Everyone tells you the key to profits lies in finding a good niche. But with all the competition on the net, how do you analyze a potential niche to see whether it is worth your time? One good guide I’ve found is at Jamdo Blog Marketing.

He suggests the following steps:

1. Use the keyword search tool at overture (go to: resource center, keyword selector tool) to see how popular your main search term is. A good bet is 20,000 searches.
2. Go to Google, type in the search term, and go to the first ten sites. On each one, get the Page Rank using the Google Toolbar. Ideally, you don’t want any competition over PR5.
3. For each of these sites, also go to Yahoo, and type in “link:the.site.url”. This will show the backlink count. You don’t want more than 100 or so.
4. Lastly, go research your keywords on WordTracker (that link will pay Jamdo’s blog for his helpful article).

For a more in-depth discussion, read the original article

Technorati Tags: Niche marketing, affiliate marketing, keywords

Everyone says to focus on a niche, at least at first. But how do you find a niche that isn’t suffocated by well-established companies with legions of affiliates?

You look for niches which are just going by default to the top sites. At least that’s the strategy recommended in this article. The author points out that many sites don’t even really try for good search ranking for some niche products. But no one else is either, so the big guys win by default.

How to use this information

You can take advantage of that, and drive those non-targeted searchers to the site of your choosing. First, identify likely niche.

In my own keyword research I have found many keyword phrases that tens of thousands of Internet users are searching for every month by considering the following question…

Did the top ten websites purposely optimize their pages for this keyword phrase or did they get there simply because no one else is actively COMPETING for search engine placement?

Then, apply these tests from the article:

1. Is the keyword phrase in the title of the listing?
2. Is the keyword phrase used in the Domain Name of the listing?
3. Is the keyword phrase used anywhere in the URL at all?
4. How many backward links are pointing at the URL?
5. Are the backward links pointing at the page mostly internal links or do the come from other quality websites?
6. Is the URL a top level domain or some obscure page buried deep within a larger website.?

Technorati Tags: keywords, adwords, seo, niches