When you first start looking at potential topics, like we did in the first part of Choosing A Topic For A Website, you are brainstorming and figuring out which topics will actually pay off. That’s the fun part – I honestly love coming up with new ideas and figuring out whether they can make money or not.
Money in a spread sheet is fun and all, but… what good does it do to pick a fancy smancy keyword if you can’t ever get into a position in Google and other search engines where you can get some traffic? I’ve found keywords before that have over 10,000,000 searches per month with super high CPCs. Unfortunately they’re useless because it would take a team of 150 of people to develop a top ranking for them.
Making sure that the competition isn’t too fierce is one of our biggest priorities when we choose a topic for a site. If I’m not 90% sure that I can rank for a keyword, I’m not going to waste my time.
For those of you that are starting out, you need to be especially careful to not choose keywords that are too difficult. I would start with simple niches, get some wins, and then move forward to slightly more difficult niches. Don’t try to play in the majors when you’ve never tried to play tee-ball.
Competitive Analysis
Here are the nuts and bolts of what I’m actually talking about. Step 1 is to do a search in Google for your keyword. Let’s analyze the keyword ‘cell phones’ just to see what we get. Here are the sites that come up on the first page:
What we need to do here is analyze how strong these pages are and make a decision about whether we can compete or not. A solid way to do this is by taking a look at Google’s own method for determining the relative strength of pages – PageRank.
PageRank is a scale (0-10) that can show us how good Google thinks each page online is. If a page is PageRank 10, Google is saying it’s one of the best and strongest pages online. On the other hand, if a page is PageRank 0, we know that Google thinks it’s a weak page.
You can find the PageRank of any page by installing the Google Toolbar for your internet browser and turning on the PageRank feature. The PageRank of each page you visit will then be displayed on the toolbar. You will see a little green bar at the top of your browser and if you hover over that bar it will tell you the PageRank of the page you’re looking at.
A way to short cut this process is to install the SEO For Firefox browser extension. This will help you to look up PageRank directly in Google’s results. If I do the same search with SEO For Firefox turned on, the results will look like this:
All of this extra jazz under each listing is being put there by SEO For Firefox. If we want to see the PR (PageRank) of each page, we click each of the little question marks by the PR under each listing. It will then look like this:
The little 7 next to the ‘PR:’ under the T-Mobile listing means that this particular page is a PR7 page. It would take a very serious campaign to compete with that page. The other pages in the top 4 are PR6, PR5, PR5, and PR4. That’s a boat-load of strength and I would recommend running for the hills. You don’t want to compete for keywords like this until after you have this whole process down.
PR5 pages are incredibly strong pages. PR4 pages are also pretty strong pages. We don’t even want to talk about PR6+.
If you’re starting out, you want to try to find keywords with competition that’s under PR3. I would prefer to see most of you find keywords that are even easier than that. If all you ever did was find keywords with <PR2 competition (they would of course have to have decent potential), you would be doing yourself a huge favor. You can beat PR3s and PR4s but it’s going to take a lot more work – sometimes too much work.
Guys I know that this is a floating scale and each of you has a different level of experience. Some of you have this down and will be able to take on PR4 pages. Others won’t be able to. All of you should start out choosing keywords that are fairly easy and move up the scale after you get some wins. I’m beating out quite a few PR7 pages now but that doesn’t mean it would have been a good idea 4 years ago. I would have lost my mind and would have probably quit.
If you really want to take this process to the next level you can read this lesson: How Many Links Does It Take To Get Ranked #1 In Google? I don’t feel like it’s necessary all of the time, but some of you will get some value out of it. The lesson today can teach you how to choose winners almost all of the time if you’ll just follow the concepts.
What you need to do now is go through the keywords in your spread sheet so you can analyze their competition. If I think I can rank for a keyword, I usually mark it green on my spread sheet. If I can’t rank for a keyword I mark it red. Do it and then you’ll know exactly which keywords to use.
Tags: choosing topics, Keyword Research
I’ve been using SEO for Firefox for a while now, and I can’t pass by a site without checking their links. I think anyone can learn a lot about seo, just by understanding what kinds of links other websites have.
I”m not totally clueless on SEO, but I do have to admit for the most part I haven’t been very smart or productive in my IM experience. I looked at competition, but not as in depth as I should have for the niche I chose. This has caused me grief so I took you up on your ebook call to action.
I’d like to say thanks, i’ve never done the red,yellow,green excel spreadsheet and it saved me months of wasted work on my next niche idea as it is just too competitive for my current experience.
Unfortunately, the topic is something I can write a lot about, and wouldn’t be a waste if I could compete, but on to easier things until I get this down.
Medic if it’s something you can write a lot about maybe you should try to find some longer tail keywords that would work in that industry. Usually there are some but I understand that this isn’t always the case.
Wow, thank you for this. I think this is all coming together for me now.
I appreciate all that you guys do on this site. Trying gout the SEO in Firefox now
Hi,
I’ve got two websites. One does nothing, the other brings in a wee bit of money. I wish I’d known about your blog last year when I first started. I didn’t know the pagerank had anything to do with choosing a niche. I just thought it told you how well you were doing. Thankyou
You guys are on a tear with this stuff. So am I–last weekend I picked out 25 niches with reasonably low competition (nothing higher than PR3). I wanted to stick to niches with competition in the PR2 and PR1 range but those are turning out to be hard to find if the AdSense CPC is decent at all. And yes, I do Excel spreadsheets (although my color scheme is yellow and lavender, lol).
You might want to mention that if you pound away with SEO for Firefox or SEOquake (the one I use, basically the same but the graphics make it easier for me to read) for more than a couple of hours, Google will flag your IP and make you enter a captcha to continue. That happened to me last weekend and it was rather disturbing, although things are back to normal now. I’ve adjusted SEOquake to give me PR only–I don’t need to know Alexa ranking, and I use SEO Elite to evaluate backlinks. I don’t think SEO Elite did it, because I have it set to run slowly.
Thanks again, you guys.
This is a good extension on the first lesson. I have already started this process and have 10 keywords that I’ve marked in my spreadsheet as green. I only started out with 30 ideas, so I am going to continually narrow it down until I get a paycheck that will pay for some domains. I’m hoping middle of next week, by then I should have about 10 really really good keywords narrowed down. Thanks Guys!
Wow, you’re really putting out some posts! I appreciate it and will be back for every single one.
I’ve known about the techniques you described but it sure helps to get it all from one trustworthy source instead of picking up a tip here and there during my Internet wanderings.
Thanks again Court.
What a fantastic article Court! Although most of this is knowledge I already have, I often forget the basics and just jump forwards to find myself competing against several PR4+ site, which ends up taking the amount of time it would have taken to launch 3 ‘easier’ sites and perhaps making more money.
The hardest part, as we all know, is actually ‘guessing’ the niches, from there it’s not rocket science, in fact, from there, by reading all the articles on this site, you will be able to make some decent money.
Thanks again, always a good read!
Christopher
What does it mean when no PR # is displayed and all that is displayed when you click on PR is “-” ??
I’ve noticed that if you run your keyword search a while later, the PR # usually shows up. Is this a bug in the Fire-fox ad-on?
I love your site and analytic way of thinking. I’m raring to get started. I’ve read the Keyword Crash Course 3 times. I’m not scared of the technology and am a hard and determined worker.
However, the keyword brainstorming is making my head spin. I’ve come up with 30-40 keywords but can’t find anything that gives a low PR and a decent search volume. I’m trying to find keyword with at least $1 CPC and 10,000 avg. search volume. I’m scared I’ll give up soon as I’m not making progress. Am I doing this wrong? Am I just not a creative thinker?
If I find a keyword with low PR scores in the top 5 Google results should I go with the keyword even if it has a lower search volume? I know I won’t make much money but at least I’ll start and get some experience. For example, I found a keyword that yielded a CPC of $1.15, volume of 1,000 with the first 5 Google results showing PRs of 0,3,2,5,0. If I could just figure out one keyword, I could get started!
Help!
I am really enjoying this site! I used Court’s keyword sniping technique on my first (and only) site about 8 months ago. I then got lost in information overload, even dipping my toes in PPC. Then my site BLEW up during December. I didn’t make #1, but I am on page 2 and am making a HEALTHY supplement to my income.
I noticed that you did an article marketer wrap up where you evaluated some new products since your suggestion to use article marketer last year.
Could you do the same with keyword research. You were suggesting wordze a while ago. Have you found something better since? What else is out there and is it even worth our money with Google’s keyword tool and wordtrackers gtrends tool (among others).
Thanks a whole bunch (seriously!)
Dave
I’d like to do a testimonial for you as well if you still have that going on.
Dave all you need is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
Court, what about a keyword that shows a site at the #1 position that has a PR of 0, and then the next 3 or 4 sites listed have PR of 3 or 4….how did the PR 0 site get listed first?
For example, Griz’s blog make money online for beginners is google ranked with a 0 but has the #1 position for the search term “make money online”.
That’s very rare and Griz actually has a PR4 site that shows PR0 because of a penalty.
Court – I really enjoy your sites and have read the Keyword Crash Course. When you enter your keyword in quotes into Google to see the PR for the first 4 or 5 sites, do also take into consideration the number of competing sites that contain the exact keyword? I know some other Internet marketers say to look for results that have less than 200,000 or 100,000 competing sites. Do you ignore the number of competing sites for your keyword and just look at the PR of the top 5 sites?
Hey Sydney!! I actually don’t put the keyword in quotes when I do the search – I search how a regular visitor would search.
I honestly could care less about competing sites. If I can beat the first few I can beat them all.
I am glad I read through the comments before posting my question cause Sydney (and Court) both answered it. I did wonder if you put your search in quotes as that is the only difference from all my KW research than yours Court. Are you adament about using “exact match” in Google KW Adwords Tool? I was under the impression phrase match was best…any words on that? And just so we are clear….you don’t find that the actual NUMBER of competition really matters as long as we could beat the top 5 due to their PR rank? Cause I tend to look at going for sites under 40,000….I was kinda trained that way throughout the years…and am interested in another frame of thought..cause it is a daunting area to deal with when researching KWDs.
Thanx….
Court…your blog has relit some fires in my internet marketing firepit that have almost gone out….You are awesome
So, when you put your keyword into Google and pull up the site, you sometimes see a page with a PR0-PR3. Is there any consideration given to the overall strength of the site. Meaning, what if the site that is returned in the results is PR2, but the overall site is PR5? Do you have to analyze this? Also, if the site in the top result is the exact keyword, so, cellphone.com, for example, do you pass on that, thinking it’s probably a niche site? Also, what if you see the same domain ranking for the first 3 spots? What does that indicate?
Hello,
I may have a new niche! I did a Google search and I like the numbers… but the numbers on MSN & Yahoo are much too high. Do I only concern myself with Google? Or do you think Google’s is too high also.
Google – 273,000
Msn – 1,350,000
Yahoo – 7,950,000
Ok…question with regards to Google KW Tool. Do you use only the U.S. for your results or should we be using all countries? I am referring to the country/language option at the top near where you put in the initial KW to analyze.
Thanx
Thanks Court. Never thought of this. PR is essential in SERPs but it is not the only factor in contributing to better SERPs. However, like your say, competing other websites with lesser PR (<3) is a good idea.This makes our website less competitive.
I’ve been using the SEO FIREFOX add-on for several months now, but I never bother to learn how to get the page rank from the report it gives. This post is an eye opener.
I notice that the information it gives is on the exact webpage that we are trying to compete with. That raises a question I will like you to address.
If a website having a homepage that is PR7 is competing for a keyword. But the actual webpage displaying the keyword is still PR0, does that indicate that we can still compete favourably with it for that particular keyword.
What effect will the homepage PR eventually have on the webpage containing the keyword that we are competing for.
I’ve been avidly reading this site and others since stumbling onto it and I can say its a breath of fresh air to actually be talked through the details of how things are done. I have a few ideas that I am thinking of trying. The main question i have is do you only use the above ways of defining which keywords to go after? I say this because a lot of people are pushing costly software to do this i.e micronichefinder/market samurai etc.
Is it enough to use google keyword tool with PR feature and then feed info into wordtracker for KEI analysis?
Also is it worth going for a niche where most 1st google page results are shopfront sites? To show what i mean if I went for the keyword flat back shoelaces, the first page results show shops selling shoelaces,does an adsense site with reviews,writeups on this subject rank well and bring clickthrus?
Hello Mark and Court!
You know what? I don’t know how to address you! I’ll write Mark and Court unless it matters one way or another…let me know!
This stuff you teach…it’s awesome to use an overused term.
I’m actually “getting it” now.
Now all I have to do is translate getting it into doing it and getting it right.
Thank you so much,
Riley West
Hi there I did a search for the SEO For Firefox browser extension and it came up with a few results but I can’t seem to find the exact one you use. Can you please help me with that?
Thank you so much for your great articles and ideas!!