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If this is such a niche market then competition is probably low.  In that case I would start producing good informative content that attacks each of the valuable keywords in the niche.  If you can't build up, then build out.

This Matt Cutts video is from 2013, but I think it still applies today. I ran into the same issue once re: terms & conditions, asked a question very similar to yours, and somebody on this message board shared it with me. Hope it helps. Long story short, as long as you're not being spammy about it, you should be fine. I would add that since it's actually useful to your user, I would implore you to include it!

This is a long answer To get content to rank you need to have a good plan in place before you write the content and then patience after. Make sure your content is something that people are interested in and are willing to share before you actually write it. Good content actually starts with keyword and viral research. So for example lets say your site sells dog collars. Instead of writing all your content about dog collars, you can think in more broad terms like: Dog collars for training purposes, Things you need to know about puppies, dog skin irritations, do prong collars hurt or help training... Do keyword research to find what these terms can be. (use google ad words to estimate traffic). Next use content explorer from AHREFS to see what content having to do with your keywords has been viral in the last 24hrs to 6 months. For Example: If you type in dog collars it shows that in the past 24 hours an article about "16 things you need to know about getting a puppy." has been shared on Facebook 4.2k times and retweeted 82 times. Narrow your keyword list to the top content ideas. Next go to google, search your new keyword list to see what ranks for the them. Next quickly use Moz Open Site Explorer to check the DA/ PA / and link and spam metrics of the guys on the front page of those results. Try to identify if there are sites you can knock out with a properly optimized piece and some links. Narrow down your keyword list again based on your results and then you can run a keyword difficulty report on Moz. Run a FULL REPORT so you can see all the different variables that makes those sites rank. This can give you a strategy for what you will need to outrank what is already there. Next start to write your content based on what is MOST SHARABLE SOCIALLY, what is MOST ATTAINABLE to rank for, and what shows decent traffic. Make sure you follow proper on page SEO. Use Moz On Page Grader to grade your content while you write it. Check the results. Adjust your content to get the best grade. You should also grade the competitor pages you are trying to outrank to make sure your on page SEO is at least as good or better than theirs. Link Tip: see who the top sites are linking to and link to those resources or better ones. Research in Moz and Ahrefs and Majestic who is linking to the already ranking content. Try to see if there are ways to build links from those same places. Replicate what is making them rank, follows, no follows, as long as they are relevant are good. After you are happy with your content it's time to distribute it. This part is the hard part. Make sure you use Google web master tools / search console to Fetch and Render the new page. Then submit it to index. Start your Social Distribution Campaign by first posting to your sites social media pages. Check your visibility for the article by seeing how much it is shared, liked, retweeted... If you are posting to a businesses Facebook page you can see how many people have viewed the post. You may be surprised to see that not too many people see posts at first due to Facebook's sharing algorithm. There are 2 ways to get more distribution on Facebook, the easy way is pay for it, promote/boost your post or run an add with your post pointing to your content, make sure you target the ad to your preferred audience. The harder way is to get engagement on your post (likes, shares, and comments) in the first hour(s) your post is published. If you run an ad you can track conversions on sales or goals with Faceebook's pixel so that you can see people coming back and purchasing after the first visit. This pixel will also place your post/ad in front of visitors after they leave your site if they did not complete a transaction. Hopefully you can get some traffic from here. Check your web analytics to see what networks sent better traffic. More conversions, more time on site, etc... Based on this data you can invest more time and money in promoting to that network as your target customers are more likely there than on the other networks. Monitor the groups on these networks as well to see if your content can add value to the discussion in the groups. Word of caution DONT SPAM the groups it just looks bad for you in the long run. As with reputation management it is better to already be a part of the Group and have an established presence by sharing valuable content, so when you share content you're affiliated with as long as it adds value it wont be seen as SPAM and you won't get banned. To see if Google has indexed your new page do a site:websiteURL search and check to see if your new page is listed. Next search your target keyword and synonyms to see where you rank for those. Record your position. Next you can use google to look for outreach points. Sites you can contact to do traditional link building. If your content is original and adds value to the conversation you have a better chance at getting good links. Don't worry if you don't get too many, this can be really hard depending on what you are writing about. Check your Google Results positions regularly. (I do it every morning and again throughout the day). Track your results and keep doing competitive research. As you learn more of what your competitors are doing, repeat your outreach process to get more exposure. If you are a site with low authority you can have the most amazing content and still have trouble ranking or getting traffic. For example in the hair product space, L'Oreal will always have an easier time ranking a page than a small hair care brand. It can be done but it is a harder job because of the trust google places on Authority. To help rank less authority sites you need social presence and social importance. Hope this helps. Make sure you track all of this in a spreadsheet of some sort, so the next time you launch a new piece of content you can just follow a blue print. MOZ's white board Fridays cover how to do a lot of this and Ahrefs has a great series called over simplified SEO that talks about all this in easy to understand terms. Let me know if you have any questions. Best, Erick

Hello Alicja, Andrew is correct. Becoming a Google Trusted Store is intended to, "help customers easily find merchants who offer a superior online shopping experience." It seems that your case & company would not qualify because the actual transaction is not taking place online. To answer your question, if you were to use a system such as Shopify to allow for online transactions, then you could look to apply. Unfortunately, until that time you'll be unable to be a Google Trusted Store. Full Eligibility & Restrictions Hope this helps! Trenton

Hi Alicja, When you say "some of your content," how much do you mean? If brandB copied a paragraph or a few sentences and used it as an intro to a unique piece of content, you should be fine. Google understands that there's naturally going to be some overlap on the same domain. If they copied an entire page, yes, I would recommend using canonical tags, or removing the content. I assume that brandB understands that a canonical tag will mean their version of the page probably won't rank on Google? Best, Kristina

Thank you Dirk

Hi Paddy, Agree on the spam part. Though Pinterest used to have followed links initially. I checked that for one of the company using Moz Open Site Explorer. However it doesn't seem to be the case anymore. All the links now have become no follow. Will research a bit more on this and will keep you posted. Thanks for the help.

The issue is the link in the contact info - www.oorboo.com If you look in the source: www.oorbo.com => this is a relative link - so when you click on it the www.oorbo.com will be added to the current url. Make it absolute & the issue is solved: www.oorbo.com Dirk

Hi there. Exactly same IP? or same C-Block? I would recommend having different IPs if possible, also do keep your and client's websites on several different hosting servers so if one of them goes down, all of your websites are dead at the same time - you'll save yourself lots of pain. As for how valuable those backlinks are - I'd say as long as you're not using spammy techniques (lots of footer links, all of them are follow, to the same page, with the same anchor text etc), you will be fine. Of course, it would be nice to have every single client website with different C-block, but in real world it's close to impossible. Hope this helps.

Thanks, Miriam. I appreciate it. Broad advice for a general question. I haven't checked out the local resources yet, but will later tonight. Thanks again!

It does. Thanks very much, Jared!

so the deal with subdomain vs domain is that you need to think of them as two separate sites; one is just living in the same database as the other. So when you moved the site over to a subdomain, it's possible you took a little hit but I don't think you would get penalized for having the main site live on the subdomain. It might come down to how you migrated and managed the redirects (did you map everything appropriately?), lost links because people were still referencing the old domain with the www subdomain, and a variety of other factors. The .co ccTLD is actually for the country of Columbia, and isn't for "company" as some people may use it for. While there are a ton of spammy sites that use the .co because it's easier to snag an exact match domain, that doesn't necessarily mean you're being targeted for it. There are billions of websites out there. Having the .co and hosting in the US could send mixed messages, which may impact; however there's no real way to tell with any certainty. Review your site migration, and make sure you have all the pages moved over correctly. Next I would check links. Reach out to people who are linking to you and ask them to update to the new domain. 301's lose a good percentage of equity passed, so it's better to get the full value with the correct link. Check local directories as well to make sure you cover all bases - those will need the URL updated. Finally, review your on-page optimization. Are you targeting the right keywords? If so, do you have the appropriate pages optimized and set up with good internal linking? Check your traffic in analytics to look for specific dates it either spiked or dropped. That will also help you narrow down what you changed/what you need to change. Things like this are more detective work in the beginning to bring problem areas to light. Start with that and let us know what you find.

It causes "duplicate content issues" in the sense that only one is likely to appear in search results if you do both. Given that Linkedin is probably more authoritative it's more likely to show up, but it just depends. It won't be a "penalty" necessarily - especially if your author name is on both. If the goal is just a lot of views, go for it. If you're trying to build the site you should probably prioritize the site. Generally I'd recommend posting first to the site, making sure it's indexed, and then cross-publishing or cross-promoting if you don't see a lot of traction with it. But that's just because I'm generally trying to build my sites, and not LinkedIn. As I said, there are probably more views to be had on LI, but it may not accomplish site goals.

Thanks! I appreciate it!

Hi Cyrus, That's really useful, thanks! I'm prepared to put in the time so I'll work on the external link building. I'm going through all my old posts at the moment and redoing and SEOing them. It's such a massive task! Hopefully it pays off in the end. It's reassuring to know Google's not going to block me. I was kind of worried. Cheers!

Sorry Rand, but I still don't see the benefit of tracking this metric at all. Moz really needs to do an indepth post about what DA is and how to use it. I'm sorry if it's already been done, and I haven't seen it. Seems like it could be a beneficial metric to track if you could have a larger pool of competitors to see what's happening to their DA.

"We hope to get the link back up asap." It's more than a year later and the link is still not live. Can you re-enable it please? I'm glad Jen Keller asked the question so I was able to find your link (above), but it would be far better (and save time for your visitors) if you would re-enable it. Thanks!

This is a rather difficult question to provide a clear answer for. There is not one thing that will influence DA, rather several things done correctly over time may or may not influence your DA. For more information, I strongly recommend reading this from Moz - https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority