In order to find these top 50 keyphrase opportunities I suggest you use Google’s Free Keyword Tool and base your search on the average number of monthly searches each phrase has been receiving. The next thing you want to figure out is the relevance of your niche topic in relation to each of these keywords. Relevance here refers to the possibility that two distinct niches could be competing for the same keyphrase.

For example, if I was considering starting a new website about training guard and attack dogs, one of the keyphrases I might select would be “protection training”. The problem is that when I search for this term on Google, I receive search results for both “executive protection training” as well as “K9 protection training”

So what is a Search Engine Optimizer to do? One option is to check the first page of Google rankings and simply count up the number of results which relate to your chosen niche. In this example seven out of nine links and one out of two videos where related to K9 protection training.

I like to count each link as ten percent and each video as five. So in this example I will say the relevancy of the keyphrase “protection training” to my niche is 75%. At this point in my spreadsheet I will multiply the total monthly traffic by the relevancy to estimate the subset of that traffic that is likely to be interested in my niche.

The next step is to try to make an honest appraisal of where you think that each of your top 50 keywords might wind up. You can use the following statistics to estimate the percentage of the searches traffic that will click on your link depending on its ranking position for a given keyphrase.

For each of your 50 keyphrases it is helpful to look at the Google search results based on PageRank, domain relevance, number of backlinks, etc. Let’s say that for a given keyphrase you think you can wind up in 4th position then, you might want to ascribe that .6% of the relevant traffic. I like to be super conservative in these types of estimations so in this situation I might round this down to about 5%.

So the idea is basically to make two cuts out of the total amount of monthly searches, the first based on niche relevance and the second based on your estimated landing position. By taking this information and multiplying it by an estimated value-per-visitor you can get an idea of how much keyphrases would be worth to you per month. This type of estimation is enormously valuable to determine-not only how viable a niche is, but also to begin to figure out how you will structure your on-page SEO strategy.

In last weeks challenge, we talked about inexpensive options for shooting online video. Depending on which option you choose, audio noise might be a serious issue for you. Last week I completed the challenge using a regular digital camera and there was a lot of audio noise. So I’m looking forward to cleaning it up this week.

For tips on using the software I highly recommend the following YouTube video by Bill Myers.

Any form digital camcorder, whether it be MiniDV, DVD, or HDD should be fairly strait forward to upload onto your computer. Usually this will be done through a firewire cable and will require a computer with a firewire input jack.

If on the other hand your camcorder runs on an analog signal, then the task of posting online video can be significantly harder. One option is to borrow a friends Digital Camcorder and connect your camcorder to theirs through the AV wire. By having your camera output to theirs you can set your camera to play and theirs to record. Once your footage is stored on a digitally formated medium, their camera can be used to transfer it to a computer.

One of the simplest options is to use the video setting that comes standard on most digital cameras. Just use the USB cable that came in the camera’s box to upload your photos and videos to your computer, as you would normally, and then upload the video file you have shot to YouTube. Depending on the specs of the camera you should be able to shoot video that produces online video of a decent quality. Obviously this is not going to be anywhere near the highest quality option for producing online video, but it works.

For those of you have a camera designed specifically for producing online video, such as a pocket video camera made by either Flip or Vado then the task of shooting online video will be even more strait forward. The software that comes with these cameras have been improving and some of the latest versions allow you to sync your YouTube account with the software so that you can upload your video to your computer and then upload to YouTube with a click of your mouse.

If you have not done so already, you will need to create a YouTube account. Once your account is set up, go to the YouTube website and sign in. Once you are signed in you will see your username as a text link, towards the top of the screen, just a little bit right of center. Click on this link, and on the next page click on the drop down list entitled “New” which appears on the left hand side of the page a little bit down from the top and select the “Video Upload” Option from the drop down.

From here you can browse the files on your computer and click “Upload Video” when you’ve found the right file.

With this concept in mind I’d like to encourage you to undertake an audit of all the physical and virtual assets lying around your own home which could be more efficiently applied toward growing your online business without extracting any cash from your pocket.

This might sound like crazy talk so let me start with what I think is a somewhat strait forward example. If you have a ton of books lying around your house on a particular subject, then you have a natural comparative advantage in doing research on that subject compared to anyone who does not own such a collection.

After books the next big area to check out are the electronics lying around your home. An unused personal recording device can be put in your car in order to record ideas that pop into your head during your daily commute. Digital cameras can be used to take pictures for your business that you might otherwise consider buying online. If you have a video camera purchased any time in the last 5 years then there is a good chance that there’s a way to render that video into a format compatible for creating online video, and in a pinch you could even consider using a digital camera to shoot online video.

After electronics I would switch your search to hobby items such as sporting equipment, musical instruments and board games. If you have tennis racquets, tennis balls, and any tennis instructional videos lying around the house then you have lots of value stored up that you could use toward creating photos, video, and articles for a content based site.

Don’t just stop at tangible items. Search out siblings, parents, children and other family members for information. Are they experts in a particular hobby? If so that’s great! You have just found an expert mentor in that niche… one that will probably work cheap. One of the things your searching for, is what the trends are, you want to try to pick their brain in an attempt to find out what’s going to be hot topics in their niche, three to six months down the line.

Once you discover where you think the trends are headed you want to positions yourself where the traffic is going to be before that traffic even exists! By the way, when it comes to your family members, don’t just stop at their hobbies, by all means, consider their profession as well.

Professionals in the fields of health care, legal, insurance and financial services have traditionally been big money fields in terms of non-sustainable online business models. These sites are usually both highly competitive and highly profitable. So you want to exercise your competitive advantage by using your connections to try to spot the trends before others do.

Ubuntu is a distribution or “distro” of the Linux operating system. It’s open-source software distributed under the GNU General Public License. Without getting into all the nuances, what this means is that you can download the software onto your machine, and use it for free!

There are many ways to install Ubuntu, however the newest method, called Wubi (Windows-based Ubuntu Installer) is arguably the easiest instillation option for new users.

At this point you may be asking yourself why you would want to go through the trouble of first installing, and then learning how to use a new operating system? The answer is that having a Linux distribution installed on your machine allows you to run a whole host of other useful, open-source software packages, most of which have been built to run exclusively on the Linux platform.

These open-source programs have the potential to handle all of your computing needs including: spreadsheets, word processing, graphic design, digital video editing, screen capture, and screen recording.

All this having been said, there is a trade-off to using open-source software. Open source software is often less user friendly, harder to install, and usually comes with less customer service. So for those of you who have never used Linux before, but are willing to get out of their comfort zone and embark on a technical adventure, know that there will likely be frustrations and plenty of bumps on the road.

The advantage you will gain in return will be hundreds and potentially thousands of dollars saved in comparison to the costs of conventional software!

So the Challenge of The Week is to install Ubuntu on one of your computers using the Wubi Installer. Please note that the instillation requires at least five gigabytes of free space on your machine. It’s also helpful to know ahead of time if the computer you will be using is built on a 32 or 64 bit architecture. You can find this out either by reading the specs that came with your computer or, if you are a Vista user, you can follow the steps laid out here.

In the book he devotes a chapter to analyzing strategic situations in terms of “material, time, and quality”. In order to examine how online business imitates chess we have we have adopted this metaphor in our post “‘MTQ’ Analysis in Online Business“.

If that last sentence sounded like gibberish to you, don’t worry, our recent post entitled “Blogging as an SEO Busting Technique” outlines the concept.

We suggest you start your research with Google’s Free Keyword Tool by looking for keyphrases which are receiving between 20,000 - 100,000 searches a month and don’t have too many sites competing for the same term. This can be guestimated on Google’s Free Tool, by looking for keyphrases with a little green bar next to them that is less then half way full.

The most imporant factor for this challenge is to make sure all of the top three results in Google are static web pages (i.e. not blogs, forums, or social networking sites). Additionally it will be helpful if you can find a keyphrase such that none of the top three results have a PageRank higher than 4.

To discover a site’s page rank consider installing the Live PageRank plug-in for Mozillia Firefox. Once installed, this plug-in will display the PageRank of whatever site you are currently viewing in the bottom, right-hand corner of your browser window.

Happy niche hunting, and by all means if you have a question or you’ve found a niche opportunity that you’d like to share with others (a.k.a. you’re not going to use) feel free to share it with our Facebook group!

Added Note: Please forget what I wrote above about “the little green bar”. While doing research to try to complete the challenge myself I realized that trying meet this requirement makes the challenge just about impossible to complete. I must have been out of my mind when I wrote that sentence, my bad.

If the top contenders competing with you for that domain are static web pages then you should consider using a blog as a means of creating a competitive, SEO advantage.

A lot of people have talked about the SEO value that blogs bring in terms of fresh content. But as Darren Rowse of Problogger points out in his post, “How Much Does Fresh Content Matter in SEO”, fresh content is not the end-all and be-all of SEO.

As Darren points out, there are cases where static sites outrank blogs which are both optimized for the same keyphrase. Even if fresh content is not the end-all of SEO techniques, it’s important to remember is that fresh content does seem to have significant value in the eyes of the search engines.

There is an additional value that blogs bring in terms of SEO benefit that is not often talked about and that is  that blogs can easily leverage the internal link structure of a large website. There seems to be a recent trend in the way search engines compute rankings which has increased the significance of on-page factors.

So if you have excellent on-page optimization you can gain leverage in your ability to rank well with the search engines, and as your site grows in size that leverage is increased. Think of this in terms of the “vote theory” of SEO. The idea that each link to a particular page on your site counts as a vote for that page in the eyes of the search engines.

The way we have explained the “vote theory” here is a oversimplification (certain links may potentially hurt rankings), but it helps demonstrate how powerful larger sites can be in terms of SEO clout. For some examples consider checking out  sites like Wikipedia, About, and Mahalo.

For practical tips on how to implement a strong internal link structure for your site, check out the post “The Most Overlooked Link Building Strategy…“ From Buzz Blogger.

Since Blogs are designed to make adding content easy they have an advantage in the sense that they can grow quite large (in terms of number of pages) rather quickly.

I would argue that the greatest value of a blog, in terms of its natural SEO strength comes from a combination of factors which include fresh content, the unique SEO footprint which blogs leave, as well as their ability to leverage the internal link structure of a large website.

For more info on this concept check out recent post on Blog SEO tips.

So if you find a keyphrase that’s getting a lot of traffic but doesn’t have that many competing sites indexed, and if your top competitors are using static sites, then you can consider using a blog as an SEO busing technique.

All of the back-links from all five of these articles should be directed to a single web page and the anchor text in each of these links should all targeted for the same keyphrase.

For extra credit consider writing your five articles in order to promote the name-squeeze page which you made for week four’s assignment.

For a good list of article marketing directories to choose from, check out this post from Mert Erkal of the “Search for Blogging” blog.

For some suggestions on name squeeze page layout and construction, feel free to check out our recent post, “Anatomy of a Name Squeeze Page“.