An important thing about the internet is the ability to focus on a small market that is spread out over a large area. A retail outlet would require a sizeable market within a short drive from its location. The internet brings the world to your doorstep.
I have a friend who has tumbleweeds for sale. He has a remarkably small market. How many people do you know that want to buy tumbleweeds? Here in Utah, you could count the number of buyers on your thumbs. But he has a successful business selling them (as well as some other unusual small-market products like wheat stalks and Idaho potatoes).
He has learned how to optimize his site for the search engines. The small number of people searching for tumbleweeds are able to find him. And he has made it very easy for them to go through the purchase process. This is a big weakness in his competition.
Probably more important than what you have to sell is how you will reach your market. If someone were to look for your product, what search phrases would they use? Search for those phrases yourself and see what kind of results you get. Can you compete?
Be sure to notice how many competing pages there are. On Google, this is on the right side of the blue bar at the top of the page. For the search term “tumbleweeds for sale,” my friend has 99,600 competing pages. Anything less than 4 or 5 million pages is usually possible to get a good ranking. He ranks #2 and #3.
Next, you want to know how many searchers are looking for your product. This is easily done using DigitalPoint’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. While “tumbleweeds for sale” doesn’t show any results, “tumbleweeds” by itself has 60 searches a day. Of course, they all aren’t looking to buy tumbleweeds. The real irony here is that 11 searches a day is for “how do I eradicate tumbleweeds.” My friend solves that problem by selling them.
It will take some effort to find the best keywords for you to use. This is so important that I will not build a website without finding a set of good keywords that will bring me the traffic I need.
– Rich Pulham
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