Question on Ranking in a new keyword

Hey all! My family currently runs and owns a 30 year old printing/engraving business (started by my stepdad) and we are looking into delving into a new business. This is something that has just come up in our sort of industry. I'm not going to give it away as I think this could be a gold mine...
Here are the competition and monthly search volume metrics from Google:

My question is with these provided screenshots of the "competition" and search volume, do you guys think it would be fairly easy to rank an OG looking site for the business in it? The niche/products are SUPER popular with big corporations and colleges and things of the like, I just guess they don't do a whole lot of searching for these.

Also, the few that are HIGH competition but LOW monthly searches are dominated by sites that have domain names that are EXACT to what the keyword is.. probably have no chance there. But the ones with high volume and low competition are the ones that we want to target. They have poorly made sites with really no user interface and no way of placing an order... WHO DOES THAT?

I'm no SEO expert, I'm more of a social media guy myself. So any advice and insight as to how hard it would be to rank a site in keywords like these would be of much help! You can shoot me a PM as well if you'd like to talk more about this in private.

Well that competition metric is all about adwords advertisers and not seo competition. Though they give you an estimate of what you COULD find, checking out your competition is the best way to see if its good to go.

Also, dont stress over ranking in one keyword. You should be focusing in ranking and targeting as many as you can by creating awesome content for SEs and your audience.

Content and backlinks are just the tip of the iceberg in regards to seo

royserpa said:

Well that competition metric is all about adwords advertisers and not seo competition. Though they give you an estimate of what you COULD find, checking out your competition is the best way to see if its good to go.

Also, dont stress over ranking in one keyword. You should be focusing in ranking and targeting as many as you can by creating awesome content for SEs and your audience.

Content and backlinks are just the tip of the iceberg in regards to seo

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I've read a whole ton on backlinking and things like that. My best guess it to just get the site up and running first, get products and information on it. Make it BETTER than the competition (because they're all outdated sites that look like they're from the 90s LOL) and then worry about ranking it after the grunt work is done?

It's highly unlikely that you will rank for a keyword with 450'000 searches per month, try to find long tail keywords that are easier to rank

If you want to find the real competition for your keyword go to http://www.keywordrevealer.com/ they have a free plan were you can check the keyword difficulty for 3 keywords per day

Since the adwords competition is low and the price not too expensive you could simply start an adwords campaign to sell your product/service

JasonGraham said:

It's highly unlikely that you will rank for a keyword with 450'000 searches per month, try to find long tail keywords that are easier to rank

If you want to find the real competition for your keyword go to http://www.keywordrevealer.com/ they have a free plan were you can check the keyword difficulty for 3 keywords per day

Since the adwords competition is low and the price not too expensive you could simply start an adwords campaign to sell your product/service

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Yeah we were considering doing adwords to start off with. Since we already have the expensive equipment to produce these products in house for our current business, our only overhead is the domain and hosting/ecommerce plan. So allotting a few thousand for adwords campaigns and social media campaigns (IG/Facebook would probably be our best bet for the product). Thank you for the info! I'll definitely bring this up to everyone else!

JasonGraham said:

It's highly unlikely that you will rank for a keyword with 450'000 searches per month, try to find long tail keywords that are easier to rank

If you want to find the real competition for your keyword go to http://www.keywordrevealer.com/ they have a free plan were you can check the keyword difficulty for 3 keywords per day

Since the adwords competition is low and the price not too expensive you could simply start an adwords campaign to sell your product/service

Click to expand...

Also, just tried the site you recommended. I get "website currently down for maintenance" when I go to the keyword tool. I'll try it later and may report back with results

Cinnamonster said:

I've read a whole ton on backlinking and things like that. My best guess it to just get the site up and running first, get products and information on it. Make it BETTER than the competition (because they're all outdated sites that look like they're from the 90s LOL) and then worry about ranking it after the grunt work is done?

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Yup, but still, while you are ranking your site, why not go with paid traffic? Sounds reasoning

Cinnamonster said:

Also, just tried the site you recommended. I get "website currently down for maintenance" when I go to the keyword tool. I'll try it later and may report back with results

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Just checked the website the maintenance is done

royserpa said:

Yup, but still, while you are ranking your site, why not go with paid traffic? Sounds reasoning

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This is very true! My only question would be this: What are the benefits of "paid traffic" going towards an online store? Does it just show the SEs that "hey, this site is getting a lot of attention, its important!"?

JasonGraham said:

Just checked the website the maintenance is done

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Thanks! The tools are great! I may invest in a plan through there. Looking through at the competition in the keywords it actually seems fairly low/moderate. Some of the higher ranked guys have a decent amount of backlinks but no social signals at ALL. The ones in place 5-10 for a few of the keywords are poorly made websites that have pretty much no metrics at all (0-1 backlink, no social signals, authority seems low)

The benefits of paid traffic to an online store is that it can be highly targeted by your advertisements and will therefore bring you possible buyers. Does not have to much to do with the SE's to rank your site.

Cinnamonster said:

This is very true! My only question would be this: What are the benefits of "paid traffic" going towards an online store? Does it just show the SEs that "hey, this site is getting a lot of attention, its important!"?

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Not only that, but you also start testing traffic

The pure fact you have a business that's been running for 30 years means you should have plenty of repeat customers and a mix of new ones and people enquiring.
First of all tap into these to see if the new products are something you're able to offer them and they might be interested in.
Offer them a loyalty / new customer discount to get the ball rolling.

It is cheaper to retain clients than it is to find new ones.
Piggy back onto your existing customer base to begin with.

MisterF said:

The pure fact you have a business that's been running for 30 years means you should have plenty of repeat customers and a mix of new ones and people enquiring.
First of all tap into these to see if the new products are something you're able to offer them and they might be interested in.
Offer them a loyalty / new customer discount to get the ball rolling.

It is cheaper to retain clients than it is to find new ones.
Piggy back onto your existing customer base to begin with.

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We already have customers asking for us to produce this product without even offering it, because they know our quality and turnaround time is TOP NOTCH compared to others in the engraving industry lol... We actually just had a big customer of ours who got quoted $280,000 from another company that sells these products, asking if we could do a better job than they could. Just to put into perspective how big in sales this could be. Our supplier sells products to Donald Trump and other major companies/corporations, he's willing to give us connections as well.

Cinnamonster said:

We already have customers asking for us to produce this product without even offering it, because they know our quality and turnaround time is TOP NOTCH compared to others in the engraving industry lol... We actually just had a big customer of ours who got quoted $280,000 from another company that sells these products, asking if we could do a better job than they could. Just to put into perspective how big in sales this could be. Our supplier sells products to Donald Trump and other major companies/corporations, he's willing to give us connections as well.

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If you're going to be able to produce these to deadlines and not be over run with work, then don't worry about additional spending on advertising mate.
If your supplier can promote for you then let them do that. You seriously don't want to get too many orders that you can't cope and either miss delivery deadlines or quality drops.

Word of mouth and personal referals are better than paid advertising and cheaper.

MisterF said:

If you're going to be able to produce these to deadlines and not be over run with work, then don't worry about additional spending on advertising mate.
If your supplier can promote for you then let them do that. You seriously don't want to get too many orders that you can't cope and either miss delivery deadlines or quality drops.

Word of mouth and personal referals are better than paid advertising and cheaper.

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We already have a policy set in where if we have a set amount of orders due per day, and unless it's a rush order, we will set it for the next possible date. Most of our major orders we allow 10 days or so (qty of 600+)... We will have a way to not get overrun for sure. Thanks for the advice though! Marked it down in my notes for sure .

I will update once we have picked a domain name, get the site up, and how our sales are going and all of that. I may make a journey thread for this if anyone is interested in the process of a business like this.

Have you done a brainstorm session on the benefits of adding an affiliate system to some or one of your featured products?

adultwebmasterdesign said:

Have you done a brainstorm session on the benefits of adding an affiliate system to some or one of your featured products?

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Actually, no... that's a good idea though! I'll bring it up tomorrow when I'm at work.

Agree with Jason, invest on long term keywords.