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Niche Selection 101

In this module we cover some of the differences in what constitutes an

authority website vs. a niche website, as well as how important following
your passion is when determining a niche to enter.

Authority Websites

Many times, authority sites cover many niches under one broad topic. An
example might be ESPN.com.

The broad topic, of course, is sports.

However, under that they deal with NFL football, NBA basketball, and many
others.

Then, inside of each one of those topics they go even further into a niche.

For example - talking about Seattle Mariners baseball or covering the latest
injury news.

Niche Websites

Niche Websites can be authority websites on a narrower topic. For

example, profootballtalk.com is all about NFL football.

Inside of that site, they also talk about free agents, injuries, specific team
by team coverage and much more - but it's starting from a tighter niche at
the top - professional football.

This doesn't mean that Pro Football Talk isn't an authoritative source on the
NFL, but it's a little more niche focused.

How To Pick A Niche

Remember this graphic from our video?

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Picking the right niche is really finding the intersection of several different
factors. One of the biggest questions is whether or not you need to be
passionate about your topic to enter a particular niche.

The Question Of Passion

Do you need to be passionate about your topic?

• If it’s your first site, it’s in your best interest to pick something you
enjoy
• It’s easy to push work aside when you aren’t passionate about the
topic
• When you are passionate about it, you care about the user
experience
• Good User experiences = more time on site & better rankings

The Competitive Landscape

The other 3 circles in our graphic can be loosely organized under the idea
of what the competitive landscape looks like.
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Are there other sites doing well in this niche?

Are there products to sell in this niche?

Is there enough search volume/interest in this niche?

To answer those questions, let's look at some examples of how you can
decide if a niche is too broad, too narrow, or just right:

Broad or Narrow?

Narrow Example 1: Dumbbells Reviews

• This niche is tailored to a very specific product

• Niched down enough but can still make revenue
• Not a ton of growth potential, because it’s just dumbbell

Narrow Example 2: Women Over 50 Fitness

• Another very specific audience

• Revenue Opportunities
• Limited topics, but could have relevance with yoga, meditation

Broad Example 1: Fitness

• Very broad - targeting all aspects of health & fitness

• Lots of topics, but heavy competition and revenue
• With lower levels of relevance & authority, it will be harder to rank
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General Rules To Follow:

• Don’t go too narrow that you box yourself in

• Don’t go too broad that you lose topical relevance
• Find a happy medium, but sometimes more niche is OK!
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Keyword Sampling Guidelines

Can you easily find 10 long tail keywords that get over 1,000 searches
per month?

1. Look at the first page of Google to determine if the keyword is low

competition.

Do you believe this “sampling” proves there are more great keywords
to be found?

No = find a different niche

Yes = Proceed!

Use the right tools to speed up the process.

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Judging Your Competition - things to look for

• At least two sites with a DR (Ahrefs) /DA (Moz) of 30 or below

• Low number of referring domains
• At least 2 sites in top 10
• UR (Ahrefs) of 20 or Below/PA of 30 (Moz) or Below

Keyword Sampling Recap

• More than 1,000 searches per month

• More than 3 words long
• At least 2 sites on the first page of Google are “weak”
o Low links to Page and Domain is ideal
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Use The Right Tools

Here is a list of both free and paid tools that we recommend to help you
with this process:

Free Tools to Utilize When Finding Keywords

• KWFinder.com
• UberSuggest.io
• SEMRush.com (Daily Limits)
• SEOQuake.com (Chrome Extension)
• Keywords Everywhere (Chrome Extension)
• Google Keyword Planner
• Moz Link Explorer (Helpful to rate competitor DA or Domain
Authority)
• Moz Bar (Chrome Extension that does the same as Link Explorer)

Paid Tools For Keyword Research

• LongTailPro
• Ahrefs.com - Find Keywords & Analyze DR (Domain Rating =
Authority)
• SEMRush.com
• KWFinder.com (Paid Plan)
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Find Your Doppelgangers

What is a Doppelganger Site?

• Sites that rank for the same keywords you plan to target
• May not visually look the same as yours - but have similar content
• Should appeal to the same audience as your site

Example: A solid doppelganger site for TreasurePursuits.com would

be Coinancials.com, which has relatively low domain authority, and ranks
for many rare coin keywords, which are a primary focus of our site as well.

Though the site doesn't visually look like ours, it does focus on a very
similar audience:

Tools You'll Need

You’ll want at least one of these tools to find Doppelgangers:

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• Ahrefs.com (Trial or paid version)
• Moz Link Explorer (Free Version)
• Moz Bar (Free Chrome Plugin)
• SEMRush (Free or Paid Version)

Metrics You’ll Pay Attention To:

• Ahrefs DR (Domain Rating) Measures Strength of Domain in Ahrefs -

(ideally looking for sites with DR under 30)
• Moz DA (Domain Authority) Measures Domain Strength (ideally
looking for sites with DA under 30)
• Organic Keywords for Doppelganger sites in Ahrefs or SEMRush
(multiple sites with 10,000+ organic visitors is ideal)
• Google Sheets (document your findings to judge competition)

How To Analyze Your Doppelgangers with Ahrefs

Simply type in a competing domain to the Ahrefs site explorer and check
out their domain metrics. Below is TreasurePursuits.com which would fit
the criteria we're looking for - since the DR is only 4.8, which is easily below
30. We can also see the organic traffic estimate is 40.4K, which is 4X more
than the 10,000 organic visitor baseline we recommend.

Also, the upward trend of organic traffic is a nice sign, showing that growth
is happening for other sites in side this niche:
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To find even more doppelgangers, click on "Competing Domains" in the left

menu and you'll see a list of similar sites based on the keywords they have
in common:

From here, you can click on those competitors to view their domain rating
and other metrics to confirm whether or not they are a true doppelganger
site for you.

How To Find Your Doppelgangers With Moz + SEMRush

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SEMRush is another fantastic tool for finding competitors and
doppelganger sites. To make sure you're looking at sites with low authority,
simply install the free MozBar Chrome extension from Moz.com and you
can get the Domain Authority (DA) of any site you visit. You can also get a
more indepth look using their Open Site Explorer tool, which gives you a
few free searches per day.

Here's a look at Coinancials:

Once we know it's DA is under 30, we'd pull it up in SEMRush:

Seeing an organic traffic estimate above 10,000 per month is a good

baseline number to look for - and a higher number is always better.

To get these results in SEMRush, simply start by pasting the URL of the
competing site into the search field.

You'll see a domain summary, including traffic and keyword ranking

estimates as shown above.
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Then, click on "Organic Research" and then "Competitors" to view a list of
competing domains, sorted by how similar they are:

Further Analyzing Doppelgangers

Now that you know how to find dozens, if not hundreds of potential
competing sites - here's how to analyze them.

1. Find Multiple Sites With 10K+ Organic Traffic - This is important

because it shows that a variety of sites are seeing success in the niche,
which usually means there is room for more (you!). 10,000 organic visitors
per month is an arbitrary number, but these estimates tend to be low, which
means the sites are likely doing even better.

2. Uncover More Keywords - Make sure to keep a record in your

spreadsheet of these doppelganger sites. Once you decide on a niche,
they will be a great source of keyword opportunities for your site. You can
come bag and dig deeper to see exactly what they are ranking for, and
which keywords you can and should target for your own site.
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Doppelganger Recap

Here are the key takeaways from this lesson:

• Find sites that look like yours, in your niche

• Log each site in a tracking spreadsheet
• Analyze DR/DA of Doppelgangers and document authority
• If lower competition with high traffic exists = validated niche
• Review keywords for each competitor site and uncover new keywords
• Continue with validated niche + profit!