Part 5 - Niche Finder Series: Keyword Competition Analysis

Before we get to the next step, I need to talk a bit about the tools you can use to help automate and save you time. And I'm going to talk about my 'go to' tool for keyword research and analysis. I never research without it.

I'd recommend to anyone getting started online to have their first reinvestment into their business be a quality keyword analysis tool or service that does many or all the things I talk about below. If you are going to be doing Search Marketing, they are a must in my opinion to maximize your efforts, automate and speed up tasks.

Can you do it all manually with Free Tools or just gathering the info using something like SEOToolbar's data... throwing all that into spreadsheets and sifting through it? Sure. But, in the end, time is money. A few dollars for a tool like I’m going to talk about below will pay for itself very, very quickly.

Not only do tools like this gather data quickly without you having to go out on the web and grab it all manually, but it also provides you visual comparisons of metrics that help you quickly determine if a niche is worth your time pursuing.

Hang around me long enough and you'll see me reference my #1 recommended Keyword Research Tool - Market Samurai. There are other tools out there (I've tried many of them going back years including using services like Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker for several years), but today I almost exclusively use MS. Do what's right for you.

MS keeps me ‘plenty’ busy and gives me a ton of data and keyword ideas. I don’t usually have time to use any other tool or resource. The rest of my time I'm marketing and driving traffic!

Besides giving me keyword searches and stats it also provides all the SEO tools, metrics and data I need under one interface! Definitely check it out.

THE NEXT STEP...

So when I am done with the first Step in this process of finding a great niche, I open Market Samurai and set up a project for these new keywords.

I'll first do a basic search to tell me what the volume is and to filter out any untargeted keywords it digs up as I talked about in the previous articles in this series..

FOUR: And then you have to use a tool to weigh the competition from an SEO perspective.  Make sure you can compete with the sites on the first page now or in a relatively reasonable time frame!  Look at PageRank, Domain Age, Backlinks etc..

In Step 4 I analyze those keywords further.. the minimum I look at in my tool are:

• The Trends Graph
• Total Searches
• SEO Traffic - Potential Daily Clicks a #1 Ranking Will Give Me
• Phrase-to-Broad Ratio - Tells Me How Likely People are Actually Searching for a 'Phrase' in Google..
  
• And of course SEO Competition

But, like with any tool like this, the power comes in the form of filters. You can set filters to show Maximum or Minimum numbers.. so if you have a long list of keywords, you can quickly get to those you know that have the most potential right away without sifting through them manually.

But that's not all. Once I have my final list I can easily, with a few clicks, analyze the competition for the phrase that look to have the most potential (in terms of search volume, competition #s and relevance). I can find out all the important SEO details and determine how difficult it will be to compete on the first page of the results.

Things like:

• PageRank
• Domain Age
• Domain Backlinks
• Page Backlinks
• Who's optimizing for the keyword in their meta and title tags...

And all that is color coded in Market Samurai (see the screenshot above) so I can visually see how difficult a results page will be to compete against.

If you were to do all that by yourself for a set of keywords, it might take hours. And for those starting out on a tight budget, you might have to start that way. But again, when you have some extra funds invest in a tool that will help you whittle that down to minutes.

SO HERE’S THE "KEYWORD COMPETITION ANALYSIS" PROCESS…

1. Compare Competition against Volume of Searches to determine those that have the best chance of doing well for you. Try to pinpoint those keywords that have decent search volume and lower competition #s first.
2. Then go further with your analysis and determine how difficult it will be to rank on the first pages of the search engine results starting with those keywords that fit your product the best, are most relevant and have the most potential.
   
1. Use a paid tool if you have one to bring out that data or..
2. Manually. At the very least do some quick searches on Google and get a feel for how strong the competition is manually clicking through some of the sites on the first page. (SEOToolbar can help you out there too - and it's free). Look at PageRank, Backlinks etc..

After you have gone through this process you might find none to a few dozen (depending on what your needs are here..) that look good and worthwhile.

Through this process you can continue to drill down and run spin off keyword searches. Try new combination's of phrases to search or lateral keywords. If you have a good keyword tool, it'll provide you a way to organize all this into projects.

Don’t rush it… do the work here and the efforts you put into the next step will stand a much greater chance of being worth the time and energy!

-Matt Levenhagen

P.S. To learn more about my #1 recommend keyword research tool visit: Market Samurai. Tip: the videos on how to do keyword research alone there are worth your time!

GO TO PART SIX: Building Your Niche Websites or Store

Niche Marketing - Niche Research