Beginner’s Guide to Building a Niche Website

Beginner’s Guide to Building a Niche Website

Topic & Keyword Research

By Jeff Kingston

@kingstonjeffrey

http://blog.jeffreykingston.com/

http://twitter.com/kingstonjeffrey

Contents

Important to Consider:

1. Your Interest in the Niche

2. Your Expertise in the Niche

3. Current Competition in the Niche

4. Volume Within the Niche

5. Ability to Monetize within the Niche

Choosing Your Niche

• There is no Formula

• Processes can help you create something repeatable

Contents







Finding Your Niche

Finding A Potential Niche

• I’ll Walk You Through One Way to find A Niche

• There are no rules

• This is not the only way to get the job done


• Amazon > “Shop by Dept” > “Full Store Directory”


• Search thru categories/sub-categories to brainstorm

• Add ideas as you go

• Think potential low competition, easy-to-target


Example: Category – “Auto & Industrial”

Sub-Category – “Automotive Parts & Accessories”

Topics -

Floor Mats Seat Covers Steering Wheel Covers Car Covers

Deflectors & Shields Grille Guards Car Care Kits Detailing Tools Headlight

Restoration Guages Shift Knobs Visor Organizers


• These are not keywords!

• They are potential topics for your niche

• You could potentially combine multiple topics

• The idea here is to build up a long list of possible topics to look into, then flesh it out with info that you can use to make a decision


• You can repeat this same process on any online retail site out there:

– Newegg.com

– Costco.com

– Walmart.com

• Check out sites in broad niches you are interested in (ex. Newegg for electronics)

Contents







Checking volume

• Adwords Keyword Tool (Still the best, if used correctly)

• Paste topics in one by one

• Probably change KW Option from “show broadly related ideas” to “closely related”

• Download KW data

Checking volume

• Sort results by volume

• I like to filter & show only volume of 2,000 – 25,000 searches per month

• Remember this is not keyword research, this is topic research

• We don’t want major head terms or super low volume long-tail terms

Checking volume

• Sort topics by relevance • You should have a bunch of “lists” with search

volumes for each list • This gives you a good idea of which lists of topics

are the strongest (or too strong)

Contents







Checking Competition

• Let’s find out which topic is worth targeting

• We can assume levels of volume by the lists we made

• Which topic can we realistically tap into?

Checking Competition Let’s use an example: “floor mats”

Google Search Shows:


What to Look for:

– Ads? More = Hi Comp

– Brands? Harder

– Phrase Matching? Less = Easier

– Site Duplication?

More = Easier

– Results Volume

More = Harder

– SERPS within SERPS?

Search pages

shouldn’t rank

– Links? Less = Easier

– Content Quality

– KWs in url

– Content type

Forums, Wikis = Easier


Let’s use another example: “all weather floor mats”



Let’s use another example: “truck floor mats”



At this point, we:

A. choose a topic and move on to more advanced keyword research

B. continue comparing competition among the topics on our list until we find something we like.


Let’s take a look at a result we like: “Shift Knobs”

Google shows:


• We can see from the SERP that it will not be super high competition.

• Let’s take a look at the links pointing to our potential competition


• Top 9 Results beyond #1 (Amazon)

Contents







Monetizing Your Topic

• You’ve found a topic you like with:

– Sufficient Volume

– Low Competition

• Now we see how we could monetize it

• Without a method of making money, your site will be relatively worthless


Options:

• Affiliate Networks

• Independent Affiliate Programs

• Amazon Associates

• Adsense (And Other Display Networks)

• Carrying Inventory Yourself

• Lead Generation


Affiliate Networks: Commission Junction

Clickbank

Shareasale

Many others

Advantages

Easy to use

Single Dashboard

Disadvantages

Mid-range payouts


Independent Affiliate Programs: Work directly with manufacturers or retailers. Ex. Zappos.com, Home Depot, etc.

Advantages

Higher Payout

Longer Cookie

Disadvantages

No Standardization


Amazon Associates:

Amazon’s Affiliate Program

Advantages

Higher Conversion

Disadvantages

Lower Payout

Single-Session Cookie


Adsense & Display Networks/Banners:

Adsense, Chitika, etc.

Publishers are paid to show ads from advertisers through networks

(You can also set this up 1-to-1 w/ Advertisers)

Advantages

Easy-To-Use

Disadvantages

Very Low Payout

Volume Dependency


Carrying Inventory:

Buy in bulk (or drop-ship) product and take payment directly through your website

(e-commerce model)

Advantages

Higher Margins

Disadvantages

Higher Investment

Higher Involvement


Lead generation:

Take down contact info for potential leads and sell those leads to industry clients.

Ex. Auto Glass website sells contact info of people looking for auto glass quotes

Advantages

Higher Margins

Disadvantages

Higher Involvement

Next Steps

• More In-Depth Keyword Research

• Find a Domain Name

• Find Hosting

• Find a CMS (ex. Wordpress)

• Create Content

• Drive Traffic

All Coming In Subsequent Posts/Presentations!

Jeff Kingston

@kingstonjeffrey

http://blog.jeffreykingston.com/category/start-here/

http://blog.jeffreykingston.com/

http://twitter.com/kingstonjeffrey

Beginner’s Guide to Building a Niche Website

Marketing

Transcript of Beginner’s Guide to Building a Niche Website