by: AskPat 496 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 496 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have a question today, from somebody who didn't leave his or her name, but that's okay. We're just going to leave that out. We are going to get to this person's question, his question, in just a second.
Before we get to that, I do want to mention that I do have a book coming out. I've been working for over a year on this and it's sort of related to today's content. I do want to share it with you. You can go ahead and sign up to check it out, because it's not out yet. It's coming out in February of 2016. In a couple of months, we are putting all the marketing into place now. This is, for some of you, the first time you are hearing about it. I'd love for you to check it out.
It's called, Will It Fly? It's about how to test your next business idea so you don't waste your time and money. How do you validate that idea you have in your head, before you actually put in that time and effort, and sometimes, money into it?
A lot of people struggle with starting a business, because they're afraid they are going to fail. A lot of people struggle because they don't want to put time and effort into something that isn't going to be worth it. How do you know if it's worth it or not? This is what this book is about.
I've done a ton of research on this, both personal, and looking at other people in how they validated their business ideas before they've gotten started. Even getting paid for their ideas beforehand too.
Check that out. It's at WillItFlyBook.com. Again, that's WillItFlyBook.com. I'll mention that again at the end of this episode. Again, I just want to thank you guys for your support. I know a lot of you have been following my progress with this book. It's my “one thing” right now. It's the one thing I've been focusing on for the last several months. I'm really excited to share it with you.
Thank you so much. Here's today's question from some guy, who asks a great question.
Anonymous: Hey Pat. In 2013, you made a video called, “Keyword Research and SEO Analysis,” which is a great video, and had a lot of content in it. However, now that it's 2015, a lot has changed in terms of how to look for keyword competition. I was wondering, has your process changed in terms of how you look for keyword analysis? For example, Google Adwords is actually discontinued now, which was one of the main tools that you used in that video. I was wondering, what new tools do you use? What process do you go through in terms of finding the niche competition, in terms of what you are going to go into. How do you determine what niche is good and bad today, in 2015? Thank you.
Pat Flynn: All right. What's up! Thank you so much for the question. I apologize that I am not saying your name, because you didn't include it. I didn't want to try and guess, even though it might be in your email address, because, maybe you left it out because you didn't want to be mentioned. Anyway, thank you, again for the question regardless. It's an amazing question, because a lot has changed since 2008.
In 2008, I came out with a video. It was titled … I forgot what the title was. It was about keyword research and analysis, and search engine optimization. For anybody who has been in the online business space for a while, knows that things change every single year, in terms of SEO, and getting in the top rankings of google for certain keywords, and that sort of thing.
Today, it's a lot more difficult to simply pick a keyword, build a website about that, and become successful. I did it in 2010 with the security guard training website. I did it again, in 2012 in a different way, in a different approach. I'll talk about that again, in a second, with my food trucker site.
The idea is now that it's going to take a lot more than just a keyword to be successful. Of course, it always has been. You need to provide value. In terms of knowing where to start, I actually wouldn't start with keywords. Keywords, I feel are great for supporting what it is that you have going on already. Also, validating a certain part of that entire research process. The keyword analysis is just one component. Overall, in the research that you do to decide whether or not a business is one that you might want to get into.
I also find that keyword research is extremely valuable when you have a business, and you try to see what you can do to maximize your efforts …. To figure out what holes there are in the market so that you can come in, add valuable content, and rank higher for certain keywords that other people aren't targeting, but they should be.
In that way, keyword research is great, and you can still analyze keywords today. There are a number of different tools to do that. Some of my favorite tools are SEMrush.com. That's a free one you can use. You can analyze different websites, perhaps, your competitors, or websites that are out there that are ranking for keywords. You can get an idea of why they are doing so well, and what their traffic is like.
If you are going to do some heavy keyword research, there is a tool out there that helps automate that process. It does use google's algorithms and search histories, and all of their date, with how people are searching for different keywords, and how much. This tool is called Long Tail Pro.
There is another one called Market Samurai that I recommended in the past. They are actually both great. They both do essentially, the same thing. I like Long Tail Pro by a guy named Spencer Haus, because I know the guy personally. I know how much time and care and attention he puts into that in making it great, and keeping it up to date. That helps me know that he can help you.
Additionally, this tool is much easier to use. There are less bells and whistles that a ton of advanced searched authorization people would use. When you are just starting out, or just doing basic keyword analysis, Long Tail Pro is definitely much easier to learn, and it's definitely a good tool to have in your back pocket for those types of things. Long Tail Pro, if you want to check it out, go to AskPat.com/longtailpro. You get a $30 discount off of that.
You don't need to pay for a tool in order to do the research that you want. The easiest thing you could do is type in keywords into Google, and just see what comes up. Even in the auto-populated ones, where you put in the keyword, but don't press enter, and there's other terms that come up. That's a great tool that you can use.
You can also find other keywords that you can also target, or that are related to your niche by putting in a target keyword, whatever your primary keyword is that you are thinking of going into, or one that your business is about. Scroll to the bottom of that results page. You are going to see a whole list of related search results. That tells you exactly what other people who had also typed in that one that you did, are also looking for too.
You can start a pretty cool breadcrumb trail by just clicking on those and keep continuing to click on those, and you can start to see and find some long tail keywords that way, that are potentially underserved. Of course, when you find a keyword that is of interest to you, you want to see who is ranking for that particular keyword, and how they are serving that on needs, or how they are not serving that on needs.
There are some exercises that I share in the book called Will It Fly? that I just wrote, that I am really excited to share with you, that talk about how to do market research beyond the keywords. I do talk a little bit about keyword research. I do talk more about the whole market research. I call this my 3Ps exercise. This is how you can understand exactly what's going on in target market that you are looking to get into.
What are those 3Ps?
The first P is understanding the places that people are at. More important than the keywords that they type in is, where do these people hang out online? Your target customer, these groups of people, where are they? They are in forums, and blogs, and groups, and other places online, certain websites. In the book I tell you how to organize these things and actually put them into a spreadsheet for a further use later on. You use these in the book for a lot of different things along the way. What I love about this book is one section builds on the next. It's very actionable.
The second P is finding out what people are serving that niche. So influencers, getting a list of all—the people that listened to the SPI podcast for awhile, you might remember an exercise called “The 200 List” by a guy named Neil Patel—this is kind of a play off of that.
The 3 Ps, I feel are a much easier way to organize this. The first P is finding all those different places that your target needs to exist. The second P is finding all the people who are influencers of that particular space. These are people who you can potentially partner with, who you could JV with, who you could guest post on. Seeing a whole list of them there is going to help you create this bird's eye view of everything that is actually going on, and where you can actually fit in, what position you could take in a space that might be underserved.
The third and final P is actually the product: the books, the courses, the physical products of that, if that matters, and is sold in your audience. What is actually being purchased by the people in your space? That is important to understand too. Once you start to see all these things working together, and who promotes what, and how these things relate, you get to understand this market more than some of those people who are already serving that market do. Then you can come in, in your own position with that idea that you have, but fine-tune it, and refine it, so that it actually is something that matters to that particular audience.
There's a lot more tips in there, in that book, a lot more tips actually. That's just a very small segment of the book. Hopefully, that helps you and gives you some ideas and hopefully it gets you excited about the book too.
That's how I would approach research. From there, you can even start to understand and create a list of the keywords, which is actually a fourth column that I share in that particular book. Again, there are just a whole bunch of exercises there. They help you not only understand how you can position yourself in the market, but as a byproduct, all these exercises that you do, become amazing resources you can always come back to.
For instance, you are going to have a whole list of influencers that you can reach out to. You can create a Twitter list of all of them, and search and interact with them, and provide value to them in one way. Then, they'll be able to provide value back to you. If you have a list of all the products out there, you are going to be able to see which ones you might want to get involved with in terms of affiliate marketing, or actually see what the prices are so that you can compare and come up at a higher price, knowing that you have more features than another product. All these sorts of things matter.
Again, I'm really excited to share these things with you in, “Will It Fly?” If you want to check that out, again go Willitflybook.com. You can sign up on the list there to get early notification of that. It will also be for sale, pre-order very soon, if not already by the time you listen to this. Check it out. WillItFlyBook.com.
I want to thank you, person, guy, for this question, and for setting me up really nicely to share Will It Fly?, and will hopefully help you along the way too. I wouldn't start with keyword research. That's not where I would start. I would start with finding a particular niche, a market, and finding out what problems need to be solved. Using the 3P exercise can help you do that. A lot of the other tips and bullet fly. Again, I just want to thank you. We do have your email address. My assistant is going to send you an email, so that we can get a tee-shirt to you, person.
For anybody else out there listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page. Thank you so much.
One more time, just because I know some of you will forget. Please head over to WillItFlyBook.com. Sign up there to get early notification, all the news about Will It Fly? when it comes out. I'm so excited to serve you with that book. I've put in a lot of time and effort and care into it. The reason it took so long, is because I only want to put great stuff out there. I've had a few half written books, that I know, just didn't live up to my standard. I know this one is going to exceed what everybody is expecting.
Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Take care. I can't wait to serve you in the next episode of AskPat. Cheers. Here's a Quote to finish off the day. This one's from James Goldsmith. He says, “If you see a bandwagon, it's too late.”
Here's a quote by Pat Flynn, “Visit WillItFlyBook.com.” Thanks guys. Cheers.