Step-by-Step Niche and Keywords Research

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Keywords and Niches

When you are building an Affiliate Marketing Website or any type of Online Business site comprehensive niche research is required to make sure that the niche you focus on is profitable, popular and can make you money.

WHAT IS A NICHE?

Basically a niche is a certain segment of the population where you intend to concentrate your Affiliate and Internet Marketing efforts and is the theme/subject of a website or blog.

Some examples of niches include:
Relationships, Skiing, Health, Video Games, Real Estate, Stock Market, Insurance, Stamp Collecting etc… as well as the sub categories or Micro Niches within the major categories.

For example, within the macro niche oh health there are several micro niches which include, weight loss, acne, balding, vitamins, staying young, aging well, conditions/diseases…etc.

Because of the high competition factor on the Internet, it is a good idea that you stick with micro niches, and especially when first beginning your Internet Marketing campaigns.

You can also go deeper into the micro niche with a double micro niche. For example, within the micro niche of weight loss you can go deeper like fat burning foods, low carb diets, natural weight loss supplements..etc.

Finding a micro niches will further cut through the competition factor and yield better results. There are lots of good micro niche markets and the opportunities are endless. And there are affiliate programs for every possible niche.

Deciding on a Niche

There are 3 main factors that should influence what niche you select.

1. Consider your interest and expertise.
This is important. It is a well known fact that in today’s Internet environment the content of a website can make it or break it. Considering the amount of work involved with marketing and creating a successful Internet business, if you can avoid adding research of an unknown niche in order to create good content on your website then it is best to do so.

When I first started in this business my first site was about computers, a subject that I knew a little about but not nearly enough to create content with ease. I spent a lot of time on researching material in order to write content for my site, all though this has turned out to be a profitable site and is a very profitable niche, it made my job more difficult.

All I am saying is that if you pick a niche you know and even better have a lot of interest in then that takes a lot of burden off the process.

2. Check out the competition for a niche
This is crucial to your success. As I mentioned earlier there are macro and micro niches. In today’s highly competitive Internet stage it is often best to go into the micro niches that yield enough user demand and searches and at the same time do not yield millions of search results (competing websites) in Google (see steps to this below).

3. Is your niche profitable and is there a demand?
Obviously you do not want to build a niche site if there is nobody searching for it or the products that you may promote within it. You need visitors and sales in order to make commissions, and evaluating the demand is the way to determine, or predict how many you might possibly have (steps to this below).

Niche Research Tools:

Micro Niche Finder Tool is a great tool that can help you find niches, it is not free but it can save time and provide comprehensive and excellent niche information.

Some great free tools to see what the hot searches on the web are:
Google Trends and My Simon Top Product/Service Searches.

Get a feel for the hot items within the niche and what people are talking about and buying by checking out these resources:

1. Read Industry Blogs – Search in Google by entering “blog + your niche” Check out the top blogs in your niche.

For example, If you are going for a gadget/tech niche you can visit Gizmodo.

2. Visit Niche Forums – Search for “forums + your niche”
See what people are talking about within your niche on the top forums. Find out who the customers are, what they want, what they need, what are they looking for, what are their biggest fears and difficulties etc…

Keywords and Niches

When people search for something online the words they input into the search engine are keywords, which then yield relevant website results for those keywords in the search results. So I want to use the most searched for keywords for my website so that I expose my niche website to as many search engine searchers and therefore as many visitors as possible.

Niches and Keywords are Synonymous.

This part is very confusing in the beginning, but a niche is mainly the theme/subject of your website and keywords are just how the niches are searched for by Internet users.

Gaging the Number of Internet Searches (demand) of a Niche with Keywords

For example, if my micro niche is weight loss then my keywords will revolve around weight loss, and I will do my keyword research by entering the main keyword weight loss and then seeing what keywords people are searching for within that main keyword/niche.

Niche Research screenshot

The screenshot, shows some of the keywords that come up when entering the main keyword “weight loss” in SEOBook Free Keyword Tool (partial screenshot of keyword results).

So my niche is “weight loss” and all the words circled in green are the keywords that people are searching for in that niche and that I can use on my website to allow people to find my site from search engine results.

Another example is to look at it backwords: Let’s say my niche is weight loss and I use a keyword that does NOT show up in the tool, then my website will sit in search engine results for that keyword, BUT no one will search for it and therefore no one will ever find my website. Make sense?

Here is the Niche Nutshell:

Niche = Keywords = Website shows up Search Engine Results = Website Visitors

Optimal Niches Should Have:

At least 10,000 searches per month combined for all keywords you may use within the niche. So, according to the above keyword research results, I know that the niche of “weight loss” is a good niche, because all the available keywords add up to at least 10,000 searches (note: the screenshot only shows a few keywords, the list runs long beyond what is showed).

I use and highly recommend Keyword Elite and SEOBook Free Keyword Research Tool and Wordtracker Keywords (free trial). Wordtracker also has a free keyword tool that is less comprehensive but is a good product at: Free Keywords at Wordtracker.

Gaging the Competition of Keywords within your Niche

Competition from other websites is another crucial factor of your niche/keyword research.

The best way to gage the competition is by doing a simple search in Google like this: allintitle:”keyword” (the allintitle and quotes narrows the results to true competition of websites that actually have that keyword as the title of their site as opposed to just a mention somewhere within their content). and then seeing how many websites return in the results.

Niche research - keyword search results

So I picked the keyword “weight loss pills” from the keyword tool results up above and plugged that into Google and what I get back is 35,300 competing sites, for that keyword.

Recap:

The SEOBook keyword tool showed a total of 1266 daily searches for “weight loss pills” and the competition is 35,300 sites.

What does this tell you?

That “weight loss pills” is a great keyword within the weight loss niche, because the searches are high and the competition is relatively low. And, actually “weight loss pills” could be a double micro niche and you can build a whole website just around “weight loss pills.”

Analyzing Competing Websites:

It is also important to look at page 1 results in Google SERPS for competing sites.

Some things to look at:
Page Rank – If page 1 of SERPS is full of high PR sites and big guns within the niche then it will be way too difficult to get to page 1 which is ultimately the goal.

Conversely if there is nothing but PRO-PR2 then it will be fairly easy. Make sure that you only consider those sites that are direct niche sites, as opposed to say article sites and indirect sites that happen to have some content related to the niche.

Age of Sites – Age of the sites is important in that Google will favor older more established sites.

Overall, you want to stay away from keywords that generate lots of results on page one of big gun sites, like PR4+ or more than 3 PR3 sites. In this case, look for the micro niche keywords within that niche.

Keyword Research Numbers:

You want to have at least 10,000 searches combined for all keywords you want to rank for within the niche.

If you are new to this business, I would suggest less than 25,000 “allintitle” in competition results so you can learn how to rank and get your feet wet anything over that will be more difficult and something to tackle once you have experience

Good Luck!

50 Comments

Simple Guide to Meta Tags Optimization

Posted by JR in Keywords and Niches, Search Engine Optimization

What are Meta Tags?

Meta Tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the header on a web page. Meta Tags basically describe the website and give search engines a glimpse as to what your website is about. Fortunately, most good website builders, allow you to fill in the Meta information in English and the Meta tag is created automatically in HTML.

Here is how the code looks in your HTML header.

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Title</TITLE>
<META name=”DESCRIPTION” content=”The text you want goes here.”>
<META name=”KEYWORDS” content=”KW 1, KW 2, KW 3, KW 4,”>
</HEAD>

There are some who say Google pays no attention to Meta Tags for Search Engine Optimization value, I say YES THEY DO! Meta Tags are an important facet of your SEO efforts and Meta Tags optimization should be a concern for every webmaster. In fact, Google Webmaster Tools suggest that you customize your Meta Tags and they actually analyze them for you within the Tools Dashboard.

Now, I am not saying that by filling in a few lines of Meta Tags you will instantly go to page one in Google, what I am saying is that Meta Tag optimization is an important part of SEO and they should be customized.

A huge and necessary benefit of Meta Tags is in allowing you control of how your website presents in search results for the attributes within Meta Tags of Title and Description. This way you have every opportunity to create interesting, relevant and clickable titles and descriptions that can greatly help your Internet Marketing efforts. DO NOT leave this to chance.

Again, some may say that Google generates their own descriptions and ignores the Meta, I SAY NOT!! Every single one of my sites, shows my title and my description from my Meta Tags, and not just for the home page BUT for every page of my site. And, I would NEVER leave this to search engines to generate on their own.

Meta Tags Optimization for every page of your website:

Your meta tags on every page of your website should be different. First of all, for every page of content, you should be doing keyword research and picking optimal keywords anyway, remember that you are striving for search engine exposure for EVERY page of your site as per what people are searching for and not just the home page. The more pages that are properly indexed in serps for your keywords the more exposure your website gets. And the Meta Tags should be optimized with this same concept in mind.

For example, my sitewide keyword is laptop computers, and that is one of the keywords that I want my site to show up in search results for. So, I will use that keyword for main site Meta Tag.

Then I write a page of content on “How-To Buy a Laptop”, so I will research that longtail keywords and find the best ones for that content page and use them in that content page Meta Tag. This process will repeat for every page of my website.

Meta Tag Optimization Attributes:

Title – Most Important! By far the most important tag is the title and it must have your keywords in it so that it shows up in those search results.

Also the title should be interesting because this is what searchers will see in the results and so you want the titles to be eye-catching, clickable and most important to the point! Be direct, searchers are looking for something specific, so give it to them.

For example, if my keyword is Buy Cheap Laptops, then my title should simply state, “Buy Cheap Laptops Here” or “Browse and Buy all Models of Cheap Laptops”, “Save Money and Buy Cheap Laptops at our e-store” and NOT “You can Buy Cheap Laptops” that is vague, and they may click on the next site on the list that tells them in the title that it has what their looking for.

Description - Most Important! Description should be no more than 200-250 characters. The description should include your keywords and elaborate on what you offer. Once again, this is your chance to hook a click-through, be precise and get to the point of what you are offering as related to your title keywords. Make it eye-catching and interesting.

Keywords – Least Important. This attribute is least important because whatever keyword you want to rank for and have Google relate your site to is best achieved through keyword density within content and backlink anchor text. However, there are some search engines that do crawl and utilize your KW in Meta Tags and you should still add your keywords as suggestions for Google, it can’t hurt.

Here are a couple of examples of good Meta Tags:

HOME PAGE:
Title: Buy Cheap Laptop Computers. Many Used Cheap Laptops Available.
Description: Browse and buy all brands and models of cheap laptop computers, including new and used cheap laptops.
KW: Cheap Laptop Computers, Used Cheap Laptops, Laptops,

CONTENT PAGE:
Title: Simple Laptop Buying Guide. How-to Buy a Laptop Made Easy.
Description: Not sure how-to buy a laptop? Please read this simple laptop buying guide that details all the features that are important in choosing the right laptop.
KW: laptop buying guide, how-to buy a laptop,

Happy Meta Tagging!

19 Comments

The Importance Of Anchor Text In Backlinks

Posted by JR in Internet Marketing, Keywords and Niches, Link Building, Search Engine Optimization

Backlinks = SERPS and Higher Page Rank

One big component of Internet Marketing is Search Engine Opimization (SEO), which is basically optimizing your website to rank in natural search engine results with both on-site and off-site techniques, and a big part of Off-Site Search Engine Optimization is an effective link building campaign.

Backlinks to your site from relevant quality sites are essential for Page Rank (Google invented way to rank authority of websites, ranges from 0-10, 10 being highest) and Search Engine Page Results (SERPS). The more backlinks you have the higher you will climb in SERPS and the higher your Page Rank will be.

Backlink Anchor Text:

Anchor text is the words visible in the hyperlink of your backlink.

Here is HTML code to backlinks with anchor text:

<a href=”http://yourdomaindotcom”> KEYWORDS = ANCHOR TEXT</a>

The anchor text you choose in your link building efforts is crucial because this gives Google (and all search engines) relevancy for your websites.

The “rule of relevancy” is where the anchor text gives Google relevance for your site for respective keywords and associates your sites with those keywords and the more backlinks you have with those keywords in the anchor the higher in SERPS you will climb.

So basically the way to rank in SERPS for your keywords is to use them in your anchor text.

For example, if I want my website to show up in search engine results for the KW “cheap laptop computers” I will put that as my anchor text when I build links.

This anchor text method should be used in all your link building efforts and for all the KW that you want to rank for.

Just make sure to vary the anchor text in different links by adding other words so the linking looks more natural. For example, Buy Cheap Laptop Computers, Joe’s Cheap Laptop Computers, Cheap Laptop Computers for Sale etc…

33 Comments

70 + Free Webmaster Tools – Free SEO Tools

Posted by JR in Essential Marketing Lists, Internet Marketing, Keywords and Niches, Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Traffic, Website Tools

As webmasters, we inevitably need to utilize many different tools, whether it be templates, link checkers, website analysis tools, Internet Marketing Strategy tools, logo designers, snippets of code and especially SEO Tools .

Here are some great free Webmaster and Search Engine Optimization Tools. Make sure to subscribe to this post as I will update this list regularly.

Free Website Templates:

Free Niche Site Builders – Allows affiliates to quickly and easily build and maintain multi-page affiliate marketing price comparison websites directly from multiple merchant product data-feeds. AffiliStore 2 has been created using PHP and MySQL and has a simple installation interface.

Free Website Templates

Free Site Templates

Free Web Templates

Template World

Free Templates Online

Open Source Web Design

WordPress Themes

WordPress Plug-Ins

Website Design Tools, Banners, Photo Editing and Buttons

Gimp 2 – Photo Retouching, Image Authoring, Banner Creator, Logo Maker and lots more! Fantastic!

FreeSerifSoftware – This website offers 5 free softwares, including logo maker, picture editor, 3-D Website Graphics

Favicon Generator – This tool creates personalized bookmark favicons, from your own personal design, which also display in browser tabs and headers. Great for site branding, symbolism and a way for your visitors to easily identify your site in their bookmark list. Fantastic!

Nattyware-Pixie – Website Design Color Picker Tool.

Google Gadgets – Add a variety of gadgets to your websites for your visitors use and pleasure, like weather reports, search, to-do lists and more.

Logo Design

Logo Ease – Simple Logo Maker, very user friendly!

Cool Text Logo Maker – Haven’t used this one, but it looks good.

Logo Design Engine – Make logos and buttons. Has great images, add text, edit font and colors. Very user friendly!

Likno Button Maker – Create custom buttons.

Free Website Widgets

Google Page Rank Widget – Nifty widget to show off your Page Rank on your website/blog with options to add Yahoo and Google Index Stats.

Spring Widgets – You can create an RSS reader with multiple feeds; badges for your profile on social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo; countdown application widgets and other cool gadgets for your blogs and websites.

Social Bookmark – All-in-One Button – Create a social bookmark add button for all social sites personalized with your website info embedded.

AddThis – Another social bookmark widget creator that also can be personalized with your website information and logo.

Robots Tool

Create Robots.txt – Fill in your parameters and the robots file is generated. This website has complete guides and tutorials on everything robots.txt.

Link Cloaker Tools:

Tiny Url – Make your long links Tiny/Cloak Affiliate ID’s. Great Tool!

Add Me Affiliate Link Cloaker – Affiliate link cloaking tool, allows to select a no-follow tag for the link.

Website Forms/Auto Responders:

Contact Form Killer – Free tool to add contact forms to your sites

Aweber Free Trial – The best and most popular software to create newsletters, auto responders and website sign up forms for your websites. For email and subscription marketing of your websites.

SEO – Backlink Building Tools

Backlink Builder – Must Have! This is a great tool! It searches for websites of the niche/theme you specify that contain keyphrases like “Add link”, “Add site”, “Add URL”, “Add URL”, “Submit URL”, “Add Article” etc. Then presents them in a list with hyperlinks, no easier way to build reciprocal backlinks for you websites.

Fast Blog Finder - Fantastic! Searches for Do-Follow Comment Links blogs for the keywords entered. Free version provides 50 results for each keyword.

Backlink Checkers for Search Engine Optimization

Free Backlink Checker from SEOPro Must Have! – Let’s face it it’s tough enough to learn SEO but checking backlinks is made easy with this complete and comprehensive backlink checker providing reports including, Home Page PR, Linkpage PR and your anchors, see my detailed review here: Best Free Backlink Checker

Link Assure Reciprocal Link Checker – Check if your link partners are still linking to you.

BRL Reciprocal Link Checker – Check on your reciprocal link partners.

WebConfs Reciprocal Link Checker

Bad Neighborhood Link Checker – Must Have! Find out if your links are dangerous! This tool will scan the links on your website, and on the pages that your website is linking to, and flag possible problem areas, such as bad neighborhood sites and sites that have been penalized by Google.

Free Website Analysis Tools:

Search Engine Stats

Google Webmaster Tool s – Must have! See how Google views your site, including, index pages, crawl stats, robots.txt and sitemap validity and more.

Yahoo Site Explorer – Must have! Yahoo webmaster tools. See how your site is indexed in Yahoo and view all backlinks Yahoo has for your site. Google does not update backlink information often, but Yahoo does! See all your backlinks by site and number.

MSN Webmaster Tools – See how your site is indexed and crawled in MSN search engine.

Google Analytics – Check your site stats, visitors and traffic. Complete Reports – Must Have!

Stat Counter – Check your sites stats, visitors and traffic. Some prefer Statcounter over Google Analytics, I personally do not. The free version limits your traffic count and then you have to pay when Google Analytics is always free.

Google Data Base Checker - Check your websites in the 700+ Google Databases

Google Alerts - See if your site is mentioned. Enter search parameters, like your site name or KW and Google automatically sends you alerts when there are new Google results for your search terms. Alerts with results from news, blogs, videos and gourps.

SEO Tools & Internet Marketing Analyzers

SEO Rank Checker – Monitor website rank

PR Checker – Domain Page Rank Checker, also has a nice widget to show off your rank on your websites. Good Tool!

Multi Rank Checker – Multiple domain page rank checker, allows you to check several domains at once.

Website Grader – SEO tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website by giving you a grade. Great Tool!

GoLexa – Complete Page & Site Analysis – For your sites and competitors – Must See!

Blog Juice Calculator - See how much juice your blogs and competing blogs have. Must have for bloggers!

Keyword Spy – See what KW your competitors are using and tells you the exact terms and phrases that are driving the most traffic to your competitors’ websites. Great Tool!

Compete Site Analytics – In-depth analysis to compare the growth of two or more websites. Great Tool!

Touch Graph – Reveals the network of connectivity between websites as per Google.

Index Rank Website Growth Analysis – Uses a scale of 1-10 to determine indexing rate of a website which helps to determine its growth. Must Have!

Xinu Returns - Check your sites PageRank, Backlinks, Indexed Pages and Rankings in popular search engines, social bookmark sites, technorati and more. Great Tool!

Conduit – On demand website syndication that builds traffic and revenue.

Meta Tag Analyzer – Analyzes the Meta Tags of your site and identifies problems and fixes for SEO. Good One!

SEO Toolbars

SEO Toolbar for Firefox – SEOBooks live toolbar for firefox that shows all pertinent SEO info for whatever site you are viewing, like highlighting no-follow links and pages, page rank, number of index pages in major search engines, site age and lots more. Must Have!

SEO Quake Toolbar – Similar to the Firefox SEO Toolbar, shows pertinent SEO and Internet Marketing information and is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Must Have!

MSN Labs Internet Marketing Tools:

Here are some excellent Internet Marketing tools from MSN Labs.

MSN – Online Commercial Intention - Predict a customer’s intension to buy, sell, or complete another kind of transaction based on her search queries or recently visited URLs.

Explore MSN – Analyze publisher website content and its audience to provide advertisers insights for ad placement and targeting.

MSN – Search Volume Seasonality Forecast – Forecast the seasonality patterns of search queries.

Keyword Research Tools:

MICRO NICHE FINDER TOOL

SEO Book Free Keyword Suggestion Tool

Word Tracker Keywords Free Trial

Keyword Discovery – Free Trial

Keyword Elite

MSN Keyword Forecast

Google Adwords Tools

Google Adwords Keyword Tool – Gage KW searches and competition in Google Adwords.

Google Adwords Traffic Estimator – Shows the estimated cost per click for selected KW. This one is good if you do not yet have a Google Adwords account and just want to know how much your KW are costing.

Long Tail Adwords – Quickly see the Long Tail Adwords and Keywords you could be missing out on.

Add URL – Search Engines & Other Places:

Google

Yahoo

MSN

Scrub the Web

Gigablast

Add Your Site Free

My Design Award – This site gives awards for best website design, they also get lots of traffic and views of your site, and you also get a nice backlink!

Twitter – Create a profile for each of your webwesites and follow some people

LinkedIn – Create a profile and add your websites

MyBlogLog – Create a profile and add all your websites and blogs, join groups and add contacts!

Social Marker – Add your sites/content to over 65 Social Bookmark/Web 2.0 Sites from one browser window – Must Have!

Claim your Blogs @ Technorati - Add your blogs to Technorati and set automatic pinging for whenever you update.

Blog Rush

Blog Carnival

All Browsers Website Display Checker:

Have you ever seen how your site looks in different browsers? Especially in Internet Explorer? You might be surprised at what you find.

Different browsers display sites in different ways due to code issues, and IE is just a bug fest with its constant problems with frames and CSS display. Use the tool below to get screenshots of how your site looks in over 65 browsers and then use the hack codes to make changes accordingly.

Browser Shots – Screenshots of how your site looks in over 65 browsers.

How to Guides on Fixing Problems with Website Displays Different Browsers:

Internet Explorer Website Browser Display Fixes – Very simple and easy to use guide.

Comprehensive Guide to Fix Display Issues in most Browsers – Provides Hack Codes to add to your sites which will solve display problems in most browsers. Made for webmasters who have some understanding on how to edit and add code to their sites.

Net Mechanic - This site has a lot of information that is worth reading on Browser Display Issues. Provides a free trial of their HTML Box Tool, which will fix these issues.

If you have any tools that you would like me to add to this list, please contact me or leave a mention in comments.

Thanks!

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