Greetings, I'm very new to the the online earnings game, and I'm trying to find a niche to start an adsense decorated blog. I want to start reviewing gun holsters, specifically tactical holsters, as I know a lot on the subject, and the competition doesn't look too rough (I think so anyway). Before I get wrapped up in a huge time investment, I want to make sure my odds are actually decent of making my way up in the SERPs, and if you think it has any payout potential. I plan on buying a domain with the keyword "tacticalholsters" somewhere in the URL, and of course, my operative keyword will be "tactical holsters". The keyword has a 1600 local monthly search volume, and a 1.63 CPC. In Google, I searched 'intitle:"tactical holsters"' which yielded 1200 results, and 41k without the 'intitle' prefix. All of the top results are online stores which sell tactical holsters, while no review sites ranked - are online stores with PR ratings of 4-6 range considered authoritative? Are they a major threat to a niche blogger? Under these circumstances, how many keyword rich 500-1000 word reviews do you think I'd have to post to the site to start seeing 1st page results? Sorry for the loaded question (and for the pun), I'm just trying to make sure I'm properly assessing the niche potential before I spend 100s of hours writing articles. Thanks!
Depends on content. If you write good quality content and manage to get quality links as well, you can easily outrank others in about 80-100 articles.
Any time you can find a topic you know about, are interested in, and enjoy writing about... you have half the battle won. Sounds like a not so competitive niche and a great idea for a blog to me. Wish I knew the topic. Since search engines rank each URL separately (they don't rank sites), the more posts you make... the greater the chance that you'll rank AND for more keyword phrases. Each post should target different keywords phrases "Review of Model X Tactical Hoster", "Review of Model Y Tactical Hoster", "Comparison of Top 10 Tactical Hosters", etc. I would also look at affiliate programs as a way of monetizing your site. Personally, I think you have to have LOTS of traffic for Adsense to be lucrative. But a small amount of targeted traffic plus very targeted affiliate programs (getting commissions for selling specific models of holsters) might be quite profitable. It's at least worth looking into. In general, I'm more likely to click on an affiliate ad than an Adsense ad... but that is just me.
It all depends on what kind of links those top sites have. You could have the greatest quality content in the world and your site wont rank for nothing if you cant out link build the other guys. If they have some links coming from relevant, high PR pages with the keyword "tactical holsters" in the anchor, I dont care if you write 1000 posts with 500 words each, you aint gonna rank for that keyword. Now the only advantages of writing good, relevant content would be for link baiting, and ranking for some long tails. But when its all said and done, the one with the strongest links wins.
I see. I didn't realize the individual URLs were ranked and not the collective site. I doubt there are too many tactical holster affiliate programs, so I definitely need to do a little more research. Any harm in using both adsense and affiliate marketing? Also, I'm a bit flaky on good backlink strategies, so I'll need to brush up on some tried and true basics (I'm sure this site has plenty of suggestions). Thanks for the info, guys. I'll do a little more research, and probably go for it. Thanks again!
great, I think you are on a very good way. The next thing you should do before making a decision is download this tool: Seoquake plugin for firefox. Do some competitor research, it seems you forgot that really important part. Also most importantly, make this decision your own... making these decisions is the best part of the game, it's called gutfeeling.
Understand that what you've done is just part of the analysis process. If your goal is to be on page one of Google, then you need to look at an analyze page one of Google regardless of SEOC (competition) numbers. I've seen 1st page results for KWPs with under 2k results that would take a US Army Tank to blast through just spot #10. And I've seen "competitive" KWPs that had some light spots on page one. Also, "competition" is used lightly here. You really need to break down sites to see how competitive they really are. A site with 12,000 backlinks (according to Yahoo), PR4 and listing in DMOZ can be PWNed by a PR2 site with a sprinkling of high-quality backlinks. In short, looking at overall competing PAGES is just a start. This is where you decided whether or not to do more research and not whether or not to start building.
Actually, its each page of a site is evaluated on its own. But, now that I think about it, each page does have a different url. Geez, never thought of it from that perspective. Sure you can do Adsense and affiliate marketing. You would probably want to go a little lighter on the Adsense if you find a good product to sell though. By lighter I mean not maxing out your pages with huge Adsense ads. Good luck!!