I really want to start a website but am afraid that I will waste my time by not optimizing for the proper keywords or not pick a good niche website to begin with. SBI from Sitesell! has a very interesting program which supposedly tells what keywords work best and would be the most profitable, but is there any other way? If I just use wordtracker to build my niche, how do you know when you have enough keywords for a website? Say I get 30 niche keywords which I can write articles for, how do I know if the website will be profitable?
Like any business, with experience you begin to learn which niches and keywords will more then likely be profitable. But at the end of the day you have to test the market. Success is never guranteed in this business. If you are new to online marketing, start with a keyword which isn't too competitive. Just make sure that it is getting a reasonable amount of searches to make it worthwhile.
Thank you for your reply. Do any of you guys know how many keywords are preferable to start a website? Do you guys know what tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 means?
That's really bad advise for a newbie to internet marketing. They will just blow money away. Tier 1 keyword is the primary keyword for the site. Target this keyword on the homepage because Google would consider this the most important page in most cases.
How does anybody pick the "right" business opportunity? Research your customer and then figure out if you can provide a solution to their problems. If you have no idea who your customer is... then you won't make any money.
I think my post gave off the wrong message. What I meant was: what are the indications that it will be profitable? Also, say there are 500 competing websites for a keyword. Do you guys know any good tools to analyze the competition to see what chance you have of ranking high for the keyword? Anyone tried Spyfu?
Go to Google... Search for the keyword phrase you are considering. At the top right corner of the SERPs Google will tell you something like "Results 1-10 of about 15,400,000 for <insert keyword phrase>". This means there are about 15.4MM pages in their index which rank for that keyword. Not all are 'trying' to rank for it. Most typically just happen to have the word on the page, so you're not really 'competing' with them all. I find Google Insights (http://www.google.com/insights/search) very insightful when doing keyword research. You can find out which variations of a keyword phrase get the highest volume of searches. You can also find out which variations of a keyword phrase are increasingly getting more and more searches (though they may not be in the top 10 by volume). If you click on one of the top search phrases by volume, you get more long tail searches that have lower volume of searches by are less competitive (and therefore easier to rank for). You can learn a lot from your competitors... by looking at their web site, seeing which terms they are targeting. Pay special attention to the <title> elements and <h1>, <h2>, <h3> elements for their pages... the words used in their navigation links on the site... the content of their pages. These are all clues as to what keywords they are targeting. You can see which pages they have indexed by searching at Google for site:yourcompetitorsdomain.com... you can get a decent sample of which sites are linking to your competitor by searching at Yahoo! for link:yourcompetitorsdomain.com (Google's LINK: operator only returns a very small sample of inbound links... Yahoo! lists a LOT more but they are the ones that Yahoo! knows about, not necessarily the same one Google knows about). At some point you just have to jump in and try something... anything. It's a learning experience. You may not be successful with your first web site. You may not be successful with your 5th. But with each you will learn... and eventually you'll find something that works.
A business venture is always undertaken by good research of the market place and the possible demand-supply mismatch and your ability/skill to fill in the slot. Try to look at your own capability and how well you would be able to supply what the people demand, should be your starting point in selecting a niche. Regards, RightMan
Guys thank you for your helpful replies. My idea is to make a website chronicling my ways trying to make money without any. For example, I can sell bottled water on the street, go door to door offering something, start a mobile car wash, etc.
Of course, you must study first the nature of the website you are going to make / optimize. I think its not so hard to choose a proper niche for a website, not unless its a very narrow / specific topic website.