Stop Doing Stupid Niche Research

Dude what a great article.
i love the title and it really makes me wonder how many times we approach things in the wrong way

Thx!

At one time they will run out of animal names to name the updates.

Thanks so much for sharing. It looks great.

Hi Sparrow,

Incredibly interesting read buddy.

Honestly; makes sense too on many levels. Brands are vetted already in many ways, so Google follows the billions, and brands get some serious rank on the Big G.

I actually recall lowly little Blogging From Paradise beating Forbes for "how to submit a guest post" years ago on page 1, position 3 on Google. Falling in love with the process of creating helpful content, getting sweet links in and seeing an initial surge of traffic to my site were all huge factors; the initial surge courtesy of my tribe, which I built up over years.

If you aren't a massive corporation, fall madly in love with the process of creating and connecting. That is the #1 weapon we have in our arsenal; the process, as you mention in the post.

Thanks for the interesting share.

Ryan

In short: Don't focus on keywords, deliver great content.

"Just about every technique for marketing works the downside is that it is only one part of the puzzle. You must have a strategy to win in this game of marketing."

Absolutely. When you tell them about something that could help them in their online business, all they ask is "Will that make me money?" and my answer is "Not THAT in particular, but it will help." You don't buy a bookkeeping software and ask "Will this help me to make more money?" So many people are looking for the quick buck, which is why most of them won't make any money at all...

It's about building a sustainable long-term business.

Excellent! Thanks for sharing! I was aware that Google constantly changes their algorithm, but this I did not know This shows that we cannot rely on Google on traffic. The more streams of traffic you can get to your site, the better. Diversifying traffic is important.

Sparrow I am probably putting my foot in it given this seems to get the approval of Warrior forum but

Where the evidence? (moderators: I'm assuming since this is in the forum section that it is open to discussion. If not just remove the post. no harm. no foul)

the only thing I saw in your piece was some personal research and your conclusions from it stated as fact. Theres an old saying that applies to SEO. Correlation doesn't equal causation. Perhaps you are right but perhaps not.

What makes people read stuff like this and jump up and say - "Aha!. Eureka! great article!". Is that brands do rank all the time in Google. There is a correlation BUT

Brands do tend to have MEGA links and they do get linked to from generally better and more authoritative sites

So the brand aspect skews the causation. Is it the brand for being a brand or is it that brands get better links?

Some of us have outranked Brands. Its not easy but thats due again to links and authority. Conspiracy thoeries are great complete with knowledge of secret meanings. I love a good JFK like theory myself but for SEO I just need a little bit more evidence. All experienced SEOs do research and for SEOs that have been in this section for years we have all seen people say their research reveals something that isn't really so.

I'd be curious to know how you isolated the brands from the links that brands get. In solid scientific research you have to take precautions to isolate the particular thing you are testing so that other factors unrelated (in this case links and link authority) do not skew the results.

Thats not to deny Google hasn't favored sites based on authority that might not even be reflected by links. Wikipedia is an example. Many pages rank without the kinds of links normally needed but for all we know Wikipedia is a seed site for pagerank. That doesn't make a blanket alleged "vincent update" a real brand thing.

Just saying i'd like to see a good deal more evidence.

Keyword planners data has always been off. Most pro SEOs have known this for many years. Still its not completely useless. Its plain wrong many times but as many adwords users will attest its comparatively right a lot of times too(not in specific numbers of searches but which terms get more traffic than others). I see no reason to denigrate a SEO for using it or teaching others to use it. You just need to point out its not perfect. Sometimes I run an adwords capaign to get a better feel for the term's real numbers.

Mike you have some valid points, unfortunately the details you are looking for are way beyond the scope of this article, but I will try my best to answer your questions

I did mention in the original article I had to cut this short I had a lot more to say

What makes people read stuff like this and jump up and say - "Aha!. Eureka! great article!". Is that brands do rank all the time in Google. There is a correlation BUT

No I did not say Brands rank all the time, Brands rank for certain keyword groups and less than others.

I use Moz's domain authority to determine the differences between authority. I use this because it is the only metric that is consistent. Is it perfect of course not, but I have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Until I find a better metric I will use this because multiple factors are considered when assembling the numbers like links, age, etc...

The chart I display is fairly consistent for the results I see day in and day out about 70% of all the keywords are brand dominated for page one results.

I just did a new study using just buyer keywords and products that amazon affliates sell to see how it played out and I saw similar results it's not to say that certain areas brands are almost non existent . More than likely it's the other 30% of the results in the chart, I chose random samples to get a cross section.

Brands do tend to have MEGA links and they do get linked to from generally better and more authoritative sites

So the brand aspect skews the causation. Is it the brand for being a brand or is it that brands get better links?

I don't think you can separate the two, to be considered a big brand, because if it was just an link issue then everyone would be sprinting to accumulate links to be considered a brand

Some of us have outranked Brands. Its not easy but thats due again to links and authority.

This I know is not true I see this all the time keywords dominated by brands in my charts many times all red signifying brands and in the #1 postion is a low domain authority website.

Upon inspection generally the low domain authority website has more relevant content, I will speak more about this further down.

Conspiracy thoeries are great complete with knowledge of secret meanings. I love a good JFK like theory myself but for SEO I just need a little bit more evidence.

This is no conspiracy theory, I suspect you did not research the history around Vincent's Change, because it's a fact it is what it is and why it was created.

All experienced SEOs do research and for SEOs that have been in this section for years we have all seen people say their research reveals something that isn't really so.

I am an experience SEO I have been doing this since the inception of the internet and I have seen just about every trick in the book including some I will never release.

I come up with this method as a result of having over 10 million pages and most of them on page one for huge head keywords all the big keywords in insurance, real estate, grants the list goes on.

When I started to lose top positions this is when I started to investigate why this was happening on mass. Strangely enough a year later the internet lit up with how Brands were dominating the results after Ad-age broke the story.

Please look up the history of this it's all there.

I'd be curious to know how you isolated the brands from the links that brands get. In solid scientific research you have to take precautions to isolate the particular thing you are testing so that other factors unrelated (in this case links and link authority) do not skew the results.

You cannot isolate brands and links they are inherently the same, you may do this for lower authority sites, but overall as I said previous it's not a link race and your pointing to it is.

Thats not to deny Google hasn't favored sites based on authority that might not even be reflected by links. Wikipedia is an example. Many pages rank without the kinds of links normally needed but for all we know Wikipedia is a seed site for pagerank. That doesn't make a blanket alleged "vincent update" a real brand thing.

At the moment you may not be aware there is some very scientific testing going on about why wikipedia ranks the way it does. The results are using the scientific method of isolating many factors and show that several internal links are equal to one external link. A lot more is going on than what I point to in this article that goes way beyond the scope of this article.

Just saying i'd like to see a good deal more evidence.

Unfortunately this was beyond the scope of this article, but below I will try to show you some of the evidence uncovered by my testing.

Keyword planners data has always been off. Most pro SEOs have known this for many years. Still its not completely useless. Its plain wrong many times but as many adwords users will attest its comparatively right a lot of times too(not in specific numbers of searches but which terms get more traffic than others). I see no reason to denigrate a SEO for using it or teaching others to use it. You just need to point out its not perfect. Sometimes I run an adwords capaign to get a better feel for the term's real numbers.

I remember having a discussion in another thread with you if my recollection is correct and the best we could do is agree to disagree.

Let me reveal what my experience is with keyword planner and in addition to another very well known marketer.

I was hired by several PPC guys their budget was over a million per month on ad spending to rank their websites on page one to make a comparison about traffic to organic vs PPC.

I specifically ask them their thoughts about keyword planner they kind of laughed at me pointing they don't use keyword planner it doesn't contain the correct data instead they are assigned representatives to walk them through the keywords that are important in addition how to craft their ads to get the most of the traffic

The other marketer had diner with his client and the Google representatives and experienced the same. Unfortunately since you are demanding proof I cannot verify this but it is what it is nothing I can do about this.

The other experience I have is the traffic as you point out can be unreliable that is true some keywords are better than others. My best traffic came from keywords with almost non existent statistics from Google so we partially agree there on the search volumes.

My pet peeve with keyword planner search volumes is people don't understand what we both know to be true and they take the search volumes literally, so my approach is different don't use them at all and look at actual results to see who is competing on page one. Search volume numbers mean nothing if the competition is unrealistic period.

If your teaching individuals to use search volumes in my opinion your doing that individual a disservice without explaining the nuances of the whole story.

Today the name of the game in search is topic driven not keyword driven, we both know many times articles are ranking on page one without the keywords but the article is topic relevant. So why bother with search volumes just put some great content out there add value.

Now for the proof you requested, I've been doing this for over 10 years and it gets complicated because it requires large amounts of data to see how the search engine behaves, otherwise the data can be skewed if your only looking in certain areas.

I have many charts and data to show for now I am going to show one.

wifi lightbulbs

I chose this because I found an article about smart homes are the up and coming thing for affiliates to sell items. What I found this was going to be a very difficult niche to break in.

Here is what the chart looks like, 50 buyer keywords and only one that had an average page one value less than a 60 DA


Next is some data I collect

I collect all the URLs, Page Counts, URL Counts, ADs, individual DA, Average DA for the page, Position on page one, and site types


In this image out of the 50 buyer keywords 2 sites have a number one position on page one one site has 2 number one positions keep in mind they are competing against sites with DA's 60 and above

Next image


This image is to show you the actual page one results, I see two websites on page one for a keyword that has stiff competition

Take a look at page count, this website is on page one for 48 keywords out of 50 keywords
this is one article ranking for multiple keywords, this is what I mean the search results are topic driven and not keyword driven.

The article does not have all the 50 buyer keywords in it but still ranks for them, these are actual results of what page one looks like.

Next image


This is the other keyword showing a low DA website out ranking stiff competition

I see stuff like this all the time but they are the exceptions

Are they ranking because of links and authority I don't think so because of their low DA values they don't have any where near the links of the much higher DA values Brands in most cases

My point is I've done this for millions of keywords. In addition I have checked link profiles and I have software that tears apart the content to see if there is some evidence it is on page SEO, what I found this is not the case no correlation of on page SEO

I uploaded another image of a golf product that all 50 buyer keywords are less than 40 in most cases the sites are much easy to dethrone on page one unless they have superior content


This product sells between $200 up to $1000 and the brands don't dominate it.

I would love to find many products like this it's what you call a unicorn.



I uploaded this to show a niche in general the charts typically look like this for how brands dominate. My point to all of this is that you need to know what the actual search results look like if you want to have page one results with the least work.

I haven't even touch how Rank Brain factors into all of this. I have historical charts to show that show almost 100% red and then when RankBrain came on full time the charts started to show much lower DA values showing up.

Showing all the evidence Mike is really beyond the scope of this article and I invite you to take me up on checking out what I have. I have a youtube channel showing the early days of many brands on page one with just images no text on page one not long after Vincents Change took hold.

I've done this research over millions and millions of keywords with automated software actually I'm closing in almost a billion keywords so Mike unless you have something to compare why this is not so I stand on Vincent's Change controls alot of the results sites with a Moz DA value greater than 60 dominate the results.

I know someone is going to say but DA values is not part of Google's algorithm and it is not.

Today we don't know what they use they killed Page Rank so the only thing is look at the results and use some metric.

One last thing in all the graphs and data

I track all the ad counts your absolutely right some keywords might do better than others because the data shows which keywords have the ads

I hope this clarifies things to some extent and I am still learning what all the data means so I don't know it all, but the search results speak for themselves.

One last thought what I also found it is all Niche dependent some heavily spammed niches Google really holds tight reins on their results while others they don't. I have test sites up that I break all the rules and still on page one. Most of them no on page SEO at all on purpose and still they dominate for particular niches.

It's a lot more complex than just show me the evidence because of all the buts and ifs.

Ed

Mike....

the purpose of Learn is exactly what is going on here...
the fact that you don't agree with the Article, it's 100% perfect and that is the main goal

Our job in Warrior is not to promote the content we believe is 100% THE TRUTH ABOUT SEO... but I think his article has extremely valuable points, it's well written, and he is willing to support his claims... and in my books, that wins a lot of brownie points.

And for me this conversation that is happening here, is the evidence that that type of content needs to be published and discussed.

I made my point in the other post that I recommend people to participate and comment in posts, 100% the way you do it.

So I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear. I was posting about the same topic (articles/opinion) in 2 posts at the same time

Hi Gabriel,

What has happened to this forum?

Why are we seeing ads for the the Learn "Blog" where we used to see forum discussions? Is this the new format?

Back when the forum was vibrant we would have seen people getting infractions for this type of discussion killing practice.

I had to read the whole thread to find out what the "article" was about.

I don't agree with Mike that often but I have to admit he has made some astute observations about this article.

I was considering clicking away from the forum to read the article, but when I got to the part of the discussion that cited "domain authority" as the premise of the article i thought I wouldn't waste my time. That stuff is pure Cargo Cult in my opinion. Rand Fishkin has gone public about it being a made up metric, not an actual valid ranking signal, just something that people want to believe in without any empirical evidence that it even exists.

Anyway, my main point is that it would be nice if we could not have forum posts that are purely advertisements. I think these posts that are quite obvious advertisements for the blog will drive away people that were looking to participate in forum discussions.

If the new goal of the Warrior Forum is to drive people away from the actual forum and onto the Articles, that's okay, just let us know so that we don't end up blasting people for posting advertisements in the discussion forums.

Kind Regards,

Don Burk

in fairness some sites rank for any bloody keyword just based on DA and PA with very little relevancy ....

Great article, man!

Look folks I was invited to share what I do.

What I showed works for me to view the actual search results instead on relying on other methods.

If you don't agree then this is not for you.

We all know every metric has some positives and negatives and I make no bones about it. I said multiple times DA value of moz is not perfect until something better comes along I'm using it because it tells a story in my opinion that many are missing and valuable.

Since the beginning of time people who think different encounter individuals who work on discrediting the ones who dare to think different. If you're in that ballpark continue doing what you do it works for you, but no need to force your opinions on those that dare to think different and this works for me for the past 10 years.

The answer to all of this if you don't agree this article is not for you.

I was invited here to share and I did. I can't please everyone, my apologies if your expectations was not met.

On the other hand I work with frustrated hard working individuals at the end looking to give up, because they can't work with SEO and Google as it is today. This method has given results to those individuals that now get page one results and see their business growing.

Just because you disagree does not mean it does not work, this is why we have freedom to choose.

My method is to evaluate the search results using Moz's Domain Authority Value. It is about look before you jump into any niche what is happening on page one of Google.

SEO in a granular sense is not, it's about working from within websites what their on page factors and off page factors are. It's too technical for most and the reason many have such a hard time ranking on page one of Google.

I look at it different and the point to this whole article is it's no different if you were doing a brick and mortar business the old fashion way.

You look at location, location location. This is what I do look at the search results the real estate.

You don't start a brick and mortar business by walking into a business and ask to see their books it's not whats been happening since the beginning of time. This is what happens with pure SEO in my opinion this is what people have forgotten to do look at the real estate first(Google).

My method is about that and if your debating about SEO technicalities you missed the whole point to this article.

Gabriel thanks for the opportunity to share what I do.

That's a great researched data. Keep up the good work Sparrow.

Here is several links to Vincent's Change

Unless you know what your looking for its harder and harder to find these days
I had to follow multiple links to find resources when the internet was lit up about this change

I even have a video that Matt Cutts made about this verifying the change as always Matt diffused the situation and only called it a change

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/...rithm-history/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/.../vince-update/
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3854121.htm
https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019480.html
Big Brands? Google Brand Promotion: New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding | SEO Book
Google Brand Bias in Search Results
Big Brands? Google Brand Promotion: New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding | SEO Book
https://youtu.be/LMfWPWUh5uU?t=8

I'm sure if you follow the internal links you will find more information

regardless on how you look at this it has wide reaching consequences if you look at just the results on what shows up for many products these days

Can you point to specifics what is a brand I'm not sure how to answer that, but when we see what we know is a common brand like Amazon for example we know they are a brand.

Here is another Google search that points out that Google talked about Brands is how they will define Google Search in the coming years

https://www.google.com/search?client....0.K8Ise2ID4Fg

Many authority sites pointing to Google's intentions without naming Vincent's Change

I want to clarify it's not like I'm talking in the wind or holding back any information I looked at millions and millions of results to come to my conclusions.

I blacked out keywords to protect work I am keeping, and the website links shown is how they cut off in my software.

My article is really not about SEO so the SEO discussion is really not relevant. It's been a very difficult thing to define and the best I've been able to get my head around this is it's about "Competitive Intelligence" since the forum does not have a category I chose SEO, maybe marketing would be better but a similar discussion might be waged there as well.

Now that Artificial Intelligence is part of the whole equation I personally don't think SEO in a granular aspect is making sense anymore because the more I look at the actual results it's getting harder and harder to pinpoint what placed a lower Domain Authority website above much higher Domain Authority values.

I originally started my software with over 200 hundred columns looking at all factors. I have the same resources available as all of you and more because I even develop my own software to do specific jobs.

I originally looked at Moz's Page Authority and it did not add up because fresh articles that had very little links etc... to them ranked page one many times #1 and proved very puzzling, the only metric I could get consistent results was Domain Authority. So I trimmed down all the columns to what I see as consistent results.

Are the results perfect of course not. The more I work on this the more I see exceptions. But I look for possible answers that get results. Is correlation causation of course not, but when your dealing with unknowns you work with the best information available at the time.

Many of you don't know me, I'm an engineer and testing is part of everything I do. I've worked in a think tank where my contributions are still being used today in industry for machines talking to each other. I worked on the earliest browsers now called Internet Explorer and FireFox. I say this not to brag, but to show some credit-ability that I'm not someone pulling this information from the clouds, a lot of thought and work has gone into this.

I'm trying to think out of the box instead of working with the known and limitations of what SEO is doing today. I'm trying to push the boundaries to get onto page one of Google. Are we going to agree of course not hence the discussion that has transpired.

Please do not think I feel that Rand Fishkin's made up metrics are what Google uses to rank websites they are not. But unless something better comes along for consistent results this is what I use. The search results are the search results.

I appreciate discussions and welcome them if we disagree that's OK, again if this is not for you that's Ok with me.

That's your rant?

You're obviously using the word brands loosely here. Google doesn't give a shit who ranks for a name/keyword.

Searching Google right now for the keyword buy iphone, the #1 ranked paid ad is from trademore [.] com, apple [.] com ranks #3 on paid ads for the same keyword. So you're going to tell me Google is in cahoots with big brands to weed out small business.

Whatever.

Yeah Anchor text link and LSi was doing that long before all the buzz was on Rankbrain. Theres nothing odd or new there. my firs run in with that many years ago was fun stuff. Had a cient in the UK and couldn't figure out why we were getting our tails whupped. Turns out it was because we were not familiar with the geography as Yanks. The page outranking us locally had references to counties nearby that we had no idea of. the references made the competitor rank higher for locally focused keywords. Took a look on a map to figure out that one. The actual name of the city in the serp wasn't on the page at all but the nearby counties were.

Hi Sparrow,

Great article, it's mind bugling to read how you breakdown niche research and ranking on google. I am quite interested in your mentoring and tools however my interest is more in generating leads for local businesses. Do you address this in the mentoring and do you play in that sector at all?

Secondly do you have any case studies in local biz lead generation and do your tools have features that make it easy to do niche research for local businesses including possible strategies for google maps. By features I mean cities, towns, counties and states for keyword modifiers.

Sorry if my question is off point.

Regards

Paul

To add my two penny worth. I am a veteran of SEO. Never forget that big G is there to make money out of search which means getting as many businesses as possible to advertise and compete for key words, all in big G's favour of course. Now just using this knowledge, and it follows, big brands don't exactly need G but smaller businesses do. What would you do if you were G? Stuff the first page results with brands and results where it is less likely to use adwords to force all other businesses to place ads to get some exposure on page one. And of course G can justify this. That is why since 2008 (when I began to notice this effect) I have created brands and sub brands for my clients and get them page one without advertising (ok, a lot more than this besides but branding is part of the strategy). The message here, if you are in SEO for the long term start creating brands as part of your strategy and get the brand out and the term searched on on mass. Argos (a top UK shopping brand) is found by people putting "Argos" into google because shoppers want to shop at Argos period, a trusted brand. Argos do not go out of their way to advertise on G. It would even be damaging for Argos to do so since it would throw up their competitors, much better for a top brand to capture shoppers on their own webpages by using the power of their brand. So what better from G's point of view? Spam the first page with brand results such as Argos, yes Google spam as well. And content is king? Rubbish, just look at the content of some of page one brands and most is pure crap. Page one control is about G maximising their coffers and not yours. so brands who are less likely to advertise for that key word are spammed into page one results by G to force other companies to spend their money with G. Cynical? No, just true, G is a business pursuing a revenue/profit maximisation strategy on the own terms and own agenda and are now politically savvy enough to defend their search results whenever foul is cried by politicians and regulators.The rest of us just have to work with the reality of what G really is, we have no real alternative (Bing and Yahoo excepted but with srinking relevance).

If you don't believe the power of branding on small/medium businesses (SME's), take heed and notice now. I had a business in a specialist insulation niche that made me £ mega per month. My top salesmen were making £180,000 p/a if that gives you a clue as to what I was making. I'm not kidding, it was a super profitable business. I had developed that business from scratch with a one word brand name and sold that business after ten years. It was page one, position one in google for all the relevant key words (a lot of SEO went into that) where 50% of the enquiries came from, the rest came from trade shows. The people I sold to, alas, ran the business into the ground, it expired in 2014 after being taken over for just 18 months. The website disappeared 3 years ago. Two months ago I put up a website up (not even a good one) just a free phone number and a few words saying that the brand was back as I'm working on too many other projects to do any more with it at this stage) using the brand name in the domain name, no advertising, no google adwords, no back linking, no mass page plugin, no cloaking, no tricks, no pbn and no SEO whatsoever. And guess what, I had three enquiries the very first week because people had searched the brand name and found the website I had put up! I thought it was crazy, a dead company still able to get enquiries after three years of doing diddly squat! How much business was lost in the three years previously god only knows. However, that is the power of branding, the brand, even when the business expires, does not die with the business. You want people to search the brand name as part of your SEO strategy. For a SME, choose a brand name that says what the business does in one or two words only (that is the hard bit but it can be cracked) and then get that band name exposed everywhere and on everything. It'll take a while but you can celebrate once you start seeing the search term for the brand appear in your logs. Remember, SEO/marketing these days must be done for the long haul,a brand name is essential for that.

Google and its algorithm changes have taught me two big lessons throughout my career making money online.

When I first started out, I was ranking crappy scammy websites (promoting rubbish like free walmart coupons) on Google using all this backlinking bs. I was using all of these backlinking tools that stayed on 24/7 and eventually killed my macbook pro's battery.

I made $100/day doing all that crap.

Then Google hit me with Panda and I decided I have to start creating value.

So I started writing helpful, well-researched articles in the health niche, and my website ranked organically without any artificial backlinking.

Lesson number two came in August this year. Google totally slapped my helpful, useful website, and I have no idea why.

I COULD always hire a SEO company and have them optimize my website, but lesson #2 teaches me to do otherwise.

Lesson #2 is F Google.

I recently went through a course where the guy said that if you are not profitable through paid traffic, then you don't have a business.

I will no longer even THINK about google rankings.

I will only focus on making money through paid traffic. If Google wants to rank my website, then the free traffic I get from that piece if shoot will be a bonus, but I will never waste any of my time trying to rank on that poophole again.

Maybe when I a raking in the dough, I'll hire someone to do some SEO for me, but even then it'd probably be a waste of money.

Ed solid share man just what one needs to do effective niche research.

Great Content and very helpful comments.
Its true !
Thanks guys!

This is really a nice post to stoping people to Niche Researching on Stupid Niche.

Things have changed and time has changed but still, people are using old tricks and doing useless researches.

I do not understand the contents of this article and what do you want to show?

Just show the keywords that are on page 1.
Volume of traffic generated.

So that people believe in your argument.

Your views and perception on niche research are right up to an extent and I do not completely agree with this. I am doing that thing for past one year and it has helped me a lot.