my niche keywords too hard to rank for - what should I do?

[unstoppableflow]

Hi there

I have an informational website in the honeymoon niche. doing keyword research in the google research tool, the words that come up are basically all 'commercial', things that i would never get on the first page of google for because of established, large websites, things like 'top honeymoon destinations' or ' honeymoon ideas' or 'all inclusive honeymoon pacakges'.

I dont want to spend my life link building...is there any way around this? any other plan of action?

[webapex]

Target more obscure less directly related keywords with articles on honeymoon traditions, stats on the % of children born 9 months after a honeymoon, lists of the most romantic settings.

Did you know Facebook's ads can target only engaged people? There are probably sweepstakes ideals that could at least get a Fan Page more visible with lots of likes.

[Kevin McNally]

Being honest sounds like you need a change of mindset, some of those keywords look very possible to me, don't be afraid to take on the big travel websites . Get some link building started and track your results, unfortunately this is required and you need to work at it.

Only other way round it.....use adwords and pay for the traffic but I think actually that will be much more difficult .

[Robert H Cwik]

It is not an easy niche, maybe. But I looked only at your first keyword. Although there are lots of results, the competition is not that strong as you might think. Out of the top 10 only 2 I think have the phrase in the title (total: 18,500) or in the url (total: 14,900), so there is place to squeeze in. Try to extend the first keyword to surround it with even longer tail ones (top honeymoon destinations on a budget; top honeymoon destinations in (region/country/continent); top honeymoon destinations outside (your country)).

You get the idea...

[bkdubs]

could always target alternative lifestyle honeymoons

[unstoppableflow]

Originally Posted by Robert H Cwik

It is not an easy niche, maybe. But I looked only at your first keyword. Although there are lots of results, the competition is not that strong as you might think. Out of the top 10 only 2 I think have the phrase in the title (total: 18,500) or in the url (total: 14,900), so there is place to squeeze in. Try to extend the first keyword to surround it with even longer tail ones (top honeymoon destinations on a budget; top honeymoon destinations in (region/country/continent); top honeymoon destinations outside (your country)).

You get the idea...

hey...well i am on page two for 'honeymoon tips' which has a 3,600 exact match volume per month (this is my 'biggest' volume keyword), but on the first page are a couple of the big honeymoon sites with higher pagerank than me.....the way i think is that anything Page Rank 4 and up is there because of age, domain authority and links...so i cant really compete with

[unstoppableflow]

Originally Posted by strangest

OP, let me know your website/blog url's. I have something that will interest you.

can't PM yet...the website is.....honeymoonguy.com

what do you have?

[Sam Streubel]

Use this free system to find high demand/low competition keywords for the title of your website and content pages. easynichescoringsystem.com

[xnice]

Originally Posted by unstoppableflow

can't PM yet...the website is.....honeymoonguy.com

what do you have?

I can't access to your site, it has error 509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded. I think you need to host your site at good place before all of work will be useless.

[paulgl]

Every niche can be conquered in some way. You need to
create an authority site. Do a boat load of articles on
everything and anything honeymoon. The more content,
(good content), the better. The more content that gets
indexed, the more you are becoming an authority site.

Then, the long tail keyphrases that real people do will
be slowly brought to your site. And you need to have
companions to them, like a twitter, facebook, squidoo,
blogspot, etc. all linked up.

If honeymoon is your thing, no reason to give up.

Be patient and keep working.

Now if you bought the site, stuffed with content, then
you do have to start some backlinking.

And get a real host who will give you "unlimited" bandwidth.

I did not even know people got taken down for that in 2011.

The "flippa" side, is that you bought a site maybe thinking it would be
a breeze to just rank. Bad idea.

Paul

[AfteraDream]

Stop judging competition by number of total sites competing and only measure top 10 strength. This is the main change for your mindset. You can choose a niche with little competing sites but the top 10 is packed with high PR sites and many links then you are still screwed. But maybe you ditched a niche where top 10 had couple of weak spots even though there was 1 million sites there...

Keep trying, linkbuilding is not hard. Buy a few WSO, gonna cost you like 60 bucks and in two months you will see how they did. Don't blast them at the same day tho, buy one pack and then after that one is delivered add another one a few days later..

Good luck!

[yukon]

Create quality internal keyword pages with the keyword once in the URL + Page Title, Once in a single <h1> tag per page, once or twice in <h2> tags, mention the keyword once or twice inside the content.

Focus on quality content & internal/external keyword anchor-text linking & you'll dominate that keyword honeymoon tips.

This is your competition: "honeymoon tips" site:www.travelersjoy.com

[Daniel Wilson]

Target long-tail keywords. I rather make a micro niche site and then upscale it then going for more general niche.

Offsite SEO will take you 20min a day and you'll see far better results. If you don't want to do it, outsource it. Do what you love to do.

[JSProjects]

I agree with Daniel. Start targeted niche terms that don't have a lot of competition and work your way up. If you're new, you'll burn out trying to go after the more competitive terms. The thing that's going to keep you going is success. And it's easier to see success when there's not as much competition.

You can then work your way up over time and go after the higher competition terms. If you're willing to outsource when you're working on higher competition terms it will be a bit easier.