How To Find Golden Nugget Keywords

This is something I posted in my blog in 2 parts (don't worry I won't link to it), but I think you guys can handle the whole shabang...

This is the exact strategy I use to find killer micro niches and buyer keywords. A micro niche is a super targeted area of a niche. An example of a micro niche keyword would be: "embroidered baseball caps." The niche in this case is baseball caps, but if you take it a step further you can find these tiny micro niche goldmines.

The Tools

I am going to show you how to find these tiny micro niches using free tools. These are the tools we will be using in this guide:

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

While the accuracy of this is constantly being questioned we can still use this tool to aid us in finding micro niche keywords.

The SEO Quake Plugin:

SeoQuake - seo toolbar, plugin, seo extension for Mozilla Firefox

This is a Firefox plugin that shows you loads of data about websites. It will help us determine the strength of competition of the top results.

The SEO Book Plugin:

Free SEO Tools & Search Engine Optimization Software

This is an alternative to the SEO Quake plugin. For our purposes we will be using the SEO for Firefox plugin.
Getting Started

Okay lets open up the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and get started. A good way to find micro niche keywords is to first start with a broad niche. I like to go to either Amazon or Google product search to get ideas flowing. Okay the example I am going to use for this guide is "ceiling fans" so I pop that keyword into the keyword tool and hit "get keyword ideas."

Now a list of keywords comes up with a bit of data. Before we move on there are a few settings we have to change in order for this method to be effective.

The first thing we want to change is the Match Type. The match type gives you three different options, we want to change our match type to "Exact." The reason we do that is becasue we are looking to see how many people are searching for that exact keyword per month. When we look for long-tail keywords we tend to get more exact searches per month rather than phrase or broad. This will drastically lower the number of searches but it will give us a more acccurate idea of how much traffic we can potientially receive.

The next thing I like to do is go over to the dropdown that says "Show/hide columns" and I like to hide the Advertiser Competition, and the Local Search Volume. The local search volume was the search volume for the past month - where the Global Monthly Search Volume is the average searches per month. You don't have to hide the local search volume if your used to doing keyword research with it on thats fine. I just hide it out of habit.

Okay, after we do that you want to show the Estimated Average Cost Per Click (CPC). This will show us how much money the advertisers are willing to bid per click. This is very useful in finding profitable micro niche keywords. If the advertisers think a keyword is only worth 5 cents then you should probably move on to a better keyword.

Finally, I like to Click on "Global Monthly Search Volume" to sort by searches per month, this allows me to quickly sift through the list of keywords and pick out the ones that look good.
Digging Deeper

Now that the settings are all in order its time to start digging deeper into the ceiling fan niche. At this point I open up two seperate notepads, one with potential keywords and one to list keywords I want to dig deeper on. To keep this guide short I chose 3 keywords to dig deeper on:

outdoor ceiling fans
ceiling fan blades
kids ceiling fans

Now these 3 keywords may be great I don't know yet, however, I think I can dig even deeper with these keywords and find some real golden nuggets.

Okay, so I go back to the top and plug in "outdoor ceiling fans."

A keyword that jumps off the page and one that I will definatley check out is "hunter outdoor ceiling fans." Now Hunter is probably a brand name, which means we can't purchase a domain with this keyword in it. We can use it for a bunch of other stuff so I am going to add it to the list to check out. If your not doing this search with me here are the stats for this keyword:

hunter outdoor ceiling fans CPC: $5.41 Searches: 1,000

Other possible keywords I see:

indoor outdoor ceiling fans CPC: $4.67 Searches: 720

Okay now moving on to "ceiling fan blades"

Possible keywords I see:

ceiling fan blade covers CPC: $1.76 Searches: 1,900

Now on to "kids ceiling fans"

Possible Keywords I see:

None!
Finally

Okay now I have a short list of keywords to check out. Normally I would not pick 3 keywords to dig deeper on but I would go through the entire list and find many keywords to dig deeper on. At this point we have a short list of keywords to check out. In part 2 we will cover how to quickly determine the strength of competition of the first page results. See you then!

In part 2 of "How To Find Golden Nugget Keywords" we are going to analyze the competition. Our primary goal is to find a keyword with little competition so we can rank for it quickly and easily. Okay lets get straight to the good stuff!

Remember The Tools?

Do you remember the tools we talked about in Part 1? We are going to be using the SEO Quake Firefox Plugin or the SEO Book SEO For Firefox Plugin, just in case you didn't download them before here are the links:

SeoQuake - seo toolbar, plugin, seo extension for Mozilla Firefox

Free SEO Tools & Search Engine Optimization Software

Download and install one of those plugins right now, don't worry I'll wait ;-)
Keywords

We went through a list of keywords in Part 1 and found a few that might be worth checking out. These are the keywords we found:

* outdoor ceiling fans
* ceiling fan blades
* kids ceiling fans
* hunter outdoor ceiling fans
* indoor outdoor ceiling fans
* ceiling fan blade covers

Now it's time to go through these and analyze each one to determine whether or not we can rank easily for them.
How To Analyze The Top 10 Results

Everybody does this a little bit differently, I am just going to show you how I personally analyze the top 10 results in Google. I look out for "red flags." There are certain indicators I can quickly pick out that will throw up red flags. Red flags are not good and if I see too many I will ditch the keyword and move on. Here are the red flags I look out for:

* The keyword is in the title, description, and URL at the same time
* The pagerank is over 3 with the keyword in the title
* The pagerank is 5 or higher
* The domain age of all the sites is 4 years or more
* There are no PPC ads for the keyword
* The amount of page links (backlinks to that page) there are

Now I want to be clear that some of these hold more weight than others. If I see the keyword in the title, description, and URL at the same time on one result I don't turn away and run - that's okay. However, if I see it for 7 of the results that is not okay. Keyword research is sort of an art form, the more you do it the better you will get at it.

Okay, I am going to go through some of our keywords and either get rid of them or keep them, and I am going to show you my thought process behind each and every one I do so you can get a feel of how to find these tiny golden niches.
Keyword Analysis
Outdoor ceiling fans

Right away I notice there are some PPC ads so I know people are paying for this keyword. This is good because it tells me theres money to be made in this niche.

I notice that the keyword is sprinkled throughout the page, it seems to be in a few titles, descriptions, and URLS. Now that can be okay but some of these sites are aged well and have a high pagerank. These sites don't have a lot of backlinks to the pages which is good but overall I know I can find an easier keyword to rank for. So I am going to move on.
Ceiling Fan Blades

Once again I see some PPC ads straight away so far so good. Okay, the top 2 sites do not have the keyword in the title, description, or the URL so that is a very good sign. But as I scroll down I notice a PR 5 .gov site and an wikipedia PR 4 page. Now, these are only 2 results, even though they are powerful sites if the rest of the sites are weak this may be a good keyword to go after.

Okay, none of the other sites scare me so overall I would personally put this on a green keyword list.
Kids Ceiling Fans

Again, PPC ads pop up so I know there is money to be made in this niche.

I want to take a closer look at this first result. The keyword is in the title, description, and the URL, however, the site is only a PR 1. So I am going to really focus on this for a second. Can I beat it? Well, the domain age is about 2 years old - and I notice that there are 0 page links. I think I can beat this even though the keyword is in the title, description, and URL it is still beat able.

However, look at the second result. Same thing the keyword is in all three spots. But this time the domain age is 10 years. That really makes me flinch and I am going to go ahead and pretend it is not beat able in my mind. It may actually be easy to beat out - but I want to KNOW 100% that I can rank for a keyword before I put it on my green list.

After looking at the rest of the results I don't see much that scares me. There are no super high PR sites to beat out - I see an amazon and a bizrate result both with low PR (for amazon and bizrate) and no page links. I even see a result that is only ranking because the keyword is in the title, description and URL and the site appears to solely revolve around the keyword.

This would go on my green list.

Conclusion

In the interest of keeping this post long enough to explain everything but short enough for you to digest all the information I am going to stop here. I will however, expand on these ideas in future posts. I would have made these into a video - and I will at some point - but I just switched over to linux and I am still getting used to everything. I hope you guys learned something here today, feel free to ask any questions you may have!