If you think you’re in a boring industry, think again. There is no such thing as a boring industry. Some niche industries are only thought to be boring because the average person knows very little about them. This gives you a chance to educate your audience, and if you are enthusiastic enough about your work, people will listen – or read!
A fish out of water
It can be tricky to have your voice heard in a niche industry, especially on the world wide web. But with more and more business professionals taking to the internet to look for their next product or service provider, it’s time for small fish to move away from the big pond and into the land of opportunity – without feeling like a fish out of water.
The Google goal
Many clients come to me with a bold aim – for their website to be at or near the top of Google. Some believe that the mere fact they are in the same industry as someone else that is highly ranked on Google entitles them to be as high or higher. As you might have guessed, things just aren’t as simple as shelling out some dough to Google so they rank you higher. There are at least 200 factors that come into the equation of Google search rankings, and it’s in their best interest not to share these factors…
There are two methods for ranking high on Google – I’ll call them paid for and earned.
The paid-for method
At the end of the day, Google is a business, and much more likely to encourage people to sign up to its pay-per-click service Google Adwords, rather than give away details on how to achieve a higher search ranking for a lot less money.
While Google Adwords can get your website ranking high on Google fairly quickly, the cost implications are a major pitfall of this method – we’re talking serious dollar to keep it up long-term in industries with many competitors.
This method also means that your website listing comes with an unwanted guest – the word ‘Ad’ in big green letters next to your website address. I see this as another disadvantage, as anyone who knows what an ad is knows that your company has paid for its prime position on the search engine, rather than earned it. Some people even avoid clicking these links for this reason.
The earned method
In most cases, ‘searching the internet’ in fact means searching Google’s index of it. That means the way people search and the terms they use are naturally incredibly important. And Google looks at the content of a company’s website – not the content of the business, who it employs, what it’s bank balance is or its product range, history, inside leg measurements etc. when determining where to rank it. Google also loves relevant content – I know that for a fact (that’s one thing they do share). If your website answers the questions that your customers are asking Google, you will rank higher than those who don’t.
And yet many still believe this to be a time-consuming task that offers little return on investment, but as with many marketing tactics, it’s the planned, less-flash, more systematic approach that typically wins the day.
