Keyword search – Selecting a website concept /theme.
Choosing a concept/theme based upon a Keyword search for you website is probably the most important step in the planning process. Choosing the right concept can be the difference between something you love and just another daily chore. There are several keys to selecting your concept.
First, your concept should be something that you are passionate about. It should be something that you are interested in and you that can see your self developing an expertise in.
Secondly, your concept should preferably be in a niche where there is good demand and not too much competition. We will talk a little later about the supply and demand factors.
What is a keyword, how does a keyword search work? How do I define my niche/concept?
A keyword is a term or phrase that you or I enter into a search
engine like Google when searching for something on the internet.
It can
also be the central topic, or sub topic upon which the content for your
website is developed.
If I am searching the internet for topical content, I will find it by searching a keyword or group of keywords. The keyword that defines you niche will become your websites concept/theme. Lets’ call this keyword your master keyword.
Your niche is a special area of demand within a larger (broad)
concept or theme for a product/service. What we are trying to do is set
up a niche within a broad concept or theme. Niche markets are
preferred
due to the highly competitive nature of broad topics.
The process of building your website will involve creating topical content pages, all related to and supportive of your niche.
Remember, to attract visitors to your site, we need to supply a
product or content. Both product and content rich information is found
by the internet user via a keyword search.
So, what this tells us is that in order for a search engine to connect us with the customer we need to embed logical keywords within our website. This is where our keyword search comes in to play. When our keyword rich content matches a search engine user's request, bang... we have a visitor.
Keyword - demand
With a concept in mind, we now move on to the research part.
We want
to determine viability. By this I mean, is there demand for this
content? You don’t want to create a website on a topic that no
one is
looking for. That would be awful.
One of the better tools that I have found for keyword research is the Google adwords keyword tool. (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). Let’s create a small keyword search example.
Suppose you love exercise. It could be that you are very
knowledgeable about this subject or you just find it very
interesting. You now want to create a website related to
“exercise”. If your topic
is very broad, which exercise is, it will be tough to cover the subject
matter effectively. We will need to find a niche within this
topic.
One in which there is demand and not too much competition. Open your Google keyword tool, choose your keyword, and remember for this example “exercise” is your topic. Enter your keyword and Click “Get Keyword ideas”.
Once your keyword search query returns data, click on the column heading “Local Search volume” to sort from highest to lowest. For “exercise” the monthly search volume is in the millions, huge! This topic would have been too broad. Click on the “Choose columns to display” box and select show all. Notice the columns labeled “Estimated avg CPC” and “Advertiser competition” These are important in helping you determine the profitability of the content for your website. CPC gives you an idea of what advertising using that keyword costs.
Now, moving on, we need to narrow down your concept to something which has good advertiser competition, high avg CPC, something that interests you and something which has local volume which is more manageable. Just so you get a better feel of how Keyword research works, make sure you click on all the “?” on the Google keyword tool page. You should see a “?” over each column.
It really depends on your topic but try to find volumes somewhere between 40,000 -250,000. Now, these numbers are not written in stone but should be helpful as a guide. The local volume search numbers represent the demand for those keywords
Based on my keyword search return list at the time of this writing I would have chosen “home exercise” as the site’s overall concept/niche. Home exercise had a volume of 201,000. CPC was $2.28. Home exercise as the overall concept/theme could have been easily supported by sub topics such as, aerobic exercise, abs exercise, stretching exercise, arm exercise etc (all exercises that you can do in your home, of course)... Two other notes.
1. Don’t forget to go back and use your newly chosen niche keyword in a separate search. You should be able to locate additional sub category support keywords.
2. Don’t forget to perform your searches with “use synonyms “ box both checked and unchecked. You may find some additional jewels. In the unchecked mode it is similar horizontal search, i.e. all results should contain the searched keyword.
Keyword - Supply
Finally, let’s talk about keyword search/supply. We have an
idea about demand
using
our keyword search tool; now what about supply (the competition).
The
best way to get an idea on supply is to go to the search engines and
search your niche/master keyword. Pay attention to the results.
This
represents the supply.
Obviously if there is Amazon type competitor out there that provides the exact same product or service as your site, you would face strong competition. However if competition is fairly evenly distributed and you can differentiate your product, you might still consider it.
