[SEO] Zero Competition Zero Effort

Ok good news it stumbled across an amazing looking keyword while I was in the shower. 22k searches, decent buyer intent for a product I can promote around $100 and the competition looks like a joke. A mismash of quasi related stuff.

As a bonus one of the three existing sites are already in this niche. So I think this will be the first site to put together for sure.

Squashed a few bugs and I've had the keyword tool running for a dozen hours or so without problems. It does move slow for the moment but once I'm confident in it the next step will be more threads and a bunch more proxies.

Approaching 70 pages put up for keyword testing now. I've a pretty big list of potential keywords to go through but I've been doing some work on the keyword testing script. It was limited to just eCommerce keywords but now it can go after pretty much any niche. I'm doing a little work on it at the moment which is letting it grab a bunch of extra "unique" content as well I'm pretty happy with how it's working so that's going live over tonight since it does run a little slower than before. But I think it'll be worth it and I can have it running a bunch of them at once so it'll even out.

Hoping to have the time to put together the first actual site tomorrow.

I'm really interested in the automation aspect of it. What are you using to scrape keywords, determine competition, etc? I'm assuming Google Keyword Planner. Are you using phantom/casperjs to scrape?

How many account/proxies are you running?

I'm a software dev as well, and find more joy in creating tools than I do in SEO

If I tell you exactly what I'm doing that only means more competition for finding the keywords so I won't say exactly. I will say the Google planner is included but not the only source. As far as determining competition I've hooked it up to API's and scraped third party sites but I don't think they're too useful. I'm currently grabbing as much information as I can and assigning a number value to how important I think that factor is.

I think judging competition has become a lot harder the more Google looks at intent rather than the key phrase. Sure your competitor might not mention the keywords you're searching for but Google might of linked that with another result so it doesn't really matter. But at the moment it's whittling it down for a list for me to look at manually. Next step is going to be having it look at the external aspects if a search makes it that far and then I need to decide the best way to work synonyms into the onsite checking. But I'm trying to get as many test sites up and running as possible so I can start getting an idea of the weighting I need to use.

As for what I use to scrape it really depends. I'll usually avoid having to go to PhantomJS unless I need to render Java. Ideally I want to find a nice neat AJAX call and parse that up. Faster and less work for my poor tired server. It all really depends what the target for data is and what I can get away with. As for accounts... it depends on the source. Same with proxies. I have access to a few dozen private ones and a few thousand reverse ones + whatever my scraper picks up. Some are more useful than others for certain jobs.

And I certainly know the feeling. I'll very rarely build a tool which already exists. I'd rather give someone else the $100 and let them maintain it but I do like finding something different to try and build. I've some neat tools for building links and getting tools which I like tinkering with.

And very little in SEO itself is fun. Theory crafting or finding something new is fun. Getting paid is fun. Everything else in between is just a boring grind.

Updates:

Turns out a guy I know led a pretty big search engine scraping gig. They reduced a couple of thousand proxies down to a few dozen and still got a really big scale with the way they'd scrape. So I got a few tips and I'm making a few changes to speed things up. The more I can get through the better the keywords I can find. That's the theory of course.

Changes to the keyword tester went well. It moves slower but it grabs a bunch of content now which looks pretty legit. I know someone else is ranking doing this so now I've automated to scale up better and this should improve the rankings as well.

I'm going to leave everything running for the weekend and then run the indexer and setup rank tracking to get them started. If I don't have time to write some site content myself I might start outsourcing some of it.

Very interesting journey and good to see regular updates already!

Just a few updates to start the week off.

Hooked up another API to the keyword tool. I've another source which is almost done needs some work still. Got some tips for checking the serps faster so I've been adding that. Still some work to do but its getting there. I've a list of potentials to look through from the weekend which I'll go through later tonight.

It started to spit out some great looking keywords. The first one I'm building is around 6k~ searches a month good intent and the #1 competitor is a 50 word yahoo answer page. There's another 2 or 3 which are moving on to sites now as well.

One JV partner has started. She's building up the site for one keyword now. I've a busy day of working for the development job but the server is working away at finding more keywords and I'll write up a bunch of content for at least one site tonight.

I think the guideline to start with is around 15 articles of roughly 800 words per site for now. I want to be slapping these sites up quickly. Decent content no spinning or cheap outsourcing they'll give the user a decent experience but I won't be sinking too much time into them until I think it's a site which will rank and bring in the traffic.

So:

Server runs 24/7 spitting out low comp keywords.

If the keyword is at least 1k searches, good trend spread and low comp by its filters then it'll be checked manually for a decent buyer intent and a product which can be found (or created) then a site is slapped together and we move to the next one.

If a site ranks at least page 2/3 (to be honest with the competition I'm looking at that's a bit of a joke) I'll fire up the backlink scripts. Some of those will take a little freshening up for this project I'm reducing the capital investment for a bigger site but a few days work tops.

I do think some of these keywords will rank fairly high without a single backlink if I use the right domains and pick the right keywords. But the ones I'm planning to use won't take a lot of work or capital once the scripts are converted a bit. And if it helps speed things up a bit I don't mind a little extra work up front.

Ideally I think the target should be to churn out around 15 of these sites by the end of the month. This will be domain dependent but now I'm happy the keyword script is doing the job I'll start picking up more domains for this project.

Great journey man. Good luck. It sounds like you on the way to an empire. How does one become a JV with you?

Good idea targeting these kw! continue update us!

Intrestening Journey, good luck with it i will be following

Really interested in working with you if you're open to a JV.

Cheers guys.

Re the JV I tend to not work with anyone I don't know well enough I'm afraid. Nothing but problems on that road. Ideally I just want to build cool SEO toys and have someone build the sites themselves. But I think both of these JV's are going to be a bust. If the first batch go well I'll maybe hire another writer to handle all the content but that's a headache in itself finding someone decent.

Site Updates:

The tool spat out a few more keywords last night which I think are going forwards to become a site so the current list looks like:

1) 15,000 searches. Evergreen product niche growing trend. Good intent. This one is a weird one and I think the SERPS are decided mainly by location but no harm in trying. Worst case there's a similar global keyword around 3k I can convert it to. $10-20 products.

2) 5,000 searches. People with a problem. There's no existing product for it but enough existing information to put together an ebook and see how it goes. Most of the competition are question sites or forum posts.

3) 60,000 searches. Evergreen product niche growing trend. Good intent. Potentially an eCommerce site and Google has smeared some Amazon and Etsy up there but it looks like it'd be worth a go and it's hard to argue with that level of traffic.

4) 10,000 searches. People who want something. Competition is mostly forum posts and answer sites again. Products choices look good. Could sell a juicy $400 bit of hardware or an ebook. Will probably end up doing both.

5) 5,000 searches. People with a problem. No existing product but could put together an eBook. Again competition is all forum posts and answer sites.

There are some which I'm more sure about than others. But I think all of them are worth a go. It's been a busy day with the development job but I'm planning to build at least one of these by tomorrow night. Goal is still 15 a month but that'll depend on the remaining JV because I still need to update the tools for getting the decent domains and some backlinks.

Tool Updates:

Made a slight adjustment to the keyword tool. Have it tracking the trends of a keyword now if it spots a low traffic but quickly growing trend I'd like to know about it. Still not exactly clear on the API limits I'm working with but the results are decent so far. It'll need some tweaking and the domains/backlinks scripts need put together but I want to get at least some of these sites live first.

10 pages of content and pre-sell put together in a few hours for site 4.

Basic plan to start with isn't to build any backlinks or put too much work into the sales funnel or media. I want to be pumping these sites out and the ones which rank and look like they'll work well can get some tinkering afterwards.

This is an interesting niche though. I found more longtail traffic and built a rough funnel for an affiliate product. Should hopefully have the whole thing uploaded later tonight and the rank tracking can begin.

While that's being done tonight I'm going to brush up on the domain finding script and do some house keeping for this project. Then if I still have the time I'll start start another site's content or hook a new API up to the keyword tool.

It's been a long day with the development job but I'm continuing the long ass grind with more code tonight.

JV has put together the first site it's looking pretty good. Curious niche but I've had weirder ones make good money it could certainly use some work for conversion but the goal is to pump them out for now. Rank tracking setup. I'll check back with it later to see how it's doing.

Designed a beta test for a system to get cheap decent domains. Similar to one I was using before but I had to tinker with it to suit this project better and I figured I might as well improve a few things. Again the API limits are not very clear but it's working well when I confirm the limits I'll find out if it's cost effective to do.

It's gone a lot smoother than I would of imagined. The original one of these I built a few months ago was very rudimentary and needed to run for hours every day. The tests so far it's looking like this will be done within an hour or so per day and process a lot more data.

Once this is done it's the last thing I plan to code for a few weeks at least. I'm going to leave all the backlink stuff for now because I am wondering with these keywords and decent domains if I'd even need to bother. So I'll do some overtime at the development job there's a few things I'd like to get done there and other than that I just want to pump out a bunch of these sites.

Oh and like him or hate him Russel Brunson can certainly make sales funnels. I'm a little rusty on selling my own digital stuff but for some of these niches I think I'll need to brush up a bit. Thinking of having a flick through this tonight https://www.amazon.com/DotCom-Secre...m_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=#navbar

Domain script done. Another bloody long day. But at least that's another task for the server to run 24/7.

I am tempted to hook the keyword script into this to get some better competition analysis as well but I think I'll do that later. Dev job early tomorrow then I'm going to try and knock out another site in the evening.

Interesting journey you have started. Will be following along.

I'm really curious about your keyword analysis tool, what are some variables the tool looks at to assess if it is low competition. You mentioned API, so I guess a couple of services like Ahrefs, Moz and Semrush?

You are doing bloody hard work. Good luck for your journey mate. I am inspired. I will work hard too. I am so lazy.

Site Updates:

Yeah... so I have one of these already it seems.

Less than 12 hours in the site is top of page 2 for one of the higher traffic longtails. Kinda hard to argue with that.

I won't really be tracking the sites on this short a time frame. That gave me a laugh but it's still SEO. I just happened to spot it on the dashboard for this project. Wondered why a graph had actually formed.

I'll take that as a good sign though.

Tool Updates:

The domain tool (I'm dubbing "Domain Labs") is running surprisingly well. I was expecting to have to deal with more kinks than this. I need to work on another filter or two but that can wait for now.

I modded an existing tool I have for something else last night to build a bit of a reverse engineer tool. It's going to help me track other SEO's doing some nifty stuff. It's really a good thing I don't pay for this bandwidth.

I've a long day ahead with the dev job lots to do but I'm hoping to get a site together or at least a chunk of it later tonight.

Launder said:

I'm really curious about your keyword analysis tool, what are some variables the tool looks at to assess if it is low competition. You mentioned API, so I guess a couple of services like Ahrefs, Moz and Semrush?

Click to expand...

It's a mix. I'm using API's like SEMrush as well as scraping Google and the sites themselves. I'm basically doing exactly what I would normally do to assess a niche but the server is getting keywords and doing it for me.

Busy day at the dev job. My recent grind with these SEO tools actually taught me a few things I'm applying there. But my JV showed me a keyword the tool spat out. 7k searches the CPC in this niche is generally around $4-5. The competition isn't quite Yahoo answers for this one but it's still weak enough I think a decent domain will make it without too much work.

The search is pretty specific and it's an interesting niche. I think with the right hook it could convert pretty well. There's no shortage of evergreen physical products to sell but I think there's plenty of digital products which could work there as well. The sales funnel will take some work to make it work but I'm pretty sure this is going to be site number 2 to go live.

I've a few more hours writing code for the dev job, an hour or two at the gym and then the content grind begins.