Choose A Niche

Arguably the most important and difficult part of creating a niche blog is settling on the perfect topic. If you’re looking to make money or bring in visitors, your topic could very well make or break your success. The first step I take when choosing a new niche blog topic involves making two lists: a list of topics I love and a list of topics about which I am knowledgeable or would like to become knowledgeable. If you are new at this, I suggest choosing something you already know about, but if you are willing to research it isn’t strictly necessary.

To create the lists, I simply brainstorm. Let your mind wander and write down anything that comes into it. There’s no editing required at this stage because these lists will be just for you. Once your lists are complete, compare them. It’s quite likely you’ll have some topics on both lists. These are the topics with which you will move on to the next step. I’m a visual person, so I like to use a Venn Diagram to map out my list. It makes it easier to find comparisons:

During this stage there are also some questions you will want to ask yourself:

1. Is it possible to build an entire blog around this topic?
2. Will you get tired of writing about it?
3. Is there enough content to write about indefinitely?
4. Is there a strong community of hungry buyers (I will discuss this more in the next step as well)?

As you become more experienced you will come up with your own list of questions, but these are good basics with which you can start.

Once you have narrowed down your lists, choose two to three topics to carry over to the next step. Because of the over-saturation of many markets, you will want to narrow down your topic to a sub-niche. This will be down in Step Two: Research Keywords to Target a Sub-Niche.

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You could spend anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 days researching keywords. There are many many ways to conduct the research, but they are not all created equal. I break this process down into a few steps which you will complete for each of the topics you chose when you were brainstorming.

Search engine optimization is important for a blog in any niche and choosing the right keywords can be crucial to a site’s success. At this point, you are going to run each of your narrowed down idea through these steps because they will (1) help you determine whether the niche is oversaturated and (2) help to build a list of keywords to target when you are optimizing and writing articles for your blog.

To determine market saturation, we will use a formula called the keyword effectiveness index. KEI compares the number of search results for a particular keyword or phrase with the number of web pages returned by that particular keyword or phrase. Easy, right? Sure, just as easy as any other aspect of search engine optimization. Which is to say that it sounds straightforward and simple, but after three days of research on how to optimize you feel that perhaps you’ll just write that Great American Novel after all.

The formula looks like this:

In English, the formula says that as popularity increases and the number of competing sites decreases, the better choice a keyword is. To get a clear picture of the situation, I generally build a spreadsheet with four columns: keyword, # searches, # pages, KEI.

Open your favorite web browser and pull up Overture’s Keyword Selection Tool. Type in your primary keyword and click the little blue arrow. You will get a list of suggested keywords and the number of searches conducted. Copy and paste as many results as you wish into the spreadsheet you created (in the keyword and searches columns).

Next go to Yahoo and search for each of the keywords you got from Overture. If you use a spreadsheet application, you can enter the KEI formula in the fourth column so that calculations are made automatically. Below is an example of a completed KEI spreadsheet:

The two keywords I highlighted are distinctly different. The first one is somewhat usable. I think with a few cleverly placed articles it could work. However, the second one that is highlight is completely hopeless. I have no idea where the word “hulk” comes in and how there could possible be over 300 people searching for that term. You will often find anomalies like that as you conduct your keyword research. They provide nothing more than a bit of comic relief.

Since we are looking for the highest KEI, you are now getting even closer to your topic. This is a good point to touch base with your topics. If you can see that there just aren’t enough searches for any of the keywords in one of your topics, don’t waste any more time with it. Otherwise, let’s move on to the next step: assessing the competition.

If you are going to attempt to infiltrate a niche in the hopes of financial success or social popularity, you need to know your competition. The KEI of a search term can give a good indication of where it stands, but it can’t tell you how tough it will be to get noticed. Even if there were 50 million searches and only 50 competitors, you could still be sunk if those 50 competitors have huge budgets and you are working with $100 a month.

There are some very cool niche marketing keyword tools available for a price. Wordtracker is one of the best known and you can use the free trial to see if it feels like a good fit for you. If you know of a tool that is not already on the Keyword Research Tools list please leave a comment and I will check it out.

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