How to Pick a Niche If You’re Just Starting Out (SEO)

Everyone's talking about AI changing SEO. Search results are shifting to AI overviews. Content is easier than ever to create. And if you're just starting out, this all probably seems like way [music] too much to take in. But I still believe that the fundamentals win and it all starts with picking a niche. A niche is important because it'll affect everything that [music] comes after. And in this video, I'll be revealing the four principles to picking a niche and then teaching them to a complete beginner. You see, my producer works on HRCV. He helps make SEO videos every week, but he's never actually done SEO, which makes him the perfect candidate. Okay, so Asa, before you get to work, it's important that you understand the four principles to picking a niche. So the first, probably the most important is competition. So you got to make sure that you're choosing your battles wisely. Like actually pick a niche where you have a chance at ranking. You're a solo person. You're not going to beat the sales forces and hubspots of this world. That makes sense. Okay. So the second thing is commercial value. You want to ideally find a way that you can make money. So like lists, best product name. If there's a lot of those type of queries, there's definitely going to be commercial value because those people are actually searching for solutions and they're willing to pay for it to solve that problem, right? Okay. The third one is breath. There has to be enough topics to talk about. So like don't make an entire website on just pulled pork sandwiches. You'll probably cover all the topics within like a month, but you don't want to go as wide as like food because it's just way too out there and it's really tough to tackle. You want to find a niche, something like smoking meats. Like there's a lot of different things that you can talk about in there and then you can expand out from there after. Makes a lot of sense. And the fourth one is personal interest. So if you're not interested enough in the topic, you're probably not going to want to work on it. And SEO is a long game and so you're going to have to keep working at it. So choose something that you actually enjoy. That seems like an easy one to start with. I think this is a really good framework for me to get started on. Cool. Good luck. ASO is ready to begin the search for a niche. The question is, can he combine all four of these principles effectively within his strategy? So, for me, I feel like the easiest one to start with is what's personally interesting to me. I love food. I love restaurants. I also love travel. I love hiking. I feel like those are two separate niches that I'm going to think about and kind of do a little more research on. I'm going to dive into the keywords and see what I can find. At this stage, Asa isn't choosing a niche yet. He's identifying options worth validating. The goal here is to narrow the list. I'm going to start with travel. And I feel like hiking is actually kind of a niche of that. I could either do like product reviews or create listicles like best waterproof and warm weather hiking boots. feels relatively niche. Maybe I could actually rank for that. Who knows? I have to do the research. I'm going to use HR Keywords Explorer. Once he has a few ideas, this is where HR becomes useful. Not to find a keyword to rank for, but to understand the overall landscape, how competitive the space is, how commercial the queries are, and what kind of authority would be required to compete. I'm going to put in hiking. [music] I don't want to get stuck with something too difficult that I'm never going to rank for. When Asa looks at hiking, one of the first things he sees is search volume. This is something beginners often focus on. High search volume usually means the topic is wellestablished and wellestablished topics tend to have stronger competition. That's why ASUS starts lowering keyword difficulty. I think hiking is a pretty good niche for like commerciality. I almost think I need to niche down [music] at first because my site's going to have no authority. I don't know if that makes sense, but there's a lot of lower keyword [music] difficulty I'm seeing on this. I feel like targeting just best of lists on relatively small niches. He's trying to see whether there are opportunities that would make sense for a new site. When he adds modifiers like best, versus, or review, he's checking for commercial intent. These terms usually indicate that someone is comparing options. That's a good signal, but it's only part of the picture. You still need a realistic path to ranking. This is why ASA starts thinking about narrowing the focus. New sites generally perform better when they're more specific. Let's make this one. So like New England hikes, best hikes New England, Katie is low, but also search volume's pretty low on all of these. So it doesn't feel like the best match through hikes USA. Search volume is just like not there for really it feels like a hiking page. People aren't searching that in any major way. So, I don't know if I'm going to get the traffic I need. After looking at the data, hiking starts to look difficult [music] for a first site. So, ASA moves on and keeps testing ideas. I'm going to try uh restaurants, bro. I mean, restaurants is hardly a niche. It's so universal. Massive search volume, 51 million. First thought is I can hone in right on New England. So, restaurants in New England [music] and food in New England. So maybe I can start looking at places like best Thai restaurants and best Mexican food in the Boston area. Those are where my mind immediately goes and I know there must be some search volume for that and people do click on those lists still. I know that Google does take a huge share of that. The same pattern shows up again. Very high search volume. [music] Instead of trying to cover everything, he starts narrowing by location. This is where local niches can work well. There's usually clearer intent, less competition, [music] and more opportunities to go deep in one area. Okay. Yeah, here we go. Best restaurants in New England. [music] The search volume is only 150 on best restaurants in New England, which I definitely could make that and maybe post that on my website, but I'm thinking if I could break that down into more of the hubs throughout New England. So, maybe like Boston restaurants. And I [music] already have pictures of these and I can do anything with that. Let's see what we get. So, I'm limiting the keyword difficulty to 20. I'm looking in the best out of the terms. Okay. So, best Italian restaurants Boston is a 10. [music] So, that feels doable. It has commercial value and I'm seeing that on HR showing me the user is [music] comparing products or services before making a purchase decision. 1.1K search volume. So, not not bad. As ASA looks at cities and neighborhoods, the data changes. Keyword difficulty drops and the competition becomes more realistic. This is an important shift. [music] SEO isn't about beating the biggest sites. It's about earning visibility where it makes sense for your business. I've been to most neighborhoods in Boston. I live just outside of the city, so I know these areas well. Still pretty good search volume, and the KD is actually only four. [music] So, that could be a really good first article. I feel like maybe I can rank for that. It says easy. I'd have to rank against some pretty strong sites. I'm seeing domain ratings. It's Trip Advisor. Okay, so maybe I won't be Trip Adviser, but if I could get in the top 10, I think that would be a pretty big win. Ranking in the top 10 is often enough to start seeing results. When ASA settles on a New England based food and restaurant niche, it fits the framework. Yeah. [music] So, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to do like best of lists [snorts] and recommendations for food in and around New England. And I'm going to really hone in on the local market because I feel like that's the best chance I have of actually ranking right now. So, I'm going to start by targeting neighborhoods that I know. And then I'd probably start to target other ones around New England. At least that's my plan. I'm going to see what Sam says and then we'll go from there. When ASA settles on a New England-based food and The competition is manageable, the intent is clear, and there's enough breadth to expand over time. It's also something he can realistically write about. That doesn't guarantee success, but avoids many of the common problems that stop sites early on. That's the goal of niche selection. Now that the niche is set, the next step is keyword research. Finding topics the site can realistically rank for and prioritizing them in a way that makes sense for a new