Targeting a niche market has long been regarded as the most effective way for innovative online entrepreneurs to sell their products, services, and solutions and establish prosperous businesses. However, it had a significant limitation in the past: cost. Due to the expense of targeting minuscule niche markets, this has traditionally been the domain of large businesses with substantial budgets that could afford to grow even larger.
If you want to know if niche marketing is effective, you should ask Jeff Bezos. Amazon's success was predicated on targeting millions of niche markets.
Niche / long tail business models sell a large number of products in small quantities. They are the antithesis of offline business models, which sell large quantities of a few items but are constrained by the massive marketing costs associated with attempting to sell a vast array of products to a small number of customers per product.
Amazon has utilized the concept, which was popularized by authors Clay Shirky and Chris Anderson, to become the world's largest online retailer.
Getting Started - Niche Research
Everything changed online with the release of Google's Hummingbird update. The update worked heavily in favor of good content in smaller, niche markets. Regardless of who you are, you can compete equally with the "big guns."
It is now possible for a one-man business with a niche market to become a "multinational giant" or, at the very least, a large fish in a small pond!
Identifying the keywords used by online searchers in your niche market is a simple way to determine what people in your market niche are pursuing. Simply input the search terms you would use to locate your product, service, or solution, and a complete catalog of similar phrases will be displayed.
Download a free keyword tool like Keyword Surfer and you'll rapidly discover what people are looking for. This report is straightforward to obtain and utilize. Re-enter each of the discovered keywords/phrases, and you will rapidly obtain a thorough analysis of what people are seeking:
Begin your search with a broad term (seed keywords) at all times.
Refine this list by adding and removing terms.
Remove infrequently used keywords.
Utilize a tool for aggregating keywords, such as KeyClusters.
Confirm that the search results meet the user's requirements.
Consider whether a sufficient number of prospective customers actively search for the product or service you plan to sell each month. Remember that a small online store can make decent money with a few hundred repeat customers, so you may only need a few dozen to generate sufficient revenue.
Additionally, you must determine whether equivalent products or services are already profitable for other businesses.
You may discover quickly that the companies offering products, services, and solutions in your niche are targeting so many other niches that they leave a vast opportunity for an inventive entrepreneur.
The greater the number of queries for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, the greater the effort required to achieve a higher ranking. This is commonly referred to as keyword difficulty and sometimes includes SERP features; for example, if a keyword's result page is cluttered with SERP features (such as featured excerpts, knowledge graph, carousels, etc.), the difficulty will increase. If you're just getting started on the web and pursuing the same keywords, it can take years to obtain a high ranking.
Generally speaking, the greater the search volume, the greater the competition and the greater the effort necessary to achieve success in organic search rankings. However, if you go too low, you run the danger of failing to attract any searchers to your website. Targeting highly specific search terms with less competition may be optimal in many situations. These are known as long-tail keywords in SEO.
Getting Started - Niche Research
Understanding the extent of the tail
Wouldn't it be great to rank first for the keyword "shoes"?
It's wonderful to deal with keywords that receive 50,000 or even 5,000 monthly searches, but these popular search terms represent only a small fraction of all web searches. In fact, keywords with exceptionally high search volumes may indicate intent ambiguity. If you target these keywords, you risk enticing visitors whose goals do not align with your page's content.
Do not undervalue these less common phrase terms. Long tail keywords with a lower search volume typically have a higher conversion rate because searchers are more specific and deliberate with their inquiries. For example, a person searching for "shoes" is likely just browsing. Conversely, a person searching for "cheapest red women's size 7 running shoe" is practically grasping for their wallet!