Whether you’re a new affiliate marketer, new to an industry, or launching a new product, it is important to do niche research. And, niche keyword research is where everything starts.

Doing niche keywords research can help you:

• Find the most profitable business ideas and opportunities
• Understand your target market
• Better understand your target audience
• Build new, or improve your current digital marketing strategies
• Understand the competition (competitive Intelligence)

In this article, I’ll give you an overview on how to do niche keyword research for driving more traffic and revenue for a business in a niche industry.

What are Niche Keywords?

Niche keywords are the highly specific long-tail keywords that focus on a particular industry or service expertise.

Online consumers usually use niche keywords because they are very specific to their query.  Though a niche keyword carries less search volume than more general, large-encompassing keywords, it brings the right traffic to your site with a higher possibility of conversion. 

For small or start-up enterprises, it’s important to optimize your site and your pay-per-click campaigns for niche keywords and not just broad, popular terms, which are often too difficult to rank for, especially as a new venture.

How to Find Keywords in Your Industry Niche?

Now that you know what are niche keywords and why they are so important in business, particularly for small and start-up companies, it’s time to learn how to find the right niche keywords for your industry.

Step 1. Select Your Niche 

To choose the niche to start a business, you first need to look at the current state of industries you’re interested in. Check on what big players are doing on the market and study the current demand.

Also, skills and expertise in the selected area are crucial. If you don’t know almost everything about the subject, let it stay as your hobby.

Step 2. Determine Broad Niche Topics to Find Seed Keywords

Now your f task is to list a number of general topics within your business niche. Instead of thinking of specific long tail keywords, we’re going to first brainstorm some broad topic ideas.

Step 3. Use a Keyword Research Tool to Expand Niche Keywords

There are many keyword research tools you can use to find and explore keywords.

The best free keyword research tool is probably the Google keyword planner. This is a free Google Ads tool (which requires a Google Ads account) but it’s a great tool for conducting initial research, whether you’re new to SEO or a veteran.

For paid SEO tools, there are several top-of-class options that are very even in terms of functionality and price. The three best-paid keyword research tools are Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz.

Enter the seed keywords you got in step 2, then these keyword research tools will help you identify a wide range of potential keyword opportunities including less obvious terms that could potentially drive traffic and sales.

With the paid keyword research tools, you can also find valuable niche keywords by spying on your competitors’ niche sites.

Step 4: Refine Your Niche Keyword List

Keyword research tools can generate a lot of niche keywords. However, not all key phrases will likely be valuable for the exact needs of your marketing campaign. In other words, your keyword list does not gain any value unless you refine it. 

When you enter a keyword or URL into a keyword research tool, it generates a comprehensive list of keywords or searches queries that are relevant or less valuable to your industry. It will also display Google search volume, keyword difficulty level, cost-per-click, click-through rate, and more valuable details.

We can use these data to refine our niche keyword list. Here are the 4 main criteria for evaluating niche keywords.

• Search Volume: You may want at least 1,000 monthly searches for a keyword unless targeting keywords related to very valuable products.
• Competition: Medium or lower in Ahrefs.
• Search Intent: Commercial investigation is ideal, where the searchers are actively researching and comparing alternatives to buy.
• Relevant Products: Keywords must be relevant to your affiliate programs so you can promote products, directly or indirectly, and make money.

Step 5: Monitor and Adapt Your Niche Keywords as Necessary

Finally, niche keyword research, just like any SEO strategy, may require some trial and error. After you identified the keywords for your organic and paid traffic, you need to monitor their results.

You can use keyword tools and analytics services to pay attention to how your niche keyword research is paying off in terms of results and conversions. 

Start Ranking for Niche Keywords Today

Niche Keyword research is a little complicated process. You need select your niche, keep the goal in mind, stay on topic, and use several tactics to find valuable niche keywords. However, by following the guide above, you should be able to generate hundreds, if not thousands, of niche keyword ideas quickly.

If you’re a small business with limited marketing budget, and if you want to see your conversion rate go up, then targeting niche keywords can be a strong strategy for you. Start ranking for niche keywords today!