TUTORIAL (with Screenshots & Videos): How To Find Niches and Keywords For Top 10 Google Rankings

Verifying Keyword Data:

After initial research outlined above, I settled on 6 keywords as promising candidates for a micro niche site. Here they are once again.

Now that we have our keywords, it is time to verify the keyword data reported by SEMRush.



This is important for a couple reasons.


First, SEMRush's data is not real-time, typically it is about 30 days old from the last time the keyword data was collected.
Second, they do not report the local exact match numbers in their keyword data from Google's Keyword Tool and I prefer to use that number to assess a keywords potential.

All you want to do is to verify the search numbers, advertiser competition and cost per click counts using Google's keyword tool.

Up until a couple weeks ago, this was pretty simple but as they always do Google has thrown a wrinkle into things by updating their keyword tool.

The new keyword tool shows very different data than their old one (which is where at the time I'm writing this, SEMRush got their keyword data...I'm sure in time they will update their database to use the new Google keyword tool but until then we have to do a little more digging and analyzing)

So with this in mind here are the 3 things to look for when verifying keyword data:


1) Local Exact Match Search Volume at least 1000 searches/month
2) Advertiser Competition Average or higher
3) Cost per Click at least $.50



Now, before continuing, it's time to go ahead and get something out of the way.

The criteria I outlined above are simply suggestions based on my own experience and general sentiment of others in the area of micro niche marketing.

You can disagree with, complain about, twist, tweak and experiment with any conceivable variation of the 3 criteria above to your hearts content. I'm just trying to give a starting point for your research not saying this is the only way to do things :-)

With that out of the way, let's get analyzing.

Here is a screenshot of the results generated by Google's Keyword Tool. I have highlighted 4 sections to pay particular attention to and describe then in detail below.

1) Keyword Search Box: I simply inserted the 6 keywords I wanted to verify. This speeds things up a bit so I don't need to do a separate search for each keyword.

2) Under Advanced Options: Select the option "Ideas containing my search terms" so that only keywords containing the keyword phrases in the search box will be shown. This helps eliminate a lot of extra terms and noise that we are not worried about right now.

3) Match Types: Make sure "exact" match is selected. This will give the search count for just the keywords we have entered and not include searches for related or similar terms that can inflate search numbers. For example if the default option of "broad" match was selected. the search volume for "hoodia patch" could contain the search numbers for other phrases like "hoodia patch review" or "discount hoodia patch". By selecting the "exact" match option only search volume for "hoodia patch" and nothing else is returned.

4) Search Results: The results for the keywords in our list. Details include search volume, advertiser competition and CPC.


Remember we are looking for are keywords that have:

1) Local Exact Match Search Volume at least 1000 searches/month
2) Advertiser Competition Average or higher
3) Cost per Click at least $.50


Here's a closer look at the results of the search:

As you can see from the image above, 2 keywords definitely match all three criteria ("hoodia patch" and "folic acid benefits" and 1 keyword comes close ("mobility scooter insurance") and is still worth taking a closer look at. (remember how I said you should feel free to experiment with different criteria for your keywords? well, this is a great example which I explain in detail a bit later)

For now, the 3 keywords we will move forward with are:

The next step is to analyze the competition for the top 10 results in Google, but before we move onto that phase of things I think it is very important that we discuss something that has A LOT of false and misleading information floating around about it.

That is the estimated cost per click (CPC) for keywords.

I by no means have all the answers or even the best ones but I think there are many facts and details about CPC that are ignored in most advice involved around this topic, so let's get digging.




Cost Per Click Facts and Fictions:

No doubt you have seen ads for some sort of "top paying Adsense keywords" list that is "guaranteed" to explode you Adsense profits by targeting keywords with high cost per clicks.

Most of these lists are compiled by grabbing the CPC information from Google's keyword tool just like we did above in our own keyword analysis.

This is done for tens or hundreds of thousands of keywords. The keywords with the highest CPC are compiled into a huge list and then sold under the guise that if you build an Adsense site around these keywords you can receive $30/click or even more!

Sounds awesome, the problem is that they are completely inaccurate and in most cases useless!

Here's why:


1) The Google keyword tool is designed to give estimated cost per click information that advertisers might pay to get in the top 3 positions of Google's search results with an unlimited budget. Here it is straight from Google:

2) This data is for advertiser's ads showing up in Google Search Results....not the Content Network where many advertisers do not even show ads.


3) Advertisers pay a lot less per click on the Content Network than on the Search Network...28% less in fact. This according to a case study released by Google called: CPA Performance Trends on The Google Content Network

Here is a key conclusion excerpted from the report:

What this means is that advertisers pay a lot less on the content network. If an advertiser paid $1/click on the search network for a keyword that would mean on average they would pay about $0.72/per click on the Content Network!


4) Many advertisers that do pay extremely high cost per clicks on the search network simply do not advertise on the content network at all because conversions can be pretty poor. (Personally I think this is one of the biggest reasons that building a site around many super high paying keywords fail...there is simply not enough or any ad inventory for those keywords on the content network)


5) These keyword lists fail to take into account what Google keeps and what Google pays the Adsense publisher per click. Google has released information on how much they pay Adsense publishers and it amounts to 68% of the click cost.

Let's put all of this into perspective with an example.

We already figured out that if an advertiser pays $1/click on the Search Network that same click on average is worth 28% less on the Content Network or $0.72/click.

If someone clicks on that $0.72/click ad, Google pays the Adsense Publisher 68% of that or $0.49/click.

Suddenly that keyword that was said to be worth $1/click is worth about half that at $0.49/click.


6) Finally, Google takes into account all kinds of factors that can influence the final CPC for an ad on your site. They consider things like number of advertisers, maximum cost per clicks, quality score of the advertiser, landing page quality of the advertiser, past performance of the Adsense publisher's site, etc.


Needless to say, once we get to this point there is no possible way to accurately tell what the CPC will be for any given keyword.

In the end, from Google's perspective, it is all about trying to make the experience for the ADVERTISER better and not the publishers. It's tough to hear that without getting a bit worked up but Google knows that if they fail to get Advertisers interested and using the Content Network the entire Adsense side of their business makes less money.

I know this last point could be a bit confusing but Google has released two videos that try to shed light on the various factors that impact how much Adsense Publishers earn and I encourage you to check them out below.

YouTube - Introduction to the Ad Auction

YouTube - AdSense Smart Pricing

In summary, there is no true reliable way to get a very accurate CPC for any given keyword. The best we can do is make guestimates best on the things we do know.

We know that:

1) CPC on the Content Network is 28% less than the search network
2) Publishers get paid 68% of the CPC
3) The more advertiser competition for a keyword the better


We can use this information to create a very rough formula for figuring out the best possible CPC for a keyword.

CPC X CPC % on Content Network (72%) X Publisher Payout (68%) = Adsense Earning Per Click (AEPC)

For example:

$1 CPC x .72 x .68 = $0.49 AEPC


If your mind just glazed over when you got to the formula part, here's an even easier rule of thumb:


You can estimate that the MAXIMUM an Adsense Publisher will get paid for a keyword with average to high advertiser competition is about 50% of the CPC reported by Google's Keyword Tool.

Keep in mind this formula presents an absolutely perfect best case scenario of what the CPC could be. It doesn't take into account all of the other factors like number of advertisers, quality scores, landing page quality scores, site performance history etc. So CPC will likely be even less.

I know this section is pretty dense and full of technical stuff but I felt it was extremely important to include because I think keyword cost per click is one of the most confusing and frustrating aspects of Adsense and hopefully you have a better understanding of why things are often as clear as mud when it comes to CPC.

Now it's time to get back on track and analyze the competition in Google for our winning keywords.




Sizing Up The Competition:

For a long time the general rule of thumb when sizing up keyword competition in Google has involved using advanced search commands like "allintitle" "allinanchor" or simply checking out the number of competing pages by putting quotes ("") around a keyword to get the number of results in Google.

I think such metrics have some merit but I think relying on them to determine if a market is worth entering puts the focus in the wrong place for a couple reasons.

1) Using these metrics doesn't really tell you how competitive a market is. Sure there may be only 5000 competing pages for a keyword search in quotes but that tells us nothing about those 5000 sites.

A large chunk of them may be extremely well optimized with many SEO savvy marketers dominating the top ranks. While some other keyword with 200,000 competing pages for a keyword search in quotes could be full of low quality content sites with few experienced SEO's competing for that word.

So if you rely too heavily on that metric to gauge a market you will miss out on the keyword with 200,000 competing pages because the competition is too "high".


2) The second reason I personally don't' think it is wise to rely on these kinds of metrics alone is because you are not competing with the other 1000, 5000, or 20,000 pages.

The only competitors you care about are the top 10 sites on the first page of Google for the keyword search not in quotes because this is where all the traffic is and most people do not search with quotes around their searches.

Add to this the fact that roughly 95% of all search traffic for a keyword clicks on results from the first page of Google and it is all the more obvious that sizing up the competition on the first page is incredibly important.

Study By Chitika




Analyzing The Top 10 In Google:

Scoping out the keyword competition in the top 10 Google results can paint a pretty powerful picture of how competitive a keyword really is.

Some signs of a "ripe" keyword are:

1) The Presence of A Rank Magnet Site in the top 10
2) The presence of Adsense sites
3) 100 or fewer incoming links to each page (preferably 3-4 pages in the top 10)
4) How many site have the keyword phrase in the title (look for 3 or more sites without keyword in title)
5) Do any results have exact match domains (i.e. keyword.com)
6) Are any sites a year or less in age (not super important but if so all the better)
7) # sites with Page Rank of 1 or lower (look for 3 or more pages in the top 10 will PR 1 or less)


The presence of all 7 factors isn't necessary for a keyword to be a good candidate for building a micro niche site around but the more factors present in the top 10 the better.

The most important factors in my opinion are the first 3: presence of a Rank Magnet, Adsense Site, and at lest 3-4 pages in the top 10 with less than 100 links. Any of the others are just icing on the cake.

To make all of this a little easier to understand and visualize I have created a video for each of the 3 keywords we decided to further investigate.

Here are the keywords again:

****** Watch The Keyword Analysis Videos Below To Better Understand The Research Process******

YouTube - Micro Niche Analysis - Hoddia...

YouTube - Micro Niche Analysis - Hoodia...

YouTube - Micro Niche Analysis - Folic...

YouTube - Micro Niche Analysis - Mobility...

End of Part 2....Part 3 In Next Post

In case videos are not your thing, here is a very basic overview of the results of our competition analysis for each keyword matched against all 7 of the criteria listed above.

The two winning keywords, "hoodia patch" and "mobility scooter insurance" meet the criteria very well and match up the best.

While the results of the analysis for "folic acid benefits" look very good, what the table doesn't show but was discussed in the videos is that the results for this keyword contain a number of very well aged authority sites that might take a bit more work to overtake in the rankings. The keyword definitely has promise but in the end I decided against further researching this keyword.

You might be asking?

"What about "mobility scooter insurance" it has a very low amount of search traffic why did it get the green light?"

While this keyword doesn't get much search volume it's worth a second look because of the kinds of Adsense ads that are displayed on the sites ranking at the top of Google.

Here are a couple screenshot from the #1 and #2 sites for "mobility scooter insurance":

From the ads highlighted in the screenshots, I came up with some keywords that seem to represent the kinds of ads shown on these 2 sites and ran them through Google's Keyword Tool.

(Hint: I took keywords mainly from the ad titles/headlines because most Adwords advertisers try to put their keywords or closely related keywords to their products and services in the headline of their ads.)

As you can see in the image below, all of the keywords have very high CPC numbers. Obviously this is not what you will get paid but even taking into account all that was discussed earlier about CPC numbers, these are still some very attractive numbers that merit at least some further consideration.

In In the end, however, I would pass on the keyword "mobility scooter insurance" because building a site for a keyword with such low search volume in hopes of getting a few high priced clicks is a little too risky for me. Ranking for this keyword should not be extremely difficult but the payoff could be pretty minimal.



The Winner Is...

So after all the research and analysis. After all the spying and espionage, we are left with our "winning" keyword: "hoodia patch"

It It matches all of the criteria you want to look for in a keyword. It has decent search volume, advertiser competition, should bring a decent CPC and the first page Google competition looks like a worthwhile SEO battle.

I know this was a lot of material to take in and I assure you that it's not nearly as complicated or difficult as it may sound and look. (It takes a lot longer to explain this stuff in detail than to actual do it I promise!)

What's cool, though, is that now that we have a winning keyword, it makes other aspects of market research and site building much easier.



Bonus Section: Secondary Keywords:

Once you have your winning keyword, you can easily discover other keywords you might have a good chance ranking for, plus you can find other keywords to target in the same or related markets with just a bare minimum of additional "espionage"

For instance, take our wining keyword "hoodia patch".

If we take the pages that are ranked in the top 10 of Google and run them through SEMRush using their "URL Report" option we can see what other keywords we might be able to rank for.



Keywords For: 3 Reasons to Not Use the Hoodia Diet Patch

As you can see, this page ranks for 8 additional keywords besides our primary keyword "hoodia patch". If you target similar content and topics for your content, then you have a chance of ranking for similar keywords.

You can repeat this process for any of the pages ranking in the top 10.



Here is another example for our keyword:

Keywords For: Hoodia Patch Review



What's even cooler is that we can use this technique to find other keywords to build other micro niche sites around. In the examples above what you are shown are the keywords that the specific page in the top 10 of Google ranks for but what about the entire site?


Let's take our previous example from the weightlossproductsreview.com site and see what other keywords the entire site ranks for. To do this we run a "domain" report using SEMRush.

Keywords For Domain: weightlosspatchesreview.com




This site ranks for over 40 keywords in the top 20 of Google and this report let's us see the other kinds of keywords that they rank for which is perfect for generating new ideas.

In the screenshot above, I highlighted 2 potential keywords worth investigating ("slimming patches" and "weight loss patches").

The idea is that once you find one winning keyword, you can use it to find other keywords without the need of completing the entire Micro Niche Espionage research from the very beginning.

But not only can you find other keywords but you can find entirely new markets to explore as well.




Bonus Section 2: Find New Markets In One Click

The whole point of this process is to leverage the success of others that have come before you. So it stands to reason that if you find someone who has successfully entered one market, then chances are they have done the same thing in other markets.

This is insanely easy to find out with Adsense sites and the Adsense publisher ID.

The Adsense publisher ID is the unique number assigned to all Adsense publishers so Google can attribute clicks and impressions to the right publisher.

The Adsense publisher ID can be found in the source code of any web page displaying Adsense ads. Which you can find using Firefox (or following practically the same steps in any browser) by clicking on the "view" menu and then selecting "page source"

A new window will open displaying all the code used to make the web page. What you want to look for is the Adsense Publisher ID. It is a number like this:

pub-5301190123456789 (this is a made up code)

Once you have the Adsense Publisher ID. You can go to Spy On Web (SpyOnWeb.com Research Tool -- You Can Disclose Websites With The Same Google Adsense Code, Google Analytics Code, Ip Address etc.) to find other sites owned by this Adsense publisher.

Simply enter the publisher ID in the search box and hit "search" (For this example I have blurred out the publisher ID to not reveal all of their sites.

You will get a page of results like this: (again, I have blurred out the specifics so as not to reveal all of their sites)

Boom! You now have 13 different sites, in all sorts of different markets to explore for Micro Niche site ideas! All you have to do is take the domains of each site and run them through SEMRush following the steps in Bonus Section #1 for how to locate keywords ranking for a domain.


Thanks For Reading!

Well, that about sums up everything I know about how to reverse engineer your competition!

I suggest printing this guide out and read through it a couple more times.

I'm confident if you use these strategies you will greatly increase your chances of building successful and profitable micro niche sites.


But also please please please keep this in mind:

These are some of the strategies I personally use but they are by no means the only way to do things. Just as there are thousands of us Warriors there are tons of different ways to do research, I just wanted to share with you my personal recipe.

What do you think and please to share some of your strategies :-)