Keyword and Niche Research

My last post attempted to explain how I come up with ideas for niches, I coined the term ‘niche mode’ and described how I find niches daily. I even gave my readers two examples of the exact niches I found. The importance of creating niche based websites has already been stated, a website will not flourish unless it has a unique niche. Now we are going to get into the gritty part, the actually researching of niches. I stated in my last post that on average 9 out of 10 attempted niches will not become successful. This is a rough estimation but most likely true, you are going to have to do this niche research multiple times if you wish to have any luck. I will take you step by step on how I research my niches.

The first step is to obviously think of the niche, you can’t get anywhere without this one. Look at my post on Using the Niche Mode to do this. Once you have found the niche that you think has possibility head on over to the Google Keyword Tool, this is the main tool that I use. Although it is not 100% accurate on search volume and competition, it has a lot of features and is one of the handiest. Under Choose Columns to Display make sure that you show ‘Show Estimated Avg.CPC’, this tells us how much we would get per click on adsense ads and also gives us a good idea on how competitive the term is.

Once we have check Google Keyword Tool head over to my second favorite keyword tool, SEOBook. This awesome tool tells us the exact number of searches a day, from what engines as well as linking to other search engine tools. Although the exact number isn’t truly exact, it gives you a good idea of how many searches are being performed on the given keyword. Take a look at the Google trends link to get some ideas on search volume.

The next step is to actually search for the keyword into Google. Use both quotes around the keyword as well as just typing the keyword in itself. Obviously, the higher the number of results the more competition you will have for the keyword. If there over a million results it will be incredibly challenged to get on the first position of the search engines, generally I like to stick with results that have less than 30,000. Look at your competition, see if they are trying to rank for that particular keyword or if it just happened, see if they are monetizing their site. Also use the Yahoo site explorer to see the top competitions back links, see where they are coming from. Learn from your competition and use that information when starting your campaign.

Once you have done the research on your main keyword, use the link at SEOBook to find suggestions for similar keywords using Google suggest. Also make a list of similar results using the Google Keyword Tool. Another handy tool for finding related keywords can be a Thesaurus. Make the list using the Google Keywords Tool and then repeat the past steps for each of those keywords.

Use your brain to create long tail keywords; these are the ones that people will generally use. You can’t really use any tools to figure out long tail keywords, you are just going to have to use your brain and your imagination.

Once you have a good list of keywords, including longtail keywords and feel that there is enough search volume to start a campaign, begin to make your website. Here is a list of other helpful tools when doing keyword research:

SEO Book
Google External Keyword Tool
Wordtracker

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