be north Chicago. Instead of dentistry, it can be pain free dentistry. Every business has a niche in one way or another. And what better way to specialize and communicate that than to get Google and other people’s attention, as well?

And I think in my experience, business owners balk at the idea of specializing, because they think, I’m going to cut off my audience, I’m going to be limiting myself. But if you think of it from your own experience, we all get haircuts someplace. If you have really curly hair, you want someplace that specializes in curly hair cutters, because there is a difference in how people do it. Do you want to know before you get there that they specialize and you’re in the right place? Or do you want to go someplace that just says haircuts, get there, and then ask, “Is there somebody here who cuts curly hair?” So in the end, you’re just streamlining your audience and your prospects’ way of finding that out and making them happier more of the time, if they know that before they go.

Jesse Dolan: And again, I stress to tell you from being a business owner and being in business for decades now, the hidden part of that is your internal SOPs and workflows and policies. Your example, curly hair cutter, if that’s all you do, guess what? All your tools are catered to that, everybody knows how to do it. It’s a repeatable process. Your business just runs smoother. You don’t have overhead in things that aren’t related to curly hair cutting. It just not only on the marketing side gets you in a good position to be an expert, authoritative, and bring in ideal clients, you should have a very streamlined, predictable, repeatable, scalable business there, as well, when you’re focusing on one thing.

The more general you are, you have to be equipped with inventory for everything, with tools for everything, with knowledge base for everything. And the less frequently you use all those, the more outdated they become and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Guess what, somebody else is being an expert in one of those things, as you’re trying to muddle through them all. So that is the hidden side, is the backend operation of it all, too.

Sue Ginsburg: Great point, really good point. Really good insights and information shared. And hopefully our listeners will find lots of good tidbits in there to apply to their own businesses and become a little smarter in SEO and even how they run their business.

Jesse Dolan: Right on.

Sue Ginsburg: If you remember one thing and one thing only about today’s episode, the riches are in the niches, or, let’s see, Jesse, the riches are in the niches, for all of you who get bugged by the riches are in the niches. How’s that?

Jesse Dolan: Nice try. We’ll see how that flies.

Sue Ginsburg: Back to the quote, which I really love this quote, “I don’t really need to stand out. There’s room for everyone. Although I haven’t built a niche or a niche yet, I’m just writing loves songs.” Adele said that. She’s really successful. She’s really smart. And she just writes love songs. That’s her niche.

Jesse Dolan: I was going to say, it’s kind of ironic. In the quote she says she isn’t, but then she ends up with, “I’m just writing love songs.” Oh yeah, you are. You’re not punk rock. You know what I mean? You’re writing love songs.

Sue Ginsburg: Everybody go listen to an Adele song and you’ll know what a niche business is.

Jesse Dolan: Right yeah. And for her style, I mean, she’s an expert, right? She has carved out a niche, like it or not. So hopefully that helps some people out there. Again, whether you’re trying to rebrand, redevelop, reinvigorate, or launch your business, niche down. It’s a great question. And like you said, Sue, we get a lot of different versions of this from people all the time. It’s a very big topic for where you’re going with your business or just even keyword research, and doing landing pages and things like that. So a lot of ways that you all should be able to apply this.

If you’ve got a question from this episode, from these topics, to dig deeper into any one of these veins, or if it spurs you on something else that you’ve been meaning to ask, we’d love to hear it. Come on out to localseotactics.com, go down to the bottom, click the link for submit a question. You can type it in there, or if you call it in, either way, we’ll use it on the show. We’ll give you a shout out. And if you do call it in, we’ll send you off a free Intrycks t-shirt, and you can do whatever you want with that. Hopefully you’ll wear it and tell everybody how amazing this podcast is and how much we helped you.

Thanks, Sue, for jumping on, for asking the question, and for your insights, as well. And going to see more of those fall colors in your background there in the coming weeks. Being up in Minnesota here, where we’re from, we have to embrace all four seasons, but this one is one of the most interesting. Literally the landscape changes over a couple weeks. Every day you can see it. So pretty cool stuff. All right, I think that wraps it up for this episode. Anything else, Sue?

Sue Ginsburg: Nope. Sounds good.

Jesse Dolan: All right. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. We’ll catch you on the next one. Take care.

Sue Ginsburg: See you.