It’s been a while since we’ve visited this series, so here’s a little review:

In Getting Rich Online - Finding your Niche, we covered brainstorming on your site theme and content.

In People Getting Rich Online - Niche Research we went through an exercise to narrow down your theme ideas.

One last thing on that subject - KEI is an indicator of how difficult it may be to rank high organically in search engine results. If you have a great idea, some great content or a viral marketing strategy that no one else has thought of (an angle, as it were), don’t worry about supply, demand, KEI or anything else. Just understand that it’s going to be a lot of work. As Aaron Wall of SEOBook so eloquently put it, as you get more competitive the low-quality, AdSense optimized sites start popping up, which skews the KEI. So if you’re on the fence about something, move it on to the next step (this one).

The search phrase affiliate blog has 46,800,000 results and a KEI in the stratosphere. We managed to rank #8 in a few weeks. So, moving onward.

Now we have a list of themes and some idea of which seems the best. I like Dog Training Basics. You may have a much bigger list.

Once I have some ideas I head for Google and see who’s at the top. In this case there’s a site called, oddly enough, Dog Training Basics. I go right into the view source area of the site and see if the page has any meta tags, including keyword or description. This site does not. Terrific.

Then I head over to Alexa and see what ranking the site has. I have found that over 100,000 in ranking and Alexa is pretty much useless. This site is ranked 510,000, which is average. On this page I also get info on related pages. If a site is ranked less than 100,000 I look at that site too, searching for meta tags and other info.

By now my mind is working overtime, and I’m thinking in terms of two channels — in and out — how do I get visitors to the site (both content and promotion), and what can I sell them once they get there?

You should be thinking of what it is that will distinguish your site from the top sites you’re viewing. What’s your angle, your unique content, your selling proposition? If you can’t come up with one after poking around for a while you should probably move on.

What perceived value can you offer visitors as a reward for coming to your page that no one else has?

Here’s what I come up with as I’m viewing the sites:

1. A dog training tips newsletter.
2. A resource for solutions to different dog training problems.
3. A dog trainer directory.
4. A free e-book of the most common dog training problems and solutions.
5. A resource on good dog training articles.
6. Dog training book reviews.

It is obvious that content is the key to making a dog training basics site work, so if I decide to put together this site I would need to get to work right away on some good content. This should always be what you’re thinking when you’re looking to put together a new site. You should already have an idea in your mind about the best, most unique way to tackle the subject. Now you see why it’s important to have an interest (even a passion) in the theme of your site.

The other item in the back of my mind is continuity. What can I provide that will get people to come back once they visit the site for the first time? In this case a newsletter or blog offering the latest tips on dog training challenges might work.

In this case I would also be thinking that I would have to do some paid advertising to drive traffic to my new site. Dog training related AdWords are expensive:

Dog training - Position 1: $3.00 Position 3: $2.38
Dog training Books - Position 1: $1.90 Position 3: $1.45
Puppy training - Position 1: $1.07 Position 3: $ .78

Now I go look around for some dog training forums and free articles. These are two other methods for driving free traffic. Now I’m reasonably sure that the real traffic won’t come without AdWords, which is usually where I end up anyway.

So now I go back to my #1 website, Dog Training Basics. I’m going to check link popularity and backlinks, meaning the sites that link to that site. I use SEO Elite, but you could use any tool like it.

The Dog Training Basics website has 426 backlinks, though a vast majority (88.7%) are from sites with PageRanks of 0. Aaron Wall likes to see .edu or .gov links (there is one here), and he also likes to take a look at the age of the domain (July 7, 2003). This one’s been around for almost 4 years.

I randomly click on the backlink links to see how other sites are connected to this site. Most of the sites I looked at for Dog Training Basics are link pages. There’s no viral marketing or reviews or articles.

Let’s recap. At this point you should have:

1. Some ideas for differentiating my site from the top sites.
2. An idea of ways to promote the site that (hopefully) have a unique angle or are better than what others have done.
3. Ideas for viral marketing (I can think of several for this site).
4. Assurances that you can create good content that leverages the other three elements above.

If you don’t, go to the next site idea. If you really LOVE this one but can’t quite put it together, put it in a drawer for review some other time and move on to the next one. I review my setasides regularly and see if anything hits me.

That’s the incoming pipe. Let’s figure out the outgoing pipe, which is mainly What do I want my visitors to do when they get here?

You can sell them goods, services or information (either yours or someone else’s), or rely on PPC advertising. I always suggest some combination of the three.

I now go visit Commission Junction and Clickbank. There are tons of pet supplies affiliate programs on CJ, but no real training supplies. There are what looks like a few terrific books on ClickBank (make sure you follow the steps outlined in ClickBank Hucksters before you sell any ClickBank product).

You need some good presell content pages (reviews and information that help sell) for each item you plan to sell, so keep that in mind when you’re reviewing.

I also always google Dog Training +affiliate to see if there are any affiliate programs out there that I may have missed.

So there it is. When all of this is done you should have some idea of the viability of your niche.

Pros: Viral Marketing potential, focused content, easy to write articles and post on boards, people are probably in an info-buying mood when they get to the site (HUGE plus)

Cons: Lots of competition in the top level (dog training) search phrase, expensive AdWords, Not sure of the search potential for dog training basics.

It’s gut check time — either start designing the site, stick it in a drawer or toss it in the trash. At this point I would probably start designing.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 4:32 pm.
Filed under The Basics, Internet Marketing, Your Site.
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