Search Engine Optimization has become an important part of online marketing strategies. SEO is the key to getting noticed on the internet. You need to target the popular niches that have a larger audience and compete with others to get noticed by search engine bots. However, it can be difficult to try and penetrate popular and competitive markets, and in order to execute it properly, you need a proper plan, time, and budget.
Which niches should you target as a competitive digital marketer? Let us look at the 5 most difficult SEO niches and learn what it takes to rank in them.
1. Pharma
If you are a drop shipper or an affiliate, here is some good news for you. Pharma has the scope to make huge profits. With the right SEO strategy, some marketers make 4x revenue in a single quarter. Moreover, it is not as difficult to dominate the Pharma market. With the right SEO strategy, you can definitely get there. PBNs and other SEO tactics may help you rank under local SEO keywords.
How much monthly recurring revenue can you make by ranking in the top Google search results?
It entirely depends on the number of products or the route to market. Affiliates can expect to earn smaller commissions, and drop shippers have the scope of making significantly more.
Let’s talk about the budget.
You may be surprised to know that you do not need a huge budget to rank in Pharma. By PBNs, you can expect to tap local SEO keywords.
How big should the team be?
A team of two is enough for ranking. Your team will need to optimize the keywords in such a way that the pharma sites look like local businesses. Include PBNs like address, phone, schema, map, etc and you will get there.
Recommended backlinks
PBNs are more than enough for backlinks.
When working with SEO for the pharma industry you need to be mindful of the laws. Make sure that you are not selling any banned or illegal products. In such a case you will be shut down by the FTC. It is advised that you only work with legit legal products. You can choose to partner up with a Pharma company. The niche has many opportunities.
2. CBD
CBD has emerged as one of the trending niches in the health market. Plenty of affiliate sites are working with CBD and have proved to be successful and obtain revenue. This niche in the health market has become profitable. You can expect to make commissions worth more than a million dollars per month. It has emerged as a very lucrative market. According to research and studies, it is touted to become a $20B industry. There is a lack of current regulation in this niche which makes it an enticing opportunity for those who want to explore the CBD market, as an affiliate or a direct supplier. CBD is one of those niches where you do not specifically need to be ranked #1 in order to make plenty of money.
You should focus on content quality and link building as a part of your SEO strategy. Keep in mind that you need to account for your average link velocity for the top affiliates in the CBD niche and the type of links and quality you are building.
Target hacked links, guest posts, and editorials to boost your search results. Keeping all this in mind, you need to be aware of budgeting.
Let’s talk about the budget.
Link building followed by content will be your biggest expense in this niche. You can also go for a custom-fit link-building campaign after considering the average link velocity of the top affiliate sites in this niche and the type of links they build. If we are roughly estimating the budget, you may require several thousand dollars per month at the very minimum to penetrate the CBD niche. The affiliate sites standing at the forefront of this niche are profoundly investing in links. Some affiliate sites are easily spending an expense of 5 figures per month only to maintain their existing link velocity levels. If you are looking to get ranked under this niche and make an impact, then this is budget that you should consider.
How big should the team be?
If your SEO strategy is to primarily focus on link building, then it is recommended that you recruit a large team to delegate individual tasks for certain members to handle.
Although, you don’t necessarily require an SEO team to tackle the CBD niche. Having a team does help but you can also do it individually.
Recommended content plan
Your site will completely dictate your SEO content strategy. A quick tip is to review every single popular brand and find new companies that are setting up shops. A lot of these new companies will have affiliate programs for you to join.
Moreover, you can also use tools like Ahrefs and Surfer, to make it easy for you to spy on your competition’s SEO efforts and know their strategy. You can also audit your SEO competition to look for opportunities if you feel like you are running out of ideas.
Recommended backlinks
You will need PBN links, guest posts, and contextual link placements as backlinks for this niche.
You can make a lot of money in this niche if you have the mindset, budget, and time. Research before considering entering this niche and if it does not seem practical to you, then you can explore other niches.
Also Read: 8 Factors that can hurt rankings of your adult website
3. Adult
This niche is home to one of the largest markets online and also the most competitive. Getting traffic is easy but keeping the traffic on your platform when they arrive is a challenge. The most difficult part of this niche is the building up of various links and monetization.
To make it count, you need to stay on top of the trends.
Let’s talk about the budget.
Curating huge amounts of content and pages is one of the challenges with adult sites. Most pages under this niche include videos. Although you can add SEO to tags and categories it can result in one big ball of unoptimized clutter. You need to focus on challenging aspects, like on-page optimization and decent crawling in order to make it work. The adult industry is completely dependent on content links, page speeds and bounce rates increase the impact.
You need to at least have a monthly budget of $3000 for link building and also consider hiring adult SEO specialists.
How big should the team be?
You should recruit at least a minimum of 2 members to your team.
Recommended content plan
Come up with a specific content plan that includes a system for removed pages (videos in case of adult niche).
Funnel users through blogs. Blogs work well and are less of a headache, although the real volume is with the video categories and pages. Build content after finding 15 to 20 clusters in your neighbourhood. Aim to improve your user dwell time and get rewarded by Google for it.
Recommended backlinks
You can rely on general SEO metrics and less to tropical relevancy. You will be covering a wide array of pages and should not be building two-tier links. You can use a combination of PBNs, niche edits, and a3-way linking.
You can redirect any non-image links or deleted videos to the homepage to make sure that the user stays on the website. Rest assured, there is very little you can do that can directly hurt your site when it comes to link building. Google can take care of the rest. It is recommended that you invest in a CDN and a solid server, make sure that your passwords and plugins are constantly updated since that is one area where you will be tested.
Finding decent staff to work on adult pages has been a challenge for obvious reasons. If you are new to the adult niche, avoid high competition English SERPs.
4. Weight loss
The health and fitness industry has a lot of competitive niches, including the weight loss niche. Although, if you manage to penetrate through the top rankings in Google on a constant basis, you can expect up to $250,000 to $500,000 revenue per month.
Let’s talk about the budget
Timing dictates the budget in this niche. In simple words, if you catch a fad weight loss pill or supplement right when it is trending, you can easily rank with an EMD without having to spend too much money.
But, if you want to take the longer route and aim to rank for “best weight loss pills”, then you may need a larger budget. A budget of a minimum of 5 figures would be recommended.
How big should the team be?
You can recruit a boutique-level SEO affiliate level team of 2-4 people.
Recommended Content Plan
You need to keep the balance between the amount of commercial content on your site vs for supporting which could be primarily based on information. Do not lose trust among your users by focusing on commercial content, also do not get themed as a resource site by including too much informational content or will have trouble ranking for commercial keywords.
Test and track to find the sweet spot.
Recommended backlinks
If you plan on going the EMD route, then focus on PBNs. If you want to go all the way then use guest posts and user outreach for backlinks.
A lot of people in this industry steal content. You should be careful that people should not watch your RSS feeds to check if you are posting something new, and then index it before you. Be quick and careful.
If you can secure ranking, weight loss is a fun niche to work with.
5. Online casinos
Due to the global pandemic’s social and economic effects, the online casino niche is able to secure high revenues since 2002. Moreover, popular online casino games like blackjack and slots are substituting for live casino trips and betting. This niche can be challenging but rewarding at the same time. Affiliates that work forefront in the online casino industry make up to more than a million dollars a month in commissions.
Let’s talk about budget
The budget needed for the online casino niche is pretty high. You need a larger budget to move up the search engine ranking list. Talking about numbers, some SEO online casino campaigns start around $250,000 per month.
Recommended backlinks
Focus on guest posts, PBNs, relevant directories, and niche edits for backlinking on this niche. Backlinking is the most effective SEO strategy.
How big should the team be?
This niche requires a bigger team than the rest of the niches mentioned above. You will need more members in your team to execute and manage your strategy. Your team members will have to work around the clock in order to rank your site.
If you are a casino owner, then spending money on marketing will prove to be a smart investment for online growth. If you have a talented marketing team and the right keywords, you can easily rank up the search engine rankings.
Other Niches
- Payday loans: This niche is very much in demand and searched by millions of Americans each day. You can make big money and the competition is cut-throat. With the right keywords and backlinks, you can get off the ground.
- Real estate: The market is thriving with increased competition from companies and realtors. It is challenging to create a brand or a reputation in this market and will require a significant amount of time and a big budget. While others are retreating with the economic threat of the pandemic, you could be in the market right now and expand.
Now that you know which are the 5 most difficult SEO niches, you can start researching and studying to decide what suits you the best. Take all factors into consideration like the budget required, the revenue you can make, number of team members required to choose the right niche.
Also Read: John Mueller From Google Says NO To Black Hat SEO On Adult Websites
