Off-Site SEO Strategies For Niche Sites in 2018
So last week I wrote an article titled, “How To Create Successful Niche Websites in 2018.”
As you can imagine, it was a roaring success.
I went back and read it though, and I realised I glossed over an aspect which is a big source of questions on niche sites.
Namely, what do you do for niche site off-site SEO and how do you do it?
So let’s get into that topic today.
Do NOT Overblow Your SEO Efforts For Niche Sites
The reason I kind-of glossed over the SEO for niche sites subject is that it’s not really important.
At least, off-site SEO isn’t that important.
It’s almost all on-site SEO and keyword research that you should concentrate on.
This is true in a wider SEO sense as we move on in years and algorithms concentrate on the following things:
- Time on site and bounce rate (as a measure of engagement and relevancy)
- Page quality and relevancy
- Site authority and relevancy
Now, if you’re a big company conducting a huge marketing campaign, then you’ll want to spend money on back linking and specifically building out authority across various sites and platforms. This will help you target those competitive keywords that are super-lucrative.
That said, you aren’t in that boat for niche sites. The whole point of creating niche sites is to get those low-risk, high-opportunity long-tail keywords that the big businesses don’t optimise for.
If you need to do a lot of off-site SEO, chances are your targeting is wrong. So don’t overdo your off-site SEO efforts on the niche sites you’re building.
That said… let’s look at how to improve your site’s footprint.
Social Media Buzz and Content Syndication
I wrote the other day about content marketing and content syndication.
When it comes to niche sites, you shouldn’t be spending tens of hours a week promoting your content. But you can follow a simplified method using a syndication-styled blueprint that requires no effort:
- Set up auto-posts to Twitter, Facebook etc. using IFTTT
- Do the same for any other relevant media properties (like Medium, Tumblr, Pinterest or wherever)
- Engage with anyone in your niche for a few minutes on a platform of your choice, and answer questions that arise
This is straightforward. You can find tools to do most of it and if you get creative, you can do most of it for nothing.
Longer Articles & How-To
If you want to do off-site SEO for your niche site, then you’ll want to write how-to information.
I’ve tried this and I’ve watched other guys with niche sites do the same: You can’t just link-build with product reviews.
People will remove it for spam or they’ll not click. Some will pull the, “You’re just doing it for clicks and money!” comment thing.
This makes link building an uphill battle.
Yet if you do exactly the same thing, posting a how-to article with a bunch of links to products and your product reviews, that stuff sails by.
Now the whole point of off-site SEO is to make your site look authoritative. You want people clicking, reading, sharing and otherwise facilitating the spending of as much time as possible on your site.
So longer articles are good. How-to information is good. Cross-referencing other articles will increase time on-site. If you want to and have the ability, embed videos – yours preferably but other people’s work fine too.
Link Building
So we get to the actual “link building” thing.
It’s simple, like the rest of the niche site concept and execution.
When you do your market/niche research, you’ll inevitably come across discussion forums. Nowadays, a lot will be Facebook groups or Subreddits, but forums exist for a lot of subjects.
Also, comment fields on bloggers in your niche won’t hurt. Neither will YouTube comments if you want to get into that game.
Essentially, your link building consists of posting to those avenues as part of an attempt to build a relationship with the audience.
If you drop a link on people and then disappear, you won’t get traction. Become a part of the community, and then leave those how-to links.
If you write enough information then you can respond to other people’s queries as opposed to starting topics just to link your site. This is the ideal situation.
With uncompetitive niche terms like you should be selecting, just a handful of backlinks will be enough to secure top spots in the search engines.
Final Thoughts
The above is unlikely a perfect strategy, but it’s the one I use. It’s effective enough for me.
It only takes a few minutes every so often, and is designed so that those are minutes I’d be spending anyway, (so time spent browsing the sites in question for topic ideas or other information.)
It’s not going to get you to the first page of Google for the search term “make money” but again – that’s a targeting issue.
The majority of your work for niche sites should be on-site stuff: Namely quality content, good user-experience and niche-relevant material.
The off-site stuff is just icing on the cake.