>What are your strategies to pick a niche or market?
>does anybody knows helpful links to articles, resources,
>USEFUL ebboks etc etc?
>Any feedback is highly appreciated! Hey Karsten...
There's many different ways to pick a niche. In theory, you want to do every niche (keyword).
This is what the real big guys do, like Google, Amazon, Yahoo, about.com, wikipedia, etc. They pretty much cover every niche.
While this is probably a little beyond the reach of most of us, it is still a concept we need to understand and exploit, at our own level.
For example, pick a narrow niche like "german shepard". If this is the chosen niche, then every keyword associated with "german shepard" should be persued.
There's (too) many articles on keyword research. But where to begin? And are there other considerations other than just the numbers?
News - Often, a hot topic can drive immense traffic to a site, but for short periods of time. A good squidoo lens about something that's really in the news, then "dug" and submitted to bookmarks can bring more traffic in a few days, than make keywords will all year.
In this case, you pick a niche because the topic is red hot in the news and you think you can monetize/use the traffic.
Keyword Speculation
Even better is what I call "keyword speculation". And this is trying to predict keywords that aren't searched for now, but will be in the future.
A few years ago in the MadBomber forum, I predicted a high school basketball player that no one every heard of would be a popular keyword: Lebron James.
When I suggested "LeBron James" as a keyword years ago, there wasn't a single web site about him. Now, he's one of the most popular/famous atheletes in the world.
I also had "glofish", which didn't work out...But the point is, try to think of topics that may be more popular in the future.
AOL just put out a list of 50 movies for the year 2008. You could start a blog about each, getting some "maturity" by the time the movie are released and become popular keywords.
Create a blog about 10 facts about an upcoming movie. Add a few links over time from your network and when the movie is released, bookmark/dig your blog.
Or, create about a dozen blogs, each one about "President Obama" and "President Huckabee". In about 8-9 months, one out of about 10 people will be the new US president. Do 10 blogs and you've got it covered.
Right now, no one is searching for the exact phrase "President McCain", but in 9 months, a lot of people just may. At that time, who will have the oldest, most mature pages and links?
How about albums/CDs/songs or books or TV shows that haven't been released yet? Or a highly touted high school athelete?
American Idol is about to start a new season. I can promise that of the 50 or so people that are totally unknown and not searched for right now, about 5-6 of them will be among the most searched for keywords in the next few months.
The problem is, typical keyword research only tells us what happens in the past and isn't always a good indicator of of the future.
I promise the finalists of American Idol will have HUGE search numbers in a few months, but all the keyword research tools will show these keywords to have zero traffic.
Resources and skills - Your own resources and skills also should be a factor. If you know a topic and have an interest in it, that's a plus.
Also over-looked by only doing keyword research is what assets to you have access to? Do you have content, web templates and graphics for a niche? This should also factor into any decision about niches.
Where to Sta:
One way to break down and discover niches is to use ODP/DMOZ -
www.dmoz.org
On the first page are the major niches. As you dig down the links, you will find more specific, more narrow niches.
Some niches even cross-over, such as maps, which is in "reference", but could apply to travel and regional, as well.
Arts Movies, Television, Music...
Business Jobs, Real Estate, Investing...
Computers Internet, Software, Hardware...
Games Video Games, RPGs, Gambling...
Health Fitness, Medicine, Alternative...
Home Family, Consumers, Cooking...
Kids and Teens Arts, School Time, Teen Life...
News Media, Newspapers, Weather... Recreation
Travel, Food, Outdoors, Humor...
Reference Maps, Education, Libraries...
Regional US, Canada, UK, Europe...
Science Biology, Psychology, Physics...
Shopping Autos, Clothing, Gifts...
Society People, Religion, Issues...
Sports Baseball, Soccer, Basketball...
According to my theory of SEO/SEM, you'l want to find a niche and keep expanding on that topic.
If you pick german shepards, you'll want to go up and down the ladder=>
Animals <=> Pets <=> Dogs <=> German Shepards <=> Shutzhund German Shepards
German shepards can also cross over into seeing eye dogs (health niche) as well as home protection.
Getting traffic to a medium sized niche can often tell you where to go next...What do your server stats tell you? What keywords are people using to find your site? What comments/questions do they post? Which pages/topics are the most visited?
Of course, you can't dismiss keyword numbers and that type of research is stil essential.
But it's also over-whelming when starting out. I suggest browsing ODP/DMOZ for ideas.
Pick at least two "narrow" niches. Do the numbers keyword research, consider your available content and web graphics, knowledge of the subject, etc. Also, consider moving up and down the keyword niche...
Then, get started. Research is one thing. Actually being productive is another. Merely producing two SEO campaigns about two different niches is also a good way to research.
-Boom boom boom boom.
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