When building a website, the single most important factor for SEO (search engine optimization) is keywords. This makes learning how to find a niche and the right keywords for it the first step webmasters should take before they start building their sites. However, anyone doing so needs a basic understanding of long-tail keywords and some tools to make finding them easier.
Long-tail keywords
When learning how to find a niche, the first principle to understand is long-tail keywords. These are keyword phrases that people use when searching the internet. For example, someone looking for specific information on widgets is likely to use at least a couple of words in their search. This is because they are looking for specific results and simply searching under the word “widgets” will probably not deliver exactly what they are looking for quickly. If they are looking for “red sturdy widgets,” they are likely to use the entire phrase in their search to narrow the results.
Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to get to the top pages in search results for a single, competitive word like widgets. The right long-tail keywords phrases are usually much easier to rank for. Therefore, those building new sites need to find these keywords before they start. 
Finding long-tail keywords
To find these keywords, one needs help in the form of keyword research tools. One can use free tools offered by Google (Google keyword tool) and others. However, specialized software programs offer features that make finding the best keywords a lot easier.
The two leaders in this kind of software are Market Samurai and Micro Niche Finder. Both programs offer tools to find long-tail keywords that would otherwise be much more difficult to find. They also provide useful information about the keywords such as the number of searches they get and what they cost advertisers in paid searches.
However, the most important info they offer is on the strength of competition one will face when trying to rank on the top of the search engine results pages for those keywords. While it is not a perfect indication of how much competition there is for the specified keywords, they do give one a pretty good idea of how difficult or easy it will be to rank for them.
Both applications offer their own advantages and disadvantages. Overall though, Micro Niche Finder is easier to use and better for brainstorming while Market Samurai is a much more extensive tool offering more in-depth analysis of keywords to enable users to make the best choices possible as well as various other SEO tools.
How to find the right keywords for the niche
Once the theme of the site has been decided, keywords need to be selected on criteria to include following:
- The number of searches: Keywords that have few searches generally have less competition. However, if the keyword phrase does not get at least a few hundred searches a month, it may not be worth optimizing for even if the competition is very low.
- Competition: This has two major factors. The first is the number of websites that contain the keyword phrase. The second, and usually more important factor, is the number of websites that are optimized for the keyword phrase. Professional keyword tools will give both figures as well as another that will combine them to give a good feel of the competition. It is also can be smart to do a web search of the keyword phrase and look at the sites that come up on top with tools to include those offered by SEOmoz to gain more knowledge of what the competition is like as well as what they are doing.
- How well the long-tail keywords fit the theme of the site: Every site needs to have a theme and the content all should be related to it in some way. This will give the site better search engine rankings and make it more popular with visitors.
- Personal interest: Creating websites is primarily about creating valuable content that visitors will appreciate. Content is usually better and easier to generate when the site creator is interested in the topic.
- Overall goals: While almost every site should start with some easier, long-tail keywords in mind, it is not always advisable to go for the low-hanging fruit. If one intends to keep the site over a longer period of time and continue to put work into it, it is a good idea to go for more difficult keywords with higher traffic too. These will take longer to rank for in the search engines but will bring in far more visitors once one does.
A few little secrets about keyword research
While it is important to do research when choosing keywords, it is not a good idea to overdo it for several reasons:
- Spending too much time on keyword research can waste valuable time that could better be used to create content for visitors.
- Keyword research can only give a general idea of how difficult it will be to rank for the keywords. Especially with the search engines changing their algorithms, sometimes those keywords that should have been easy become tough and vice versa.
- Over half of the keyword phrases used in real searches never show up in keyword tools! Therefore, most traffic for any one site will be for combinations of keywords that the site is not even optimized for.
With this is mind, keyword research should be thought of more as a way to find out what people are looking for and as ideas to create content.
Learning to find a niche and keywords for it begins with learning to do keyword research as well as using the right tools. Starting with keywords makes it a lot easier to rank with search engines and attracts visitors. It is the first, as well as most important, step to creating a successful website.
[...] Organizing site silos The site structure should in part take into account keyword phrases that have been chosen for their low competition. By optimizing a site for these keywords, webmasters can get the first natural visitors to their site. As the site’s links and traffic grow, so will its ranking which will in turn bring in more visitors from more broad searches. Some tools for finding these keywords can be found at How to Find a Niche. [...]