Welcome to the SEO matrix, now you can choose which competition you wish to fight. Are you going to go for the green line or the red line?
How deep does the competition hole go?
Loads of important points to consider here as you research your niche enough to make a decision on whether it is worth the time. The main goal is to find at least one little kid to beat up. This poor kid will have a PR less than 3, a BLP less than 200, no YAH listing and no Title and URL optimisation.
Of course it goes a bit beyond just having a green line. It is an indicator of the possible effort you need to put into getting onto the Top 10, or better even getting to position 1 and benefitting from ~42% o the traffic.
A green line using the following criteria is the rule of thumb for this complex calculation of competition.
Off page factors
PR – PageRank- PR Less than 3
A lot of high PR pages in the top 10 means that a lot of high authority web sites, alternatively a lot of low ones means that the keyword is a lot more accessible.
BLP – Backlinks to the page – Less than 200 links
If there are only a few links pointing to sites on the top 10 then again this makes it easier to dominate.
YAH – Listed in Yahoo – No Listing
Listed pages are about $300 a year. A useful boost if the page is producing revenue.
On page factors
Title – Keyword in the Title – Not used
Seen in the top of the browser when you go to that page
URL – Keyword in the address – Not used
Either as a part of the domain or as part of the path and filename to the page.
Remember this is really only a rough way of finding the little kids to beat up. It can be surprising when you see that at times you can have a site come up against a load of reds, or disappointed when you struggle against a load of greens and yellow. I would be extremely surprised if you couldn’t rank against a load of greens for a theme keyword.
There is a Noble Samurai video for a bit of advanced SEO competition analysis. Concentrating on comparing
Between things like the page authority, domain authority and the strength of the link networks behind them.
Content and links I am sure can overcome all at the moment, however listening to Ryan Deiss more recently he suggests that traffic is also something to consider. The feeling I get is go for it now while the information from The Challenge guys is still good, I am sure it’ll be a different landscape this time next year.
When I first tried Market Samurai the finding of niches seemed to be quite painful. I had used Micro Niche Finder before and found it quick and easy to home in on niches. However, I was determined to keep doing this process until I was comfortable at find them. Now I must say that I have niches everywhere, it was really only a matter of getting used to the interface and finding ways of homing in.
Now I am a great believer in testing. This is one principle that in my belief will help anyone steer through the rough waters of the Internet if you account for it. Now believing in it may seem great if you already know what you are going to test in the future but what if you don’t? Right now I don’t have any idea of what I will test against but I am going to make sure I prepare for it. You see I wish to work out for myself the effort required in producing a site that produces a stated revenue. There are so many factors right now that it would be impossible for me to even start, so to prepare I think what I will need later.
Good Documentation
It really is the cornerstone of any research. Simply you keep good records of what you can so that you can compare against them later. Obviously you may wish you kept data that later may seem important, that’s just a learning process, but for now it is imperative to keep everything that is available in a place that is accessible and ideally searchable.
I use OneNote religiously, for much of the research I have ever done over the past decade has relied, for the most of it on keeping good records in OneNote. There are certainly other applications out there that do this kind of thing but I have been seduced by the idea since it was made that it is integrated into my tasks, calendar, email and documents under the Microsoft banner. I would love to succumb to the passion I see for the Mac if I could have it all working together as it does in Microsoft Office but as I see it the Mac seems to be going through revolution and not settling down to any common and extensible means of accomplishing it. I am also lucky to know the scripting behind the scenes that allow me to do pretty much what I like with any of that information too so I can have powerful functions where I wish.
Back to niches and testing
A habit that is really useful for later is storing the information you gather on your niche research structured for easy finding later. The export on Market Samurai produces a CSV (comma delimited file) that can be read by a spreadsheet or database later on. Use it consistently now I am aware of the power of it. For quick browsing and comparing the modules of Market Samurai visually I just take screenshots of the information I get and store this all away in my notebook (OneNote). It has been great in comparing niches already and you find that when you do it enough you find patterns within certain niches (or markets) where sometimes one factor seems to be surprisingly dominant. I will blog more on this later when I have gathered enough information but I sometimes feel like the Google algorithm is nothing but a massively hard coded algorithm depending on actual words than sense.
The results of my niches found so far, I have 10 Challenge niches ready for the next stage out of 35 ideas that I have though of. I really tried to stick to things that I was interested in but it seems so easy to home in on them now I may get the confidence or acquire the skills to attack a load more. Market Samurai databases are easily accesses using a driver but I haven’t spent any time yet on automating it on Adobe AIR, I am not sure yet whether the effort is worth it or not.
Relevant Challenge Journal Blogs
- TC10 Mod 1.6
- TC10 Mod 1.6 – Revisiting the Matrix
- You ARE In The Matrix – Challenge Edition – #tc10
- Day 6 – SEO Matrix Analysis
- Why Sometimes a Competition Matrix Doesn’t Make Sense
- Module 1 / Day 6 SEO Matrix Analysis
- Diary of a Photoholic: Day 15
- Module 1 – Day 6 – SEO Matrix Analysis
- Eating Crow Goes Better With Page Rank
- My Challenge M1D6 #tc10
- The Challenge 2010 – Day 6
- Day 6 SEO Matrix Analysis
- You must re-test your theme keyword