How do I rank for one keyword in my small local niche?

guitarrrszz

Hey boards people

I run a blog in the entertainment niche and I have decided on a keyword that I want to rank for. I know what I want but I have no idea where to start to go about ranking for it tbh. I have done some research about it on google keyword planner and checked out SEMrush to check who also ranks for it, should be too hard.

Any advice?

Thanks

Mrs OBumble

Why do you want to rank for that keyword? What is the business goal behind that idea?

guitarrrszz

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Why do you want to rank for that keyword? What is the business goal behind that idea?

hello and thanks for the reply

Looking to rank for "music blogs ireland", trying to grow organic traffic and strength of brand

any tips?

thanks

Mrs OBumble

Most importantly you need to have content which would make it reasonable for you to rank for that key-phrase. What have you got that others haven't - are you some sort of aggregation service or blog-listing service?

To me, what you're suggesting is a very, very wide area (I wouldnt't even call it a niche). It covers things as diverse and powerful (ie likely to have people working full time on SEO in some cases) as what was on the first page when I searched that term just now:
http://nialler9.com/
http://www.blogawardsireland.com/best-music-blog-shortlist-2/
http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/ontherecord/
http://harmlessnoise.ie/
http://serenityb.com/blog-roll/
http://www.iasca.ie/undefined/undefined/undefined/
http://hypem.com/blogs/country/IE
http://irishtradmusic.blogspot.ie/

Interestingly that doesn't include any of the areas which I'd expect Google to suggest to me, given what it knows about the sort of music I'm interested in (choral and folk).

guitarrrszz

I noticed that these blogs rank for the keyword from their root domain and not to a particular article or page? how is that?

Mrs OBumble

Root domain is reportedly a strong signal in Google's algorithm.

guitarrrszz

can you link to any blogs that would be a good read?

jackluter

Participate in local classifieds,web directory,local business listings and also took part in forums related to your domain,blogs.

adamrooney

What you could be doing for a start is setting up 'Brand' profiles on social media sites,blogs,and local directories - and making sure they are optimised properly. On these 'Properties' is where you should be writing and adding valuable content with links pointing at your website, product pages etc. The content you create could be based around the KW you want. Within the content you should also have a couple or so outbound links to high authority sites within your niche. You could curate this, but importantly you must leave a link back to the source. Create good content that your readers will want to read and don't spam or KW stuffing, then syndicate this across your 'Brand' profiles as mentioned earlier, and you give yourself a chance of ranking

euser1984

adamrooney wrote: »

What you could be doing for a start is setting up 'Brand' profiles on social media sites,blogs,and local directories - and making sure they are optimised properly. On these 'Properties' is where you should be writing and adding valuable content with links pointing at your website, product pages etc. The content you create could be based around the KW you want. Within the content you should also have a couple or so outbound links to high authority sites within your niche. You could curate this, but importantly you must leave a link back to the source. Create good content that your readers will want to read and don't spam or KW stuffing, then syndicate this across your 'Brand' profiles as mentioned earlier, and you give yourself a chance of ranking

Hi,
Can you tell me what directories there are for this sort of thing?

Also, what do you mean by curate this?

Thanks.

guitarrrszz

yes I have set up brand pages and linked to directories but Im not sure what else I can do?

adamrooney

euser1984 wrote: »

Hi,
Can you tell me what directories there are for this sort of thing?

Also, what do you mean by curate this?

Thanks.

Some examples would include...primary local business directories, Google Places, Bing Local, Foursquare...

Curating content is collecting, sharing, and adding context to engaging web content, making sure to leave a link back to the original source.

adamrooney

guitarrrszz wrote: »

yes I have set up brand pages and linked to directories but Im not sure what else I can do?

It's not just enough to create these pages and leave links. You must be creating and adding valuable content regularly to these so that people/users/customers read and share them - content marketing.

jackluter

Set correct blog related to your keyword with unique content and use blog url in bookmarking,web directories for better ranking factor.

manjosh

Try ranking for a longer tail and very specific keyword. If you are into hiphop song add it. Music blog in ireland will likely give you result for type if music in irelands, something traditional. So be very specific.