The time has come. The moment you all have been waiting for.
I am finally announcing the niche I have chosen to go into along with the actual site. A lot of planning and preparation went into this, and I’m hoping those efforts pay off.
No matter the case, I’ll be sharing every step of the process. And with that said, the very first step in starting a niche site, or any site for that matter, is choosing a domain name.
Before I get into the details, here is the domain I chose for my niche site…
*drumroll*
http://getbackyourexadvice.com
There it is in all its glory. I’m sure you can guess the niche I’ll be targeting. But if not, here’s a few ideas.
Couples who just broke up, boyfriend/girlfriend wanting their ex back, couples on the verge of divorce, etc.
You get the idea. Obviously there are niches within niches, but the main niche I’ll be focusing on is for those wanting to get their ex back.
I can either go broad and branch away, or I can go deep and narrow in on a specific group of people. the possibilities are endless really. Pretty exciting stuff, eh?
Why the Relationship Niche?
Before I get into all the domain name goodies, I feel I should answer this question for those wondering why I would want to get into this niche.
Truth be told, I’ve been through a bad breakup. As recent as June of this year. I was engaged. No need to go further into details. At the time, I wanted to get back together, but not anymore.
A lot of people were in my position, and you will always have couples who are breaking up for numerous reasons.
All in all, there will always be money to be made within this niche. People are desperate to get their ex’s back and will do anything, including paying for valuable advice on how to do just that.
So, that’s the why.
Let’s get into how I ended up with the domain name I chose and the necessary steps I took to get there.
Preliminary Domain Name Research
It doesn’t sound fun, and you’d be right to think so, unless you consider the money you can make by getting it right.
It’s important to realize that when you’re building a niche site, it’s a little different than building a branding website, e-commerce site, personal site, corporate site or something similar.
Take my site for example. It’s more of a branding-type site, targeting a very broad and large niche. With niche marketing, you’re targeting a small niche, usually a specific keyword phrase.
This is the same as targeting larger niches, but the competition will be much less. So with that in mind, the keyword research is exactly the same. The only difference is that you’ll be looking for keyword phrases that get searched for less (but still have a good number of searches per month) and have little competition.
Another difference is that your domain name is going to include the keyword phrase you choose to target. As you can see by the domain I chose, my main keyword phrase I’m targeting is “get back your ex.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t get an exact match domain name with just those words, as it was already taken. That would have been ideal.
But what you can do, and what I did, was add a word to the end of the phrase. The word I added was “advice.”
Again, ideally you want just your keyword phrase as the domain name. But, when that’s not possible, add a word to the end.
So, how do we get to this stage?
Keyword Research
Like I mentioned before, the way you do keyword research never changes. The only thing that changes is what you’re looking for, and that is determined by the the niche you’re going into along with the amount of competition there is.
I’ve covered keyword research in previous posts, so I don’t want to get real technical here, other than to show you exactly what I did to land on the keyword phrase I’m targeting, along with the reason behind my decision.
I don’t have any fancy, expensive keyword tools (yet). Honestly, you don’t need them. They make life easier, but you can get by using free tools. I use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
After spending around 3 hours searching various keyword phrases, I came upon the “get back your ex” phrase and chose to use it. Here’s a screenshot at what this looks like when using Google’s free tool:
It’s important to note that you must check the “Exact” tick box so that you get an accurate number of exact match searches per month. Otherwise, you get an inaccurate, normally much higher number of searches per month.
As you can see, the exact match shows 1,000 searches per month for “get back your ex.” This is a fair amount and will serve well when you’re just starting out. It’s important to start out small and then slowly start targeting more lucrative keywords once you’re already bringing in traffic.
To get an idea of the competition for the phrase you’ve chosen, all you have to do is use Google search and enter in the keyword phrase, without quotes. Here is the list results when I search “get back your ex” without quotes:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds=17259,24279,27731,27759,27867&sugexp=gsih&xhr=t&q=get+back+your+ex&cp=6&pf=p&sclient=psy&aq=0&aqi=&aql=f&oq=get+back+your+ex&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=e18ec2db23988f7d
If you click on the link, you’ll see that there are 133 million websites that come up. Normally, that’s A LOT of competing websites. However, what’s important here is to take a look at the top 10 websites that show up. Look at what kind of sites they are, whether they’re article directory sites, news sites, etc.
Also, take a look at their Google Page Rank. The only real threat is the very first web page. It has a Page Rank of 4, and it’s promoting the exact same program I am. However, the site is boring, and it looks like a sales letter. I couldn’t get any traffic stats on it either.
The next two listings are article directory sites. Not saying it will be easy to out-rank these, but I’m pretty optimistic that will some strategic backlinking, I can pull it off. I think I can even get to the number one spot.
The Next Step
All these factors I mentioned are an important part of doing the necessary research to find a suitable domain name. You have to factor in the number of monthly searches and the strength of competition. Obviously this takes time, more so when you’re going the free route. This process can be quickly sped up when using tools like Micro Niche Finder or Market Samurai.
Like I said, it took me about 3 hours to finally come upon the keyword phrase I wanted to run with. That’s time worth spent in my opinion. If you also noticed, there are many related keywords I can focus on too. The screenshot shows you another one that might be suitable, depending on the competition, and there are close to one hundred more related terms from the complete list.
These are also factors to consider as well. No one said it would be easy, but with a little patience and creativity, finding a suitable domain name doesn’t have to be super difficult.
Now, once you’re set on a keyword phrase, the next step is to actually reserve your domain name.
Buying Your Domain Name
I use NameCheap to register all of my domains. They’re cheap, reliable, offer free Whois protection, and registering your domains with a separate registrar than your web host is a good idea for many reasons.
All you have to do is enter your keyword phrase into the domain name lookup and hit enter. You’ll be presented with a screen like this:
Of course, your choice should not be taken. You can choose as many domain extensions you want. .Com domains are the most popular, next would be .Net and then .Org.
Once you’re done, click the “Add to Cart” button and go through the checkout process. After that, your domain is ready. It’s all a matter of changing your DNS settings to point to your web host and setting up the new domain as an add-on to your existing web hosting account. If you need help with this, just let me know.
The next phase of the niche site building process is the overall design of the site. I will cover these aspects in my next niche site update, so stay tuned for that.
I realize I covered a lot of information here. If you have any questions or there’s something you’re not sure about, please feel free to ask. You can either leave a comment below or email me directly. Either way is fine.
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