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You read and hear all the time that you should not target big niches or niches with tons of competitors, but how do you really know? The whole idea behind finding a work from home niche that has plenty of searches and little competition is so you can make rankings in the search engines and get traffic. Most people go to Google and do a search for the keyword they are targeting and assume that the numbers brought by Google’s query are what they have to complete against. They then check the Google Keyword Tool and see how many searches are done on Google for this keyword and use those two numbers for deciding on their niche.

This is a dangerous game and can bite you down the road. How do you really know that you can rank on the first page for this keyword? Is it because there are not that many competitors? I prefer to know exactly what I am up against before I spend the time building and setting up a website targeting a specific niche. I always run the numbers and ask these questions.

How many backlinks and how much work will it take to be on the first page of Google?

What kind of visitors can I expect?

Is the amount of visitors going to be worth the amount of work it will take to get on the first page of Google?

These are questions that you need to be asking! I myself have made the mistake of not running the numbers. It is pretty disappointing to put up a website and never get visitors or make sales. Like I said above most of you understand finding a niche and understand how to find if this niche can be profitable, but you are not checking your competition realistically. Just because there are few competitors doesn’t mean that the competitors that are on the first page of Google don’t have tons of backlinks. Measuring the amount of backlinks your competitors have will give you an idea of how much work you will have to do to possible get on the first page.

Example: You find a keyword that gets a decent amount of searches every month. You find a product that you can create a website around that fits this keyword. You search the keyword in Google and go off of the query results it brings back, leaving you thinking that there is not that much competition and that you can make first page. Your numbers tell you that you won’t retire off of the money you will make, but if you make first page you will make a decent amount of money every month.

This is figuring that 1 in 100 visitors will buy the product or at 1%.

The problem is that you didn’t check and see how fierce you limited competition is. You see other people have found this niche and set up websites. They have had their websites up for over a year accumulating thousands of backlinks. Had you checked this you would have known that in order to make the first page of Google you will have to beat the lowest two sites on the first page, which both have at least 8000 backlinks. For you to get in the top 3 on the first page of Google for this keyword you would have to have around 10,000 backlinks which is what the top three websites are showing. To get this amount of backlinks takes a great deal of time and work. Realistically to get 10,000 backlinks you would have to work your tale off for over 6 months. Now this depends on the niche, but generally backlinks are hard to come by. You also have to realize that while you are playing catch up, your competitors are accumulating even more backlinks.

So if you are a one man or woman operation, this site is going to take all your time in order to see organic traffic. Then the question has to be asked, is it really worth the effort? Meaning are you going to be able to catch you competitors and are you going to make enough money to make up for all the time spent and all the money spent getting this kind of massive backlinks?

These are things that can kill your online work at home efforts. What is the point of putting up a website if no-one will come and see it? You must know exactly how much effort it will take to rank on the first page of Google if you are going to make your money on organic traffic and most people starting off have to hope for organic traffic, because they can’t afford advertising for traffic.

So now you understand how important this is, you need a solution. The easiest way to check how many backlinks your competitors have is by going to Yahoo’s http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com This tool will allow you to check any website’s total backlinks count giving you an idea of what you will need to compete. You can also go through the backlinks manually and check and see where they are coming from.

Example: You might see that the #1 result has 9000 backlinks and the #2 has 12,000.

This tells you that your top competitors are pretty fierce but you need to dissect this even more. You need to know what extensions their backlinks are coming from. Meaning, .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov and so on. The #1 site could have quit a few .edu backlinks which could explain why it is ranking better with less links. Now like I said you can go through each individual link from Yahoo siteexplore, which takes forever when a site has 10,000 backlinks, or you can use a better tool for dissection like SeoElite and get the total from Yahoo. SeoElite won’t tell you the total number of backlinks accurately, but it will tell you the breakdown and trace .edu and .gov backlinks. This is important in understanding why this competitor is ranking so well and what you will have to do to beat that website in the rankings.

Appling this method will give you an edge and keep you from entering niches that have fierce competition. Now I am not saying stay completely away from fierce competition. I am saying that you need to run the numbers and be realistic about what it will take to get to the first page and top search engine results. By knowing this you can set your budget and time and see if this will be worth the effort to get there!

Information written by David Dotson with other

staff helping in hopes it will motivate you to

work at home!

Article Source: ArticleRich.com

Tags: Backlinks, Dangerous Game, Google, Google Keyword Tool, Google Search, Home Niche, Keyword, Mistake, Niches, Running, Search Engines, Setting Up A Website, Traffic

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