In my last post, “Part 1: How to Choose a Profitable Niche for Your Online Business”  I had you brainstorm ideas for potential niche markets to target. Hopefully you came up with plenty of topics and then narrowed your list down to the 10 you’re most interested in researching.

 

A word of caution: the first time I did that exercise, it was too close to my bedtime and I couldn’t shut my brain off! I tossed and turned for several hours until my husband kicked me out of bed. So I got back up and decided to just go with the flow. Talk about an adrenalin rush…I wasn’t even tired the next day. I don’t recommend doing this type of thing too close to bedtime, though, as it eventually catches up to you.

 

So now it’s time to gauge the level of interest in each of your 10 niche markets. Our research will be focused on the specific keywords people typically use. Plus, we need to know whether there are any related keyword terms that indicate the level of traffic and whether your market attracts enough traffic to be profitable. Here’s a clue; if you don’t see paid advertising on a search results page, that means it’s not a profitable market. In other words, marketers aren’t spending their advertising dollars in this market because people aren’t spending money in that market. In that case, you should probably consider a different niche.

 

There are paid and free keyword researches tools available for you to use. I’m going to focus on a free tool called Google Adwords Keyword Tool in this post. Many people start out using free tools and then gravitate to the paid versions because of their ease of use, sheer work power, and the time-saving aspects. For example, I use- Market Samurai.

Note: If you already have a Google account (Gmail, etc) you’ll want to make sure to log out prior to performing any keyword research. The reason is, Google tailors all of your normal everyday searches based on personal information and preferences you may have provided when you signed up for an account. It’s their way of giving people a more “customized user experience”.  Unfortunately, that’s not helpful when doing keyword research, because Google would then filter out results you would need. You might miss valuable information. You want to see the same search engine results that your target market sees when they use a specific set of keywords in their search.

Using the free Google Keyword Tool:

Use this link or paste it into your address bar: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal then bookmark it for easy access.

 

Navigation:  Along the lower left side column of the page are help links in blue. This is where you can get detailed instructions for how to navigate the Google keyword tools site. The first time you use the tool you’ll be asked to use their word verification tool (spam tool) before you can obtain results. After that, you can conduct as many searches as you’d like without having to re-verify.

 

Entering search terms:  Enter a keyword or a keyword phrase from your brainstorming session and then click the search button. The results will be displayed in blue linked text for each corresponding keyword(s). To the right you’ll see three column headings: Competition, Global Monthly Searches and Monthly Searches. Clicking any of these headings will result in a hierarchichal display of the results from low to high or high to low. It will include keywords that are closely related, as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use your scroll bar to view the entire list, which may span several pages. Ideally, you want to find keywords with LOW competition and monthly searches between 20,000 – 40,000. This can take a bit of time.

Once you find a keyword or keyword phrase that fits the criteria, Click on it to pull up a SERP page (Search Engine Results Page) for your chosen keyword(s). (repeat as necessary for additional keywords)

 

 

Interpreting Search Results:  Now that you’re on a search results page for your chosen keyword(s), it should look something like the image below.  You will likely recognize this as something you routinely see when searching for anything on Google. What you might not know is how the page is set up. The middle column of the SERP  is what we’re interested in. These are the websites that matched your selected keywords.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each individual website listed has 3 components-

The text in blue contains the keywords that match your search terms. Underneath that in green text is the actual domain name address. And third you’ll see in black text an excerpt from the actual website that matches the relevant keywords used.

 

These are the “organic” or free listings. The ones on the top of the page in very feint straw-yellow background are the featured or “sponsor-paid” ads. Along the right side, and even along the bottom, are more sponsor-paid links (Google’s “pay per click” PPC advertising). You may have to look really close to tell the difference.

 

It’s possible that there may only be a few paid ads or even zero sponsored ads on a given SERP (aka search engine results page). This is an indication that there isn’t enough money being spent in that particular market. Trust me, a business will not invest advertising dollars into a market where they know people aren’t spending money. On the other hand, if you see a full page of paid ads, that means it’s a high interest topic where sponsors know people are already spending money.

Remember, you don’t want to be a little fish swimming in a big ocean. You want to be the biggest fish in the pond! It’s very tough to get noticed when a market is already saturated. At the same time, you want to see at least a few people fishing on the bank! You want to have enough interest to be a profitable niche.

 

 

 

 

Since this is another large bite of information, I recommend at this point that you spend time playing around with the keyword search tool and become familiar with the processes and functions. Your homework will be to use your research to help narrow your top 10 list down to 3 potential niche markets that you could really see yourself focusing on.  Remember to record your notes, and jot down any questions that arise.

 

In my next post, we’ll zero in on one profitable niche market that will become the focus of all your marketing efforts. If you haven’t read the first post in the series, you can view it here:

Part 1: How to Choose a Profitable Niche For Your Online Business

 

 

If you liked this article or found it to be helpful, I’d love to hear about it – leave me a comment below. As always, please feel free to share a link to this article using one of the buttons below. Ciao!