Basic Keyword Research To Determine Niche Potential

Of course, one of the first things I tell people when they start thinking about creating an online ebusiness is to do their keyword research. Basic keyword research can reveal a lot about whether or not the potential ebusiness is a viable one. I usually point them to Google’s free keyword tool and tell them to type in the general overall phrase that describes the niche, and to select Exact Match from the Match Type dropdown. That will give them a good idea of the kind of interest there is in the subject, and the kind of traffic they could expect if they ranked well for the search terms.

That process is a good one for determining the value of a niche, and also for finding good sub-niches to target. Once you get past this initial discovery stage, however, at some point you’re going to be hungering for more information. That’s when it’s time to use a few more tools.

Using Keyword Research To Strategize Content Development

The next two tools are fairly new to me, so while I don’t have a lot of experience with them, I did thoroughly enjoy the tests I ran. Ideas blossomed and strategies formed after looking at the results. That’s a pretty good sign that the tools are useful to me.

The first tool I played around with was Wordstream’s newish (and free) Keyword Niche Finder. The niche finder is designed to find tightly-related groups of topics that form sub-niches within your niche. It scans a keyword database of over a trillion search queries to find the most relevant and potentially profitable keyword niches, and then automatically groups keywords into closely related clusters. By identifying these groups, you can begin to form a content strategy. What are people most interested in? What groups of content can you create to target that interest?

Here’s what it looks like. Let’s say your niche is “adventure travel”. This screenshot above shows what pops up when I search for that phrase, and then choose to view the details of the “adventure travel >> alaska” group. When I scroll down, I see the entire list of 85 phrases for that grouping. One of them, for instance, is on the topic of backcountry jeep safaris in Alaska. That could make for some really interesting content that you may not have considered before.

This free tool is just one of several tools Wordstream has available. They actually have two other free tools, their original keyword tool, and the free keyword grouper. Each of these is related to the other in some way, so they can all be used for a different look at your niche.

More Details – More Ideas

Of course, they also have a paid tool that goes above and beyond all the free ones, enabling you to develop a really good ongoing content strategy. The paid tool, of course, goes deeper and gives more info than the free tools, but it’s also a bit more complicated to use and understand. I got bogged down a couple of times during my testing because I was unsure what to do next. Luckily they have lots of help and demo tutorials set up (plus some really nice people on staff who are more than willing to help), so there’s help when you need it. Once I fumbled around a little though, I could see the power behind the tool. I admit that I haven’t played with it long enough to be able to really vouch for the tool yet, but there’s a 7 day free trial, so feel free to play around with it yourself. That’s a better gauge of whether or not it will help you than anything I could share here. I can say it’s definitely worth looking at for yourself, to see if it can help you come up with your own content strategy.

I’ll talk about other tools in the future that can also help with your content strategy. For now, these should get the ideas flowing nicely.

Wordstream’s New Affiliate Program

While we’re on the subject of Wordstream, you should also know about their new affiliate program. It’s different than most, so it’s worth mentioning. They actually have two different types of payouts. Here’s how they describe those:

Pay-Per Lead for PPC – We have a keyword management solution for pay-per click advertising on search engine platforms such as Google AdWords. This product has it’s own pricing and we offer a free trial and frequently have potential customers request a live demonstration of the product. As such, we’ve decided to pay for leads people drive to this product.

Pay-Per Sale for SEO – We also have a lower priced product that is more focused at providing value for organic search, which we also make available via online billing (credit card payment). For this product, we’re offering affiliates who drive subscriptions that last at least 90 days a one-time payout of roughly 25% of the 90 day subscription.

If your niche is related, you may want to consider signing up for it.