I've been writing about SEO since I was 15 years old, and a decade later I'm fortunate to have consulted for companies I love like Ahrefs, Kinsta, Buffer, ConvertKit and multi-billion dollar brands.
The basics can be incredibly effective, but hundreds of sites cover them well and I want to focus on unique, creative ways to achieve better rankings.
Instead, here's my promise: I will put my absolute all into guides like this one to give original insights that help you get an edge over your competition.
That's it. That's my pitch for you to stick around (or perhaps let you know this isn't the site for you).
This is already too much text for a 'click-to-read-more-fade-thing' but there's more if you like.
Thank you for being here!
Today I’m going to reveal some of the most interesting online niches where there is a lot of money to be made. These are niches which have a level of competition that allows you to compete, and fast. In other words, I wouldn’t expect to be waiting years (or even months, in many cases) to see some results.
I’ve seen other people put together eBook’s and blog posts on this topic before but they usually just contain a huge bulleted list with no information on how they found the niche, why they think it’s a good niche to enter and how you would actually make money in it.
I really didn’t want to do that when deciding to cover this topic, so have covered each niche in a lot of depth so you can see if it’s the right fit for you.
If there is a positive response to this kind of post I’ll definitely do more like it in the future, so please do share your feedback in the comments!
Come Closer to Your Screen For This First Opportunity
A few months ago I was doing some backlink analysis and noticed a network of websites which were all competing for a similar keyphrase, slightly tweaked for different industries.
I ran their sites through my usual go-to tools like SEMRush and Similarweb and was slightly blown-away at what I had just discovered. A network of low-quality, thin websites with barely any links was ranking for queries which, when combined, were being searched for millions of times per month.
I have since taken advantage of what I found that day and actually never planned on sharing it.
While I’m not the only one to have discovered the opportunity, as you can see from a recent tweet of mine, I haven’t seen it covered elsewhere.
When an SEO guy tweets a G Trends screenshot of how fast one of your niches is growing and you hope noone else saw it.
— Glen Allsopp (@ViperChill) July 11, 2016
You may be wondering why I was concerned about a lot of people finding this opportunity before and why I’m sharing it with tens of thousands of people now. Well, I went a little overboard with the research for this very article and found so many niches you can capitlise on it with that I’m really not worried about competition.
“Enough of the hype, Glen, what’s the keyphrase?”
Near me.
That’s it. That’s the search query.
Or more specifically, something near me. This screenshot of keyphrases which Thumbtack – a popular services marketplace – are ranking for should give you some idea of the potential.
Another reason this opportunity is interesting to me is because it doesn’t seem to be taking much to rank.
In two of the search terms above, exact match domains are performing very well with very few backlinks. I’m not going to ‘out’ the sites but they are very easy to find when you start analysing the opportunities here.
I was able to pick up a few exact match domains myself so they’re definitely still available. I did add a few more domains to my list before going live with this article, but left out quite a few others I found.
All of the other sites I’m ranking in this space are .com’s so I’m curious to see how well the recent .co.uk purchase works out, targeting a UK-specific search query.
While I’m certainly not the only one to catch on to this, it’s always a good sign when you see exact match or nearly exact-match domains ranking well in Google. It means there are very few authoritative sites which Google thinks should be ranking.
It’s funny to see that some people are trying to capitalise on this new opportunity already with some high-priced domain names.
Now, I am aware that a large number of ‘near me’ searches are likely performed on mobile and are from people hoping to find map listings in the search results, rather than actual websites to click on.
However, the dozens of near me sites I’ve investigated appear to be receiving a lot of traffic without being featured on any kind of map pack.
I’ll use an authoritative site, HoursInfo, to give an example. I picked them because they have a number of rankings related to ‘near me’ search terms but aren’t some small time webmaster capitalising on the opportunity. You can see they are some of the most popular terms the site ranks for.
Now, I am aware that their rankings for the highlighted search terms are not great. I’ve sorted the results by volume rather than ranking position, just to show how many searches there are with ‘near me’ in the keyphrase.
Some examples of high rankings they have attained, along with their search volume, include:
- Dominos near me: 450,000 searches per month (Ranked #5)
- Post office near me: 368,000 searches per month (Ranked #2)
- Chase bank near me: 368,000 searches per month (Ranked #5)
- Gamestop near me: 165,000 searches per month (Ranked #6)
There are many more, but you get the idea.
Here’s the SimilarWeb graphic to give an idea of how much traffic they really do receive.
I’ve started ranking a number of ‘near me’ sites but they’re not high enough to show any impressive stats. That being said, I know the traffic is there due to how many small, exact match domains I’ve found ranking and their predicted traffic stats among a number of different analysis tools.
If nothing else, this could be a good niche just to test your SEO skills.
In regards to monetising the traffic, it really depends on what industry you choose. For terms like dog grooming and pet spa’s, how to monetise the site should be fairly obvious.
Making Thousands With…Bone Broth
Bear with me here; I haven’t totally lost the plot. If you haven’t been following the latest health crazes over the past year then you are probably as equally as confused as I was when I first came across this healthy meal.
Bone broth is simply a broth that is primarily made of bones and contains few vegetables (if any) which makes it different from stock.
The reason I like this topic is not because it’s some fad to jump on, but bone broth is actually proven to have a number of medical benefits. If you don’t think Apple Cider Vinegar as a health remedy is going to die out any time soon, then neither is this.
The large spike on this graph is for January of 2016, whereas the topic was talked about most in the middle of 2015. That makes me believe that people are going to go crazy for this product once again in January of 2017, when we’re in “New Years Resolution mode” and anything “healthy” tempts us to keep our wallets open.
If you’re wondering where the money to be made – “Can’t people just make it themselves?” – then you would be surprised how much people are making (and charging) for this concoction.
I first came across the topic where the owner of a Broth website, Kettle and Fire, was discussing how much a new plugin for his Shopify store made him in sales.
It was the first time I had heard of ‘Bone broth’ so I was intrigued to learn more.
That’s when I saw it being hailed as a new healthy drink option by the New York Times and MSNBC. From there, I found a number of other stores selling the broth, and it’s certainly not cheap.
That’s $70 for just 6 packs.
If you’re into natural, healthy eating then this may just be the niche for you.
You could affiliate yourself with someone who sells bone broth, make your own, or simply use variations of the term to drive traffic to other health products and offers.
If selling products on Amazon is your thing, I can imagine this is going to be a great market to start dominating now.
The Huge Opportunity with Tiny Houses
The Tiny house movement sounds exactly as it is: It’s a movement for people who want to be able to live in tiny houses.
Believe it or not, it’s a growing trend.
When I first found a video about tiny houses on Youtube I thought they were just a cute little idea. Fast forward 45 minutes and I had found myself looking at dozens of little tiny houses and being constantly impressed with what people can do with their homes.
I was also amazed to see Tiny House Youtube channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, especially when I hadn’t previously knew that ‘tiny living’ was a thing.
On some popular videos I found the Youtube comments weren’t just people insulting each other – for once – but people with questions where you can get ideas for building the solution. Here are the comments on one particularly popular video.
Just from those two comments alone you can get the idea to:
- Create a directory of people who build tiny houses and send them leads for a fee
- Review products designed for tiny houses and promote them with affiliate links
- Create a step-by-step information product on building your first tiny house
If I was going to take this on personally I would go with option two, and review products. I would focus on creating an Instagram page showcasing tiny houses and then reaching out to manufacturers to see if I could get products to review.
While tiny house owners seem to want to spend as little money as possible, the one in the video above cost $77,000, which certainly isn’t cheap. While they don’t want to spend a lot of money, they’re still spending it, and I could see tiny product reviews working very well.
GPS Car Tracking
I’ve been building this blog post over the past few months so any time a new industry or niche idea comes to me, I write it down.
It was interesting to see that one Reddit thread I wanted to cover had actually deleted the opportunity they were talking about.
Although the original poster seemed more than happy to share the idea originally – as you can see in their discussion title – it seems like they didn’t feel that way for very long.
Commenters absolutely loved the idea and everyone started thinking of businesses around it. I think this scared the original poster.
You may question my integrity when I highlight what was there, but every single comment reply explains what the business idea was. It received nearly 700 upvotes on Reddit so has already been seen tens of thousands of times.
And of course, only those interested in the niche will take any action (see my closing statements in this blog post) so there’s not too much to worry about.
The original idea, shared on Reddit, was good but not something I would go for myself, which is why I’m more open to sharing it.
The idea was to buy GPS trackers on Alibaba and then go and fit them on cars in your local area for a fee. Apparently they’re fairly easy to install and then people can have peace of mind if their car ever gets stolen or they want to track where their kids are driving when they’re using their car.
I prefer online businesses to those offline, and while people can make some good cash with this – many commenters were excited about copying it directly – it’s too labor intensive for me and the scope is too small.
Instead, I would consider doing things like:
- Importing the GPS trackers and selling them via Amazon or my own Shopify store
- Creating a lead generation site for those wanting this then selling the leads to people who can do it
- Reviewing each tracker and promoting them with affiliate links
I think this niche is only going to get bigger as it becomes easier to set-up, so there’s a lot of potential here.
Laserless Tattoo Removal
With more people sporting tattoos than any other generation in history, it makes sense that we would have more people than ever trying to remove them.
While laser tattoo removal is a growing trend, so is the desire to remove tattoo’s without any lasers.
Right now, admittedly, there aren’t huge volume numbers for this search term. Most estimates point to various terms, like “non laser tattoo removal”, receiving around 200-500 searches per month.
That being said, there is a Clickbank product on the topic that seems to be selling quite well, so there’s definitely a market for it.
And I predict that market will grow.
As far as monetisation goes, I would personally try to target people via these “lessor” keyphrases and sell them on a more expensive solution (providing it is a better solution). I don’t think there are any alternatives that are better than lasers for removing tattoos.
Tattoo removal shops typically charge over $1,000 for the service so if you’re able to generate leads for local businesses, they’ll definitely pay for you for people you can send their way.
Will Automation Increase 18 Wheeler Accidents?
Legal industries online are some of the most profitable out there. Unfortunately, many of them are dominated by large firms which Google view as authorities in the space so even if their page ranking has little to no internal links, they still rank.
Fortunately, there are still a few opportunities. If we look at 18 wheeler accident, we can see that the results aren’t dominated by top legal firms, but actually by news sources.
However, there is one site that was able to break through the news.
I edited the screenshot so it was not too long. The legal site here was ranking in 7th for me.
Now you may be thinking this is a very obscure and unsearched for industry to go after, but the numbers are quite impressive.
According to Google Keyword planner:
- truck accident: 8,100 monthly searches
- 18 wheeler accident: 1,300 monthly searches
- truck rollover: 1,300 monthly searches
- truck accident lawyer: 1,000 monthly searches
- semi truck accident: 1,000 monthly searches
- truck accident attorney: 720 monthly searches
- fatal truck accident: 390 monthly searches
The keyphrases I’ve highlighted in bold are the ones that interest me most as I feel I could directly make money with them. While the first will include people looking for news results, I believe it will also include those looking for help with legal action after suffering an accident themselves.
The suggested Adwords bid price for ‘truck accident lawyer’ is $139.72. That means Google suggest you will need to bid $140 per click if you want to get one of the top ad spots in search results for the US. In other words, this industry is worth a lot of money to lawyers and they’re willing to pay to get clients.
As far as monetisation goes, as I mentioned earlier, I would primarily be focused on the rank and rent model. Either rank a website in this industry and rent it out to an actual legal firm, or get in touch with legal firms and ask how much they are willing to pay for leads you send their way.
Finally, I do wonder if this is an industry which is only going to be worth a lot more money in the future. This is one field where automation is likely to happen, at least in part, over the next decade. Those automated truck lawsuits are going to set a very interesting precedent for vehicle automation as a whole.
Car Shipping Companies
Just like with the legal truck angle, car shipping companies present another great opportunity to use the rank and rent model or rank to lead generation model.
Some of the most searched for terms in this niche include:
- shipping a car: 8,100 monthly searches
- auto shipping: 8,100 monthly searches
- auto transport companies: 6,600 monthly searches
- car transport companies: 4,400 monthly searches
- how much does it cost to ship a car: 4,400 monthly searches
- car shipping companies: 3,600 monthly searches
- how much to ship a car: 2,900 monthly searches
It’s nice to see so many variations of how to phrase the question and yet each search term still has some form of buyer intent.
Let’s look at the search results for one of these terms, ‘Car shipping companies’.
Note: I removed the ads from this screenshot to reduce its length.
RD in the screenshot stands for Referring Domains. This means how many different websites are linking to them. The lower the number, the better. While companies like Uship will have thousands of different sites linking to them, it shows that the smaller, newer competitors still have a chance to rank in Google.
But these guys rank so far down. Are they really getting traffic?
Well let’s look at the worst ranking website in my screenshot, Shipmycar.com. Remember this was actually lower down because ads are normally in the result but I removed them to shorten the graphic.
If we look at SEMRush we can see they’re growing quite well organically.
Of course, these numbers aren’t huge, but they don’t have to be. When people are searching for these terms they’re generally ready to part ways with their cash, or doing the final research before they do.
There’s also the great local SEO angle with ‘ship a car [city]’ type search terms. According to one of the websites ranking, the most popular cities to ship cars to and from are:
- New York, New York
- Los Angeles, California
- Chicago, Illinois
- Washington
- San Francisco
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Dallas, Texas
- Miami, Florida
- Houston, Texas
If you’re outside of the US there is probably even less competition. If you’re in Europe for example then research things like “driving through Europe” or “car shipping to Europe” and so on.
This isn’t always an obvious niche that people think about so the current competition can definitely be beaten if you’re willing to put in the work.
Security System Reviews
With 2,400 searches per month and a suggested Adwords bid price of $14 per click, this is a search term I really like. Not only because of the acceptable search volume and clear ad presence, but because the term ‘reviews’ signals intent. It shows someone is likely looking to purchase a system in the near future.
This opens up the opportunity to either promote your own products, use a dropshipper, or promote Amazon products as an affiliate.
It’s also a niche that seems to be growing as well, as security systems become more affordable.
If you see anything like the following in search results, it’s always a good sign.
Whenever I come across a growing niche that has recent dates in the search result, it always peaks my curiosity. Mostly because standard ranking factors (age, most links, domain authority) often don’t apply and a few basic links pointing something written recently are all you need.
Millions of Parents Need ‘Kids Party Ideas’
One niche I’m surprised to see hasn’t been dominated too extensively by huge brands is that of specific party ideas for kids.
If you have young children of your own and could see yourself writing about this niche and sharing photos of your parties with others, this could be the niche for you.
I first read about this website when looking at a success story for a certain website builder.
Although his website is very prominently shared as a success story around the web, I do want to be a bit more coy and block out any concrete information as to what his site is.
The main website in his network is ranking for more than 31,000 different keyphrases, some of which are searched for thousands of times per month. In another effort at being respectful to their success, I have blocked out number 1 rankings they’ve sustained for a long time.
The stats are even more impressive when you consider than the website “only” has links from 400 others. That’s not a huge number from a site which gets millions of visitors each month from Google.
Especially when many of those links are from websites which anyone can pick up a link from, just by taking the time to register on them.
While it’s not a niche I would be interested in personally, I think it could be a great side-project for anyone with young children.
I would monetise the site with things like an eBook detailing the best party ideas, and then including a directory which takes a commission for leads on things like party magicians and clowns. There’s also the chance to link to party props and decorations as an Amazon affiliate.
A Niche That’s Virtually Yours for the Taking
If I just said “get involved in the virtual reality niche” that would be a little boring of me, and typical of the poor profitable niche ideas blog posts I’ve seen in the past.
I’m sure you already know that virtual reality gaming (and other forms of erm…entertainment) have a big future ahead of them and companies like Facebook have invested billions of dollars into what they believe will be a huge new market.
So as an SEO knowing that the world is going to be searching for virtual reality “things” in the future, where do you start when looking to conquer Google?
Personally, I would start by looking at the news.
Not what TechCrunch is saying about the industry, but who the readers of TechCrunch are investing in.
One such example, is UploadVR. A one year old blog which raised over $1.25m just seven months ago.
While the numbers aren’t huge for the investing world, it’s a pretty big sign that people think a blog on the topic is going to make significantly more money than that back. The sum is even more impressive when you consider that we’ve barely even scratched the surface with usable products that anyone can easily own.
When I first saw the ‘virtual desktop’ a few months ago I have to admit I was blown away. I’ve never played with an Oculus Rift or similar device, but I would love to get the chance to. Virtual desktop for VR basically negates the need to take off your headset to look at other things on your computer.
How cool is this?
When I first saw this I instantly thought, “Someone is going to make a Google competitor that works so incredibly well in Virtual Reality.” Google will then go and buy them most likely, but still, I think that’s one of the next big things we’re going to see from a well-funded startup.
Sadly I am not a well-funded startup and nor do I want to take on that challenge, so we have to spread our horizons a little bit.
Looking at the categories of UPloadVR.com alone you can learn a lot about the areas of search that are going to be popular:
- Google Cardboard
- Oculus Rift
- Virtual reality shopping
- Virtual reality advertising
- DIY Virtual reality
- Virtual reality cameras
- Virtual reality jobs
The list goes on. I think any one of these could merit a stand-alone website.
If you’re really into this niche and willing to do extra research, upload VR have one cool feature as part of their design.
That’s right: The pageview count for every article.
For a stats-nerd like myself, I love having this kind of data available.
I’ve no doubt you could pay a programmer $100 or so to scrape the website and figure out what the most popular posts in their history have been. Keeping in mind that some will have just ‘gone viral’ and won’t necessarily be searched for, it would give a lot of insights into the potential future of this huge industry.
The Web Needs a Pole Dancing Directory, Believe It or Not
You’re probably going to wonder what I was “Googling” when I say this but I just couldn’t get away from this niche when doing research for this post. I really didn’t want to write about it at all because it’s not a keyphrase as such but I just had to cover it.
After all, these niches are supposed to be for you and not for me, and I know quite a few people personally who would actually like to tackle a project like this one.
I first came across the ‘Pole dancing course’ niche on Clickbank, where there are a few eBooks and membership sites for sale (which you could promote as an affiliate).
Then a few weeks ago I received an email from an ex-Girlfriend who I haven’t spoken to for years and remembered she used to take pole dancing lessons, and still does.
For guys not in the know, pole dancing lessons are not just for women who want to work in the nightlife industry. I’ve seen a few classes in person and people (mostly women, of course) have a lot of fun with it. It’s physically demanding so a great way to keep fit.
As I always say “Go local” I started looking for pole dancing courses in different locations around the world. Whether that was states in the US or for major cities in the UK.
The competition is fierce.
There are ads four ads for everything I searched for and then the map pack and…it’s tough.
But I wouldn’t write off the niche just yet.
One thing that I found was missing in this industry was a directory. One place where you could find reviews of the different places to get lessons for a specific country.
I would personally create a huge directory of all the schools and academies out there in the UK and allow people to rate and review them. Then for each city you could of course reach out to the various schools and offer advertising opportunities on the website.
Just for London alone, look at the type of queries people are searching for:
- London pole dancing class
- London pole dancing school
- London pole dancing academy
I found 17 diffferent schools in London alone, so it’s a competitive market.
I would say this industry is my ‘wildcard’ as there are not too many angles to enter it from unlike other ideas I’ve shared. This is just an opportunity I think some passionate could do really well with, and I would have been doing someone an injustice if I didn’t write about it here.
A Millionaire Reaches 27,100 Monthly Searchers for What?
I was reading an AMA on Reddit’s Entrepreneur section recently and came across the owner of an online store for glass pipes and other smoking-related items. Since I was working on this article at the time, I decided to do some research into the types of keywords his site was ranking for. After all, it had generated over $6M in revenue in 2016 so far so the site must be doing quite well.
While there were many keywords to choose from, the one that stood out to me was “dab rigs.” Mostly because I had no idea what that was. At 27,100 searches per month, I decided to check the search results.
Even searching from the US there are only Google shopping links in the right of search results – no ads – and I love search results like this which have:
- Forum threads ranking
- Blog posts from 2016 ranking
- No huge ecommerce sites like Amazon ranking
- No homepages ranking; only sub-pages
I think if you were going to create a dedicated website solely on ‘dab rigs’ then you could have a good chance of ranking well. It’s also a buyer-intent keyword, so if smoking and paraphernalia are your thing, it could be for you.
Just Starting with SEO? Maybe Try This
If getting high is your thing but you’re new to the SEO world, you might want to start with a lessor search term to test your ranking and website building skills. Another term which dab rigs go by are ‘concentrate rigs’.
Again I had no idea what this is but Google tells me,
Dab rigs focus on flavor rather than filtration like traditional water pipes because concentrates are typically already refined, and do not need debris filtration like traditional dry herbs.
The more you know.
If you’re going to have success in this niche, you should have known this anyway.
While concentrate rigs “only” gets 1,600 searches per month (still not bad for a buyer-intent keyphrase), the .com is available.
And if you’re angry it’s not available by the time you’re reading this post, I promise it was. Go and check Whois…someone just registered that today.
It doesn’t mean you can’t attempt to rank for the keyphrase though. Try concentratehq or concentraterigs.net and so on. Just because someone got the .com it doesn’t mean they’re actually going to put any work into it.
How to Soundproof a __
When I first attempted to take up podcasting a few years ago I discovered the office I was working with (a fairly square room with little furniture) was far from ideal when it came to acoustic sound. I had to purchase a number of foam panels for certain areas of my wall in order to get rid of the echo I was experiencing in the room.
That’s why I know this is a good niche to enter, because people are willing to spend money to fix this problem, especially when they’ve spent money on a good sound system / podcast microphone / studio equipment.
A few relevant search terms in this niche include:
- how to soundproof a room: 12,100 monthly searches
- how to soundproof a wall: 2,400 monthly searches
- How to soundproof a door: 3,600 monthly searches
- How to soundproof a bedroom: 1,000 monthly searches
As you can imagine, the list really does go on.
Even just for a door, the number of long-tail keywords which are searched for – found via Google Suggest – are many.
- How to soundproof a door
- How to soundproof a door cheap
- How to soundproof a door with household items
- How to soundproof a bedroom door
- How to soundproof a hollow door
If you enter this niche, you have absolutely no excuse to ever run out of topics to write about if you’ve really done your keyword research.
Another reason I like this industry is because the search results are dominated by blog posts.
Not homepages.
Not huge brands.
Not ecommerce companies.
But bloggers who wanted to cover this topic with their own advice.
The obvious option when it comes to monetisation is linking to stores to purchase the acoustic panels you recommend as an affiliate, but there are many more options to take especially if you’re reaching people who run recording studios or are just getting into podcasting.
And I went the extra mile:
Whoever goes and registers this, please actually build a site on it.
A Genius ‘Rank and Rent’ Niche Idea
I love this one. Not because it follows one of my favourite online business models – the rank and rent method – but because it’s such a different take on the niches that people generally associate with this business model.
We’ve all heard about recommendations for injury lawyers and office rental and so on, but you’ve never heard anyone talk about this niche.
Mommy makeovers.
I’m not even going to look at the search volume for this one because I don’t care. It makes logical sense that people are searching for this and even if the numbers are small, it’s once again a buyer-intent keyword.
Oh, and a reader of ViperChill is already renting out four websites in this niche.
I asked for permission before sharing the niche here.
I said I would not check the search volume for this term, and I won’t, but the Google Trends graph is encouraging.
I could totally see local beauty salons and hair salons willing to pay for leads generated by these search queries.
Love this one.
Heavy Equipment Rental
I won’t claim to know much the construction industry but I am pretty sure about one thing: Companies are far more likely to rent the equipment they use around the world rather than own and transport it themselves.
Renting construction equipment is a very lucrative industry because some items can cost thousands of dollars per day
In the UK, crane hire for 5 hours is £390 ($514). This is not a huge crane that you see working on malls or car parks. This is for a very small crane which sits on the back of a lorry and can’t lift more than 10 tons. They’re expensive to own, and expensive to rent.
There are so many different angles to take with this niche because of how many different types of heavy equipment people rent. It was funny to check a few domain names and see how much people want for them.
And another.
If you don’t have the budget for these, I understand. Unless I was really into this industry and wanted to make a huge authority site, I wouldn’t consider them either.
However, being the overly curious guy that I am, I did manage to find a few .com’s which are available and do pick up some searches each month.
Here they are:
- RentRototiller.com – 720 searches per month
- DingoRental.com – 590 searches per month
- HydroseedRental.com – 590 searches per month
As of hitting publish these domains are available. I’m sure they’ll be gone very quickly. Not to worry; I’m sure there are many, many more as well. I didn’t do too much research into them as I won’t be entering this niche myself.
I will be straight with you, as I feel I have been for the entirety of this blog post: There are big players in this niche. Companies with hundreds of millions of dollars – like CAT – dominating the search results for most queries.
That’s why, if I were to take this on, I would go local.
Don’t just go for broad rental phrases but go for the rental phrases for specific areas. To give you a starting point, the top five US states for construction work are currently:
- Oklahoma
- Illinois
- Florida
- Texas
- California
If you’re outside of the US, like myself, then research areas where construction companies and homeowners are more likely to be looking for heavy duty equipment.
As luck would have it, we can also combine my first niche recommendation with this one. Sunbelt Rentals rank very well for a number of rental search terms. The last query on this list is interesting:
Don’t just tackle this from a generic standpoint. Try to be creative.
As with other industries I’ve covered, the aim is not to get thousands of visitors landing on your website each month. It’s about getting the right visitors and being able to convert them as a lead to send to companies who can pay big money for them.
And finally, a good way to know if this is the niche for you: You already knew what a hydroseed and rototiller were without searching Google (because I certainly didn’t).
The Simplest Ever Guide to Finding Your Own Highly Profitable Niche Ideas
The above search term, admittedly, comes with a number of ads in the search results. Buyer intent keywords usually do if you’re based in America. There are far lessor ads when I change my proxy settings to non-US countries so keep that in mind, but the majority of readers here are based in the United States.
If you’re seeing ads for anything you search for after reading this post today: Make sure you learn from them.
One website I see constantly running ads is http://bestreviews.guide.
For example, for the ‘security system reviews’ keyphrase I see them buying ads for this term and then sending traffic to the following page.
Every single ‘View Product’ link is simply an Amazon affiliate link.
Since Security system reviews was an interesting niche to explore, we can then analyse what other industries http://bestreviews.guide have “caught on to” in order to give us inspiration for other industries to enter.
For this example, I’m going to use SEMRush.com. I did recently purchase a premium account, but for the purpose of this example I will not log in, meaning I’m only using data which is freely available.
When I enter their domain name and look at other terms they’re buying ads for, I see the following results:
While some of these may be search terms they’re just ‘testing’ to see if there’s money to be made, you can generally conclude that they are making money, otherwise they wouldn’t be bidding on the terms.
Best bluetooth earbuds is only going to increase in popularity if the rumors are true about Apple’s next iPhone coming without a headphone jack.
Best portable air conditioner is only going to increase in popularity if sponsored scientists continue denying the state of global warming.
For any ads that you see in Google when performing your research, put them into SEMRush to see what other industries they’re advertising in and then analyse the organic search results.
BestProducts.com = The Biggest Link Network Google Won’t Penalise
It’s not secret that I’m disappointed as to how well BestProducts.com are ranking in Google. Especially since they only benefit from sitewide footer links on Esquire, Cosmopolitan and Elle.com. It’s seems highly ironic that Google will go through Black hat world forums looking for sites and networks to penalise but totally ignore the big fish right under their nose.
I guess Hearst Media spend enough money on Google Adwords.
That out of the way, there is something to learn from BestProducts.com: 99% of their rankings are for keyphrases where freshness counts.
For certain search queries, how recent something was written matters far more than how many links it has to a certain page, or how good the on-site SEO is, and so on.
This is known as Query Deserves Freshness, or QDF for short.
Therefore, if we analyse the terms they’re ranking for, we can see opportunities where new sites and pages actually stand a chance of ranking.
I’ve logged into SEMRush.com now to give you a list of some of those terms, for your inspiration:
- wireless earbuds: 90,500 searches per month
- best wireless earbuds: 22,200 searches per month
- best vacuum cleaner: 22,200 searches per month
- best waist trainer: 22,200 searches per month
- waterproof bluetooth speaker: 18,100 searches per month
- lighted makeup mirror: 14,800 searches per month
- best portable speakers: 12,100 searches per month
- moscow mule mugs: 33,100 searches per month
- best bluetooth headphones: 40,500 searches per month
- best workout headphones: 6,600 searches per month
- tattoo cover up makeup: 6,600 searches per month
- best blender for smoothies: 5,400 searches per month
The list goes on, but hopefully there’s inspiration for a variety of niches there.
We’re not done with huge companies and their unstoppable networks just yet.
Small Business Phone System: A Link-Ring Example
“Small business phone system” isn’t a niche I have chosen to cover because I think you should enter it. Not only because the search results are largely dominated by big brands, but if Google Trends is to be trusted then it’s a dying industry as well.
Take a look at the following screenshot to see how brand-dominated the results really are.
You’ve got Cisco, Telstra, ATT and so on. Any rational SEO would look at this search result and think “I’m leaving that one alone.”
What you don’t know, as I know you didn’t go and search for this term – it’s a pretty boring industry – is that I removed the first result from Google.
And the first result isn’t some other huge telecommunications provider offering this as a service. Instead, it’s a blog, who wrote an article on the topic in 2016.
With an estimated 3,600 searches per month, I would say this sends Business News Daily at least 1,000 monthly visitors thanks to their ranking. Ironically, the site is owned by Purch, another of the 16 companies who I reported as dominating the world’s Google search results.
The reason Business News Daily is ranking, is because of Purch’s network. Just look at this example from TomsITPro.
The highlighted text is a slightly more professional way for a private network owner to say, “Here’s a link to another article I wish to rank in my network, and another”.
The mentions of other Purch-owned sites, Top Ten Reviews and Business News Daily are internal links to their own articles on the topic.
Does a network owner really need to cover the same topic three times? I think the better question for these 16 is, why wouldn’t I create this article on all of my sites? Why take one search result when we can have many more.
My annoyances aside, it shows that even brand-dominated queries can be outranked by an in-depth and linked to article on the topic, so don’t count out all opportunities at first glance.
Sorry I Just Killed All of These Niches By Blogging About Them
If you genuinely believe that, then don’t take action on any of them.
Though please allow me to remind you that I dedicated an entire blog post to a Pomodoro app I would love to see built and not a single person created it.
Many, many people got 80% done, but nobody went ahead and actually finished it.
Why? It more than likely wasn’t something that they cared about enough. They just finally had an idea to work on and started working on it.
If I had the interest to do so I would be building far more ‘[industry] near me’ websites but they’re just not very exciting. I do have a few on the go, as I said earlier, but I’m really not putting that much work into the sites. I’m relying (hoping?) on them to rank with minimum effort.
And when someone comes into those industries with a bit more effort, they’ll outrank me and take away some of my marketshare.
When I asked people whether they would be interested in this article before going live, a popular comment was that I would share how I found the niches as well.
While I hope you got something out of the industries I shared, I hope you got more out of how I found them, and you can too in the future. Even if ViperChill readers don’t make these industries saturated, they will be one day, and you need to know how to find other opportunities.
If you got something out of this article and would like to see more of them in the future, please do let me know in the comments below. I have a stack of industries I consider but don’t have time to enter, but at 7,000+ words I think I’ve covered enough for part one.
