Keyword Research for Niche Research | No Cost Affiliate Marketing
Every branch of marketing starts out with market research, which is commonly known as niche research for online marketers. In this first chapter of No Cost Affiliate Marketing Digest, I am going to list and elaborate on how one could conduct an keyword research properly.
You can always make money with a niche that is already competitive and profitable, which most niches already are. However, it is going to take you years to rank highly on search engines.
What are we trying to look for are niches that can make us money, where people will buy stuffs but not competitive yet.
Today, we are going to look into basic keyword research and for next week, I will be diving into how you can decide whether a market is viable or profitable enough for you to dive into.
There are a lot of keyword tools that you may or may not heard of. Anyway, I am going to list them down:
Wordtracker Keyword Research Tool
Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool
SEO Book Complete Keyword Research Tool (best web-based tool - RECOMMENDED)
Keyword Buzz (FREE and Downloadable Software - RECOMMENDED!)
Using Keyword Research Tools | Board Overview
One of things these tools automates are the ability to suggest keywords that you type into the search bar. You can go deeper and deeper to get more suggested keywords from these tools (shown in image below). Also, you have to adapt yourself to a few tools as all of them have their own advantages and shortfalls.
Most of these keyword tools show DAILY searches according to various search engine data. However, you have to keep in mind that the figures shown to you are normally estimates which the actual figures can be a few times higher.
Moving away from the number of searches that a keyword receives, you will have the number of competition for a particular keyword. Well, we will look at how to assess the competitiveness in the upcoming section but for now, let’s just keep it as you should be eyeing for a keyword with little competition.
Keywords to Target for No Cost Affiliate Marketing
This section will be the core for keyword research. We are going to look at two main elements, which will be the demand and competition. As a beginner, you might want to start out with keywords that are not highly saturated. After you became an expert in this, you can always start dominating keywords that are more competitive.
Keyword Searches and Keyword Demand | Keyword Research
Since Internet marketing is booming, most keywords that are highly searched are competitive. However, there is always a chance for a keyword to escape the eyes of all marketers.
Keyword Search Amount Tip: When you are looking through the keyword list provided by the keyword tools above, there might be some keywords that are not being targeted by marketers out there. One of the obvious ones are localized keywords.
Keywords like “texas gardening”, “debt consolidation florida” and “credit card manchester” (for example) will have little competition because marketers are not willing to dig deep to create information that are so specific. Also, there might be different regulations for different geographical locations.
Even though the information that you can provide should be specialized as well, you can sell the exact same items to people who are searching using localized keywords. For example, you can sell all sorts of organic pesticides or chemicals to people searching for “garden pests uk” and “garden pests houston”.
Keyword Competition in Keyword Research
For competition analysis, we only look at the numbers showing under Google. Why? They are the search engine with the most users on the Internet and their search results are highly relevant compared to Yahoo and MSN.
When doing keyword competition analysis, I would recommend you to use quotes, which is instead of searching fat loss, you should search using “fat loss”. In the Keyword Buzz software, you can actually automate the process of showing the amount of competition when a quoted keyword phrase is used.
For starters, anything below 500,000 results can be dominated easily. You should not aim to dominate anything with millions of competition because as a starter, it is important for you to see fast results because it will equip you with the necessary motivation.
If you are able to come up with a list of keyword phrases that have less than 500,000 results, you need to drill further. You need to check the authority of the sites that are ranking on the first page. This is crucial because some search terms may have little competition but the sites or pages ranking on the first page have high authority and it will be hard for you to compete against them.
To achieve this purpose, you have to pull out Yahoo Site Explorer. Proceed to the search results page on Yahoo. Paste the URL of sites ranking for top three for your keywords. Now, click on the inlink tabs. For the choose inlinks dropdown menu, choose except from this domain.
Confused? Let me show you an example. Let say I would want to dominate “rose gardening”, which is a term that is highly searched. The screenshot below is what should be done after you have pulled Yahoo Site Explorer out.
Why use the number of inlinks as a measure you might ask. Well, Google sees links to a site as a vote. Thus, the more the inlinks that a site has, the more authority and priority will be given to the site when it comes to keyword rankings. There are a few other factors that determines keyword rankings but all these will be covered in the Search Engine Optimization Chapter.
If a site or URL has over 1000 inlinks, it may not be the site that you want to compete with for the top position. Yes, you can achieve it by building links over the period or settle for a lower position for the keyword but for short term, you will not be able to surpass the site.
What’s Next After Keyword Research?
What is the point of keyword research? Well, to help you pick a market that is suitable for you to make money online from affiliate marketing. If you are already in a niche, it will be useful when determining which keyword to target for when creating affiliate landing page. Also, no cost affiliate marketing involves article writing and keyword research will also let you know which keyword that you want your articles to revolve on to get the maximum exposure.
Keyword research is definitely vital for every affiliate marketers, especially those who will be dependent on organic search engine traffic.
On the next chapter of No Cost Affiliate Marketing Digest, we will be covering how to assess market viability of a niche. It is a whole different thing compared to keyword research. A keyword with high volume of searches does not necessary mean that you are able to make money off the keyword or niche.
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That downloadable tool was really useful, thanks for the heads up.
I am glad that you like the tool. Hope that you enjoy it in helping you to build a set of good keywords.