Nivas was wondering if I use brand names products. The answer is, No, I do not. I just do not feel it is worth the chance of receiving a cease and desist letter. Especially after spending money on a domain, outsourcing of content and back links. It’s just not a risk I am willing to take.
I will show you how I use Micro Niche Finder to locate hundreds of keywords that are non-brand keywords.
First Get Your General Niche
I enter a very broad and general niche keyword. in this case, I will go with “acne”. Make sure you are set for “exact” match. Click the tabs on the upper left hand side to choose “Exact”.
Choose A Word Of Interest
I almost always choose a keyword phrase I am unfamiliar with. Chances are if I never heard about it, 90% of other internet marketers have not either. So here I chose “glycolic acid”. I do not care that the monthly searches are 33k+ since I am still conducting keyword searches and trying to find a good keyword.
Now when you click on “glycolic acid” I make sure to choose “narrow dig”.
Now I will sort this list according to Local Search results. I start from the top of the list and go down. I usually start off with checking out the domain availability on keywords in the 4-6k local search range. I will try and look for 3 keyword phrases that I think might not be targeted by other marketers. but I certainly do not shy away from 2-word keywords.
Next, I check to see if a domain is available. Look! We found one for “aqua glycolic”.
I do not even bother looking at SOC in MNF. I wanna see for myself. So I take my keyword straight over to Google search.
You will need SEO For Firefox because I am looking for 3 or more either PR- or PR0 sites and that plug-in shows the PR for the sites on the search pages. Now, I see this is not a good keyword to go after because the SOC would be a bit more difficult than I am willing to bother with since there are only 2 PR- sites and the rest are PR 2-5.
BUT…I am not done with this word. I go back to MNF and click on another keyword of interest found listed under “aqua glycolic” which is “glycolic acid peel”. I make sure I click on “glycolic acid peel” and choose narrow dig.
I see another keyword of interest with a TLD left for “lactic acid peel” and it looks good with 2.9k exact monthly searches. This is about the lowest number of monthly searches I target these days.
Back to Google to enter in lactic acid peel (without quotes).
What’s that? Look what we have here. So far 2 listings of a PR- or a PR0.
Now for a look at the remainder of the page 1 results. Aha! Another listing of a PR0.
Now, I do not care how many back links any of the top sites have. I do not care how many sites I am competing with. I am positive that my exact match domain is gonna give me the boost I need.
Time for the final confirmation. Is the CPC gonna be worth it?
With 9 advertisers and the lowest expected cpc of $0.56 with a possible maximum of $1.71. This is a good keyword. I would definitely buy this.
There you go people. A free keyword to the first person that can snag the last TLD for it.
Micro Niche Finder makes it so quick and easy to do keyword research. It’s my solid weapon for doing xfactor site keyword research. If you do not have it yet, you are working too hard. lol
And now onto my earning news.
Yesterday’s Adsense Earnings: $26.18
Highest single xfactor single site earner: $2.79
Lowest single xfactor single site earner: $0.16
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Wow Sara – thanks for this. I can see that you do not overcomplicate things unnecessarily and that’s great, fantastic post. I do things in a similar way looking at the PR except I do look at the SOC beforehand. Maybe I shouldn’t, I definitely don’t think it’s completely accurate and I bet I miss out on some keywords my way.
.-= Ruth – Web Career Girl´s last blog ..Review of ‘Learn How to Build and Sell Niche Blogs’ and the VRED Vault by Michelle Adams =-.
I used to just buy domains if MNF showed me a green light. Ouch! Big mistake because then later on as I built the site I would see a ton of PR3+ on the page. Now I know its important to see the SOC for yourself and not take the advice of any software for SOC recommendations. the SOC green light in MNF is a guideline and should not be the final say.
Thanks for sharing your research method Sara – I can see now how you are having success with this. I still need to refine my keyword research especially now I have switched from MNF to Market Samurai – but I’m going to use your steps as a basis.
.-= Clare Swindlehurst´s last blog ..Adsense 101 Bootcamp Week 3 – A complete website overhaul =-.
I am not familiar with Market Samurai. Does it also give you a determined SOC?
Market Samurai doesn’t give a single “Strength of Competition” figure – instead it provides all the information that would be used to generate a strength of competition rating and allows you to use your own judgement as to whether to pursue the niche or not.
Generating a single SOC figure can lead to oversimplificiation of SEO and lead you to miss out on opportunities.
Great post, thanks for sharing
I don’t look at the SOC either. In fact I think sometimes its worth taking a risk with what is on page one. I have come across keywords that SENuke have told me “Don’t waste your time” but I put up a page and it ranks first page without any backlinks. In fact I have a lot like that!
I couldn’t agree more. I just have gotten to the place where I can glance over page 1 and determine on whether or not I can take the competition. Early on with my xfactor site building I was still struggling with understanding all this SOC business. lol
Sara – I just read this blog post and thought you might find it useful while building your profile links: http://arindamchakraborty.com/7-simple-steps-to-keep-angelas-backlinks-alive
Very interesting post Clare. That would be good for using that profile packet I purchased on WF for 1,000 profiles because 30% of the sites on that list were not allowing profiles to be public but I had no way for early detection. Which is why I ended up buying terry’s packet because he has made certain that the profiles allow the search engines to index them.
Terry also has suggested methods of not placing links on profiles right away. I think too many people are just impatient and do it anyhow.
Is Terry still offering his backlinks? I thought I had heard it was closed. NoteworthyTips if you have a link for them can you pass it on.
Thanks
Hi Jason,
Yes it is closed. Terry closes the WSO each month once 30 people have purchased the packet. So you have to pretty much pay attention to the thread every few days. I had subscribed to the thread and watched it a few days and eventually I saw those lovely words “Backlink Blackbelt Now Open With Only 17 spots left”.
Terry will notify you by PM when he reopens it through the WF if you message him telling him you want to be notified of the next opening.
http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/171149-rave-reviews-four-hundred-high-google-pagerank-backlinks-sites-month-30-users-maximum-per-list-8-left.html
Thanks much
great post and nice images. i do he same thing. i really dont look at the soc but i try to kep the search above 5000.
do you use the brain stroming link much?
thank for all the info.
Hi Alex,
I have not heard of the brain storming link before. What is it?
Hey Sara, I think Alex meant the “brainstorm” button on MNF. I find that button hit-or-miss, mostly miss.
Ohhh right! Nah, I never use that because the first times I had, it was really saturated since the same products repeat on it. You aren’t really getting fresh ideas if 1,000 other micro niche finder users are also using that feature. lol
By the way, great post, and when I first looked it over, it felt like someone had documented my routine! I believe a ton of us are doing almost the same thing. John xfactor has truly succeeded in mass training an army of adsense gold seekers.
Love how you distilled xfactor and clickbump into one easy read, and how you moved away from SOC. The first page check really is the way to go, and I have scott to thank for that.
Having said that… I find that a percentage of the sites I put up sometimes inexplicably end up ranked at serp 50 or higher, even when page one has three or more PR – or PR 0. Damn those human reviewers! That’s ok, I will just pump out another couple of dozen sites or so for them to gloss over.
I thought I had posted a comment somewhere how my sites typically rank on the PR-/PR0 competition recommendation. Oh well. I find that for every 6 websites I build, only 1 will make it on page 1 and stay there right away. It might be a position of #5-#10 but they made it to page 1! The other 5 sites usually break up like this: 1/5 of them will be at position #11, 3/5 will end up somewhere between #14-18 and then one site will be at #25+. I usually find with the last site ranking at #25+, it will eventually hit page 2 after 1-2 months. Sometimes within just weeks.
I don’t really focus on them once they have been sand boxed though. I’ll still send them some blog comments but I don’t do much more than that. At least for now.
Yep, this is almost exactly what I do as well except that I use Traffic Travis to check out the SEO. I like how it puts all the sites in a table and you can see PR and backlinks (as well as other SEO stuff) at one glance.
.-= Sara´s last blog ..Brute Force Linking Loophole – My New Secret Weapon =-.
That sounds pretty cool Sara! I’ll have to check out TT.
I don’t have micro niche finder (yet) so I pretty much start with putting a keyword into GKWT (checking local exact search) then Market Samurai (look at search numbers again and the cpc) I I extract these into excel sort by local search and check cpc. Listing my search target range and highest cpc first I copy/paste this list into godaddys bulk domain box and search. Using the available domain list I check the top ten sites PR (also using SEO4Firefox) I’m sure with time I’ll find a better way to do my kw research but for this works and is free. I just need to stick to a specific set of guidelines. I have a bad habit of thinking PR0 good, PR- good, oh PR2 ummm maybe I can beat that that’ I seem to fixate on some keywords instead of sticking to my better judgment and passing it up.
Question; Sara you look at how many advertisers each keyword phrase has? Why?
.-= Witchie´s last blog ..Just Keep Moving Forward! =-.
yes, its important to look at how many advertisers are bidding on the keywords at any given time. If I see anything under 4 advertisers I would not go after the word. The reason being is if there are only a few advertisers that means they are not going to be concerned about competition with one another and most likely they will bid very low CPCs (cost per click). If you have multiple advertisers (anything above 8 is a really good sign) then there is more competition for the advertisers and they will be doing some higher CPC bidding wars to make sure they get their ads placed over the next guy.