Content should be at the core of your online marketing strategy. Sometimes it’s easy for your content to reach a wide audience, but if you are in a niche industry, your blog posts or website content may not be getting much attention. It’s not your fault – you just need to think smart about how to reach potential customers.
While there are many helpful tips out there that can help you optimize your content such as paying attention to the right keywords, having an effective backlink strategy, and optimizing your content for mobile devices, there are a few lesser-known tricks that you may not have thought of. One such search optimization (SEO) trick that you may not have thought of is the shoulder niche.
What are Shoulder Niches?
Shoulder niches are content that sits alongside your main content (I.e., on its shoulder) that complement it and bring it to a wider audience. They help to bring traffic to your site by presenting it to people that may not have initially been searching for it in the first place. Shoulder niches are subjects that are closely related to, but different enough from, your core content.
Choosing the Right Shoulder Niche
As mentioned, shoulder niches need to be related to your core content, but different enough to it to drive customers to your site that may not otherwise have discovered it.
Say your industry is pest control. Sure, it’s your bread and butter, but few people may be looking for pest control content. A good example of a shoulder niche would be gardening. You could commission content based around common garden pests, increasing your reach into the gardening industry. A bad example of a shoulder niche would be cars – it is unlikely that this would bring much traffic (excuse the pun!) to your pest control content.
Or, say you are a tire company. You might want to look at content about the history of tire technology since the 19th century. Or you could consider content about trending car accessories. Additionally, you could consider blog posts about driveways for the home.
Once you’ve decided that you want to use shoulder niches as part of your content strategy, it’s easy to sit down and brainstorm ideas. You could likely come up with hundreds of ideas for relevant shoulder niche content. Then you can reach out to other bloggers and business owners and invite them to write content on your site. The only limit to choosing a shoulder niche is your own ingenuity.
It is easy to reach out, too: many business owners and bloggers are only too keen to increase their own online presence, so they should be amenable to providing content for your site. There are also many online platforms where you can find freelancers who specialize in providing content for a multitude of industries. Sometimes all it takes is an email or blog comment pointing out how much you like their writing and inviting them to provide a guest post on your site.
Advantages of Using Shoulder Niches
Aside from the boost to your online visibility and a wider appeal to new audiences, another advantage of a shoulder niche strategy is building effective backlinks from other sites and authority websites. Search engines look for high-quality backlinks when deciding which content to feature on their results pages.
The online world is one of constant competition for traffic, as this equates to increased profit margins for companies. Taking even some traffic away from your competitors is a good thing and will increase your industry authority. With an effective content strategy that includes shoulder niches, you are improving the viability of your business online.
The Takeaway
High-quality, relevant content should be central to your online business strategy. You may not have thought of shoulder niches before, but rest assured: they absolutely work. Once you start thinking about what fits, you will find it incredibly easy to come up with ideas for content that complements your central message. Then, it’s just a case of creating said content for your shoulder niche. The power to increase your traffic is in your hands.
