How Keyword Research Can Help You Find & Dominate Niches
By Carole' Nickerson

eBooks, articles and infoproducts are some of the hottest selling and most requested products online. eBooks are one of the easiest things to sell because they require no shipping & can be accessed within minutes of placing an order. When the ebook boom hit it's peak, they started popping up everywhere and now that marketers have perfected their selling & design tactics, there's no stopping them.

But just as the dust began to settle on the ebook bonanza and pay-per-click search engines bubbled to the surface with keyword data, the word "niche" started infiltrating the internet marketing collective. As more tools became available for researching the search patterns and requests of web surfers, marketers took notice and saw one golden opportunity after another. We now know exactly what people want, and how many people want it.

With laser precision, we can now easily dominate some of the most profitable yet overlooked markets on the web - and there are thousands if not millions. This insight has fueled all kinds of infoproducts and the rush is on to get those ebooks and articles published before someone else steals your thunder!

But if you're still not sure what to write about or haven't been able to figure out the whole niche writing concept yet, then you don't need to look any further than keywords.

Step 1 - Keyword Research

The best tool for this is Wordtracker. I've yet to find another tool which offers such excellent search data. This service will let you see exactly what people are searching for, as well as helping you determine how much competition you might have for a product in the search engines. You can start with an existing topic, or you can go fishing! Since I like to write about all kinds of topics, I enjoy the challenge of locating niches with no competition and then dominating those searches. But how do you "fish" for low-competing keywords?

You have to think in terms of the types of searches performed for information. Here is a list of a few keyword combinations which work well:

- How To

- Learn How

- Learn About

- Information on

- Find info on

- Find info about

These are basic terms you would enter into Wordtracker's "Comprehensive" Search feature which is located in "Keyword Universe". You will end up with numerous results displaying things like "how to make a cool xanga", "how to tie a tie", "how to make paper snowflakes", etc. What is happening is that Wordtracker is using your base keyphrase and filling in the results.

To take this one step further, you can use wildcards to get more unique results, such as:

- How To * New

- Learn * Online

- Info * Dogs

Wordtracker will fill in the * with any number of keyword strings that people are searching for, such as "How to Write a Newspaper Column" and "Info on northern inuit dogs".

Don't assume the results are no good just because the keyword or phrase shows a low count for how many searches are performed. The Wordtracker database uses information from search engines which get peanut traffic compared to Google or MSN. You might be surprised when you take the keyphrase, plug it into Overture and see that while Wordtracker displays only 10 searches within a 120-day period, Overture reports 300 searches every month. It's about percentages and this is probably what a lot of people overlook.

Here's another way of looking at it:

If search engine A gets 2% of all internet traffic, and a keyword in it's database reports 10 requests in a month, but search engine B gets 50% of all internet traffic, then you can assume that the same keyword is actually getting more requests than just 10 searches per month. So with that said, it's important to put keyword reports into perspective by looking at the numbers behind the numbers.

Step 2 - Competition Research

Wordtracker has a great feature which allows you to see which keywords have high and low competition in the search engines. Obviously, you want the low competing phrases for faster, more tangible visibility. It is important to learn how to use this research so that you can use it effectively. Wordtracker offers great tutorials you'll be able to digest in just minutes.

For example, the keyphrase "headache remedy news and information" has only 38 sites competing in Google's index. I would see this as an excellent target because it has many requests and would be easy to dominate. Immediately I see potential for products such as:

- An ebook about headache remedies

- An article about headache remedies (Easy Adsense Revenue)

- A forum, newsletter subscription (Easy Adsense Revenue)

- An intro page to an affiliate program

- All of the above!

Step 3 - Get Busy!

Now that you know how to use basic keyword research to locate niche ideas and dominate search engine results, you gotta get busy and start writing those ebooks and articles. You can choose to do one or both, offer ebooks for free or for sale. It really all depends on the topic you are focusing on. The obvious way to know which format is best is to look at how much content can be realistically written on a topic.

One interesting strategy to consider is writing an ebook or group of articles where your keyphrase and keyword research determines most of the categories. For example, let's say you find 10 great low-competing keyphrases like:

- "How to teach my hamster to fetch"

- "How to get my hamster potty-trained"

- "How to train my hamster to speak Spanish"

- "How to train my hamster to do my taxes"

- etc.

You get the point, right? You're basically just creating categories based on what people want. This way you're reaching a larger audience and getting even more search engine exposure.

Carole Nickerson has been a web developer and internet marketer since 1998. Visit http://web.thenetter.com for more free articles, tips and software.

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