Today I’m going to explain how you can use one content strategy to attract traffic from Google and use that same content to sell to specific sub-niches within your industry.

I’ll show you how we are currently doing this with InboxDone.com using a content strategy I first learned and applied way back when Google was just becoming the dominant search engine, and I was in charge of my first company, BetterEdit.com.

Let’s start with two simple truths that we must all accept today if we are going to succeed with a content marketing strategy based on getting traffic from Google search…

  1. The internet is incredibly competitive and crowded. Trying to rank in Google for the top keywords in your niche is basically impossible.

    By that I mean, if you sell green tea and you want your website to be the first result in Google search for ‘green tea’, it’s not going to happen. Okay, it’s not impossible, but it’s darn hard, will take a long time and probably won’t last as you will be fighting with well established websites and big companies with huge marketing budgets.

  2. For small businesses, going after long tail keyword phrases (for example, ‘best organic green tea to lose weight’) and local search results (‘buy Chinese green tea in San Diego’) is a better strategy. You face less competition, thus it’s easier for your content to rank higher in search results.

These two statements apply equally to the second largest search engine in the world as well. That’s YouTube.

Google and YouTube both have algorithms to determine which content should rank highest. These algorithms review factors ranging from incoming links to your content, to the authority of the websites where those incoming links come from, bounce rate, length of time engaged with the content, number of views, and so on.

These ranking factors are hard to control, and that’s exactly why it’s so important to go after more granular, niche specific and local search topics. With less competition, you can score lower on these ranking algorithms yet still rank high because there are fewer pages/videos going after the search terms you are.

Plus, with more specific content, it should appeal to more specific needs and thus improve those ranking factors. For example, people will watch your entire video or read your entire article when it specifically focuses on their unique needs. The longer the time they spend engaged with your content is one factor that tells Google and YouTube algorithms your content should rank higher.

Selling To Sub-Niches

The great thing about this search engine strategy is it’s also a sales strategy.

When you create content specifically for sub-niches, longer more descriptive content and local-centric content, you communicate a more specific message to a specific group.

For example, when you write about the best organic green tea to lose weight, it’s not just about green tea, it’s communicating specifically about two needs – the organic nature of the tea and the goal of how it can help people to lose weight.

These become differentiation factors, reasons why that specific content appeals more to a specific audience, and thus converts better (you make more sales).

I first applied this concept when selling editing services. My company at the time targeted students at universities, in particular to start with in Australia, where I was born and living at the time. The content we created wasn’t just about ‘editing and proofreading’, we created content to focus on essay and thesis editing, on goals like ‘getting better grades’ and targeted local search phrases like ‘Sydney thesis editing’.

The content I created targeted niche and local search phrases that ranked high in Google and also appealed to certain specific groups (university students in Sydney for example). This strategy helped to both attract people from Google and convince them that my company was the best choice for them, because we specialized in certain things.

The Strategy Still Applies Today

I continue to apply this strategy as I manage the content strategy for my current company InboxDone.

We recently created the following sub-niche specific pages on our website:

Each of these pages are written to appeal to a very specific need. They are also designed to rank for a niche specific search phrase in search engines.

While our team of executive assistants are email and calendar specialists first, for many clients we take over additional tasks like the needs listed above. By targeting each of these needs individually with its own content rich page, we better sell our services and help bring in new customers from Google.

Of course for this to work, your website has to have some ranking authority and ideally you will continue to improve it over time. That means you need incoming links from other sites, which is one of the reasons why I am writing this article — to create new incoming links from my blog to the InboxDone pages. This will help them to rank higher.

How To Apply This Strategy To Your Business

To make this work for your business you need to first be clear on the sub-niches to go after.

These can be based on geography or demographics, specific problems or needs, or features of your product or service.

I recommend you do research by using Google to search for long tail phrases related to the product or service you sell. Consider different use cases and different target customers and what they would type into Google when looking for a product or service like what you sell.

I also gain a lot of insight from sales calls and interacting with customers. Nothing beats hearing directly from people already interested or already paying for what you sell.

Once you have a list of potential niche needs, you need to craft a well written and designed page to target each one. These pages should stand alone as sales tools, speaking directly to the need and the target customer and how your product or service can help them.

The copy on the page is critical not just as a direct sales tool, but to rank in Google as well. The title of the page should contain the keywords you are going after, and those keywords should appear in phrases throughout the page.

Finally, while you are creating these pages, which could take months depending on the size of your team and budget, you should also conduct a link building campaign. It takes a while to build up site authority in the eyes of Google, so you want to constantly attract new links to your website to coincide with publication of your new niche content pages.

This is not a quick marketing strategy. It’s not like paid advertising, where you can spend money to purchase the top rankings in Google. However, if you invest the time and effort to do it, it can deliver results long term that won’t cost you any money per click.

If you need help with this strategy, consider joining the Laptop Lifestyle Academy. I’m happy to answer your questions there in the members-only forums or on one of our live coaching calls.

Yaro