Wouldn’t it be great if SEO were easy?
Imagine if every project you looked at was a “no brainer” – the starting point, the goal and every step along the way laid out clear as day like Google Maps directions.
We’d all be happy as clams, sitting back and watching the money roll in, laughing as we sipped cocktails in the sun on a beach somewhere.
Uh…wait. How big a beach are we talking here?
If you’ve read The Dip you know that the concept of something being both easy and very valuable is usually ridiculous. In fact, the opposite is usually true. The difficulty of reaching the goal determines the scarcity – and scarcity creates value.
There Can Be Only One (OK, maybe two)
There’s money in ranking #1. How much? Well, that part depends – on what you’re selling, how many people are searching and how well your site converts that traffic. Some of our clients generate as much as $4k of revenue per month through a single #1 ranking.
How much do you think the #2 position is worth? If we use the leaked AOL data as our basis, 3.5x less traffic – so $4k/month becomes a little over $1k. Pretty big difference, isn’t it? That’s about the salary of one entry-level worker in this country. $1k a month is nothing to shake a stick at for most people, but you see the point.
It doesn’t get more scarce than this – only one website gets that top position and the traffic benefit (value) that comes with it.
Of course, the cat wasn’t always so far out of the bag. Before search engines were saturated with competition, valuable top positions weren’t nearly as difficult to come by. Some had the foresight to jump into valuable niches early. Others stepped in shit and realized what they were sitting on later.
My Delorian is in the Shop
Remember in Back To The Future II when the elder Biff stole the Delorian and brought the sports almanac back to younger Biff so he could make a killing in sports betting?
Wouldn’t it be nice to go back and jump into a valuable niche before everyone else did?
Sure would, Doc.
Even narrow niches are more saturated by the day. The reason is pretty simple: setting up a website and populating it with content is pretty easy. With platforms like WordPress most developers can register a domain, have a website up and get to the content population stage within an hour and for less than $10.
It’s a Long Road to the Top (Unless you build a helicopter)
In saturated niches the top players are all getting the on-page SEO stuff right – and if they’re not, they probably will eventually.
The determining factor is trust – mainly measured in backlinks.
You can employ a team of link builders on a full-time basis to go out and beg for links. You might gain some ground this way, but you stand the risk of being outmaneuvered by smarter competition.
I read a line recently (I don’t recall where) that went something like this: “no niche is too saturated for fresh thinking.”
If you want an example of this consider Matt Inman’s success with Mingle2. By web standards this story may be old news, but it applies to the point perfectly.
Forget the quality of the website for a minute – forget the on-page SEO (it didn’t matter anyway). Matt built tens of thousands of links to a brand new website in a saturated niche (free online dating), and he didn’t do it with a team of link builders. He did it by being clever. He built links by creating quizzes geared towards bloggers – the quizzes generated badges with nifty little links pointing back to Mingle2.
He got the site ranking #1 for “free online dating” and sold it for an undisclosed (but probably quite large) sum of money.
Simple? Relatively, sure. Easy? You tell me.