Just to be on the same page, a market is a group of individuals that:

• share a common need
• have the ability to pay
• are motivated to buy

A niche on the other hand is a subset of a larger market e.g.

• market = Dell
• niche = Dell printers
• micro-niche = Dell multifunctional printers

People define their interest by the keywords they type into a search engine. Some phrases are used more frequently than others, meaning they have more commercial viability as well as more competing pages. There are two types of keyword searches that can be performed. Say for instance I was searching the keyword phrase digital camera, a broad match search would return pages that had the keywords digital and/or camera anywhere on them. A phrase match on the other hand would return pages that had the keywords digital camera in that precise order.

For our purposes, keywords that have over 1 million competing pages are defined as market keywords, those with 30, 000 – 1 million com competing pages are defined as niche keywords and those with less than 30, 000 pages are defined  as micro-niche keywords.

Our goal here is to find keywords for which there is an acceptable level of competition. Aside from just an acceptable number of competing pages, we also want to look for phrases that generate traffic. We will do this by using a tool called Market Samurai. You can get you free trial during the Thirty Day Challenge by clicking here.  The thing I like about Market Samurai is that it:

• enables you to explore market level keywords and find niches/micro-niches
• enables you to analyze traffic/competing page data for different keywords
• enables you to find category keywords

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of keyword research. If there is no traffic, there is no demand, no searches, no visitors, no buyers and ultimately no money. If there are too many competing pages, you will probably have no chance of rankings, no visibility, no rankings. Thus, our aim to to find keywords that have high traffic and low competition. This will provide you with high potential demand, high potential rankings, high potential visibility, high potential traffic, high potential buyers, high potential profit.

For the purpose of the Thirty Day Challenge, our acceptable keyword phrases are those that have at least 80 searches a day for the #1 ranked page on Google, less than 30, 000 competing pages and a phrase to broad match ratio greater than 15%. Phrase to broad match ratio is defined as the ratio between the traffic for the keyword in phrase match compared to broad match, and the higher the score, the more likely the phrase is listed in the precise order e.g digital camera).

As you do your keyword research, you will come up with a theme keyword, which is the phrase you will build your sites around. You will also come up with category keywords, which are phrases that are related to your theme keyword and meet the same traffic and competition criteria mentioned earlier. Category keywords help your search engine rankings. This is because you don’t get ranked solely for your theme keyword, you get ranked for related keywords as well.

When analyzing SEO Traffic, we use broad match whereas when analyzing SEO Competition we use phrase match. The big difference is that analyzing traffic using broad match gives us the deepest insights to keywords that might have great potential. Analyzing competition using phrase match on the other hand enables you to assess your true competition in terms of how many sites are optimized for your keyword.  Fewer competition means the potential to get better ranking with less time and less effort.

Remember also that broad match searches tend to include irrelevant results.  Sites that are phrase matched appear higher in rankings.

Day Two’s Mindset is about Embracing Change. People more often than not tend to resist change because it unnerves them. But you have to remember that you cannot control change. Nothing ever remains constant except change itself. Change is inevitable…embrace it.