Niche Keyword Research: Evaluating SEO Aspect

When you doing niche keyword research, it’s really important to pay attention to its potential in terms of search engine optimization, or SEO.

First of all, it will give you a general idea about the level of competition – niche keywords with no competition most likely will bring no profit.

Secondly, it will help you understand how to make a SEO-friendly dropshipping store – in the long term, SEO improves the ranking of your webstore in search engines, so it becomes much easier for people to find your website.

In order to make the dropshipping niche evaluation easier for you, we made a scale that will help you decide which niche has more potential in terms of SEO, and which one is almost impossible to squeeze in.

Dropshipping niche keyword research: Google Keyword planner

So where do we start analyzing the niche regarding its SEO perspectives? No doubt the first step is keywords analysis. Every niche name in fact is a keyword. Therefore, first of all you need to estimate the amount of searches for this keyword in Google (and for those that sound alike). You can do it with Google Keyword planner tool.

The algorithm is the following:

1. Sign in to your Google account and open the Keyword planner;

2. Among the options choose “Search for new keywords”;

3. In the dropdown field enter the name of your dropshipping niche, for example “dogs collars” and press “Get ideas” button at the bottom;

4. You will get the list of keywords that are related to this niche with approximate amount of searches in Google for them. By defaults the date range is 12 months, you can set your own range on the left sidebar.

5. So dogs collars has between 10K and 100K searches which is perfect result for the dropshipping niche – it has some demand but it doesn’t exceed the sensible limits. If there are more than 100K searches,  the niche is too wide and the competition there will be simply monstrous. If there are less than 5K searches – skip to the next niche option, this one probably has neither competition nor profit.

We personally rate the results the following way:

• If there are 5K-50K searches, the score we assign to this dropshipping niche is 5* since it’s perfect in terms of competition;
• For 50K-100K the score is 4* – the competition is great, but there still might be place for you;
• For ≤ 5K searches the score is 3* – the niche is all yours, but there’s no profit in it;
• For ≥ 100K the score is 2* – the competition is too high, no chances to win.

You can see that Google Keyword planner has only 3 ranges, therefore we advise you to look through the list of related keywords it provides you along with for your query. If there are a lot of keywords with 10-100K searches, it is probably between 50-100K in our scale, if there are mostly 1-10K, it is closer to 5K-50K in our scale.

Have any issues with Google Keyword planner or just want a ‘second opinion’? You are welcome to use the Ubersuggest tool for the same purpose, too!

Niche keyword research: manual overview of the competition

During the next step it is mandatory to conduct a manual research and get an insight into the niche and your probable competitors. In order to do that, open Google search page and enter the following query in the search field and press “search”:

allinurl:niche name (for example: allinurl:dogs collars)

As the result, Google will show you the pages that have that keyword in their URL, which is an advantage for them in competition.

Also repeat the same search with the phrase “allintitle” and you will see all the pages that are SEO-optimized for this keyword – they are your competitors.

Look at the number of pages Google returned and that will give you rough idea of the competition in the dropshipping niche.

We personally rate the results the following way:

• If there are 3K-10K pages, the score we assign to this niche is 5* since it’s perfect in terms of competition;
• For 10K-100K pages the score is 4* – you’ll have to work hard to win the competition but it will be worth it;
• For ≤ 3K pages the score is 3* – the competition is pretty low but profits are not high;
• For ≥ 100K the score is 2* – the competition is too high, no chances to win.

Niche keyword research: Keyword Explorer

We can also recommend you to use special services like Keyword Explorer by Moz. You’ll need to register with Moz and you’ll be granted with the access to this tool.

Just enter your keyword to the search field and press “try free”. This wonderful tool will estimate the keyword competition in real figures and provide you with extremely valuable information on the competition in the niche

Here is how the results for “dogs collars” look like:

As you can see, this tool analyses whether it’s difficult to work effectively in such a competition, what are your opportunities, and what’s the potential of entering this niche. Even though all of these criteria are crucial, we first of all look at the “Difficulty” parameter as it lets us know if the competition in this niche is fine for us. We personally rate the results the following way:

• If “Difficulty” reaches the mark of 0-40, the score we assign to this niche is 5*;
• For 41-60 the score is 4*;
• For 61-80 pages the score is 3*;
• For 81-100 the score is 2*.

We advise you to research everything this tool suggests you. But remember that this is limited version since it’s free, however it is exactly enough to evaluate a few niche options.

General use of search engines for niche keyword research

The last step of our evaluation is manual search engine results pages analysis. To understand your potential SEO competition with huge retailers, just enter your niche keyword in Google search field and explore the results on the first 2 pages.

If the whole first page is taken by such behemoths as Amazon, eBay and others – there is a really slim chance that you will have any profit in this niche. You’ll never win against those giants and that means that they get 90% of all the customers. What is left brings no profit.

If the results include not your competitors but some services like Yahoo!Answers or some spammy articles (such resources are called Easy Target), this means that the niche is free and you better grab  the chance to take it.

We personally rate the results the following way:

• If the 1^st page is mainly taken by giants but there are up to 4 places taken by Easy Target results, the score we assign to this niche is 5* – this is most preferable result where you can get a good spot in the competition and get nice profits;
• If the 1^st page is fully taken by giants, the score is 4* – the competition is extremely high and your chances are rather slim;
• If the majority of the results on the 1^st page are Easy Target, the score is 3* – you can win the competition but profits won’t be worth it;
• If 1^st and 2^nd pages are taken by giants, the score is 2* – your chances for a commercially successful venture are insignificantly low.

If you want to easily calculate the potential of dropshipping niches you’re considering for your store, use our free research tool that shows how good is this niche for your business.

Follow these simple steps, and get an awesome dropshipping store that is guaranteed to stand out from the competition!