Steps In Refining The Beach Wedding Planning Niche

I know something about the beach wedding niche, but I addressed it from scratch - to find out what the market wants now, what keywords people are using in their searches, and what are the specific "long tail" phrases they use in their searches.

Keyword Research

I used these tools / approaches and more:

• Google Suggest to find related keyword phrases, then "more options" to search...
• Google Wonderwheel for fine-tuning related searches, and
• Google images to see what Google considers hot,
• Google product search,
• Videos that ranked.

Then I drilled down further...
I used tools such as Google Keyword Tool External and Google trends. I compared several different keywords, geographical concentrations, emerging keywords...

Commercial Viability

I explored the competition to test commercial viability of selected keyword phrases, starting with page 1 Google. What and how many were the sponsored ads for the keyword search? The Adwords ads?

What search terms attract mere browsers, and which draw an audience that is ready to buy?

What products are being promoted in this niche? How profitable? Do they satisfy market demands? Can I be an affiliate? How difficult would it be to create my own product?

Top Performing Sites

Why did Google give page 1 status to the sites appearing there? Who are the celebrities in the market? Why?

I used SpyFu to discover their top keywords, studied their ads and listings, and explored them in greater depth on Alexa and Quantcast. i plugged a couple of them into the Google tool.

Competition

Without endurance to go into depth reporting, suffice it to say that within acceptable bounds of numbers of searches, I ceased being concerned with competition as a possible deterrent.

What is "acceptable" in terms of competing pages? That depends...

• Who us the competition? Entrenched authority sites? How many positions?
• What's the real competition in "exact match?"
  
• Are they using web 2.0 properties? Is there a void to be filled?
• What web 2.o properties are ranking for this niche? Can I get page 1 rankings that way?
• What do advanced search operators such as "intitle" and "inanchor" show about mt key search terms?
  

I don't know that I am supposed to give my final lists here, but that's a major part of the process I followed as I was able to sit up.

Other Market Research

What are the current conversations in the market? I cannot now list all I tried to journal in scribbling sideways on a bed, but some asoects of mr inquiry included:

• Google Blogsearch
• EzineArticles and IdeaMarketers
• Google News
• YouTube videos
  

Bottom Line

The keyword phrases surrounding beach wedding planning met the criteria and complemented my on-going work with other beach wedding related terms. So I would not be abandoning my prior work, but rather, enhancing it and rounding out mt beach wedding presence further.

Future Planning?

I would like to improve skills and develop new skills in terms of testing the market to know what they really want (polling and PPC) and develop products to satisfy that. I want to design a profuct funnel and on-going relationship with me customers... Relationship, not just transaction.