Phrases with SEOT >1,000 and SEOC <20,000 ?

[lintlin]

Thanks from me, too, Dean. This is pretty much how I have been looking for niches, but I was worried that I *take too long* or that I go home empty handed after spending hours searching. Glad to know that happens to the pros, too!

[cyberking]

Originally Posted by DeanRichards

Caro is, of course, absolutely right, it's all about mindset. And I don't mean that in a mystical way.

The last thing I want to do is set myself up as some sort of expert with Market Samurai, because no one understands better than I do that I have barely scratched the surface of what Market Samurai can do.

This may sound silly, but my biggest breakthrough came when I realized that MS and I were a partnership. In the beginning, without realizing it, I was expecting Market Samurai to find keywords for me. I was expecting it to do all the work. Click a few buttons and presto. Sometimes it seems like it's that easy, but mostly not.

So let me give you some specific ideas to work with...

You should know by now that single word keywords basically never represent micro-niches, so I never bother with them. But I use them as "seeds" for finding micro-niches. So let's say I start with "sport". The first thing I would do is set the Phrase Length filter to minimum 4 words. That may seem crazy, but "sport" obviously represents a huge mega-market and I'm looking to see if I can immediately pick off some long-tail gems. You'd be surprised how often this simple little trick works. In fact, I just tried that and found "maclaren quest sport stroller" which fits the SEOT & SEOC guidelines. It has an SEOC matrix that doesn't get me excited except for the fact that it makes me suspect there are real opportunities in the stroller niche. If the 4 minimum gets me nowhere, I back it off to 3 words and try again. I could also start with "sports" instead of "sport" and it would probably take me down different paths of exploration.

So let's say this trick yields 10 phrases that meet the guidelines. I'd open them all in new tabs and go straight to the competition matrix for each of them. If I don't find any winners, I'll take the ones that seem most promising and do keyword research with them, often moving up and down the food chain with Phrase Length to see what I can find.

Moving on... another trick I use is that after I do the initial keyword generation, I don't just immediately go to "Analyze Keywords." Instead, I carefully scan the list and I click on the key symbol of keywords that get my attention to open them in new tabs. These will be words that obviously represent exploitable niches. I don't care what their actual numbers are at this point because I'm still just looking around. I don't want to be so focused on finding my "money words" that I end up ignoring areas that could be golden if I just explored them further (like finding the stroller market while doing sport research).

Once I've done that, I move on to Analyze Keywords. But I don't immediately set the SEOC filter to 30,000 because, again, I'm exploring and some of the keywords may have tons of competition but they may also get a huge number of searches and may represent markets I never knew about. But once I see them, I realize I should explore them further. So while a keyword phrase you find this way may be outside the guidelines, it may represent a market or niche that has opportunities when you drill down further.

After I've picked off those keywords, then I set the 30,000 max filter and see where I'm at.

Besides being a partner with Market Samurai, keyword research is really all about the Babe Ruth factor. If you want to be the king of home runs, you have to be willing to also be the king of strike outs. I don't routinely find killer keywords because I'm especially smart or talented or have tons of experience. I find them because I spend a lot of time working really hard to find them. I've spent hours and hours exploring keywords that seemed like there had to be slam dunk opportunities only to come up empty handed at the end of the day.

Ok, I'm going to give away one of my best "secrets"... be on the lookout for niches that generate zillions of low traffic category keywords and where the people in that niche are fanatics. "Hunting" would be an example of a market like that. There may not be that many guys in one day looking for "night vision rifle sights" but the ones that are, well those guys are money. And if you manage to get them to your hunting site, they won't just stay on your night vision rifle sights page, they'll check out everything you've got, because they're shoppers. If you have 50 pages/posts dedicated to products that bring you 10 guys a day, that's 500 guys a day with money to spend. Car guys are fanatics. Mothers with babies are fanatics. Cosmetics.. oh my goodness, there are so many makeup junkies out there, you wouldn't believe it. Look for fanatics.. they're where the REAL money is.

You don't always have to find the SEOT >1000 and SEOC <20,000 keywords to hit a home run. I much prefer it when I do find those keywords, but not finding them doesn't stop me from making money.

Onward and upward!

how does this compare to finding mirco niches the way anothony teaches?.

Thanks,
Cyberking

[Jeff K USA]

Thanks Dean for that post.
I just started the 30DC, and my hardest challenge is finding micro niches...
I always seem to just find 2 word phrases...

Ironically I noticed earlier you could set phrase length on MS, and tomorrow I was going to test out using that feature to help me with keyword phrases.

It's amazing how when I find or come across something that could be a breakthrough I find a forum post like yours to help me simplify the process which I was about to tackle.

Just wanted to say thanks Dean.