Getting Started - Part 3
Tagged Under : choose niche, keywords
Okay, you’ve taken your list of interests, you’ve picked one item on that list and you’ve narrowed it down to a very specific keyword phrase. If you haven’t yet done this, go back to Part 2 and read it. I’ll wait.
You now have your keyword phrase. Guess what?
This doesn’t necessarily mean this is what you’re going to be focusing on for your business.
Huh? Did I hear that right?
Yes, you heard that right. See, just because you have an interest in something, doesn’t mean other people are going to have an interest in it. And even if they do, if you’re going to go up against a million other sites promoting the same niche, you are going to have one heck of a tough time getting your piece of the pie. This is why I advise people to stay AWAY from Internet marketing. Why? It’s a jungle. Yes, you can make it work. I did. But why beat your brains against a stone wall when you can find something that is more like hitting a pillow.
So let’s take my own choice of health. I decided to go with the more narrowed keyword phrase “Masterbilt AJ-500M“.
Great, now what?
Well, let’s see what our demand and competition is.
How do we do this?
Well, the competition is easy. Just go to Google and type in, with the quotes YOUR keyword phrase. I’ll type in mine.
I get 1210 sites coming up with that keyword phrase. Okay, that’s great.
Now, let’s see how many monthly searches we get.
To do this, go to a keyword suggestion tool and type in the same phrase.
I use many. Here’s one of them.
Now, the tool will also give you alternative keyword phrases, because not everybody is going type in YOUR phrase.
Okay, type in your keyword phrase, and see how many monthly searches you get. Use the pull-down menu to choose “exact” instead of “broad” to find out how many people search for your exact keyword.
In my case, not too good. My original phrase only got 36 monthly searches. And even one of the best words in my list, “Masterbilt Guitars” only got 56 monthly searches and it’s not very targeted. What I mean by targeted is this.
Does everybody who types in masterbilt guitars into a search engine want a specific guitar? That’s why you want your target phrase to be as specific as possible.
So let’s see what we have.
36 searches for a non targeted phrase and over 1000 sites to go up against. I don’t know about you but those odds are ok, but not great. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t pursue this, but if you do, I just want you to understand what you’re going to be up against. It will be an uphill battle due to the number of searches. With that low number of competitors, you could put in some work and get your site listed high in the search engine returns, but if only 36 people a month are looking for your keyword, you will only get a few visitors each month.
Ideally, you want to find a keyword phrase where you have about 1000 - 2000 competing sites and about 5,000 to 10,000 searches a month. Believe it or not, these ratios exist. They’re not easy to find but they do exist. And when you latch onto a niche with very little competition and a good number of monthly searches, you’ve basically found yourself a goldmine. The key is cashing in on it.
Just keep repeating the above process until you find a niche that you are happy with. It may take some time, but it’s time well spent.
In Part 4, we’ll begin to build our business.
