Keyword Research – Finding your Niche

Keyword Research/Niche research

Keyword Research is an important part of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Internet Marketing (IM). It is useful for improving the performance of your website, discovering more information about your customers, planning marketing campaigns and much more.

Keyword research can give you incredible insight into what consumers are looking for — helping you create highly targeted websites, content, advertisements, and Internet marketing campaigns.

If you are interested in learning more about keyword research and niche research, you have reached the right place.  This guide will explain the importance of keyword research before giving an overview of the keyword research process.  It will help you gain a thorough understanding of how keyword research can improve the success of your website and marketing efforts.

The importance of keyword research and niche research

Keyword research is the foundation of SEO and online marketing.  It is considered essential because it helps you understand which search terms consumers are using when they search for products, services, or information online.  Having this knowledge available will help you target your SEO and marketing efforts very precisely.

In addition to determining which keywords are the most popular, keyword research can tell you how much volume and competition there is for specific keyword.  This information can help you identify keywords that have a decent amount of traffic without an excessive amount of competition.

Mastering the art of keyword research can help your business in a number of ways:

• Better SEO performance

Keyword research will help you find the ideal keywords to use for a website’s URL, headings, menu, meta data, and other content.This ensures that your website is relevant to the search term consumers use in search engines and can increase how well you rank for specific terms.

• Content marketing

Performing keyword research can help you identify the kinds of content that consumers are interested in. It can also help you identify which keywords to place inside your content to optimise it for SEO.

• You will know your customer better

Having customer knowledge helps you meet their needs, wants, and expectations. Keyword research gives you the precise language your customers are using when performing search queries, which can help you determine exactly what they are looking for.

• Advertising

Understanding the fundamentals of keyword research will help you find the best keywords for your online advertising campaigns.

• Internet Marketing

Other forms of Internet Marketing including newsletter marketing, social media marketing, and affiliate marketing will also benefit from keyword research.

How to perform keyword research — the right way

So, how do you find the right keywords for your business to use?  Traditionally, most people would simply think of a few random keywords that users are likely to type when looking for products or services that their business offers.  For example, it’s reasonable for a sport’s shop to believe that people looking for soccer balls would search for “soccer balls”.

Next, they would type “soccer ball” into Google’s Keyword Planner and look at the related keywords that Google has found.  This might include phrases like “soccer balls for sale” “adidas soccer ball” and so on. They would then pick the phrases that seem relevant and use them to make content or optimise their website.

This approach is now considered outdated and inefficient.  A better way to perform keyword research is to focus on“niche topics” at the the very start of the research process.  A niche topic is a question, ideas, or events that relates to a specific niche.  This can help you find “new” keyword ideas instead of words that are just “related” to the keyword.

For example, if you were selling soccer balls, its niche topics would include things that relate to soccer, like the “World Cup”, “Lionel Messi”, “Best soccer goals”, or “Live football scores”.

These soccer-related keywords are very far from “soccer ball”, but they form the basis of potentially-valuable niches that you can use to find underused keywords.  While every other shop is competing to rank for “Soccer balls”, you can use related soccer niches to reach soccer lovers from a different angle.

Finding niche topics

In the example we just gave, we more-or-less guessed basic niche topics relating to soccer.  Let’s try that again, but this time, we’ll think about the kinds of topics that someone interested in buying a soccer ball might like to read.  We can safely assume they are playing soccer, so they might be interested in information like:

• “How to kick a soccer ball further”
• “How to kick a soccer ball accurately”
• “Soccer ball drills”
• “Fitness for soccer players”
• “Best soccer tips”

These are potentially valuable niche topics that can be used to bring traffic to your website, improve your SEO, and bolster your marketing campaigns.  The best niche topics are often searched for but have very few websites providing that kind of content.  This allows you to reach an audience that wants to buy soccer balls without ever competing for the term “soccer balls”.  If you are struggling to find niche topics, here are a few tips:

Consider the buyer

What kind of person buys a soccer ball? They are very likely either be a soccer player or a parent of a soccer player.  Now, have a think about their goals and ambitions.  They probably want to get better at soccer, get fitter, and learn more about the sport.  What challenges will they have?  They might struggle to kick the ball very far or pass accurately.    Think about what they want to achieve and you will discover dozens of niche topics.

Use social media and websites for ideas

If you are still struggling to find appropriate niche topics, consider visiting social media websites like Pinterest and Facebook to see what soccer fans are currently discussing.

Web discussion forums are also an excellent place to see what soccer lovers are talking about.  You will find hundreds of questions, debates, and discussions that soccer fans are having with one another.  You can find web forums by searching for your primary niche and the words “forums” or “board”.

Searching for “soccer forums” results in dozens of web forums including BigSoccer.com.  This website includes a subform where players are discussing how to get better at soccer. Just looking at some of the titles will immediately give you ideas for potential niche topics:

“Improving shooting technique”

“Turf cleats are they worth it?”

“Hip flexor injury”

“How to beat goalie one on one”

Another fantastic option for learning more about a niche is Reddit.  It is one of the world’s most popular websites, with thousands of soccer players using it to discuss their favourite sport.  For our example, I will visit reddit and search for soccer to find the soccer-related subreddits.  Some of the subreddits that appeared include r/Soccer, r/SoccerNerd, and r/SoccerNoobs. You use the titles of posts for idea or click on a link to see what players are talking about in the comments.

Finding keywords for our niche topics

The next step is find some keywords for our selected niche topics.  The types of keywords that you find for each niche topic should be divided into one of three categories:

Head keywords

These are single word phrases that relate to the niche like “Soccer” or “Football”.  They extremely difficult to rank for as they are highly competitive. It is very unlikely that your sports store is going to beat BBC Sportor The Guardian’s sport sectionfor keywords like “Soccer” and they are high authority sites.

These keywords get a huge a huge amount of traffic every day.  However, these broad kinds of keywords don’tconvert very well because most people who want to buy a specific item will not be searching for broad terms like “Soccer”.

Body keywords

Body keywords are typically 2-3 word phrases that are still quite broad.  For soccer, a body keyword might be “soccer ball” or “soccer skills”. These kinds of phrases have slightly less traffic and less competition than a head keyword.  However, they will convert better than a head keyword, with terms like “soccer ball” converting very well amongst people interested in buying a soccer ball.

Long tail keyword

Long tail keywords are very specific phrases with 4 or more words.  The kinds of people using these phrases are usually interested in a specific product, service, or source of information.  A long trail keyword might be “Adidas competition soccer ball” or “Buy Nike soccer ball”.  These kinds of keywords have much less search volume individually, but can provide a great deal of traffic if you rank for many of them.  Most of the Internet searchers performed are long tail searches. Long tail keywords convert very well because the searcher is looking for a specific item or piece of information.

The best approach for most businesses is to target body and long tail keywords.  it will be easier to rank for these keyword categories and they convert very well.

When choosing a keyword to target, the key is to aim for the sweet spot between competition, conversion potential, and search volume.  You will be looking for the low competition, high search volume keywords that consumers often use when they are interested in making a purchase.

Now that you understand the concept of niche topics and keyword research, you can begin to use Google Keyword Planneror a tool like Uber Suggestto identify useful body and long tail keywords.

Thanks for reading Keyword Research/Niche Research.  Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of the importance of keyword research and how you can use niche topics to take your keyword research to the next level.