The Niche That Wasn’t

Last week, I shared that I decided to give up on my original niche idea for Niche Site Project 4 and select a new one.

The truth is that I didn't really follow my own niche selection advice when I selected my first niche.  You see I was driving across the country on a road trip with my family when I initially came up my niche idea.  And I had basically “sold” myself on the idea before I did any serious research.

Lesson 1 – Do research before picking your niche!

However, then Google came out with the recent “Medic” update and several sites in the niche I had selected appeared to lose traffic due to the update.  Since I was already having second thoughts about the niche, this pushed me over the edge and I decided to find a new niche.

I'm now happy to report that I've found a new niche that I feel great about!  I've even bought a domain name and I have hosting and WordPress installed.  Oh, and I've found 50 or so great keywords that I plan to target.  (I'll provide an in-depth post about how to do keyword research in the near future).

Since I've decided to abandon my “old” niche, I'm going to reveal today the niche that wasn't.  You'll see the exact niche and some of the keywords I was initially thinking about.

I hope this will be a valuable exercise to discuss why I didn't go with this niche.

The Niche That Never Was

Without dragging things out any further, here's the niche I went with for Niche Site Project 4: the Senior living niche.

That's right!  I was going to build a site about products for seniors and senior living in general.  Why would I consider such a thing?

Well, I initially looked at the niche and saw the growth of the target market.  Baby Boomers is the largest segment of the population and there are a lot of interesting products and advancements in this space.

The niche has a ton of growth potential.  So, really before I did any keyword research, I sold myself on the idea.  

However, after digging into some of the keywords I started to get nervous.  Let's take a look at some of the keywords that I was considering.

The Keywords I Considered

Now that you know that I was considering the “Seniors” niche, I thought it might be interesting to reveal the keywords I was considering.

Please note that I put several hours of research into finding and verifying these keywords.  I'll share a few examples of both the good and bad keywords that I found.  If anyone is considering this niche, you are more than welcome to “steal” these keywords.  I no longer plan to compete in this space.

Please note: These are some of the final keywords that I was considering.  When it came time to actually ordering articles, I'm not 100% sure that all of these would have made it…but most of them likely would have.

In order to get to this short list of keywords that you see above, I had to sift through MANY other keywords that I felt were not worth targeting.

Keywords I Didn't Target

Below is a short list of a few of the keywords that I decided NOT to target.  Please note that even though the KC score is low on some of these I decided for various reasons not to go after the keywords.  (It could have been search volume, or not many affiliate sites ranking, or other competitive factors that turned me away).

The Doppelgangers

One of the principles I often talk about when doing keyword research is Doppelgangers.  The basic idea is that if you can find other sites that are similar to what you are trying to create and they are ranking for the keywords you are looking at, then you likely will have a chance to rank as well.

In particular if you can find newer or weaker affiliate websites ranking for certain keywords, that's a good sign for you.  I will then take those “Doppelgangers” and plug them into SEMrush and see what keywords that are ranking for to see if there's some ideas I can “steal”.

I like to find sites that have a Moz Domain Authority of 30 or less.

Here's a list of a few Doppelgangers I found in the Senior living space:

As I looked at these Doppelgangers, I started to see a disturbing trend.  Many of them were clearly hit by the Google “Medic” update and this made me nervous enough to find a new niche.

Here's what I saw in SEMrush:

seniorsafetyreviews.com – A small hit

bestforseniors.online – A pretty big hit

bestposturebrace.com – A Massive Hit

Other Sites I Looked At

I also like to keep a list of other sites that appear to be doing really well in my niche.  Even if they are not low authority sites, it's a good idea to see what the “big” sites in any given niche are doing well.

So, here's a few sites that I found doing well in the Senior living space.  

Overall, I hope being able to see these keywords and Doppelgangers is helpful as you decide what niche you should go into.

The Domains That Shall Not Be Mentioned

I initially ignored some of the above red flags that I saw and went as far as buying a domain name.  Not only did I select the wrong niche, but I misspelled my first attempt at buying a domain name. 

I won't blame you if you stop reading along and go follow another blogger that never makes mistakes.

So, here's the MISSPELLED domain that I purchased: SeniorSaavy.com.  Turns out I should have spelled it: SeniorSavvy.com.  But of course that domain isn't available. Whoops!

I went back to the drawing board and bought a different domain, this was going to be the domain I used to build Niche Site Project 4 On: NextLevelAging.com.

Then of course, I changed my mind and picked a different niche.  So, if anyone wants either of those domains, let me know…maybe we can make a deal :).  

Oh, and I had compiled a whole list of potential domain names, that I guess it doesn't hurt now to reveal.  I didn't buy any of these, but they were in the running for the Senior space and were available.

I have to give a hat tip to Jake and Jason for some of these domain names, we each contributed a few and had a good time coming up with these.

Takeaways

Overall, I nearly went into the old people niche…but changed my mind last minute.  I hope that revealing the niche, the keywords, the doppelgangers, and even the domain names is helpful as you pick your own niche.

I put several hours into researching keywords and more, so it hurts that I just have to dump all of this work.  However, I'm super excited about the new niche I've found and I think it was a wise choice for me to change directions.

If you are in a niche where you are seeing lots of other sites get penalized by the most recent Google update, it might be worth considering other niche ideas.

What are your thoughts?  Now that you've seen the niche I decided NOT to target, are you still satisfied with your niche selection?

A lesson for me is to actually follow my own process.  I got so excited about just thinking about a niche in my mind, that I selected it before ever actually sitting down and doing the research.  That's a bad idea that cost me several hours of time.

But I'm back on track now and ready to get my new site up and rolling!  I hope you enjoyed seeing the Niche that wasn't.