Questions
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Spammy Industry Keyword Research
Hey Aaron: First thing to realize is that you've basically decided to get into running and chosen the Olympic Marathon as your first race. The "work from home" category is probably one of the 4 or 5 toughest categories to compete in due to the massive, usually spammy/black hat competition. I'm sorry that sounds like such a downer, but It wouldn't be fair to try to answer this question without first making sure you're aware of the incredibly steep challenge and learning curve ahead of you. Are you certain you want your first foray into SEM to be in such a difficult market vertical? I don't ask that to be discouraging, just to ensure that you've got a realistic view of what's ahead. That said, if you still want to dive in to this specific market... You're clearly wanting to target legit approaches to home-based business. My suggestion would be to initially go after some very specific niches that will help you get away from most of the crap you've already mentioned as your biggest obstacle. The good news is - I think you've already identified a couple. Why not start with specifics like your "how to start a store on Ebay" and "how to start a part-time store on Etsy"? You could focus your keyword research on just these kinds of specific activities, and even get right down to a couple of specific interests (say golf and crafting) that you're already knowledgeable about. They would lend themselves to a lot of really obvious content building, both in text and video. (These wouldn't have to be separate sites, just different categories on the same site) You could even aim to organize by interest, rather than by business opportunity e.g. home-based business ideas for golfers. This is called "going after the long tail" - specific topics that will have far less volume of interest than the primaries like "home-based business" but with far less competition and a much more defined target audience. Develop and hone your skills with these more accessible targets, then use what you learn to move up the chain of competition. (Or simply spread wider in the long tail with more highly niche targets!) Start with just a couple of these concepts, and as you build them out and start seeing success, find another to add. Don't spread yourself too thin at the beginning. Once you've built up a bunch of these categories of content on your site, you'll naturally be moving toward becoming an authority site on home-based business in general. Because of the spammy nature of the niche, building trust and authority are going to be very challenging but critical to long-term success. You'll most definitely need to build social media networking into your plan also, since done well it can be very effective at building that trust/authority that is much tougher with just a website. Let your passion for helping people come through as much as your specific business expertise. Bottom line, you're going to need to have a clear strategy that's do-able given your current skills and resources, before you start considering how to do the actual keyword research. You're already part way there having figured out that you're up against a very messy category. My recommendation - carve yourself a very, very specific niche and build from there.
Keyword Research | | ThompsonPaul0