Many smaller online marketers face the difficult challenge of finding profitable niches to focus on that aren’t already saturated by large brands. This is especially difficult when trying to target audiences that are created by huge household name brands. While marketers have long been able to find long tail keywords which could earn them a fair amount of web traffic, a new study shows that many major brands no longer have the top keywords locked up.
With recent Google updates that have limited the number of results a single domain will typically have on the results page it has opened up a lot of opportunity for other marketers. The study specifically reviewed keywords from some of America’s most popular television shows. Looking at keywords associated with 23 Emmy award-winning shows found that the networks producing them are performing worse in 2013 than they did in 2012.
In the past, for example, when people did a search for the name of a main character in a popular television show they would see results including several from the network that produced the show, a Wikipedia entry and maybe a YouTube video. Today, however, Google is far more likely to show just one result from the network itself, opening up several spots on the top page.
While some marketers are capitalizing on these changes, there is still a lot of opportunity for individuals and businesses that are willing and able to invest in making authority sites in niches which were once dominated by a single domain. With hard work and a smart strategy the sites which large brand names are no longer ranking for could provide excellent long term opportunities for others.
One great example of how smaller marketers could capitalize on these changes is in the merchandizing of products related to television shows. In the past the networks which sold DVDs of seasons of their shows on their website would quickly rank on the first page for their online store. Today, however, when people search for a show name plus DVD they won’t necessarily even see the network’s online store in the top ten results. This opens up opportunities for direct DVD sales or Amazon affiliates to move into this niche.
With the extensive product lines many popular television shows have today it is easy to see just how much opportunity exists with this type of marketing. Of course, this is just the television show niche, there are hundreds of others out there which were affected in the same way from recent Google changes which opens up many opportunities for online marketers.
Have you looked into moving into more competitive niches which were once dominated by big brands? If so, have you had any success? It can be intimidating to enter these types of markets, but there are huge rewards to be had when managed properly.
