This week marks the beginning of my case study of entering a new Niche Online.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to begin work on a marketing project for a group of silviculture businesses: tree seedling growers.

Last week I spoke with a number of greenhouse owners, and I’ve come to understand more about the current state of the forestry industry in Northwestern Ontario and how that’s effecting the silviculture specialists. Many of the greenhouses reported a decline in demand for tree seedlings in recent years and production is well below capacity.

After a few conversations, the greenhouse operators started to identify some alternative markets where they may gain new clientelle and diversify income sources. Many of the growers quickly identified a wide range of different trees they could grow – aside from the traditional Spruce and Pine varieties.

During my conversations, I was quickly typing anything that might be a useful keyword phrase; a phrase that these new prospective cleintelle might use to search for the very product the growers were brainstorming about… I was able to collect a healthy range of keywords and phrases.

Stepping Into The Niche
Now, before I begin building the website for the first greenhouse business, I’m going to start creating a mini-net web of internet real-estate consisting of blogs, articles, RSS feeds and one way links from a number of my existing sites. All of the links, articles, blogs, spaces and RSS feeds will cluster around the keyword phrases of my greenhouse owners.

Once the Mini-Net of greenhouse keyword pages are indexed by Google, they become a powerful support for the eventual top search engine rankings of the Greenhouse Business Websites.

In the end, of course, top search engine rankings don’t help if your site doesn’t bring in new business enquiries. Tune in to a future post that will demonstrate how to measure if your site is doing all it can to help your business grow.

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