Qualify your niche
Before investing time and energy in a niche, look at its competitiveness, as well as the breadth of search interest and, of course, its profitability.
These are the factors you need to assess when qualifying your niche.
Step 1: Identify search trends
The first thing you need to do when qualifying a niche is to determine whether or not there is consistent interest in the niche. You can map this out by looking at the search interest over a period of a year or longer.
Search trends that fluctuate regularly indicate that a niche is not always popular. Therefore, you may not generate stable and reliable income from it.
Here’s how to identify search trends.
Google trends
Google Trends is a free tool that helps you analyze keyword search trends.
Here’s an example.
Enter your topic in the search bar and click ‘Explore’. We are going to use “running shoes”.
Then click on “Last day” and change this to “Last 12 months”. The most effective way to measure search trends is to analyze data over a year or even two.
This will give you a much better idea of how popular the niche is:
As you can see, interest in ‘running shoes’ fluctuates throughout the year. However, if you analyze the timeline at the bottom of the chart, you will notice that there is a consistent level of interest in this topic throughout the year.
Another place to look for search trends is to look at the fastest growing subreddits or even look at what’s popular on TikTok.
Step 2: Identify and assess competitors
The next step in qualifying a niche is identifying and assessing the competition. These are sites that already rank based on the keywords and topics you want to target. Understanding what types of sites they are can help you determine whether or not you can compete in the niche.
Let’s look at the key steps for identifying and assessing competitors in your niche. If you want a more comprehensive guide on SEO competitive analysis, check out our guide we linked to.
First of all, you’ll want to search for your keyword and look at the search engine results page (SERP).
Next, you’ll want to look at the sites that are ranked. Next, you’ll want to look at each site’s Authority Score (AS) (to determine whether they are authority sites or not).
Before we go any further, let’s first distinguish between authority sites and non-authority partner sites:
- Authority site: A site with an AS of 40+. Authority sites cover broad niches such as ‘running’ and contain content that covers all aspects of the niche (not just affiliate content).
- Unauthorized partner site: A site with an AS of less than 40. These are websites that do not have the same level of trust and credibility as authority sites. These sites often have fewer backlinks and may not be well recognized within their niche.
That said, let’s look at the competitive analysis.
Assess your competitors’ authority scores
To check the AS of a site, you can use Semrush’s Bulk Backlink Analysis tool. All you have to do is paste the URLs of the sites that match your primary keyword and click ‘Compare’.
Then you can see the AS for each URL.
Identify affiliate sites
The next thing to check is whether the highest ranking site is an affiliate site. If so, that’s good news because it indicates that Google is choosing to rank affiliate sites based on the keyword.
How do you identify affiliate sites? First click through to the page.
Then check the following:
- A clear disclaimer stating that the site earns commission from product links in the articles
- Product review posts, often identified by keyword modifiers such as:
- “Best”(Best 15 Air Fryers of 2023)
- “Top” (Top Texas Tours)
- “vs” (Adidas vs. Nike running shoes)
- “Roundup” (Best Laptop for Video Editing Roundup)
- “Reviews” (pink gaming chairs reviewed)
- Buttons with CTAs like “Book Now” or “Buy on Amazon”
Here’s a real-world example.
Runners World has a clear disclaimer stating that it is an affiliate site.
Analyze your competitors’ backlinks
The next thing to check is the number of backlinks pointing to each top-ranking page.
If a domain has a low number of backlinks (e.g. less than 10), there’s a chance you could overtake the site by outlinking it. But you need to obtain high-quality backlinks from high-authority sites that are relevant to your niche.
To check your competitors’ backlink profile, you can use Semrush’s Backlink Analytics Tool.
Copy and paste the URL of the competitor’s page with the highest ranking into the tool’s search bar. Than,
- go to the “Referring domains” tab.
- select “Active”
- set the Authority Score to 30-100 so that you only see referring domains with a high AS score
- and select ‘follow’ to see links that pass link juice because they carry the most weight
If you look at the results for the Runners World page that ranks first, you can see that they have a total of 28 high-quality backlinks pointing to their page. This will take some pushback, but can be done by formulating an effective link building strategy.
Analyze your competitors’ traffic and traffic value
It’s critical to look at your competitors’ traffic and traffic value to determine if there is commercial value and search interest in the topics they cover.
To do this, you can use Semrush’s Organic Research Tool. Simply copy and paste your competitor’s domain into the tool.
You will then get an overview of their site:
In this example you can see that Runners World generates over 1.4 million traffic monthly. This gives us a pretty good idea of the breadth of the search market.
Plus, you can see that their traffic is worth almost $1.1 million. That means advertisers are willing to pay a lot of money for this traffic, which tells us that the keywords they’re targeting have commercial value.
Analyzing these factors will give you an indication of whether or not there is potential in this niche. But you will also need to look at affiliate programs and their commission structures to find out if these are programs you could benefit from.
Step 3: Assess profitability
Several factors come into play when assessing the profitability of a niche. First and foremost, it is critical to identify the revenue generated by sites within your niche.
One way to do this is to work out some basic predictions. For example, let’s say an affiliate pays a 10% commission and the average order value for their site is $50.
This means that each sale is worth $5. If you can get your page to rank number one in the SERPs with a 33% click-through rate (CTR) for a keyword with a search volume of 1,000, that equates to 333 clicks per month.
If your conversion rate for this page was 3%, that’s ten sales of $5 per month, which equates to $50 per month in revenue from that page alone.
Another way to assess profitability is to use Turn arounda platform dedicated to buying and selling domains.
After you land on the home page, click ‘Browse’.
Then select “Websites” > “Content” > “Review”.
Scroll down to the ‘Industry’ filter and select your niche. We went for “Electronics”.
Here you can see that this site generates $1,330 per month from affiliate sales.
While this provides a general insight into the profitability of your niche, it is crucial to consider the costs of creating content and maintaining the site.
Next, you need to find and analyze affiliate programs and their commission structures.
Step 4: Find affiliate programs
Now that you’ve determined that there are sites in your niche that make money with affiliate marketing, the last thing you need to do is look for relevant affiliate programs.
Once you find them, you need to determine if these programs have commission structures that you can take advantage of. But if you’re looking for something a little more niche, here are three ways to find affiliate programs.
1. Googling
Do a simple Google search.
For example, if you’re looking for affiliate programs in the running shoe niche, type in “running shoe affiliate programs” and hit the search function.
You will be given a list of sites to view:
2. Look at your competitors’ sites
Another way to find affiliate marketing programs is to look at your competitors’ sites.
Some sites place the information in the footer menu. This is usually the case if they only work with one seller, such as Amazon.
Here’s an example:
Other sites maintain a special affiliate disclaimer page where they describe any affiliate programs they have participated in.
3. Analyze your competitor’s backlinks
By analyzing your competitors’ outbound links, you can identify which affiliate programs they have signed up for. To do this, you can use Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool.
Simply copy and paste your competitor’s domain into the tool and click “Analyze”. For this example, let’s use Runners World (runnerworld.com).
On the “Overview” page, click on “Outgoing domains”:
Set the “Category” filter to “Shopping” or “Internet & Telecom”. We went with “Shopping”.
You will now see the affiliate programs your competitor has signed up for.
In this image you can see that the competitor has signed up for a number of affiliate programs, for example Amazon, Walmart and Awin.
The next step is to research the affiliate programs you found. You need to determine if they offer products or services related to your niche that you would like to promote.
Additionally, you should look at their commission structures and rates to assess whether the ROI is worth it.
Once you’ve gone through all the steps necessary to qualify your niche, it’s time to find topics to create content around.
