Archive for niche research
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 !!!!!!
5 CFT Challenge – Critical Focus Time Block 1
Posted by: | CommentsHere are the components of Critical Focus Time Block 1 of Ed Dales’s 5 CFT Challenge, and my experience of actually doing it.
1. Pick Market
2 Find a keyword that works
3. Pick some category keywords
I did these 3 fairly easily within the 45 mins, since I’d already done some Market Samauri research for other projects that I hadn’t used.
I found Ed Dale’s words REALLY helped keep me on track, e.g.
“When you’re not sure just run with it”.
“You’re just following a process. Don’t go overboard thinking about this stuff”.
“The action point is really, really simple:
- Think up a fresh topic
- Don’t get your knickers in a twist
- Just pick something and
- GET THE SITE UP!
GO AND MAKE MISTAKES AND GET IT OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM
4. Register a Domain Name
This is where it all began to unravel. As my thirteen old son would say . . . “Fail”!
I ran out of time for this and ended up playing around with options whilst watching TV. It was midnight before I knew it and I still hadn’t found a good enough domain.
Moral of the story – don’t attempt this without the clock ticking in the background. It’s just too easy to allow time to expand.
I ended up shifting this task into CFT 2 and ended up going for a domain that I found whilst I was trawling in front of the TV, so all that extra time wasn’t completely wasted after all. Not necessary though. The domain doesn’t meet the visitor numbers criteria but I didn’t want to spend any more time on it. But I’m not happy about it.
5. Write classic beginner draft for first blog post
Again, I found it very hard to follow instructions here, to just whack out some content. In the end I spent what remained of this CFT block, after registering the domain, completing this task.
So the running total so far is 2 CFT blocks. And my enjoyment rating is high.
Narrowing Down The Market
Posted by: | CommentsPhew. Just had my first 1:1 mentoring session with Ed and it was a bit hairy for the first 20 mins or so. We talked about how coaching was what I’m really interested in, rather that building an internet marketing business (although I probably didn’t state it as clearly as that) and then went about trying to identify a market.
Problem is the world is my market and people in general, However, that was never going to wash with Ed.
I could see his point.
In the traditional marketing model one of the biggest mistakes is to try and market to everyone. But choosing a market with the sole purpose of creating an IM business is not something that works for me. I’ve done that too many times in the past and resented all the time I spent writing about cholesterol, finance, pilates, swimming pool pumps (I kid you not), water purification etc. etc.
As the call went on I could feel my energy dropping as I imagined picking a market and trying to make myself enjoy the work involved.
The breakthrough in the conversation came when Ed said how good the content was on my Life Moves blog. I was surprised at his enthusiasm since I see my blog posts and my IM writing from the past as distinctly different. I was assuming that it would be the latter type that I would have to revert to if I picked a specific market.
“Could I continue to write like I do on my Life Coaching blog, and have a specific market I asked?” “Absolutely”, says Ed and then proceeded to bring up my latest blog post, on the screen, and add a few words here and there to make it useful to the real estate market, as an example.
Hmmm . . . getting better but not quite there yet.
I am interested in the mechanics of internet marketing. I like numbers and measuring them and learning new things.
But I like to write about life. The journey. The process.
These things attract me more than the goal of just making money in an online marketing business. If you told me I could make a million this year but the content I’d have to write about was something I wasn’t interested in I wouldn’t take your money. So it’s important for me that, no matter how the business side of things pans out, I am able to enjoy the process while I’m creating it.
This year, part of my journey will be an internet marketing adventure being mentored by Ed. I’d like to write about that experience and also record the actions I take and progress made. (See the Web Marketing Strategy and Results section).
I’d assumed that Ed’s response would be to say that the IM market is already saturated and too hard to get into but, to my surprise, he thought it was a great idea.
And so, this blog was born.
Actually it was conceived rather than born since some keyword seo and niche research was needed before I chose a domain name etc.
But before we move onto that let’s look at how this web marketing game differs from those I’ve played in the past. See my post regarding internal motivation.
