Launching a site for a product with unformed demand

The first item on the list of situations where SEO is powerless is usually a product with zero or near zero demand. Indeed, it is strange to engage in the promotion of what they are not looking for.

If the product is really new and there are no analogs - that's right, you can do anything, test hypothesis after hypothesis, and SEO will be in the back row. But if the product is already known, for example, in the neighboring region and there is a chance to promote it in yours? Or innovative product extends the well-known? There is already something to build on.

We will show how to prepare a platform for promotion - how to collect semantics, what to spy on from competitors, how to decide - to make a full site right away or to limit ourselves to landing. And complete the picture with other tools of promotion.

For more specificity, we took a very real situation and will analyze all the work on a narrow example.

We build a hypothesis: there is a solvent audience in the region

Suppose we decided to promote a new service for home delivery of products with recipes. Region - Yaroslavl.

This is a city 260 kilometers from Moscow with a population of about 600 thousand people. The capital can be reached in 2.5–3 hours by car and in 3 hours and 20 minutes by high-speed train. That is why Muscovites are frequent guests in these parts and vice versa.

Why do we need this information? She tells us that active young people in the city are at least up to date with metropolitan innovations and services. As a maximum - leads a fairly successful business, designed for the same advanced audience.

There are several health food stores in the city, there is a vegetarian cafe, more than 50 coffee houses, including Starbucks, Organic, Surf Coffee and conceptual with brewing “alternatives”. In the TOP of the regional issuance of Yandex and Google, there are six online grocery stores with home delivery (one specializes in farming, the other on mostly healthy products) and two services for delivering ready-made healthy food for a week.

We build a hypothesis that the target audience for the delivery of products with recipes in the city is. And proceed to the preparation.

Demand study and semantics formation

The basis of promotion for any product is the most complete semantic core. To begin, briefly formulate the essence of your proposal. We select the key query “delivery of products with recipes”.

1. Start by analyzing the frequency of the key request in the left column of wordstat.yandex.ru . Do not forget to set the region:

When studying the demand for a new product, the situation may look like this:

2. The first resource for complementing semantics is the right column of Wordstat with similar queries. In our case, this did not work:

3. If collecting by exact product names gives near-zero frequency, try entering a broader key query:

4. The next stage is the analysis of the right column for a more frequency key. And here we find ideas for expanding semantics:

Similarly, we analyze the right column for each of similar queries:

5. We will discuss the competitor analysis in more detail below. Now it is important to mention that Moscow services for the delivery of products with recipes focus mainly on dinners. We use a narrower query:

It is important for us to collect all possible semantics, so even such numbers of diluted frequency should not be intimidating.

6. A good resource for complementing the semantic core is Yandex and Google hints.

Yandex Tips

Google Tips

Tips are best collected on all found keys. To do this work manually even for a small number of requests is quite a laborious task, but there are automated tools .

7. At the very bottom of the search results, there is a “search with search” block. Ideas for expanding semantics can be there.

This is what a block looks like in Yandex search results.

It looks like a block in the search results Google

For more rapid collection of phrases associations, use a professional tool .

8. Look under which key queries optimized competitor pages. The parser meta tags and headers will help to collect this information.

On the basis of all the collected phrases you need to create a common file with queries, their diluted and accurate frequency. We got about 50 requests, so we group them manually.

Screenshot of the part of the table with queries

If you are lucky enough to collect much more, use a tool to cluster semantics .

In a standard situation, full clustering semantics serves as the basis for the structure of a new site or the refinement of an existing one.

In a situation of low demand, a product can often be described by a single cluster of requests that can be sent to the main page or landing page.

The remaining keys belong to the category of near-thematic and can be used for targeted advertising and information sections of the site.

Competitor Analysis

When launching a new product on the market, there may not be any competitors in TOP. What to do in this case:

1. Refer to the sites of related topics. In our case, these are online stores of grocery delivery and ready-made healthy food delivery websites.
2. If this is a new product only for your region, analyze the TOP-20 issue in Moscow and major cities in which this business is already developing. We analyze sites from the Moscow issue on relevant requests.

What to look for when evaluating competitors:

• menu structure, page nesting;
• communication elements and usability level in general;
• USP;
• commercial factors: pricing, line of services, delivery terms, the possibility of online payment, the availability of convenient methods of communication;
• the presence of the information section, types of materials.

Important: this is not about copying the structure or USP from the “colleagues”, but about analyzing and applying the best practice for your target audience.

First, we analyze 2 one-page services of delivery of ready-made food for a week in Yaroslavl.

Landing structure is about the same:

• the name of the service and the UTP or action;
• advantages;
• menu / ration options;
• reviews from social networks;
• lead form.

Calls on lead forms are almost identical:

In one of the landing pages, the advantages are spelled out in more detail and there are answers to frequently asked questions.

Pay attention to the section with menu options, which is implemented differently for competing services.

Not a very good option - gallery. The name of the dish, calorie content, the ratio of protein-fat-carbohydrate is displayed in the caption to the photo. The photos show only one version of each meal.

The option on the second landing is more interesting. The menu for 2 weeks is presented visually, it changes when you click on the day of the week:

When you click on the dish description appears:

By itself, the text is written well, but where is the calculation of calories and the ratio of protein-fat-carbohydrate?

On the same landing page there is a calculator.

The cost of the service depends on the daily calorie intake, the number of meals, additional options (water and cutlery), the duration of the program (from 1 week), the inclusion / exclusion of days off.

Referring to the Moscow issue of relevant requests.

Sites-multipage on the subject of food delivery with recipes worked out in detail. Given the competition, this is not surprising. Most services specialize in the delivery of products exclusively for dinners. The sites have separate pages for the menu designer, a story about the team and suppliers, the principles of the service, terms of delivery and payment, a blog. Some implemented a personal account.

In the “Menu” section of one of the services, you can change various parameters: the date range, menu types, number of dishes and persons, dishes themselves. Also presented are attractive photos of ready-made dishes with a brief description and tags and an order button.

The analysis gives starting points for the formation of our own UTP and an idea of ​​what functionality is needed on the site.

Site or Landing?

Traditionally, a multi-page site is considered more suitable for promotion than a single-page site: you can create several query clusters, cover low-frequency information phrases, distribute external reference weight and internal linking.

But in the regions and a narrow niche, a landing page can be a practical solution, since the costs of its creation are incomparable with the creation of a full-fledged website services or online store.

Analyze the issue in related topics or other regions and determine the type of resource.

That's what we found out.

In TOP search engines for requests for delivery of products with recipes in Moscow, only multi-page sites. If you look at the TOP by related niches in Yaroslavl, we see online grocery stores and two one-page pages - ready-made food delivery services for a week.

At the design stage, it is important for you to understand what functionality is required at the start of the project and in perspective, and on the basis of this, decide on the type of site.

Can't you say for sure if your product will “go down”? Choose a less labor-intensive landing - MVP for testing ideas.

If you are confident in your marketing strategy, it is better to start with a well-optimized website that will develop with the business.

Having decided on the format of the site, it is also important to consider the requirements of SEO when choosing an engine (CMS site):

• SEO functionality: separate fields for the title and description meta tags, the presence of the h1 title on the page, the ability to create and edit robots files and sitemap, set up redirects and the 404 page, ease of adding and editing text through the administrative panel.
• Ability to implement Schema.org and Open Graph microdata.
• The ability to connect online payment systems. Paying on the site can be a significant competitive advantage.
• Adaptive layout. The convenience of a mobile site has long been a requirement for high search engine rankings.

Local search is important for local product

If your product is focused on residents of a particular region, do everything to get into a local search. Here are detailed tips on working with local Yandex and Google search .

Short check list:

• You need to be on Yandex.Maps and Google maps. Register and fill in your profile as much as possible in Yandex. Reference Book and Google My Business.
• Register in all popular otzovik and trust industry reference books.
• Follow your feedback on Yandex, Google and Otzovik, respond to them, work with the negative.
• Use the new service Yandex. Area in the regions where it is. You can create an organization profile and talk about the product to residents of large cities.
• Participate in other Yandex services. To increase the awareness and the formation of expertise, the service Connoisseurs will be useful: it needs to give answers to users' questions. For those to whom this is suitable, there is a Yandex.Services aggregator. Register a company, fill orders and get feedback.

Reference strategy in a niche with unformed demand

Purchased links from exchanges in 2019 do not work as well as before. To promote a new product, it is better to use white link building methods:

• news with a link to the site in industry and / or regional media;
• advertising publications on the visited sites where your target audience is;
• guest publications on authoritative resources;
• getting into lists and ratings;
• Reviews on visited portals and blogs;
• reviews and comments.

As you can see, the reference strategy for a new product includes PR tools, content marketing and work with reputation.

When choosing sites we consider 3 factors:

• the presence of an active target audience;
• attendance;
• compliance with the subject of the project (for example, in the case of delivery of products with recipes it will be: business, healthy lifestyles, weight loss, sports).

You can take care of “warming up” the audience in advance. For example, start a blog or a page on the social network, start writing materials that are interesting for the target audience, accumulate a pool of loyal users, and then present your product by offering special conditions to the first subscribers.

Basic optimization steps: checklist

1. Distribute the clusters of the semantic core to the landing pages (or select the main requests for the main / landing page).

2. To register meta tags title and description with the entry of phrases from the semantic core.

3. Configure robots and sitemap files.

4. Add a site in the console of Yandex and Google webmasters.

5. Add codes for web analytics systems (Yandex.Metrica, Google Analytics), set up goals.

6. Create TK for the text (s) with the entry of key phrases, LSI semantics based on the following factors:

• comprehensive product / service description;
• solving the user's problem on the page;
• clear structured text in the language of the target audience.

7. Consider the commercial factors of ranking: address, phone, time, online chat, callback service, messenger buttons, delivery terms, online payment, warranty.

8. Carry out technical optimization: code validation, checking page loading speed and increasing it if necessary, setting up redirects and the main mirror, connecting an SSL certificate.

9. Check the site for mobility. You can use the relevant sections of webmaster consoles or a special service from Google .

10. If necessary, perform a set of works for getting into a local search.

11. Increase the reference site trust white link building methods.

The main bonus after completing this checklist is that your ideally optimized website has every chance to conquer the TOP in the first months of its existence, because the competition in the niche is zero or close to zero.

You can go further in the optimization - here is a detailed checklist that will allow you to thoroughly work out all the nuances of SEO. It is better to work with it if you decide to immediately make a site that is complex in structure, and not one-page.

Other marketing tools: activate demand by all available methods.

Of course, you are unlikely to achieve great results using only SEO. Rather, SEO is necessary, but not enough to activate demand. Use the entire arsenal of marketers to find out about you.

• SMM: get groups in all social networks where your target audience is, initiate activities, talk about product benefits, engage in discussions. Build partnerships with related groups.
• Targeted advertising in social networks by region, income level, gender and age, interests. Paid placements in thematic and near-thematic groups.
• Contextual advertising. In a situation of unformed demand, it is better to start with testing small budgets on related topics. It may turn out - as in SEO - that there is no direct demand yet.
• Integration with opinion leaders. Use Youtube and Instagram bloggers that are popular with your target audience to promote a new product, offer special conditions for their subscribers.
• Advertising in offline points of concentration of target audience. Here are the good old flyers and business cards. In the case of delivery of products with recipes such points can be coffee shops, barbershops, office centers, health food stores.
• Content Marketing. Ideally, you need to start doing it in advance. Create a blog on the visited platform, prepare publications for sites where there is an active target audience. Perhaps this is the best way to talk about the product and get a quick enough response, explore the "pains" of your potential customers and prepare the best solution for them. Get ready for feedback that may contain ridiculing your idea and even hayterism. Formulate in advance the correct answers to possible objections, so you earn more points.
• PR in regional media. If there is still a “gloss” in your region, consider the profitability of the publication, but we recommend you to focus on the visited online resources and portals. In addition to increasing brand awareness, you will receive a trust link for SEO.
• Advertising on events that suit you on the subject. In our case these are: running marathons, markets for farm products, food festivals and other activities associated with a healthy lifestyle.

Do not be afraid to start in a new business niche - but do not forget to carefully calculate everything - and use all the marketing opportunities.