Importance of finding the right niche...

[euphoriamorning]

OK, so as above.. I understand the importance of finding the right niche, the trouble is, given i have a few in mind.. upon using google adwords, seemingly the competition is low on a few keyword variations.. with that; good to go i'd imagine, but.. when I type these into the google search bar i get 100's of millions of results back? I thought that we wanted to be aiming for under a million or so results.

So fundamentally my question is, upon finding a niche, what is the best way to guage the analytics ..? Thanks!

 

[jcorkern]

I used to worry about that too, but lately (last 2 to 3 years) I just find my top level keywords and drill down to the long tails that have the bigger keywords in them.

Let me give you an example.

Here is a search for Coconut Soap..

This search has 10.5 million competing pages.

Notice the titles of the pages that are ranking and look for the common denominators of keywords. Of course coconut soap is in there, but what else, what problem are they solving?

The longer version of the keyword for no 1 on my computer mommypotamus.com and that site has this title: How To Make Pure Coconut Oil SoapMommypotamus

There is no space between the word soap and the site brand or "Mommypotamus".

So we take their title and pop in into Google, without the branding. There are 1.2 million competing pages.

So whats in the title? "How To Make Pure Coconut Oil Soap", how many variations can you come up with for these keywords.

Here are a few ideas:

How To Make Pure Coconut Oil
How To Make Pure Coconut Soap
How To Make Coconut Soap
How To Make Coconut Oil

You could easily come up with more that are contained in the title as I have here. These are the types of phrases people search for. And now for the big secret that most professional SEO's will never tell you.

Go after the longtails. It will get your site traffic faster but still contains the main keyword, like "Coconut Soap".

You get the lesser volume keywords and your site has exposure and a little traffic. If you continue to promote it and have some who search for that longtail phrase and they write about and link to your page, making it go higher and higher in search until you get the top spots for the 10.5 million competing pages.

Here is the problem. If you don't have the best page on the web on that topic, you may get a few links and little traffic, but if you have the most outstanding content on the web on that topic (topic being coconut soap), you will continue to earn links until you dominate the main keywords.

The trick for success is longtails and building the page that is far superior to what dominates now. It's actually very simple in concept.

Hope this helps.


P.S. You noticed I never mentioned keyword volume...right? Quit worrying about keyword research, do searches and look at the titles that are already there and they will tell you what to do.

If they rank for coconut soap, they rank for every possible configuration of the keywords in the title, content and/or description.

 

[djbaxter]

Excellent reply, Jim!

 

[rvitsentzatou]

That's indeed a really useful answer.

I also worry about worry that subject too.
Thank you Jim!

 

[patco]

Very good & useful answer. Thank you!