Archive for May, 2010

How are you identifying your niche?

A few weeks ago, I created a simple video on Basic Keyword Research. I’d produced that article to help a Chinese friend who had decided to create a website offering Chinese travel tours. After publishing their site they realized they weren’t getting any web traffic, despite their traditional marketing efforts.

I decided to do a quick analysis on their site and realized it had been put together without any strategic planning or keyword research. Not being a direct close friend or directly associated, I didn’t have time or the desire to sit down and explain what some of the problems were.

However, making a quick 10 minute video was easy and somewhat enlightening, but still nothing more than an extremely simple introduction. I’m not the best video producer by any means and I failed to explain the basic concepts of understanding the data.

If you do a Google search for “chinese travel” and get About 140,000,000 results, that should tell you there is heavy competition for that specific keyword. If you want to get your site to show up on the front page for that search term, you have a lot of work ahead of you.

If you run the “chinese travel” search term through the Keyword Tool by Google, you find that globally there were around 49,500 searches and 33,100 locally for the month of April. My “locally” covers North America.

Finally, if you examine the search terms with the Traffic Estimator, you discover that you could expect between 14 – 23 visitors per day if you held the a position in the top 3 positions.

Without any more research efforts, this data should tell you something. It should tell you, that it’s a long climb to the top and the results are somewhat minimal in the end. You would of course piggy back on a variety of keywords along the way, but you have to ask yourself if this is the correct keyword to capture? Are there better ones?

Ideally, you want to find keyword combinations that have a lot less page results from your search and have a higher rate of traffic once you’ve made it to the front page. This is due diligence work but vital to the success of your site and it’s marketing campaigns.

I like to try and create a plan based on keyword research for whatever site I create or develop. I’ll sometimes find a heavy competitive keyword phrase and make it a long term goal, but I’ll always find long-tail keywords I can use to get the site started.

I feel there isn’t enough time in the day to do all the things I would like. Exploring Google and all they have to offer small business is something for which I do not have enough time. Even still, I would love to become well versed in their technology.

Google has implemented a Google Apps Reseller, which should be of great interest to IT solution providers and professionals around the world. I have passion for internet technologies and Google has become a vital component of successful online businesses and careers. As an IT consultant, I don’t have the luxury of using time as an excuse. I need to know Google.

I may not be a Google Authorized Reseller, but at least I’m taking advantage of Google technologies and services for my business and personal use. Google and their many webmaster tools has become a best friend for small businesses. They contribute to the open source community too, which I respect.

If you’re in consulting business or an IT professional and you’re just using Google as a search engine, you’re missing out on some of today’s most important internet technologies. GMail is awesome email software and the convenience of Google Docs puts commercial applications to shame. But, it’s the Google API that truly makes it all so powerful.

If you’re already in the IT industry and taking advantage of Google Apps for your business, you now have the opportunity to add Google Apps to your existing VAR business model. The Google Apps Reseller Program is an opportunity to strengthen relationships with existing clients and generate revenue by having Google as your partner.