If I could give just ONE piece of advice to prospective website owners (and current owners unhappy with their SERPs) it would be to select and target a niche.
What do I mean by niche? Think of the Great Wall of China … imagine your task was to break through armed only with a chisel – Impossible you say! Now what if I could show you a crack, a veritable chink in the armour, an unshielded thermal exhaust port that would allow you to bring down a chunk of wall, getting you through. In internet terms, the GWoC is the huge array of websites competing for your prospective client – over 230 Million at the end of 2009 – you HAVE to find a tool to breakthrough that electronic clutter. My favoured tool is the niche.
A quick side-track … Targeting a niche is not the only way to break through – starting a viral hit like Facebook or Twitter can be pretty effective too! But unless your name is Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey or you have a truly unique internet application that will take the world by storm, I suggest you find another method. Also effective are huge wads of cash, being first on the scene or having an existing known brand name.
- Cash: With enough money you can buy your way to the top – But to be in the top 1000 websites you need to attract over 4 million visitors per month so you better have deep pockets if you’re paying for them.
- First: Amazon started out being one of the first e-commerce sites that took really good care of their customers.
- Brand: There are companies that could sell a turd if it had a logo on it (iTurd – I like it!) If you already have a huge off-line following, chances are you’ll succeed on-line as well.
But for the rest of us mere mortals – pick a niche. Let’s say you want to sell widgets online. You do your market research and find that there are a million widget sellers already online. Damn! So now do some more market research to discover what exactly prospective widget buyers are looking for. The crucial word there is buyers – we don’t want to target widget tire-kickers. We discover the overwhelming number of buyers are looking for blue widgets. That could be our niche. But what if the market is still too competitive? More market research discovers a real market yearning for left-handed blue widgets and nobody is satisfying it – Now THAT’S a niche!
How to do the research? If you are hard-core, you can do it yourself with a combination of Search & Keyword tools – it may take a while, but you’ll end up with a healthy appreciation & in-depth understanding of your market. No? – Well there are 2 tools I currently favour:
Market Samurai & Micro Niche Finder.
I’m sure there are others but these are the two I trialled & liked enough to buy.
MS allows you to demo a fully operational copy of their software for 21 days & there is a discount offered if you purchase early in this period. MNF is currently offering a discount of around 50% so it’s good value too.
One thing I have to say – these tools cannot give you a definitive answer. The results are based on data available at that time, day and place and could vary if you try a week later.
You might like to try different samples and average the results. Or you could accept the fact that it’s impossible to accurately measure the internet and indicative results are the best you’ll get.