Module 1 – Using Market Samurai – Days 4 To 6
ByDays 4 to 6 of module 1 are all about using Market Samurai to evaluate your niche and carry out keyword research. You can sign up for a free trial copy of the software by clicking on the link.
The most important thing about this part of The 2010 Challenge is to keep going until you find a niche that meets the criteria. Don’t be tempted to give up or settle for less than the minimum’s described. You’re be very thankful you did later on.
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Day 4 – Finding Theme and Category Keywords
Learn the difference between theme and category keywords and that for both types of you are looking for good levels of traffic and acceptable levels of competition.
Successful evaluation of your potential niches requires you to follow The Challenge filter criteria.
They are as follows:
- SEO Traffic should be >80
- Phrase to Broad Match should be >15%
- SEO Competition should be <30,000.
Targetting keywords that meet or exceed the above criteria which greatly increase you chances of success.
Day 5 – Understanding SEO Competition
Day 5 is an introduction to the concept of SEO competition and how to use the Market Samurai competition module to assess it. Both amount and strength of competition are important. The amount relates to how many other people are trying to rank for your keyword (covered on day 3) and the strength relates to how much authority your competitors’ sites have, in the eyes of Google.
Even though a keyword phrase may get lots of traffic, if the competition is strong you will struggle to rank. Therefore, you should only go after keywords where you not only do have a good chance of ranking well but also where the SEO competition is not too strong.
The Market Samurai Competition Module allows you to carry out real time SEO analysis of the top websites on the first page of Google that are already ranking for the keyword phrase you’re investigating. This results in an “SEO matrix” which is explained more in future lessons (see below).
The five key factors that you can use to assess your competition are:
- Page Rank (PR)
- Number of Backlinks to the page (BLP)
- Whether or not there is a Yahoo Directory listing (YAH)
- Does your Keyword appear in the Title?
- Does your Keyword appear in the URL?
and you will using the “SEO matrix” produced by the Market Samurai competition module to do this.
Day 6 - SEO Matrix Analysis
There are a number of factors covered in the SEO Matrix so it can seem a bit overwhelming at first. Like anything else, the more you use it the easier it will get to make good choices.
The day 6 lessons goes into detail about what each of the columns in the matrix mean and how to use the data to assess the strength of your SEO competition. The more weak competitors you can find in the top 10 results the better. But for now, finding one is sufficient.
For the purposes of The Ed Dale Challenge, the rule of thumb for a weak competitor is finding a complete row of green in the SEO Matrix. In order to do this the PR must be <3, the BLP will need to be <200, the YAH listing will be “No”, and the Title and URL will not be optimized for your keyword phrase.
Once you’re more experienced with this you will look at the numbers rather than the colours and you’ll be looking for results in your top 10 competitors that have a low PR, a low number BLP, no YAH listing and no keyword phrase in the Title or URL.
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The most important thing to remember when you’re doing your keyword, market and competitor research is not to get discouraged when the results that don’t meet The Challenge’s minimum criteria. Just keep plugging away until you find something that does.
It’s much better to keep checking new niche ideas than go with one that’s not quite right, only to discover that it doesn’t make you any money further down the road. Be patient and you will find a good niche/keyword phrase.
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Even once The Challenge is over (October 2010) you can still give Market Samurai a go for free. I’ve been using this software since if first came out and can’t recommend it enough! Just click on the link to sign up.
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