NSP 3.0 Keywords and Domain

This Sunday I had a Skype call with Paul, and we’ve discussed a lot of things, sharing some info about our countries and visions. Paul told me a little about himself and I told him a little about myself, then we started discussing niche websites, and how much of a good idea this business is ( free time, not so hard work after all, big pay, scalable, SEO/Marketing related ).

I told him that I would like to work as an SEO consultant, something similar to Brian Dean or Neil Patel, although we did discuss how they might actually have a bigger team behind their content. They might have started small, but coming up so fast with 100 000 words guides, and lots of them, is not a one man gang job.

As you know from my last blog post, I picked my niche. I now also have a domain and WP set up. I will be using the same theme I always use, a very powerful customizable theme called GeneratePress which I also recommend. Tom, the developer, is awesome !

The design is not set up yet, but I will be working with a graphics designer, a friend of mine, to get a niche design ready. Content will be a priority.

I decided to go with a new domain rather than an expired one, mostly because all expired ones I found were either badly named, too expensive, or spammed out. I also wanted a brand of my own, and I wanted something to cover the whole bigger niche, rather than something that would be more related to one subniche than to another.

Mass Keyword Research

I recently finished my keywords research, and by this I mean I used LTP and Moz Keyword Difficulty trial for one month to figure out what keyword difficulty these sites have. I discussed with Paul on the Skype call how I don’t really trust the Keyword Difficulty Tool, as it can be quite misleading sometimes, and since LTP Platinum also uses the Moz API ( I think for KC too, not only for DA and PA ).

Let me explain: during my research in the beginning, I bumped into a subniche of a bigger niche that did have a couple of low websites, one of them being www.nichename101.com or something similar. This site looks horrible, and I mean really hideous ! It does rank for some keywords in that subniche, but not quite on the majority of the others left in other subniches (it ranks for best product for X but not for best product for Y which makes the niche probably not worth it, although I might consider taking another look at it).

Most of the other keywords would show up websites like Amazon and Alibaba or other ecommerce sites, but one particular keyword had a Keyword Difficulty of 15% which is amazingly low, I’ve never seen one so low.

The only reason ?

The website nichename101.com with low DA and over 10 years of activity, and a lot of Page Authority N/A for many ecommerce websites. Taking a closer look, I did spot that although no PA, the ecommerce pages were actually pretty well optimized in the titles and metas for these kind of products, not to mention that people recognize brands as Amazon and eBay. So my opinion is that it will be a lot harder to rank there than just 15%.

On the other side, I did find a lot of other 45% Keyword Difficulty that had 3-4 niches sites with quite spammy links or maybe not many links at all, DA under 30 and age perhaps up to 3 years.

In my opinion, is a much better sign if you find a couple or more low DA sites that are ranking well among bigger sites that are not that well optimized for the keywords. I would avoid Amazon eBay Alibaba and any other ecommerce websites. Low PA forum pages, Yahoo! questions and maybe even Quora questions are good signs that it might be easier to rank.

But don’t get me wrong, the Moz tool is awesome, and mostly the keywords I found pleasing to me did match a Keyword Difficulty of 30 – 25 or less. I just think you can simply figure that out by looking to the first page result and using the Moz DA Toolbar, and maybe Ahrefs to figure out how well those sites are building links. If you’re doing this massively, tools like this and LTP Platinum will save up a lot of time.

Categorizing keywords

My biggest problem now is that the whole website covers around 3 big subniches, each with many small products/topics, maybe even 30-50 each including different types of products and different types of usage. So I could write about well over 100-150 subniches, as well as one bigger general one, with lots of different interesting topics. Categorizing keywords won’t be such a struggle, but deciding where to start will be.

I could just start with the easiest competition subniche as Perrin mentioned in one of his coaching calls, but then the content won’t really match the site, so I first want to cover a little bit of each 3 big topics, and then focus on them one at a time, 30% first one, 30% second one, 30% third one, till I cover 100% of topics, and then just continue blogging, maybe start hiring writers.

By the end of this week I’ll have these categories and subcategories set up, and place 5-10 keyword in each of them. I will then create a schedule, just to know exactly when I will write/post content.

Writing 300 words each day will get you over 100 000 words in a year, which is pretty much an authority website. It’s not that hard to do 300 per day, but I’ll be probably doing something like 3 articles of 1000 words each week after I get some heavier 2-3000 words pillar articles ready.

I still have to watch some of the videos on NichePursuits about content strategy, I lacked the time.