Tackling India’s Most Competitive SEO Niche in 2025
"Two months ago, I Entered the Toughest SEO Niche With No Guarantee of Success. 60 Days Later, AEO Engines Started Citing The Blog"
Here, I am documenting what happened in these two months.
The Question I had at the Start
Why would anyone start a content project in the most cut-throat niche in India — credit cards?
It’s dominated by decade-old giants
CPCs are ₹150+
Every SERP is full of listicles
Zero room for fluff
Hard to build trust, harder to get traffic
And yet… I said yes. Because I always felt that the the harder path feels more interesting than the safe one.
The Honest Setup
I set the stage before onboarding, like I always do:
Told the client the landscape was brutal.
No promises, no “hockey stick graph”, no grand promises.
Just one line: “Let’s experiment. Let the content decide.”
Why?
Because real SEO in 2025 doesn’t reward shortcuts: it rewards strong POV + structured work + consistent updates.
Step 1: The First 30 Days: The Pillar Nobody Built
Instead of chasing “Best Credit Cards for X” (the graveyard of SEO dreams), I went where no one was looking.
There was a industry news causing strong gap in the market about credible info that users were searching.
A topic users were hunting for
+
Zero credible content
+
High intent
+
High info gap
So built the first pillar around that.
What made this pillar special:
Fresh research
Real analysis
No generic facts
Clear documents
Simple straightforward guides/info for beginners
Interlinked from day one
It wasn’t a listicle. It was a resource.
Used plain old cluster/pillar strategy with just 3 blog posts to start with. And it showed results. We started getting impressions, within the first 15 days.
My hypothesis proved correct: even if we don't have the authority, if we do credible research and share the findings without thinking about SEO, we would get rewarded.
But the battle had just begun...
Month 2 — The Second Pillar
Same playbook. Different gap.
I researched approx 1100+ reddit posts to come at the pillar idea (not some SEO dashboard of some fancy tool)
Avoided the crowded rooftops. Instead, pitched the idea where the first few results on a generic keywords were plain PDFs from 2020.
So, went straight to an underserved search pattern most competitors ignored (or didn't have energy to research on).
But this time, I took a different approach:
More factual data (something that can become a directory of records in the future)
More search intent mapping (based on my reddit research)
And steady, low-touch updates every week
My idea wasn’t built for “publishing content.” It was built for:
Compounding topical authority in a niche that already had everything covered.
The Moment I Noticed Something Strange…
End of Month 2. Start of Month 3. and ongoing
One Day, I checked Search Console expecting “a little movement.”
Instead:
80+ clicks (in a niche where 80 clicks early is a signal)
9,000+ impressions
Queries moving from 70+ to 20–30 positions
AEO citations across ChatGPT and Perplexity
The surprise wasn’t the numbers. The surprise was how early the LLM engines started noticing us. I didn't do any fancy llm.xml update. Or took any shortcuts.
Here's what I just did:
- Found a publishing frequency that promised consistent updates.
- Kept updating old blogs + internal links
- Added fresh perspective to every old playbook
- Didn't use skyscrapper tecnique (or anything that SEOs promise)
- Tried to publish every week with news, updates, and information written for the reader, not the search engine.
And I realized something... AEO didn't choose us becuase I did a lot of things. It chose us because maybe I felt credible, clear, structured, and helpful.
Why This Worked in My Opinion?
1) We didn’t chase volume. We chased gaps.
Competitors fight over “Top 10 cards.” We built content where users needed explanations, facts, and real opinions, not lists.
2) We wrote for beginners, not experts.
The Indian credit card audience is half-confused, half-curious. We met them where they stand: simple words, short sentences, clarity.
3) We updated early. Updated often.
Google + AEO engines love freshness in complex niches.
4) We didn’t wait for 20 blogs to interlink.
We interlinked from day one. Small sites need that momentum.
5) We proved expertise without saying “expert.”
The writing sounded like someone who actually uses the cards. Not someone rewriting Wikipedia.
The Hidden Advantage: Zero-Friction Systems
I just used what I knew. Not some fancy 'hack' gurus are busy portraying on social media:
Plain old cluster + pillar strategy
Internal linking done regularly
No fancy plugins/llm.txt or xml.
No technical SEO problems
No spammy shortcuts
Just consistent, disciplined execution.
What This Means for Future SEO”?
The experiment showed me:
Topical depth beats topical breadth (So evergreen content is no where to go).
Clear writing beats keyword stuffing.
Info gaps beat competition.
Search intent beats blogging frequency.
AEO engines pick up real expertise early.
Small sites can break into hard niches.
Good internal linking is underrated.
Remember... If You're Building in a Tough Niche…
You don’t need luck. You don’t need shortcuts.
But you do need a system built on clarity.
If you want help replicating this cluster + pillar approach, or you’re exploring a dense niche, I’m happy to chat.
Because this also started as an experiment… and slowly becoming a proof of something I strongly believe in:
“Clear writing + topical depth still beats noise, even in the hardest niches.”