SEO|The Full Insider SEO Details Exposed

If you are attempting to start a business online or if you are simply trying to increase your traffic and revenue, focusing on a niche market can give you the edge that you need in order to reach the high goals that you have most assuredly set for yourself. There are so many different niches in the overall market that any web site on any topic can find a niche and fill it. When you specialize, you are more likely to succeed.

The most powerful tactic in the history of warfare is the classic divide and conquer routine. You can make an obscene amount of money if you can take over one niche market and then another and another. Focusing on smaller groups of people and dominating their needs in a particular area is the best way to effectively spend your resources.

When you attempt to evaluate your market keep in mind that there are people in your market that you wouldnt normally associate with it. There are a small number of people who live in the suburbs who would like to wear cowboy boots. If you can target your products at groups such as these you are more likely to sell to them than someone who would target the cowboy boots to… well.. cowboys.

Finding niche markets can be a daunting task. Basically, you can ask yourself a few questions that will assist you in finding the niche market that is right for you.

1. What experience do you have with the products that you are selling? If you are an expert in the field of your sales, you are more likely to succeed than most. Try to come up with the reason that you got interested in the products that you sell. Figure out what kind of people are most likely to be interested in your products and then try to come up with some groups that arent so quickly thought of but that may find it fashionable or interesting to purchase your products.

2. Who was the product that you are selling designed for? Cowboy boots were designed for cowboys. There are people who have never stepped foot on a farm who will wear cowboy boots, but they were designed for cowboys. Try to think of what group of people the product was designed for and what other groups can be cut out of the same mold. I.E. country folks, suburbanites, city dwellers, inter-city dwellers. You are not as likely to sell cowboy boots to inter-city people as you are to suburbanites.

3. Are any of these groups already targeted for your product? If somebody is already targeting the niche that you came up with, you may be able to decipher whether or not there is still room in that market for you. If your competition has been selling the cowboy boots like hot cakes in the suburbs there may still be time for you to make some money off of them.

4. Can you target your niche better than anyone else? If there are already companies selling your product to the group that you wanted to select as your niche market, you still may be able to be the most successful. Just because you are not the first doesnt mean that you cant be the best. If you can target a group of people better than anyone else due to some experience, tendency, or inborn characteristic, go for it. Competition is important, without competition nobody would ever become successful.

5. How well can you optimize your niche for search engines? You may be able to come up with an excellent niche market that you can provide for better than anyone else. This niche may be completely original, and you may have the resources necessary to really get it off the ground. But does it have the potential to top any search result sheet? Will anyone ever come looking for it? If not you may have to start off by advertising on pay per click advertising services such as adwords before you get a chance to really thrive on your fresh new niche market.

If your niche market can fill up a few slots for key words you are in better shape than most. It is normally very difficult to come up with good, comprehensive key words for your web pages. The best situation that you can encounter is one in which your key words are more or less laid out for you. If you have a catchy little gimmick or a highly targeted niche market you should be able to come up with a good set of relevant key words. Having relevant key words is most of the battle in the whole SEO game. Any SEO that can come up with a good, comprehensive list of key words will probably do quite well in the world of business.

When you analyze a competitors website, you need to make sure youre prepared to do the job correctly. Competitors websites, if analyzed properly, can give you all sorts of information that you can use to increase the traffic and the popularity of your site. You can use these sites to analyze your own market. If a site gets a lot of hits it has to be doing something right. Check out where it is ranked, what key words it uses, how it is formatted, and what you can do to exemplify the good and filter out the bad. Also be sure to keep copyright laws in mind as a copyright infringement suit is never good for you, your site, or your blood pressure.

Identifying the Leaders.

You need to start off by identifying the major players a good place to do this is Yahoos directory. Its not as comprehensive as it once was, but its good if youre looking for the major players. You may want to print out the directory to take a closer look. Look for large companies, as well as innovative approaches and new products. Also use this examination as an attempt to identify the niche markets that the major players have not identified and exploited. If you can find new niches youre basically set as far as traffic goes.

Also consider that since Yahoo!s directory is the place that you look to find the big players, it may be a good place to get listed in order to become a big player. These little associations are important if you want to start to attain more and more traffic and conquer a niche or category. Try to identify all places that the big dogs hang out and start hanging out there. Its all about who you know in this business so bigger is better. You might not be ready to play with the big dogs, but the only way to get there is to sit down and give it a shot.

Sites like Media Metrix 500 can tell you which companies get the most traffic, and you can learn about the relative traffic by using Alexa. Alexa is a free add-on to your browser that ranks the traffic to each sire you visit, telling you whether its in the top 100, the top 1000, the top 10,000, and so on. This gives you a rough idea of where your competitors are in the pecking order.

Scrutinize the Leaders.

The next step is to study the top 5 or 10 competitors very closely. There is a lot that can be learned by looking at competitors website and analyzing them. These are the things that you should look for.

1. Make sure you check to see what products or services they offer, and note anything thats different from your own offerings. Look for gaps that you could fill.

2. Think about the look, feel and functionality of their website.

3. See what advertising campaigns and offers theyre running.

4. Look at their strengths and weaknesses, from the customers point of view.

5. See if you can figure out their strategy.

When youre dealing with publicly traded companies, you can often get detailed information from their SEC filings. Write down the names of their key players and then look for any interviews and speeches they might have made about their website.

Look for Strengths, Vulnerabilities, and Gaps.

Now, summarize the information youve found into a few sentences for each competitor, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each one. Note strategies that are going to be necessary to counter their offering these will depend on your own websites strengths. If youre small, then youll need to be resourceful to exploit their weaknesses.

With this research, you can create a marketing plan. Be sure to include how you intend to deal with competition, and what steps you think youll need to take for you site to come out on top. Once youve finished analyzing your competitors, you need to consider whether it would be better not to compete at all, and find a less-saturated market.

Dont get frightened away prematurely, though make sure you know what youre getting into before you start, and dont let big companies intimidate you. Remember that you can move faster than they can! All you have to do is offer your customers things they cant find anywhere else.