My first ever website started years ago was about hosting and I decided it would be really nice if I could rank it on Google for the keyword “web hosting”. I can laugh at this now because I knew nothing about how Google worked then and saw no reason why I shouldn’t be on the 1st place. What I didn’t realized is how much knowledge, time and money can be required to rank in some markets, sometimes more money than you could ever imagine to get in the 1st place anyway. I had yet to discover the power of the blog niche market.
Most businesses don’t get to choose the market they are in, often the marketplace and their angle on it is set in stone long before the web strategy is designed. This often translates into SEO in the worst way possible in that the business just picks the default definition of what they do and decides to rank for that. The problem is every other business in their market is doing the same, everyone ends up fighting over the same visitors and spending more every month to do so. So, the question is “Is there a better way to earn money and exposure from an SEO perspective”?
A niche keyword is always defined by volume and many assume that because a niche is a lower volume market, it is also lower in value. However, I know from experience that the right blog niche can earn you much more (relatively) than the bigger market. For a start, it’s always better to be #1 for a small niche keyword than #20 for a high volume one because so few people venture past the first results on Google. After all, if they provide the solution for your search, then why look further? Another big factor is that a niche keyword, due to its specific nature delivers more targeted traffic to your site and all SEO people love targeted traffic. For example, if your site ranked for the keyword “vacations”, what exactly would you have on the homepage? You’d need to have everything related to vacations because you really don’t know which part of this huge market people are looking for. However if they find you by typing in “cheap vacations in Brazil” then you really don’t have to think too hard from a sales or advertising prospective what you’re going to show them.
The main reason I always target a niche keyword (at least to start with) for any new site I’m working on is of course the competition, as mentioned so many businesses on the web are just targeting their core keywords with little thought of the competition. I’ve found that people often use more than one phrase or combination of phrases to say the same thing which means with just a slight modification you can target a whole new market. For example “SEO tools” means roughly the same thing as “SEO software” but you get two very different sets of results in Google. If that was your market, you would want to pick the one with the least competition as the traffic is going to convert just as well. Another really easy way to find a high value niche keyword is to add a price modifier to your core phrase. Some standard price modifiers are cheap, discount, reduced, luxury, and people often use these when trying to narrow down a search. Also the great thing about modifiers from a sales point of view is that people only add them to a search when they are serious about making a purchase. I guarantee no matter what business you are in, you can add the word “cheap” to the start of it and there will be surfers typing that search keyword in.
To me, finding your blog niche and keyword research in general is all about planning, even before you start the SEO process. The thing is, your success in SEO will often depend on the niche you pick because like me, even with all the skill in the world you’re not going to rank for “web hosting”, it’s about picking the right battle. I hope this article helps with your next SEO project and you find the perfect market for your business.
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