Okay, so you know what this series is all about - me building a niche site, from scratch, using the No Marketer Left Behind Internet Marketing Membership site that I’d bet my kids on to be the best around!

For this project, I’m building something OUTSIDE of the Internet Marketing Niche.

So here we go, Day 1 of building my new niche site!

I printed out my Module 1 Worksheet that I will use as I work through each video in the first Bootcamp Module which is “Niche the Niche“.

In this module, we learn how to generate niche ideas, find the “keyword gems”, drill down in keyword research to find the perfect keywords to build a site around and the keywords we’ll use, and select our domain.

What I accomplished today:

1.  I created an insane list of great niche ideas. 

These are just the ’scratch the surface ideas - the ones I’ll drill down on to find where the money is. Michelle gives you some great, super easy, avenues to generate ideas from. (You can also use these avenues to generate ideas on creating informational products - which you can give away for free to build your rep and your list; and/or sell to make money on; or both!)

I used the avenues she told me to use and quickly generated PAGES of niches and sub-niches that I can dig deeper into and investigate to find the money. It took me maybe 20-30 minutes to generate several pages of ideas (from which, as we go through the steps, I’ll find the first niche I’m going to build on and then still have tons to pursue as well as some great ideas for information products I can create along the way to help me build).  This is seriously idea generation at its best (you can do SO MUCH with this list!)

I used the 5 top places recommended (one is SO FREAKING SIMPLE and I never thought about it before, it’s totally that ‘duh’ moment) and really I could have generated thousands, literally, of ideas but I limited it to a few pages for now.

2. I narrowed my list down to the top ones I had an interest in pursuing the most at this time.

3.  I narrowed my list down even further to the best choices to start with out of that list using the rating system Michelle provided.  This rating system helps you determine which of those ideas you should start with (the top 2 or 3 to start investigating).

4. From that list, I started my keyword research using the idea that had the highest rating on my worksheet. I know, I know, keyword research - not usually our favorite thing to do but it must be done to find the money and with the keyword research tool we use, it’s almost fun because the results are SO detailed and there are so many ways you can utilize it. I said almost! I’m not going to pretend it’s now my favorite thing to do, but it didn’t seem quite as painful because this is keyword research at its best. And, again it’s a vital step in finding the money - which is the entire point of niche marketing!

I used the video instructions and the keyword tool to drill down into my top level keyword and find other keywords as well as an even better keyword to build the site around.

I discovered the MONEY MAKING words to build my site around and the other keywords I’m going to use within by using the keyword tool to analyze:

    Analysis of my potential would-be top ranked competition for this keyword(s) such as: how old, or new, their site is; what their pagerank is; how many backlinks they have to the main domain; how many backlinks they have to the particular page that is targeting my prospective keywords; whether their sites are listed in particular directories; if ‘our’ keyword is in their page title, URL, description, header; and the number of days since Google last indexed the page.  All of this information gives me great insight to even more details about how competitive a keyword is and how easy or hard it will be to rank highly fairly quickly and start raking in some cash!  It even shows me everything color coded using green, yellow and red so that I can quickly see whether it’s a “go” or “no go” for me.

Here are 2 screenshots from my keyword research that show WHY I’ve chosen this primary keyword to build my site around (showing the stats outlined in the bulleted list above):

This first screenshot shows the keywords I’m looking into (with the orange field being the one I’ve decided to roll with).

Searches = searches per day (higher is better)

SEOT = approximate hits a number 1 listed page could expect (higher is better)

PBR = percentage of phrase match searches out of broad matched searches (higher is better)

SEOC = SEO Competion (Lower is better)

SECTC = SEO Title Competition (Lower is better)

Search = Monthly traffic trends

OCI = Percentage of chance that someone is looking to buy (Higher is better but should be taken into consideration w/other factors)

AWV = daily traffic value, and cost, adwords advertiser in #1 spot might expect

SEOV = daily traffic value #1 spot might expect

So, taking all of these values into consideration, I chose to go with the keyword in the orange field because it has stats that I like, particularly when taken into consideration with the next screenshot which shows my current top competitors.

niche-keyword-stats-blurred

This next screenshot shows the Top 10 Google search results (my soon-to-be-competitors) and their stats.

DA= Domain Age

PR = Page Rank

BLP = Backlinks to “Page”

BLD = Backlinks to “Domain”

BLEG = Total links pointing to from .gov or .edu

DMZ and YAH = Whether or not site is listed in these directories

Title / URL / Description / Head = whether or not page is ‘on page’ optimized in these areas

CA= How many days ago since Google reindexed the page

Colors: Green is good for ME, Yellow is so-so, Red is not good for ME

seo-competition-for-niche-marketing-keyword-blurred

You’ll notice there’s a lot of green = good for me; a slight bit of yellow I feel I can overcome; and very little red for me to worry about.  The big yellow caution area- the backlinks to the primary domain isn’t a HUGE concern for me because I can beat them out in the green areas…and get my site listed on some of the sites contained in the actual ‘domain’ part.  The backlinks to the pages (that focus on my actual keyword) I can certainly beat out without an extreme amount of effort.

Using the various keyword stats and taking everything into consideration, I now have the main keyword I’m going to build my new niche site around.  Let’s see how it goes!

So, recap summary - I created a list of tons of niche ideas (containing many others I’ll be looking into in the future too), filtered it down to the best ideas I wanted to check into now, narrowed it down some more using a rating system to pick the top 2-3 I wanted to dig into, chose 1 and started finding the money-making keywords in my first choice niche using DEEP stats that yield results FAR superior to the Google Adwords or Wordtracker keyword tools (I’ve always loved those tools but they can’t give you these kind of results - and you can use the keyword tool we use for free even though there’s  paid version that I recommend purchasing when you can).

As you wrap up this research, you can’t help but to be super stoked about what’s to come!  You know you’ve found the money and you know you’re on your way to achieving success in this newfound niche!

You’re probably wondering about my keywords I’ve found? Can’t tell you just yet, but I promise it will all be revealed as the building continues!

The next thing I’m going to do is choose my domain name according to the steps in the video.