How to define your niche

In MSN Encarta I found the following definitions to the the word niche:

1.Suitable place for somebody: a position or activity that particularly suits somebody's talents and personality or that somebody can make his or her own

2.Commerce specialized market: an area of the market specializing in one type of product or service designed to undercut the competition in the same niche

Both definitions cover internet niche marketing, each one in its own way. We want to find a niche where we have some knowledge and we want to find a niche where we beat the competition for a Google ranking. Such a niche would be the perfect niche to work in for you.

Based on these definitions it should not be so difficult to define the niche(s) which should be the best niches for you to work in. The perfect niche is where you can build your marketing and beat the competition when it comes to Google rankings.

How do you find your own perfect niche?

A niche can be defined both as a vertical niche or horizontal niche. If you want to offer products and services in a niche you will have to think vertical, which means that you have to define your niche based on the capabilities of the products or services you want to offer. If you want to offer your products to specific groups of people, you should think horizontally.

The ideal niche is where these two meet.

Where does it hurt?

When you create the keywords for your products, keep i nmind that you want to solveis a specific problem for someone. If you want to market fish recipes, you should not use the word fish as your keyword. Create a list with the features whcih best describes the issues you can solve with your products and services.

When you have established the appropriate keywords for your products, it is time to think about the clients, who will buy your products to solve open issues?

Are the issues your products can solve related to specific groups of people? This is the horizontal part of your analyzes. List the characteristics of the clients you want, those who are most likely to buy your products or services based on the issues you can solve.

So with the list of issues you can solve and the list of characteristics of your clients, you are ready to do research for the best keywords.

The research you can in several ways, the most important part of the research is to find keywords which are applicable for your niche, your product features and client target groups.

As you move along in your work, you should look for keywords combinations which can describe the problem and where the competition for the keyword is low.
With Google keywords you can solve part of the keyword issue, but there are many sources of informatio abot key words and you should use them all, if you know about them. With efficient niche marketing tools you can reduce the time you have to put in from number of hours to number of minutes. Ther are many tools you can use, I use Market Samurai for my efforts. The time you save is significant and time is money.

Once your niche is in place with good keywords, you can start to build your website and fill it with good quality content, then you start focusing on your marketing and promotion.