Using Market Samurai to Find & Evaluate Micro Niches
October 25, 2009 by Andy · 36 Comments
There are a number of Micro Niche Finder tools out there, with perhaps the best known being Micro Niche Finder. More recently, Jonathan Ledger has come out with the excellent Niche Horde. However, with money being tight, it would be nice if you could rely on just one keyword tool. Well, Market Samurai might just be that tool. I use it to research large sites, and I use it to research micro niche sites. In this tutorial I want to share with you my technique for narrowing down a niche into a micro niche, and evaluating it to see if it would be worth targeting for a mini-adsense site. Feel free to leave a comment at the end of this page.
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I am also using Market Samurai as the only SEO and keyword research tool. I am using it to find opportunities for affiliate sites and to find profitable adsense micro niches. For me, Market Samurai has no competition. It is simply awesome.
I think the keyword research part of MS has limitations, but so do all keyword research tools. As my own methods have changed, MS has become a good match for the way I work.
From the first day I started learned Market Samurai months ago, I was very impressed with its power, and now I hardly even write one page without checking some keywords. I learned several things from this video, hadn’t really paid *any* attention to awa. Thanks!
AWA is important for Adsense publishers in particular
Awesome stuff Andy. Learned some new tricks. Was just wondering why you did not apply a filter on the SEOT before analyzing. Out of curiosity how much is a litre of petrol and a pack of smokes in the CI’s?
Hi Ann
Yes, that would be one way, but I am not solely interested in the SEOT figure as experience has told me that if I want something badly enough, SEOT is not going to stand in my way :O)
A litre of petrol is 0.75 Euros which is about 1.13 US. That’s quite good for us because it did go up to over a euro a litre a year or so ago ($1.50). Diesel is cheaper at 0.65 Euros (I think – I’m not sure as my car is petrol).
Smokes? Not sure. I don’t smoke myself other than the occasional cigar, but they are very cheap (at least compared to the UK).
Hi Andy,
I’ve had Market Samurai for a while now but i’ve never gone through
looking for micro niches like that. Fantastic video as usual as always youre info
is great. Keep them coming.
Regards
John
Glad you liked it John. I will cover more in depth research for “authority” style sites in a later tutorial. Market Samurai is actually well suited to that style of research as well.
Hi Andy,thank you for this video.would you please do a micro niche keyword research with Micro Niche Finder keyword tool,thanks.
Hi Baron
I will do one eventually. Have you seen the tutorials that James Jones has done on MNF?
Hi Andy,
I have been using Market Samurai for a few months now. There are so many features, even in the keyword research module, that I learn something new everyday. For example, I never realized the importance of SEOTCR column. I had previously highlighted the OCI column – Do you think the OCI is important? What about the PBR?
Thanks,
Mick
I think all of the columns are there for a reason. I am not totally sold on the idea of OCI. Depends on what kind of sites you are building, e.g. if you build adsense sites, AWA, EPC and the competition are the main columns I would recommend. For affiliate sites, OCI might be one to look at, but I am not convinced of the accuracy of this information. PBR? Again, not too sure I need it, but if you have any suggestions of why it might be useful instead of (or in addition to) the other columns I’d love to hear them.
Hi, the reason Market Sam works without getting a ban from google is that it is using its own proxies by default. Just a quick note.
Hi Steve
Yes, I know. Its a great feature that so many other pieces of software could implement. TOo many have a feature to use a proxy, but finding proxies that work is such a pain. MS have done the best thing and included them for us.
Hi Andy
I bought market samurai when it first came out but have never thought of using it for this purpose. I used micro niche finder but this is much easier and much faster I must say.
Using domain names in the title works every time. I have a number of page one rankings for some really highly competitive keyword phrases.
My latest site http://www.portraitpaintinggallery.com is number one for that term out of 17 million results. This site is less than 3 months old.
Over a relatively short time I will also get ranked for the main term “portrait painting” as well.
Thanks for the help Andy
Good luck with that Lloyd.
Another stellar video, Andy!
I have been using MS since introduced during 30Day Challenge ‘08. I have bought a lot of tools over time but this was a smart invest…it just keeps getting better.
Quick question –
In your video, you show finding an ‘Adsense-based’ site ranking in the top ten using SEO Competition tool in MS.
In my niche research, I often come across similar Adsense/Xfactor designed sites appearing in the top ten.
I assume since you took the next step and looked for a potential domain name, you would still go after this niche.
Do you have any experience and have you been successful in competing/out-ranking similar sites?
Do you approach the niche with the same strategy as if they are not there or do you use additional or alternative methods for ranking in this case?
Thanks, as always, for your insights and sharing your experience and insights.
Jeff
Jeff
I dont really care about the type of site, just whether the PR / Age / page depth on the site etc fit my criteria. I think that you could buy the domain, setup a site and create great content that would easily get into the top 10. Get some good backlinks as well, but that’s something you always need.
I started using Market Samurai in August when I began the Thirty Day Challenge. I had been floundering around, as a newbie, trying to figure out how to proceed. Market Samurai is the only market keyword research tool I use now. It also has other very useful modules. Several different pages of my first “project” with 30DC and Market Samurai went to page one, two, three, and four of google very quickly using my main theme keyword, category keywords, and long-tail derivative/semantic keywords and are still there.
Congrats Renee
MS is a really great tool, no doubt. There is so much info you can get with it that sometimes it is a bit bewildering.
Hi Andy,
Ditto all the accolades above – ran out of adjectives to express my gratitude for all your expertise and knowledge that you generously share with this community.
I noticed that for all the searches you continued with a broad match. Would there be any case you switch to phrase or exact match to narrow down your niche selection?
Thanks & Regards,
Rick
Not when I am researching a niche, no. I’ll maybe cover phrase and exact match in other tutorials, but what you saw in this video is my exact method for finding Micro Niches.
Thanks Andy, keeping it uncomplicated works best for me…
Hi Andy,
Your comment to Webmaster; “As my own methods have changed, MS has become a good match for the way I work.” Any chance we will see an update to KRAPRO with a options profile that will match all of MS data columns? I’ve followed your tutorial on importing MS data but it gets messy for me (spread sheets and I don’t get along to well) to try and move MS columns around to line up with the current profile options.
How about an early Christmas present?
Rick
Hi Rick
Version 5 of KRA Pro will have full support for Market Samurai (and every other tool). No idea when it will be ready though, as I am re-writing 90% of the code.
That’s great – will wait patiently – or at least try to! I like MS best of all the keyword research tools. What I don’t like is MS tab setup – difficult, clumsy, slow, etc., etc. Having to export to a spread sheet then back in MS is a painful process, for me anyway. Oh well, I’m learning more about spread sheets but I sure would love to have KRAPRO to work with all the time.
Andy:
What a great video! I notice in the video above about MS and microniches the one you chose was foldup treadmill and it had a low SEOTCR, 11 AWA , and a SEOTC around 110 however it had a SEOC that was very high. Do you not pay attention to the SEOC?
Thanks,
Rick
No Rick, SEOC is not as important as SEOTC or SEOTCR. SEOC is just a count of pages that include the phrase somewhere, not pages that are optimized for the phrase. You would expect a page that is optimized for a phrase (and therefore more difficult to beat) to have the phrase in the title, no? Enter SEOTC!
Hi Andy,
Thanks for all the great videos. My question is regarding the SEOTCR versus the results on the SEO Competition results. If the SEOTCR is high but there is a lot of green and gold in the SEO Comp results, what would be a good approach? Also what is considered a low or medium number for SEOTCR?
Thanks for your help, I’m still new to this and got hit in the head too much playing rugby so I struggle a bit
Andy,
Since the beginning of December AWA (Adwords Advertisers) is no longer available on Market Samurai. Under the Knowledgebase link on this page http://www.noblesamurai.com/support/ is now the following short statement:
“Where has AWA gone?
Unfortunately the Google service which we used to get AWA data is no longer available. As a result we have been forced to remove it from Market Samurai. As soon as we are able to find a similar data source to replace the Google service we will return this functionality to Market Samurai.”
As AWA forms a cornerstone of your technique for discovering microniches does this mean that the technique is now obsolete, or is there a way to get round this?
Thanks,
Simon
It really is a shame the column was lost. I now look at Adwords Competition column instead for a rough guide, but check everything I am interested in over at Spyfu.com who do give you a figure for number of advertisers.
Best way to find great keywords will be to build a website with a low competition keyword and monitor website logs for keywords which users typed to arrive at your site.Who knows you might stumble upon a golden nugget
Cant say I agree. You’ll only be found for phrases and words that are on your site in the first place. Keyword research must come before building the site.
Hi Andy,
Thanks for a very informative video. Having decided on the micro niche “foldup treadmills” how would you go about constructing the site? Do these type of sites have one article on the main page or do they have other article pages? Do you use WordPress with pages and no categories?
Many thanks,
Brenton