

Ask HN: Review my idea - Hosting SEO - webstartupper

Background: This idea was borne out of an internal tool I created to figure out and validate SEO strategies for websites I own. I figure since it works for me, I could try and sell this to a different industry/niche - in this case 'hosting'. This tool currently does not have an UI - I run sql queries directly on the mysql server to get my information. I have created a mockup UI to show how I expect it to work.<p>UI for explaining the app functionality - http://axemantech.com/HostingSEO/<p>Pain point it solves: Currently there are many seo apps that show serp rankings, on page and off page seo stats but seting up the system is generally painful. I dislike having to add keywords for my website, add data for my competitors, etc. This generally happens because these SEO apps are generic.<p>How to solve this: Since this app focuses on a specific niche, it will already be setup with all the potential keywords for the niche (and will continously add new ones). All the data that the customers (people performing seo for hosting companies) want would already be in the system. A customer would only sign up with his domain(s) and the app would show him his serp rankings, onpage and offpage details about the SEO for his web pages and his competitors.<p>The reason I chose the 'hosting' industry is because its one of the industries with the costliest adwords cpc - which means that a small change in ranking could be potentially very large savings for the companies. I am however open to other niches (especially ones that are not saturated)<p>I have been a technical guy for 10 years and find it quite hard to change my mindset to that of a business guy. All my questions are related to the business side.<p>My questions:<p>1. Does this sound like a good idea?<p>2. How else can I add value by specializing for a niche industry?<p>3. How would one figure out the best industry for this?<p>4. How would one figure out the market size for a specific industry?<p>5. What's the best way to get the initial users to help build this? I was thinking of contacting people who work at hosting companies via LinkedIn and try to sell to them directly.<p>Thank you so much for your time HN. You rock.<p>Akash
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toumhi
Interesting. I'm myself a software developer with a strong interest in SEO, so
I know what you're talking about :-) I thought hard about breaking into the
SEO tools world but I've discarded it so far for being too competitive.

To answer your questions:

1- I'm not sure. The best is to ask your prospective customers.

2- That's a good question. Can you make something better than SEOMoz by
specializing? Your initial Unique Value Proposition is that it's easier
because the domain and keywords are known. However I don't see that as being
much work. Can you quantify that?

3- I think your initial reasoning for choosing the industry is right.

4- no idea. Google searches, reviews sites would only cover a small part of
all hosting companies.

5- Contact people directly from LinkedIn or from contact forms on their
websites. Try to get smaller hosting companies first (for e.g local hosting
companies in your area).

In the end, I'm not really sure about the value of what you're offering. If
you could service one niche, you could trivially expand (it's just a matter of
entering keywords). So your product needs to have some more niche relevance.
Maybe a list of link building tips, bloggers to reach out to do guest
blogging, industry-specific opportunities etc.

If you want to brainstorm this more, I'd be glad to help. My email address is
in my profile.

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webstartupper
Hi Tommy,

Thanks for the answers. I'm definitely interested in brainstorming. Will send
you an email in a while.

Akash

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trienthusiast
I dont think doing seo for a single industry is a good idea. Actually I think
it's terrible.

Seo is a competition. You cant be serving both me and my competitor. Whose
website do you promise to.get better ranking to? Who pays you the most? I'd
rather just pays adwords then.

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webstartupper
I'm not thinking of providing direct SEO services to the companies in the same
industry. The app would simply allow them to check and validate their seo
strategies and see comparable data for all the other companies in the same
industry (on-page and off-page seo stats, back links etc).

At the moment, I'm not confident that there is any niche-specific value the
app can provide to the companies. However, assuming I can figure that out,
would a company really be put off if their competitor was able to access the
same value?

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kappaknight
It sounds like you're trying to build <http://mixrank.com> for SEO. SEO is
tough cause the results aren't immediate. Also, as a business person, most
would rather pay for results (black or white hat) than a bunch of information
that they may not be able to act on.

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Chirag
It is a good idea to start with, but needs a lot of work on top of it to make
it usable. Pick a relatively lesser dense industry to start with.

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webstartupper
Clickable - UI - <http://axemantech.com/HostingSEO/>

