Domains for Niche Markets - Am I missing something?

16 replies
  • SEO
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Hello;

I'm asking this here, because my question really comes down to how the keywords I am looking at are going to get picked up in the search engine. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

In a niche marketing I am working on, I have been searching for domains. Overall it is an extremely popular market, high traffic, high competition.

However, I have found a number of domain names available for keywords that appear to have low competition, but show large numbers of searched in the google keyword tool.

Based on all the testing I have done, if you put up a decent web site on low competition keywords, it is pretty easy to get to the top of the search engine, even if there is a fairly high search volume.

I don't want to mention the names I am working on at the moment here in a public forum, so I will just give a made up example:

Lets say the the marketing I am working in is Cars, so I am looking for domains about specific things related to cars that I can use to generate traffic and sell targeted products.
I find the domain CarWax.com is available. I check the Google Keyword tool, I see that Car Wax gets 30,000 searches a month. I look at the results in google for Car Wax, I find there are a few sites that sell car wax, but they don't have these keywords in their names, and are poorly marketed sites(no pr /10M+ alexa). (in other words, they are the type of sites that in the past with other sites I have done, I have easily surpassed)

So in this example, if I buy CarWax.com, make a nice site, do the typical things that help build up a site in a search engine(fresh content, frequent updates, good onpage seo, etc.) is there any reason to believe that I won't see a good share of traffic from the search car wax, once my site works it's way up google?
I've done this before and had it work on other search terms that are low competition, but with the domains I am looking at this just seems a little too easy. I am having a hard time believing that no one else has taken these domains and done this exact thing if it will work on these words. (Note the domains are generic, like carwax, no trademark issues. Also the domains are for products people actually buy, similar to the car wax example)

For anyone else that uses a strategy like this to find niche markets, what is your minimum search volume you look for in the Google Keyword tool to make it worth your time to get a domain and setup a site? 5,000 10,000 20,000 more?

Thanks
Jamie Dolan
#domains #markets #missing #niche
  • Profile picture of the author Craig McPherson
    G'day Jamie,

    I like to use terms that have 3,000 minimum for the exact term globally.

    I then study the top 10 for the term to gauge how hard or easy it will be to displace them.
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    • Profile picture of the author jamiedolan
      Originally Posted by Craig McPherson View Post

      G'day Jamie,

      I like to use terms that have 3,000 minimum for the exact term globally.

      I then study the top 10 for the term to gauge how hard or easy it will be to displace them.
      Hi Craig;

      Thanks for responding. I think I found some good ones today. Adwords shows 27,100 exact results on a closeout domain I picked up at Godaddy.

      Do you have any guidelines you look for when deciding how hard or easy it will be to displace the top 10? (e.g. Below X page rank, or Above X Alexa)

      Thank You.
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      • Profile picture of the author Craig McPherson
        Originally Posted by jamiedolan View Post

        Do you have any guidelines you look for when deciding how hard or easy it will be to displace the top 10? (e.g. Below X page rank, or Above X Alexa)

        Thank You.
        Jamie,

        I don't think there is a hard and fast rule there. I use gut feeling to be honest but to make the decision easier you want the majority of page 1 sites to be PR3 or below.

        Generally if the pages are deep inner pages such as www.yoursite.com/yoursite/yoursiteagain.html

        you have a fair chance of beating it. Another factor is how many backlinks that page has. SEO quake can tell you that. If it has under 200 I will have a crack. It does not matter to me how many backlinks the main page or the whole site has. It is how many backlinks that exact page has that matters to me.

        Jamie, one thing to keep in mind here is that with this, and any other Internet marketing subject, there more often than not is no hard and fast rules. What works for you might not work for others and vice versa.

        For example, A friend of mine has 46 niche websites that make him over 5K per month. They are only 5 page websites. Every site targets a keyword phrase that gets between 2500 and 4000 exacts a month. He leaves the highly searched for terms alone and grabs the mid range terms. This works for him. It might not work for others.

        Cheers mate

        Craig
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Houghton
      Originally Posted by Craig McPherson View Post

      G'day Jamie,

      I like to use terms that have 3,000 minimum for the exact term globally.

      I then study the top 10 for the term to gauge how hard or easy it will be to displace them.
      Great point. Exact search volume for specific key phrases is very important IMO. The "broad" search on the Google External Keyword Tool is very deceiving and I had to learn the hard way thinking I had "lightning in a bottle" targeting certain keywords when really there was no traffic there. "Exact" key phrases is the only way to go and 2,000 - 3,000 searches per month is usually enough to justify targeting a particular key phrase.
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      • Profile picture of the author jamiedolan
        Originally Posted by Chris Houghton View Post

        Great point. Exact search volume for specific key phrases is very important IMO. The "broad" search on the Google External Keyword Tool is very deceiving and I had to learn the hard way thinking I had "lightning in a bottle" targeting certain keywords when really there was no traffic there. "Exact" key phrases is the only way to go and 2,000 - 3,000 searches per month is usually enough to justify targeting a particular key phrase.
        I've been playing with a few keyword tools but had assumed google keyword tool was accurate for an exact term. So if the google keyword tool says 5,000 searches for car wax, is that likely to be wrong?
        If so, why is google publishing this inaccurate and misleading intormation?
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        • Profile picture of the author tldnetworks
          Originally Posted by jamiedolan View Post

          I've been playing with a few keyword tools but had assumed google keyword tool was accurate for an exact term. So if the google keyword tool says 5,000 searches for car wax, is that likely to be wrong?
          If so, why is google publishing this inaccurate and misleading intormation?
          Not sure what you're saying. keyword tool does say 27,100 exact for car wax. Not sure where 5,000 came from. What makes you think their results are wrong?
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          • Profile picture of the author jamiedolan
            Originally Posted by tldnetworks View Post

            Not sure what you're saying. keyword tool does say 27,100 exact for car wax. Not sure where 5,000 came from. What makes you think their results are wrong?
            LOL

            The 27,100, was the result of the keywords I was researching related to a dog product. I just made up the car wax as a generic example, I had never even looked it up in adwords, until now, and I see that it happens to also have a result of 27,100. No wonder it was confusing.

            I did have some confusion, I did some searches in the keyword tool today and accidentally I was not set to exact match, so I had inflated results on some of my searches. :-(. However, my best domain still gets 74,000 on exact match. :-)

            Thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author apocrypha
    When the site is new,i do SEO for long tails.I try to dominate 10 long tails rather than one competitive one.When it moves up,gets few months old and gets some trust,its time to rank for more competitive keywords.By the end of the 6 months or a year,you are gearing up for even the most competitive keyword in the niche and its achievable.
    This way,i am getting SE traffic even when the site is new.When its old,i am the boss.So, win-win.

    That was me addressing some Competition thing.

    For me,There are only 10 competitors and a keyword is competitive not because it has lots of competing pages but it has mega sites in top 10.I have SEO quake installed.Whenever i query it gives all the details of the website in the SERPS.I look at each of them,check the backlinks and a use general rule of thumb to decide if the keyword is worth pursuing.

    Hope it was of some help.
    Cheers
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    • Profile picture of the author jamiedolan
      Originally Posted by apocrypha View Post

      I have SEO quake installed.Whenever i query it gives all the details of the website in the SERPS.
      Any problems with getting banned for using this software?

      Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author arttse
        It is much easier to to rank for 5 keywords with 200 searches per month than to target 1 keyword with 1000 searches per month - particularly for a new site (provided the competition on non-competitive).

        I would rather target the keyword 'buy car wax' with 50 seaches per month than targeting the keyword 'car wax' with 2000 searches per month (assuming you are selling car wax) - even if both keywords had equal number of competititors.
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        • Profile picture of the author jamiedolan
          Originally Posted by arttse View Post

          It is much easier to to rank for 5 keywords with 200 searches per month than to target 1 keyword with 1000 searches per month - particularly for a new site (provided the competition on non-competitive).

          I would rather target the keyword 'buy car wax' with 50 seaches per month than targeting the keyword 'car wax' with 2000 keywords per month (assuming you are selling car wax) - even if both keywords had equal number of competititors.
          Would you purchase domains and setup a site for something with as low as 50 searches a month? It seems like it would be quite hard to get more than just a few sales from those 50 searches.
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  • Profile picture of the author tldnetworks
    You can rank naturally for exact match domains WITH relevant content pretty easily. I've put up sites with 1000 +/- that get results based soley on the generic matched domain. 27,100 exact match is awesome and should do Very well if built out properly. I like Craig's example - I think that's a easier and more profitable route.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    from reading over your post you might want to take a look at the clickbump method thread. It's about a gazillion pages long now.

    I think it's methods may be very similar to what you are asking about.
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    I'm all about that bass.

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  • Profile picture of the author TheOldMan
    I love this forum, so much good information here.
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  • Profile picture of the author scfc22
    Don't always trust Google's Keyword Tool - even on exact.

    I found a keyword phrase that had a '2500' Global Search Volume.

    I put up a 4 page site, got it up to about 5th in the ranking and yet I wasn't getting any traffic at all.

    I then looked at the phrase on SEOBook and their keyword tool said the phrase was being searched 4 times a day.
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  • Profile picture of the author erwindegrave
    Don't just limit your mind on searching for a short domain name. If you are into niche markets, you can consider buying long tailed keyword domains to get more chance of being listed in search engine for your desired keywords :-)
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    Erwin de Grave
    Success Coach & Internet Marketer
    www.MassiveAffiliateIncome.com
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