Archive for market research
Module 1 – Using Market Samurai – Days 4 To 6
Posted by: | CommentsDays 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.
Module 1 – Keywords and Market Research – Days 1 To 3
Posted by: | CommentsKey Points:
It takes the same amount of time to build an unsuccessful business online as it does to build a successful one.
The biggest factors that determine whether you succeed or fail are the market you choose and the keywords you target.
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An explanation of the market, niche and micro-niche hierarchy, and keywords and their importance.
Market – A community of people who share a common interest in a particular subject or activity which often has its own language made up of terms and acronyms.
Example – brides to be market who are interested in weddings and use acronyms such as MOH = maid of honor and FH = future husband.
Niches - subset of market which the community would be interested in. So in the above example niches might include wedding cakes, wedding flowers, wedding dresses etc.
Micro-Niches – these are niches within niches. For example within the wedding dress niches you would find vintage wedding dresses or wedding dress hire. The 2010 Challenge targets mciro-niches since they are generally easier to get a first page ranking on Google with.
Keywords – the words or phrases which members of a market type into a search engine in order to explore a particular niche. Searchers use different phrases to access the results and, as a result, the number of people using any one phrase varies considerably. The higher the number of searches for any particular keyword, the higher the potential value to you.
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By the end of this day you need to have identified 7 market or niche ideas that you can investigate further.
Suggestions for where to look include Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool and the magazine section of Amazon.com.
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Day 3 – Traffic and Competition
Traffic Estimates
When someone carries out a search in Google the search engine records the keyword phrase they used and, over time, develops estimates of how may times a day people search using that specific word or phrase. The result is 3 different traffic estimates.
For the purposes of this example let’s assume that you’re searching for an internet marketing coach. The 3 different estimates would be:
1. Exact Match – the number of people who type the phrase internet marketing coach exactly as written.
2. Phrase Match – an estimate of the number of people who are searching for a phrase which contains the words internet marketing coach, in that order, but also has other words (or numbers in it). e.g. find an internet marketing coach . . . or . . . internet marketing coach recommendations.
3. Broad Match – this refers to any phrase which contains all 3 words internet, marketing and coach but not in that order and with additional words included. e.g. hire a coach for internet marketing success.
The distinction between these types of traffic estimates is important because Google tends to rank your pages for keyword terms in a certain order. Usually you’ll be ranked for exact match first then as you add content and obtain links you get phrase match rankings. Then, as you site develops authority you obtain broad match rakings.
Aside ——
This hasn’t been my experience. Exact match usually comes last for me so I’ll be interested to see what happens with the site I put up for this Challenge.
—— end aside
Because of the different time frames associated with the different traffic estimates you can use this key to map out the traffic potential of any particular keyword phrase:
- Exact Match = short term traffic potential
- Phrase Match = medium term traffic potential
- Broad match = long term traffic potential
This means that when you’re trying to decide which keywords to target in your online business you should use Broad match data. This is because it’s the long term traffic potential of a keyword phrase that is most relevant at this stage of the process.
Competition
The second important concept introduced on Day 3 is that of competition.
When you type a keyword in Google search and the results are returned you will also see an estimate of the number of web pages that broadly match that keyword. This is the figure that appears at the top of the page any says About xxxxxx results (x seconds). If you put your term between inverted commas, e.g. “internet marketing coach” you will notice the number of results is reduced. This is because this is the phrase match competition estimate, i.e. the number of times this phrase has been searched with the words in the specific order, plus additional words.
When creating a new website you should start by focusing on your most specific competition, i.e. those returned when you do a phrase match search. Then, once you analyse and outrank your specific competition, you will often see an improvement in your broad match rankings as well.
This means that when it comes to competition you should be looking at the results of the phrase match search, rather than the broad match.
So, to recap – for traffic research you want to use broad match data. For competition research you need to use phrase match data.
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For more in-depth information on these ideas and videos illustrating them, please visit the Day 1, 2 or 3 links above, sign up for The 2010 Challenge, and watch the full training. Actually don’t watch it DO IT !!!!!!
Ed’s Magnificent Symphony Of Four Parts
Posted by: | CommentsHaving a massive catch up with regard the 2010 challenge since my focus has been on other things. But I’d like to have a complete record here. If you’re doing The Challenge or are up to date there won’t be much in this post of interest for you. Just saying! :-)
The pre-module ended with:
Day 5 – The Challenge disclaimer, primarily for legal reasons, I should imagine.
Basically, we can’t guarantee you will make money and we will make a commission on some advertisements etc. etc.
Day 6 – The Magnificent Symphony of Four Parts
This is an essential lesson for anyone thinking of starting an internet marketing business (or anyone who already has one), irrespective of The Challenge. In fact the success of any commercial endeavour comes down to these four things and the order is just as critical as the parts themselves.
Typically, when anyone starts a business they start with an idea for a product and go ahead and make it without first discovering if there is a market for the product. This is a high risk strategy and one that isn’t necessary, especially online. Even with good research, you can’t guarantee that you will pick a winner but you can mitigate your risk and not waste you time in markets that are never going to sell if you apply the four parts.
1. Market Research
This phase is commonly rushed through or not done at all, but if you make the effort to do this bit properly you will eliminate much of the risk right here. With all the tools and information available online there’s really no excuse not to do it. You just need to be patient and not rush forward before it’s done. In Ed’s experience, 95% of all the problems that turn up later could have be identified in advance if the market research had been done effectively. So skimp on this step at you peril!
2. Traffic
Even with the best product in the world, if no-one is visiting your offer, you’re not going to sell anything. So you need to determine upfront if there is enough traffic to sustain your business in the market place.
3. Conversion
This refers to how well your page produces the desired action from you visitors. Typically this is buying your product but it could also be other things such as signing up to a mailing list, clicking on an ad, completing a survey etc. Once you have the traffic it’s easy to test different options to improve your conversion rates and income.
4. Product
Once you have visitors they will tell you what they want to buy, or you can find out from market research, so there’s no need to know this in advance. you don’t even have to have your own produce although you will make more if you do.
