Quitting The Day Job

Building a Better Site - Research

In the next part of the series on building a better site, we will get down to the hardest part of the whole process, the research.  In our attempt to build a better site, we first created a concept.  While writing up the concept, we did some research in order to see if the main purpose of the site was feasible.  Now we will get down to nit and gritty and start doing some thorough research.

Where do we start?  How about at the beginning?  Go back to your concept, and get the one sentence main purpose of the site.  As an example, let’s use:

Build a website that will promote dog training books.

That is simple, but to the point, and it gives you the starting point for your research.

Research

The first thing you should research is whether or not people buy dog training books.  Is this niche popular, meaning do people actually search for it.  Two tools to help you are:  SeoBook’s Keyword Suggestion Tool and Google’s Keyword Tool.  SeoBook says “Dog Training” gets 2235 searches a day, while Google says it gets 1.2 million searches a month, so yes, people are searching for it.

While you are searching to see how popular these niches are, also keep a list of ALL the keywords on these two sites, along with the data from the sites.  When you are building content, you will want to use these keywords in your content in order to get more search engine traffic.  Just looking down the list on Google, I see that “Dog Training Equipment” gets 12,000 searches a month.  So while you started out promoting just books, you now have a second option for your site.

Content

The next bit of research is on the main content of the site.  If the site is selling a product, research the product.  If the site is about freebies, where will you get the freebies and what type of freebies will you put on your site.  You want to sell Dog Training books, so find all the Dog Training books that you want to promote.  It would probably be best to buy them, but you don’t have to.  Check out the website for the book, reviews of the book, whatever you can find.  Do people like this product?  Do people want to buy this product?

Competition

The last research you should perform is on the competition.  Here are just a few questions you need to answer:

• What products does the competition promote?
• How are they advertising?
• What does their content look like?
• What can you do better than your competition?
• What can you that the competition doesn’t do?

Should We Continue

Now remember, we still haven’t officially decided to build our new site, but after this step we will.  If for any reason in your research, you see any red flags, then you may want to stop and scrap your new site.  Do enough people search for your niche?  Can you find the right products, or can you get the right content you need?  Is there too much competition or is there no way for you to out-do your competition?

If you think you should scrap the site, do it.  Don’t just jump in because you spent so much time so far.  Stop, and you will thank yourself.  But if you do think this will be a profitable endeavor, then let’s keep going.  Most of the time after this step, you will be energized about your new site and ready to get it up and running.   The next steps will get you there.