Market research is something that is one of the best friends of any business owner, as it really can tell a person what services or goods that are desirable, or what’s going to sell if you pursue it. Online market research is essentially the same as traditional market research, except all of this is done on the web. Browsing through forums or other mediums, a person can develop a “target audience” that will accept the product and/or service. Online market research can really save money, as thorough research can tell a person whom they need to target for their products.
For instance, if a person is selling pink eyeliner, it’s safe to assume that you’re more than likely selling to women. More specific than that, you’re more than likely selling this eyeliner to women under the age of thirty. Obviously, this would eliminate the market of advertising to males, as they generally do not have much of a need for pink eyeliner, in most cases. The steps outlined below will explain a few ways that you can do market research to find your top competitors.
Step-by-Step Action Plan
Amount of Searches Per Month
- When trying to optimize your website for keywords, you want to make sure that the keywords that you chose are receiving enough searches to them on a monthly basis. So what you want to do is use the free Google keyword tool to help you find out this information. Once there, you want to type in your keyword or keyword phrase that you are trying to target for your website. When you do a search a list of keywords should come up with your search term included with different search phrases for that keyword. You want to find the keywords that get over 10,000 searches per month because you want to make sure that the keyword is getting enough searches on a daily basis. Based off of this information, you want to choose the phrases that you would like to optimize your website for.
Finding Competition via Google Search
- Visit Google and type in your top keyword phrase that you or your business is trying to target or is geared around. In the search results, a list of 10 websites should come up on the first page. You want to go through these sites and see which ones are your actual competition. You should skip over the sites that are .gov, .edu, and .org because these sites wouldn’t be direct competition to you because they are generally sites that provide information and usually are non-for-profit sites. Take the top 5 sites from the listings and those should be some of your top competitors online.
Finding Competition via Alexa
- Now that you know who your top 5 competitors are, you want to go to Alexa and do some more research to who a couple other competitors are based upon Alexa’s search engine. You want to click on the tab “site info” and go to “keyword search” and once again put in your top keyword. There should be a couple of new sites that should come up that where not listed on Google.
Demographics
The section does not apply to this particular section due to each niche and industry being different.
Conversion Rate
This also does not apply to Market Research because these will vary depending on the particular business.
Free Google Tool- Tells you how any searches a particular keyword gets on a monthly basis.
Alexa- a search engine that provides information about websites that has Alexa toolbar installed
Compete- Compares 3 websites based on the traffic
Keyword Elite – Help you search for profitable industry specific keywords.
Cost
There is no cost associated with doing market research. All of the information that you get from doing it is free.
