Researching a niche or even finding a niche topic for your new website can be a daunting task. Most people do not even know what a niche is and therefore cannot understand why it is important at all. A niche can be applied to any business and we have been using this idea for as long as I can remember.
I was talking to a local store owner recently who has a dying business in a small town due to big supermarkets moving into town. I mentioned that she should develop a niche and distinguish her business from the others. The look on her faced was a puzzled one. It was like I was speaking another language. What I meant is for her to specialize in a product and do it the best. I also suggested she concentrate on something that the other businesses didn’t have, therefore giving the customers a good reason to come to her store. In the internet world we call this a USP (unique selling proposition).
Remember when the local petrol station would have a person serving the petrol. I would go there before going to the petrol station that only had self service available. And what about the deli where they give your child a cheerio to chew on while you were shopping. The child always wanted to go back to that store. What the business offered was more than any other business was offering.
Quick Start Checklist For Researching a Niche
- Choose a topic you are interested in. I do believe that if you have a passion for your topic your business will last.
- Research the keywords in the Google keyword tool. Always choose exact match.
- Go to Google search and Google your top five keywords. Investigate the competition thoroughly. Ask yourself, can you beat them?
- Your main keyword for your niche should preferably be no less than 1000 exact global monthly searches. For related keywords I go as low as 100 global monthly searches.
When you have chosen a niche and sorted out your keywords you can then start building your WordPress website from scratch.
Researching a Niche for Your New WordPress Website
A niche in website world is a topic of expertise that your website focuses on. And the niches get smaller as you dig into them deeper. So for example the subject of golf is a huge and profitable niche however everyone knows it and there is so much competition. Therefore the average “jo blo” has to go for a specialized area. So say we dig deeper into the niche.
I have to make a very important point here. If you do not research your niche and find the right keywords you will be struggling to compete with any one. You really need to be educated about keywords and SEO techniques that will make your niche skyrocket to the top of the rankings.
Below I will show you how to manually dig down deep to find the right keywords for your niche. It is a time-consuming project but it is necessary to do. When you get yourself established I would strongly suggest that you invest your money in a program such as Keyword Elite. This program will do all this and more for you in seconds! Please note that I have tried other products but they are far too difficult as I do not want to get to deep into analyzing when I could be building websites.
First we type Golf into google search and see that we have 392,000,000 competing results.
Now that is impossible to get into so I tried golf swing. Still in the golf niche but smaller with 5,800,000 results.
5 million results is still too much competition. I am not a golf fan so I have no idea what to write in next. Therefore I am going to look at the bottom of the page to see the related searches for the term I had already typed in.
Golf swing analysis sounds good. Lets see what results it shows.
Tools I use to research a niche:
1. Google keyword tool: If you have an ad words account then you can sign into this and use the keyword tool in their. If you do not have a Google ad words account you can simply search for the “Google keyword tool” and use it. even though I have a program to do all the work for me, I often go back and use the Google keyword tool.
2. Keyword Elite: I have tried market Samurai and felt that it was very difficult to use. When I actually decided to check out keyword elite I was confronted with many how to videos which helped me understand how to use the software right from the start. The videos are free to watch and can really open your eyes to how important finding the right keyword for your niche is.
3. Researching affiliate websites: It is handy to visit websites such as Amazon.com and Clickbank.com to see what the most popular products are. Am is on has a Best Sellers section and Clickbank.com has a option to search for products with the recurring income or the highest gravity.
4. Google Search: The good old Google search can still tell you a few hidden details, but this is of course if you don’t have something like Keyword Elite or Market Samurai. Google search can show you who your competition is, how many advertisers have ads on the side of the search results and even show you your related keywords.
Anyway I could go on forever, however in the video below I actually go through all of these words and show you why they are not really that good to get into. After that I find a possible niche that might be good and go to buy a domain name on namecheap.com. Everyone is different on how they are researching a niche and this is probably not the best way, but it has worked for me. I guarantee that if you just get in and do something you will find your own way to do things.
If you liked that video, check out the Keyword Gem Video. Of course they are selling Keyword Gem but the video is an eyeopener. You can simply watch the video to learn more about researching a niche.
Notes on researching a niche for your website
This process can also be used to find the right keywords for your article titles. If you target the wrong keywords in your articles they will not be found by the search engines. It is as simple as that. If you would like to skip all the hard work and use some fantastic software to do the work for you, you must check out keyword elite. You can go to their sales page and simply enter your e-mail in to check out all the free videos they have on how to find a niche. There are videos that have been made by many of the big gurus who are very successful in building niche websites.
Please add your comments below…have you got any tips and tricks to share on researching a niche?
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This post was written by...
mitz – who has written 197 posts on Lets Build Websites.
I am addicted to internet marketing and making money online. Who wouldn't want to live that life? I started out with one website as a hobby and now have over 20. Building websites and making money online is not that hard. You have to actually take action to make money...that is the biggest hurdle! :)
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Great guidelines – thanks a ton. On the side note: this is bit off-topic from the blog post but well, the related-search-results on Google are also great as LSI keywords to use in your blog posts. It’s all about relevance, after all. The more highly on-topic stuff we talk about, the better Google ranks.
Jack recently posted..Snoring Mouthpiece Reviews & The Best Stop Snoring Mouthpiece
Yes you are right Jack…I have found lately that I can get a PR 4 for my first ranking if I have relevant content, categories, navigation, and so on… Very cool…Every site I have has a PR 4 minimum now..
Oh wow, that’s excellent! PR4 is a great thing. Congratulations, Mitz.
Jack recently posted..HRT Music Streamer
Have bookmarked this to come back and read later.
Anne Lyken-Garner recently posted..e-Books For Free
Hey Mitz,
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear!
I have probably read several of the things here already elsewhere, but it’s actually starting to click. You have an excellent way of explaining things and I do appreciate it.
I have missed the boat with much of the on page SEO on my site. But, the next will be better and, as per your video, we will be fixing old posts so that they are optimized. Thanks.
Rob recently posted..How to Get Anything You Want Out of Life?
Yes, it´s difficult to find a niche. But easy, too, after i´ve read your article. Thanks a lot. And the video “tutorial” explained it very well!
best wishes,
Markus
Great article you also MUST like your niche since you will be writing so much about it.
Lisa
Thank you for very useful information and detail in video for me now. But I to follow it I need proxy. Maybe you advise a nice article about how to use proxy
donetsk recently posted..Donetsk Opera and Ballet Theatre
Nice article, I lately found your writing and it is truly unique. I surely will read this again., if you need information about itune help
iTunes Help recently posted..Request Refunds iTunes Store
Thanks a lot for this video…it was more than helpful and I appreciate all the effort you put into it. Thanks again.
I have proved this, out of spite, when someone bought a name that i was talking about to them. When I researched it everyone was searching for the keyword I had mentioned to that person, but with the letter s on the end.I too use Namecheap. Even with their recent price increases, they are still cheaper than GoDaddy.
Hi Mitz, I keep comming back and rewatch your videos you are the best. I’m finaly taking the plunge like you say “just do it”. There is one thing though are there any minimum / maximum figures you work to?
Yes I do have minimum figures:
I search for the keyword in Google keyword tool. Find something with more than 1000 searches and low competition. Then see if the exact domain name is available. If it is I do a search in Google search. Search for the keyword in”". IF it has less than 100,000 competition that’s good. Also if no-one has the keywords as the domain name…that is good…and if the top ten are all low Page Rank, that is even better… Its all about looking at all this and if you think you can do better, then “go for it”!!!
Hey ! This video is so great. I tried Google tools, and I was wondering something :
If I want to create a website on golf equipment, and I want to buy the domain http://www.equipmentgolf.com, is it as efficient as http://www.golfequipment ?
Thank you so much to share your knowledge
I have done this before. If you research it, sometimes it is counted as the same thing. However on the other hand, sometimes one gets all the search traffic and the other gets none… I have proved this, out of spite, when someone bought a name that I was talking about to them. When I researched it everyone was searching for the keyword I had mentioned to that person, but with the letter s on the end. So the person steeling my idea, just stole my initial idea and failed to research it further. I ended up with the golden keyword just by adding an S. That’s how precise it is.
Research will answer your question.
After reading further about the google keyword tool, it appears that the “competition” bar is actually not portraying web site competitors at all, but instead only people competing for particular keywords in google ad campains; a big difference.
Derek Kimball recently posted..Choosing A Graphic Designer
Hi Derek
You are probably right about the competition but it still works when trying to find a niche..It is a combination of all these things. All I can say is that this has worked for me…
But I have to say that things change and this method will change also…It only works for now.
Thanks very much for this simple tutorial. I’ve watched a bunch of videos on people’s keyword niche methods and yours is the easiest to follow by far. I too use Namecheap. Even with their recent price increases, they are still cheaper than GoDaddy.
I run a graphic design site through wordpress and it’s been difficult competing with the numerous other design sites. I’m going to have to find more niche keywords to target for sure.
Derek Kimball recently posted..Choosing A Graphic Designer
Fantastic. I have been doing a lot of reading on this subject but didn’t fully understand, until now. Great Video.
Thanks Again.
Bob Jones
Robert Jones recently posted..What is Quad-Cities Internet Market
It probably goes into more details than that…but once you get the first part, it will all seem clearer and you will just get it. Its one of those great mysteries of Internet marketing.
I feel this compose up was truly a fantastic beginning to some possible series of create ups about this subject. Plenty of folks pretend to know what they’re preaching about when it comes to this topic and most with the time, really couple of people in fact get it. You seem to truly dominate it however, so I think you need to start writing a lot more. Many thanks!
Or this is just a really nice comment….Or this comment wins the award for smartest generic comment of 2011. In both cases: Respect.
When I researched it everyone was searching for the keyword I had mentioned to that person, but with the letter s on the end. So the person steeling my idea, just stole my initial idea and failed to research it further. I ended up with the golden keyword just by adding an S
I love that story. Serves them well!
Sometimes I do see that if I search like in my case for “pole chainsaw” or “pole chain saw” I get different results but google says the same amount of searches are done every month. A bit confusing.
Danny Strampel recently posted..Black & Decker NPP2018 18-Volt Cordless Electric Pole Chain Saw
LOL! Danny, thanks for the laugh. My money’s on the latter. Looks like a generic comment. I think commentluv should’ve shown a deep link to their recent post if it was a genuine manual comment. I agree, though – It’s a pretty smart generic comment. One that happened to be not-worthless, because of the mention of future possible series. Anyway, let’s just hope spammers don’t get inspired from this. :p
Jack recently posted..Zquiet Reviews from Experts & Users
Hey this is great… This kind of stuff really stumped me. No one wanted to just tell me straight like this… Thank you….You have helped me greatly!
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