SEO Step By Step Guide: 2. Identifying the Niche Market

In the previous post, we saw that the website optimization for a website should start much before the website is designed. We noted that the process should start along with the business planning.

If you are interested to start an online home based business to generate some secondary source of income, you will be required to launch a website. At this stage, you are likely to have a question in mind, “How is selecting the niche market for one’s business related to SEO?” When it comes to SEO we are interested in dealing with online competition effectively and to increase one’s online visibility. In this broader sense, selecting the right niche market too is part of SEO. When we start discussing this, further you will see a further stronger relationship between the two.

When you are selecting the niche for your business, you must select something that receives lot of search queries in the search engines and at the same time, the number of website in that niche should be relatively lesser when compared to other equally popular niches. You can find the first aspect of keyword popularity from Google Keyword Tool that you will find at: adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. This tool is basically for those who want to launch Adwords campaign but it will still serve our purpose when we are brainstorming for ideas. Another place that we can consider to find the latest search trends is – google.com/trends. You just need to explore the above two pages to get more insights on the topic. You will be able to find the second aspect that is the number of websites online for a particular keyword or phrase which can also be known as keyword competition from the regular search page when you make a search in any of the search engines, you will get the total number of sites that are considered relevant for the search that is made. This number should be less where as the former value should be more.

Secondly, you must select a niche market that is not seasonal because seasonal niches will receive searches only during those seasons. For instance if you are selling products or offering services relating to Christmas, then you will receive traffic only during those seasons. For almost 8 to 9 months, your website’s traffic will be very low. In other words, you will make very little money during other months. So select something that will get you traffic round the year.

The next important point to remember is choosing a niche whose market has great future scope. A classic example here would be niches there were based on Y2K compliance. These businesses did not have any scope after the year 2000. So this is a short-lived market. Only up to a specified time, you will get traffic and after that event, you will be forced to look for a new niche.

As you can see selection of the right niche is closely connected your website’s traffic and hence the success of your business.

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