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How would YOU tackle the competition in this niche?

by markowe
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
OK, I've got this little sports equipment niche, I know a bit about it, actually I am quite passionate about the sport in question. Typical item sells for $80-$300, Amazon, eBay etc.

Main KWP is 2400 exact searches, global (1300 UK local, 880 US local - I can target both markets with geotargetting, Adsense etc.) - also there are potentially tens, if not hundreds of thousands of related LSI keywords.

I picked up the .org EMD for the main KWP - .com and .net are taken. This is how the competition stacks up:

- SERPS page one has 3 pages with 0 PR (including my direct EMD competition) and 3 pages with NO PR.
- .com EMD is 3rd on page one (excluding shopping results), with 0 PR, very few backlinks and basically a lot of autoblog content.
- .net EMD is 1st behind the shopping results with 0 PR, ONE backlink showing in Yahoo Explorer and just EIGHT very thin pages with some content but mostly eBay listings (hard to believe that is so high up...)

That to my mind is pretty weak competition all round. I am guessing the two EMD's are there basically on the strength of the EMD, from back when that was still highly effective for ranking (I personally don't believe it is as effective anymore), plus a bit of domain age.

So how would you tackle this niche (careful, it could be your sites I'm going after )? I plan to create some good content in any case (better than the competition's - not hard!) but I feel like the niche is not big enough to warrant a full-blown product review blog.

I have a few ideas of my own, but just wanted to bounce ideas off people, especially as my feeling is that it has got harder of late to get a affiliate product review-type site to Google page one - at least, it's not the cakewalk it once was.

What would your tactics involve? I mean, in general (no GreenFart or link spamming - aiming for quality).
#competition #niche #tackle
  • Profile picture of the author jitterbug978
    I would tackle them... by taking a running start! You can hit harder that way!!

    Sounds like you could be sitting on a goldmine, just do as you normally would. Build content, perform on page seo and then build links. If its something that could spread virally or something people would chatter about then get it on facebook/twitter.
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    • Profile picture of the author Bill Jenkins
      Banned
      I would tackle them and take them down with ease. I say go for it and rake the dough! Hit it from multiple angles and build up tons of keywords and you should be sitting pretty.

      Good job on your market research. Keep it up!

      Bill
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  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    Thanks for the encouragement

    Just wondering what people think would be a good model for this sort of site - used to be you could just knock up a few static pages and you'd be away, but seems the game has changed over the last year and the big G isn't falling for that stuff anymore.

    This niche is like, say, baseball bats though (it's not that, just an analogy), it's like, how much can you really blog about baseball bats day in day out? So not too keen on going the blog route either.

    Any thoughts?
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    • Profile picture of the author dadamson
      Originally Posted by markowe View Post

      Thanks for the encouragement

      Just wondering what people think would be a good model for this sort of site - used to be you could just knock up a few static pages and you'd be away, but seems the game has changed over the last year and the big G isn't falling for that stuff anymore.

      This niche is like, say, baseball bats though (it's not that, just an analogy), it's like, how much can you really blog about baseball bats day in day out? So not too keen on going the blog route either.

      Any thoughts?
      Different KWs and niches require a different approach on fresh content. Base this on what your competition is doing (everything is relative to your competition rather than what Google "likes").

      Some KWs and niches are 'evergreen', the competition and majority of the listed sites are not creating new content often. This suggests that fresh content is not as important in say the "golf" niche as it would be in the "current fashion" or "latest news" niches.

      Based on what you have told us, static pages should be fine.

      To rank quickly for this keyword, get your pages up, do your onpage SEO, then start the backlinks! Do some reverse engineering to grab some of your competitors backlinks and ideas while creating backlinks from a wide range of places.

      Build some link velocity and include some social bookmarking, blog commenting, and article marketing at the very least.

      Good luck with it.

      Cheers,
      Dave
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      • Profile picture of the author Stephen Crooks
        All the usual SEO rules apply and so I won't go into that but the best way to tackle a review site these days is to ask yourself a few questions first and let your answers shape the content you deliver.

        1. What would someone interested in this sport equipment be looking for information on?

        2. Are they interested in finding the best price?

        3. What do other pages ranking highly in your niche do?

        If you find that people in your niche love to see demonstrations of the equipment then consider creating a cool video showing the equipment in action. If they are interested in seeing how strong the equipment is then create a video showing how you tried to destroy it!

        If price is the main concern then also offer a price comparison script showing the best current prices.

        By looking at other people's pages you can get some good ideas for your own site. Don't plagiarise but use the good bits and make them better.
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      • Profile picture of the author debra
        I would compile a demographic market plan targeting the user in mass numbers that were fanatically interested in that niche, "baseball" as you say in your case.

        I would create a relationship within baseball social groups and bring them into my site. I would create my linkwheels, commenting, quest postings and all other content within those groups.

        P.S. I have a spreadsheet that is all about sports that I did by hand. With the stats of all the sites too. I was going to clean it up a bit and add a few more things then put it out to the public. Right now I'm finishing up one that is geared towards general marketing across something like 12+ different platforms.
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