Understanding Your Online Vertical Market
Creating a “Themed” or “Siloed” website really starts with an understanding of your vertical market from a top down view. You need to first identify where the top of your market is for any particular niche you are researching. You will miss real opportunities if you wrongly identify the top of your market.
Finding the top of the market is done by finding the keyword that has the most competing Web pages in a Google search.
For example, if my market is going to be Fish Tanks, Fish Tank Supplies, etc. or a sub-niche from there, I need to start my research at the top of that market.
Your research may surprise you when you find that the top of the market is a keyword or phrase you had not thought of.
The top of the “Fish Tank” market happens to be “Tropical” and not “Aquarium”.
- Tropical = 141,000,000 competing pages
- Aquarium = 65,000,000 competing pages
- Aquariums = 10,600,000 competing pages
I use keyword classification categories so I always know where I am when I am doing my research.
Here is how I classify my keywords:
- Market Category = More than 10,000,000 competing web pages
- Market Segment = 1,000,000 - 9,999,999 competing web pages
- Sub Theme = 150,000 - 999,999 competing web pages
- Niche = 2500 - 149,999 competing web pages
- Micro Niche = 600 - 2,499 competing web pages
- Phrase = Less than 600 competing web pages
From there you need to start drilling down into the market to get the full picture of how the market is organized. As you drill down you will discover the “Golden Nuggets”.
Once you finish your drill down and collect the data you will be able to create a blueprint for the architecture of your site. I generally start with a 5×5 silo structure, but it could be more or less. 3×3 or 10×10. What do these numbers mean? A 5×5 means that I will create a site with five categories and have 5 sub pages in each category.
For example if I am doing a site on aquarium products I might have the following silo landing pages from the home page (or simply put 5 categories in my site). Your Market Will Chose Your Categories!!! I haven’t done the drill down on the categories so these are just for example only.
- Aquarium Pumps
- Fish Tank Supplies
- Aquarium Lighting
- Acrylic Aquariums
- Aquarium Stands
Then under each category I would have five pages with content and offerings.
For example:
- Aquarium Pumps (Category Landing Page)
- Fish Pumps
- Little Giant Pump (product name)*
- Pentair Pump (product name)
- Fish Air Pumps
- AquaClear Pumps (product name)
* A “Golden Nugget” - “Little Giant Pump” (High Traffic - Low Competing Pages - High average Cost Per Click). The higher the cost per click, the more money in that market!
On a phrase match this Keyword phrase has 330 searches per day, 117,000 competing pages and $4.20 average cost per click. On a broad match - 733 searches per day, 418,000 competing pages and $4.20 average cost per click. With the proper “Siloing” and themed backlink strategy, you can dominate this market.
In the next Segment I will discuss the free tools and the metrics that you need to look at to begin creating your blueprint and discovering those “Golden Nuggets”.
