Picking a niche to blog in...

[jonrpatrick]

Hey guys,
I've come a LONG way, and most of it is due to you guys. I appreciate it.
For the new year, I'm planning a new blog, and I'm curious what criteria you use to determine if a niche keyword is something you want to build around.
The goal is a blog that organically generates traffic and ultimately abundant floods of adsense cash.

I'm not asking for keyword suggestions - my intention is to sit in a quiet place (ha!) with my computer and just start brainstorming through the keyword tool and the Wonder Wheel.

But if I find a find a keyword that (say) has 20,000 website hits in a google search for the general term, and the keyword tool has 1000 global searches (and 320 local, whatever that means).... is this worth it?

What boundaries do you set in finding keyword topics? Minimum 5000 searches globally? Less than 200,000 competitors for the general term? A ratio?

Thanks in advance,
JP

[Thomas De]

I would start with minimum 1000 searches if the ppc is high, but in general I try to get 3000. The amount of results is not that important.

I check the onpage SEO of the TOP10 for the particular keyword in google with Market Samurai. You can read in my ebook how it works. If the Top10 is not well optimized I should rank high without big efforts, even if there are 1.000.000 results.

Originally Posted by jonrpatrick

Hey guys,
I've come a LONG way, and most of it is due to you guys. I appreciate it.
For the new year, I'm planning a new blog, and I'm curious what criteria you use to determine if a niche keyword is something you want to build around.
The goal is a blog that organically generates traffic and ultimately abundant floods of adsense cash.

I'm not asking for keyword suggestions - my intention is to sit in a quiet place (ha!) with my computer and just start brainstorming through the keyword tool and the Wonder Wheel.

But if I find a find a keyword that (say) has 20,000 website hits in a google search for the general term, and the keyword tool has 1000 global searches (and 320 local, whatever that means).... is this worth it?

What boundaries do you set in finding keyword topics? Minimum 5000 searches globally? Less than 200,000 competitors for the general term? A ratio?

Thanks in advance,
JP