micro niche marketing - just need a small bit of help

10 replies
Hello all,

I'm getting addicted to this, I now find myself watching tv or listening to the radio and writing down keywords to research!

Anyway, I have now made 2 sites, both are pretty rubbish but I know they are my way of learning so I don't mind too much.

I have decided that I want to pick a product to advertise for Christmas and I am going to try the long tailed keyword approach but I am a getting myself a bit confused and I was hoping for some help.

So I look up my keyword phrase, lets say "red suit that belonged to santa" and google keyword tool tells me that there is a 15,000 global search volume and it's worth £0.40 with adwords.

I search for the exact phrase in google and the top 10 websites that come up are amazon, ciao, comparprices, doyoo etc. are my chances of getting to the top of that list slim?

the domain red-suit-that-belonged-to-santa is available.

my other question is about the marketing of the site and the backlinks. My two attempts so far have been more informational sites on a subject, I have a few amazon product links that are related and I have adwords running as well, these sites make a few pounds each day but really just about cover the cost of hosting and the price of purchasing the domain names.

I understand that to try and increase traffic to a information site people are going to want more articles and information but how are you supposed to write four 500 word articles and produce 5 or 6 pages if all you are really doing on a long tail micro niche site is providing a page with a picture of the product, information, maybe a few reviews and a list of the best prices.

I'm probably totally missing something here and I am maybe trying to run before I can walk but I was hoping that someone could help me out.

I did some sums and if the google keyword tool is right, this product could be a nice earner for the next couple of months.

thanks in advance
#bit #long tail #marketing #micro #niche #small
  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    I think you need to think more about becoming an authority first in a small area, and then expanding to other small areas. Your overall plan should be big, but building small areas, creating interrelationships through internal links, and then ever growing into larger areas would be a plan that most people who are successful would implement. Katamari Technique is one way to describe it, and Matt Cutts did an interesting video about it. So at least in my opinion, micro niches would be a starting point, not a goal. What you are going to find if you manage your growth properly is you will end up getting traffic for other micro niches that you would not have even thought about, and it just ends up happening naturally.
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    • Profile picture of the author reillymary56
      I watched the katamari video and I found it very interesting, I had never thought about it like that.

      The thing with this technique though is that you would have to constantly be aiming at niche sites in related topics, is that right? so that you can build up your reputation and links under the general topic that you are aiming to break into.

      I read on the forums though that some people will pick a specific product with maybe a 6 keyword phrase, make a website on it and start earning maybe 7% commission on a £500 item and this is only their 2nd or 3rd website, so they don't have their own network of sites to link from.

      How do these people get the traffic to their sites that are only dealing with one product? Do they still have to write multiple articles etc.? I was reading a post earlier today and someone was talking about a 4 slice chrome toaster as a niche site, there is only so much you can write about something like that, and I don't think there are too many forums about toasters.

      Thanks for the reply, and the link
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      • Profile picture of the author wordwizard
        I would suppose some mix of PPC advertising and SEO and maybe article marketing too would do it...

        They may also have other related sites that feature other kinds of toasters and then satelite sites that have the specific toasters...
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  • Profile picture of the author Ken Durham
    A few tips:
    For that specific phrase you could probably have top billing within a month if not sooner depending upon your on site SEO imho.

    Try this in your Google search
    intitle: "red suit that belonged to santa"
    This returns sites that have the phrase in their title. Your title is an important fist step when SEO'ing a page.

    Note that No One has this in their title. (a good sign this phrase May be easy to rank for)
    Also most sites that are returned on the original phrase are informational sites about how santa got his red suit. I have found that these are most often good signs and easy to overtake. Even the appearance of Amazon can be a good indicator. They seldom concentrate on individual products and are usually fairly easy to overtake.

    The only times I have ever had anyone find my site via Google by searching in quotes has been competitors. I don't think many people search using quotes do they?

    When checking competitors backlinks check them for the specific pages that compete against you, not just the domain. If you check just the domain the millions of backlinks to Amazon will make you give up in despair

    As for content, when you run out of ideas for content it is time to outsource. Someone will come up with unique ideas for repeated content for you.

    The best of luck to you!
    Ken
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    • Profile picture of the author reillymary56
      Thanks for all the replies.

      The importance of the domain name/url was mentioned and I meant to ask about this. Do the keywords have to be part of the actual domain name i.e.
      www dot this-is-the-long-tailed-keyword-phrase dot com or can it be as a page of a different domain e.g. www dot mydomain dot com/this-is-the-long-tailed-keyword-phrase

      The phrase that I am currently researching appears as the exact phrase but only as the page of a site, like www dot amazon dot com/this-is-the-long-tailed-keyword-phrase

      (just realised, I can't post urls!)

      If there is no difference in how google ranks the two then the obvious attraction is that I can purchase a generic closely related domain url and just create pages for each product.

      I'm assuming there is a difference though?
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  • Profile picture of the author InitialEffort
    I always start by finding a niche and seeing if the domain is available, so you have step one done. But now you need to see if the exact search volume is there. Is it worth building a website for 50 visitor search volume per month....probably not.

    After you develop quality content, you need to figure out how to drive traffic. Will you use CPC, SEs, Article Marketing etc? Also how will you build quality backlinks. Building backlinks is half the game, you need to figure a method that you can tolerate. I am a person who hates building backlinks.

    Once you get visitors to your site you need to make them convert. It's much easier to convert adsense clicks over affiliate sales. So I would recommend starting there.
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  • Profile picture of the author InitialEffort
    I don't buy hyphen domain names unless I absolutely have to. In micro niches, I would just move on to a new keyword phrase.

    I looked through my list of domains I own and less than 5% are hyphens.
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    • Profile picture of the author reillymary56
      Originally Posted by InitialEffort View Post

      I don't buy hyphen domain names unless I absolutely have to. In micro niches, I would just move on to a new keyword phrase.

      I looked through my list of domains I own and less than 5% are hyphens.
      why no hyphens?

      I thought that buying a hyphened name would make it easier for the potential user to read and therefore increases the chances of them clicking on it, especially if it is a long phrase/domain name?

      I have specifically looking for hyphened names because of this, is this something else I need to change?
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  • Profile picture of the author InitialEffort
    Well I used to buy hyphenated domains until I noticed they just were not ranking well. I had one fall from Yahoo's #1 spot to #30 for a keyword I had ranked for 3 years on. I'm not the Google SEO Guru though. I try to make websites rank for both Yahoo and Google.
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    • Profile picture of the author reillymary56
      I have just been reading other posts and I came across something that is related to domain names that I was wondering if you could help me with.

      From what I have read so far people will decide on a product that they think is going to sell, right down to the model number, so that they can get people specifically looking for that product. The other benefit of this is that because they are being specific they are more likely to purchase and then we get the commission.

      So just for argument sake say I was going to promote an lg 32ld450 tv. It was my understanding that the general practice would be to create a website called www dot lg32ld450tv dot com (or whatever the best version of those keywords would be), but I am reading that companies are suing over trade marks or demanding that domains be transferred to their name.

      If this is the case then how do you create a niche website based on specific keywords? If you are marketing a product the keywords will, more than likely be the product and model. I'm getting more confused!

      I as going to use apple ipod 16gb as an example but I am guessing Steve would have the dogs set on you before you could say iphone4g.
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