Methods for finding the right niche and KW (8)

Hi All,

I would love to hear your methods of finding the right niche for your affiliate site and finding the right KW to promote.
I'm starting SEO and would very much appreciate help on this matter.

Thanks

I've had this thread open in my browser for many days now - but each time I read this again, don't know where to begin to answer.

It's a very, very general question that you've asked. We need to narrow things down a bit.

When it comes to niche-selection for SEO, It's all about finding something that is broad enough to have decent search volume, while not so broad that competition is too high.

I haven't done SEO for at least 2-3 years now - a ton must have changed - but we must have some SEO experts here on this forum. Let's get a discussion going and hopefully they'll chime in with their wisdom!



Amy

For niche it's really just what you're willing to do... no wrong answers other than niches that cannot make money. So I'd say find a niche that you know has products with affiliate programs you can monetize.

The idea of a niche is also kinda generic... it can be a small niche(ie. bed sheets & pillow covers) or it can be a larger niche(ie. bedroom stuff) or it can be huge(ie. literally everything related to a house).

So with picking a niche there is no right way to do it. Find something that you think could earn money and try it out. Study competition, sure, but if you can beat them with better content/links then competition doesn't matter a whole lot. The "right" niche is whatever you're willing to try that might earn money.

For finding the right KW that's also kind of a strange question. You should not be targeting just one keyword. You should have a list of KWs you wanna target. Your site should ultimately try to become semi-authoritative in the niche.

Think about how WPBeginner is a huge asset to anyone learning WordPress... it's an authority on the subject through-and-through. It also has affiliate links. But that's not it's sole purpose--you want to find a similar way of doing keyword research. Target some KWs geared towards selling products like reviews, best ofs(ie. best satin bedsheets), or product comparisons. But also target KWs that are just informational where you're answering questions or writing a listicle of resources or something like that.

Sorry if this is a bit rambly but your initial questions are a bit vague so they're tough to answer. My highlights:

- There is no right niche. Just find something that could potentially make money and try it out. Study competition to see if you're going up against any behemoths, but even the big guys are overlooking smaller KWs you can target... which brings us to the 2nd part of your question:

- There is no single "right" KW you should target. Each post you write should target a different KW, and you should definitely be writing a lot of posts(or hiring writers to do so). This means you'll be targeting hundreds of different KWs across all your articles, none of them are right or wrong. They all add to your website's authority and should ideally help you rank for a wide range of KWs all related to your niche.

Oh I don't think I answered your question about methods doing this stuff, lemme share what I can on that. Everyone has their own methods so it's best to adapt your own.

For niche selection just brainstorm ideas. I'll think about different products and how they revolve around a niche... for example a camcorder could be an A/V niche site or an electronics site. Or I could do a site more about video editing by reviewing software & digital courses to learn After Effects, Premiere, etc. With the niche I start with a general idea of the audience and the product(s) they might want. Then I search various KWs related to that niche in Google, glance over competition and see if I could write better/more in-depth content & outrank.

You might also just keep a notepad and jot down ideas. Just random products, jot em down. Then try to connect a niche later. You can go super small or crazy large, really doesn't matter.

Methods for KW research mostly involve spying with tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. I'll think of a product and punch an affiliate-targeted search into Google. For example "best camcorder under $200" or something like that.

Then I'll list all the sites that are clear affiliate sites and spy on them in Ahrefs/SEMrush. See which of their posts rank the best, which KWs they're targeting, and specifically which product-type keywords they're targeting. Usually this means searching through each website's posts for two specific words: "review" and "best". These are generally the types of posts that can earn the most so I'll try to single those out and get ideas for products I could write about.

Granted this is only one part of how I research KWs because there are so many different ways to gather ideas. Forums, Quora, Reddit, Twitter, and tools like BuzzSumo can all be useful in researching topics to write about.

But looking through other similar sites that you want to emulate will get you plenty of KW ideas to target.

Originally Posted by thepinkcat

Oh I don't think I answered your question about methods doing this stuff, lemme share what I can on that. Everyone has their own methods so it's best to adapt your own.

For niche selection just brainstorm ideas. I'll think about different products and how they revolve around a niche... for example a camcorder could be an A/V niche site or an electronics site. Or I could do a site more about video editing by reviewing software & digital courses to learn After Effects, Premiere, etc. With the niche I start with a general idea of the audience and the product(s) they might want. Then I search various KWs related to that niche in Google, glance over competition and see if I could write better/more in-depth content & outrank.

You might also just keep a notepad and jot down ideas. Just random products, jot em down. Then try to connect a niche later. You can go super small or crazy large, really doesn't matter.

Methods for KW research mostly involve spying with tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. I'll think of a product and punch an affiliate-targeted search into Google. For example "best camcorder under $200" or something like that.

Then I'll list all the sites that are clear affiliate sites and spy on them in Ahrefs/SEMrush. See which of their posts rank the best, which KWs they're targeting, and specifically which product-type keywords they're targeting. Usually this means searching through each website's posts for two specific words: "review" and "best". These are generally the types of posts that can earn the most so I'll try to single those out and get ideas for products I could write about.

Granted this is only one part of how I research KWs because there are so many different ways to gather ideas. Forums, Quora, Reddit, Twitter, and tools like BuzzSumo can all be useful in researching topics to write about.

But looking through other similar sites that you want to emulate will get you plenty of KW ideas to target.

Woot woot @thepinkcat! Lots of valuable advice there - thank you for taking the time to organize your thoughts!



Amy

Re: writers, I usually scour Upwork but it takes a lot of effort to find good ones there.

Problogger Job Board is another place to try although if you want quality writing you need to pay well for it.

Another option is to add a page to your site like "write for us" explaining that you're willing to pay for writers & include your stipulations for people interested. This method isn't proactive but you never know when someone knowledgeable in your niche might find your site & be interested to write for you.

Lots of awesome points from thepinkcat !

Let me also chime in a bit, since I've been doing SEO for years

When choosing keywords to target, I found there are basically two types of KW you can focus on in your articles/posts ... either traffic keywords and money keywords. The first one can bring you lot's of visits, the other ones will actually make you money.

Let's use an example based on the niches thepinkcat suggested in his first post : bed sheets & pillow covers, bedroom stuff and everything related to house.

Technically you can use all of these niches on one site, house related stuff can be the general niche of the whole site, bedroom stuff can be one of the sections and sheets & covers can be an article withing the bedroom section.

Let's name your site allabouthouse.com - the titles, main metas and intro text can be about fine living in general, aimed of home owners of all kinds and shapes ... this main theme can help you rank for these generic terms, it will bring you lots of visits if you manage to rank them, but this traffic will be quite hard to monetize ... because what are you gonna sell them? There are so many things that home owners might be interested in ... it's hard to target it.

Then you can have sections based on the different areas of a house : bedroom stuff, bathroom stuff ... now we are going more niche and it will be also easier to offer the visitors something they might be interested into. These keywords can still bring enough visits, less than the general home owners kws, but their profitability will increase.

And then we enter the specifics like bedroom pillow sheets and covers ... these are longtail keywords with low search volume, but these are the true money makers. This about article titles like : "How to pick bed sheets?", "Bedroom pillows reviews", "Bed sheets for allergic kids" ... There are the keywords that can yield insane results even with Adsense ads.

So, like thepinkcat already mentioned ... it's not about picking one keyword or niche, treat it like a tree structure ... chose one main niche or vertical and go more and more detailed as you move down the tree, all the way to extremely specific long tail keywords that you will use as article titles ... you also don't need to focus on one KW in an article, simply use it as the main theme of the article and write about it, which will result in a natural re-appearance of the KW throughout the text.