Step 2 - Research your niche or theme
So you know the domain you are going to use. If you don’t please read Step 1 - Picking A Domain Name.
Researching the niche
In Step 1, you researched some keywords to help you pick out a domain. Now you need to use some of those keywords to find out what websites are listed for them. Check Google, Yahoo and MSN for each of the keywords that you are interested in using.
Click through to these sites and see how they are laid out. What type of words do they use? How much text do they use? How many sites are linking to them? How many pages on this site are indexed?
Search Engine Commands
Some search engine commands can help you with the task of finding out how many backlinks a site has and how many pages are indexed for that site. (backlinks - how many links they have pointing to the site)
Google & MSN Commands
site:domainname.com (shows the pages indexed)
link:domainname.com (shows the sites that link to it)
Yahoo Commands
domain:domainname.com (shows the pages indexed)
linkdomain:domainname.com (shows the sites that link to it)
Evaluate the research
After you know these things, you can decide on what keywords you would like to use. Just realize that if the keyword you are targeting has 25,000 links to it, it may take some time.
I never tell anyone to pick something easier to get. It just shows you how much link building you will need to do. I go for the tough ones, but target the smaller keywords at the same time. We will get to that after we go over building the site.
Remember, if someone tells you that the keyword has too much competition, that you should try something easier, just maybe they don’t want another competitor. How will you know whether or not you can do it if you don’t try?
Research Conclusion
You should now have an idea of how much link building you will need to do. Also, you can see how much content and how many pages most competitors have. You will want to try to get this many on your website. It will give you a good internal link structure. I will go over that when we start building the website.
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Thank you for including the various search engine commands. I can never remember them
Comment by Lloyd — 1/27/2005 @ 7:13 pm
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