• One day left in Contest - Grill Auctions is almost gone!

     November 14, 2007

• So - Does KEI Research REALLY Pay Off?

     November 9, 2007

• Killing time, Registering new Domains, reflecting on a busy 30 days!

     November 8, 2007

• Understanding the Needs of your Visitors by the Logfiles

     November 8, 2007

• Promotion of your Niche Store

     November 7, 2007

• Back at the House for a few Days

     November 6, 2007

Creating a Niche Specific Category Structure - Part 2

October 16, 2007 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Build a Niche Store, Everything Else

OK - I am fresh again! I had most of this post typed out over the weekend, which somewhat burned me out a little! Once I began finishing up yesterday I found that elimination of the non-essential categories would be a better place to start out… thus this whole post did not get done in one day!

Apologies to those of you that were on the edge of your seats… Hopefully, you settled back in and are ready to do some category building!

On that note - Lets go!

In yesterday’s post, we eliminated all non-essential categories from our main eBay supplied category tree. The result was a much smaller and cleaner category listing on the main page of the public website.  Even though it is closer to what we want, there is still quite a bit of work to be done before we can open the doors to traffic!

Today is another day that will be spent researching and developing the top level of the menu as well as many of the child or subcategories that will be our navigation menu. I will use research from Wordtracker and several websites that I stumble upon during the process. This is not an easy thing to do if you want to do it correctly. The point, click and be done, days of web research just don’t exist… Your diligent work today will pay off in the long run!!

Looking back at the spreadsheet we created during our Niche Discovery process, we saw HIGH demand for various terms. Many were generic searches for manufacturer names, types of grills, accessories etc. At this point, we want to start putting together the category headings. For the purpose of saving days of research time, I am going to list several main category headings, but for the GrillAuctions website, we are going to focus on only the first one… Types of Grills. Using this general heading will let us encompass just about everything the site needs.

• Types of Grills (ie: gas, charcoal, electric etc)

We could add, manufacturers, accessories, parts, etc… but those would actually fall into expanded subcategories if we choose to do so.

Once we have an idea of the main category, we start research on the web. When I was looking to get more info on type of grills, one of the places I stumbled on was the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association. Once I land at this first site, my sponge of a brain is immediately welcomed with not only a nice looking site, but also a site that is full of FACTS about grills and grilling! (I have bookmarked it for future reference when we begin writing articles.)

By clicking on the Consumer/Barbeque link in the upper right, I am treated to a page FULL of info about grills, our Niche Market! I know, pretty easy to get sidetracked into the information they have on the site but for now… I am interested in the Grill Buying Fact Sheet. From the second page, I get a list of the different grill types in today’s market. I will take that list and jot it onto my pad for possible use as a directory in the site.  You will also notice that there is a nice short description of each type of grill next to the type. That will also come in handy when writing category meta-descriptions! (We wont copy/paste though, we will use them for reference and tips in writing our own.)

Parent Category: Types of Grills

Sub category list we will start with:

• Charcoal Grills
• Dual Fuel Grills
• Electric Grills
• Gas Grills
• Infrared Grills
• Kamado Cookers
• Kettle Grills
• Pellet Grills
• Portable Grills
• Smokers
• Turkey Fryers
• Stainless Steel Grills
• Barbeque Grills

Now, we also know by looking back at the spreadsheet, that there was demand for other terms not listed here. I added those to the bottom as well. In reality, EACH of the terms is a Niche market of its own and will do well with separate domains! One of you should go grab a few domain names and use this as a reference to develop them! (hint hint… I grabbed up BuyCharcoalGrills.com for a new store of my own)

Just a quick note about using the KEI factor and wordtracker as a resource for finding your terms. Remember last week when we researched our Niche market? I chose to use the terms “Vermont CastingsVM600″ & “Vermont Castings VM600 Grill” as two terms that would be a good target. Go ahead and search Google for those terms now… This site comes up #10 for Vermont Castings VM600 (when searched with quotes) and #1 for “Vermont Castings VM600 Grill” (Again surrounded in quotes) Even though the terms are wrapped in quotes, this site has absolutely zero relevance to the terms but still ranks high when placed in quotes. If I (or one of you) was to put together a Niche Site around only Vermont Casting grills and focus on specific products, they would rank well quickly!

Back over to wordtracker we go… looking for the MOST POPULAR results for “Charcoal Grill”. In the results, I want to try and strike a balance between demand and KEI, so I will write down all long tail terms that carry a KEI of .1 or higher! For example:

• Search Term: (Predicted Search volume/KEI)
• Category: Charcoal Grills (661/.09) Not top shelf, but good for a category!
• Weber Charcoal Grills : (398/0.11) Less than .1 KEI, probably not too good, but high search volume
• Charcoal Grill Smokers: (54/1.20) Great Target
• Charcoal Grill Design: (17/12.50) Great Target, semi-grill related
• North American Charcoal Grill: (19/40.30) Great Target
• Charcoal Barbeque Grills: (12/9.80) Good Target
• Stainless Charcoal Grill: (15/.035) Just OK
• Drop in Charcoal Grill: (22/.27) Just OK
• Charcoal Drop in Grills: (15/20.25) Sligh wordplay, great target!
• Royal Oak Charcoal Grill: (21/.18) Just OK
• Fold-able Charcoal Grill: (19/32.00) Great Target!
• Stainless Steel Charcoal Grills: (19/9.0) Great Target

I could go on and on with this list… but will stop here. You should end up with 15-25 good volume/KEI phrases for EACH of your main “Grill Type Categories”… these will be used to put together your store navigation structure. In the end you will have something that resembles this:

Charcoal Grills

1. Weber Charcoal Grills
2. Charcoal Grill Smokers
3. Charcoal Grill Design
4. North American Charcoal Grill
5. Charcoal Barbeque Grills
6. Stainless Charcoal Grill
7. Drop in Charcoal Grill
8. Charcoal Drop in Grills
9. Royal Oak Charcoal Grill
10. Fold-Able Charcoal Grill
11. Stainless Steel Charcoal Grills

Dual Fuel Grills

1. First DF target
2. Second DF Target
3. Third DF Target
4. etc etc etc…

Electric Grills

1. Target 1
2. Target 2
3. Target 3
4. etc etc etc …

….. other main categories through Barbeque Grills.

Since we now have our list of main categories and the resulting list of products we are going to use to begin, we can head over to the admin of the site and create a main category tree.  After you log in, choose the “Store Pages” link on the left menu. At the top of the page, click on “Create New Store Page”. Pay no attention to your current category structure right now… we will be using all of it over time.

As we build the hierarchy menu, each main category will use the keywords and description of its listings. For example:

Name of new page: Charcoal Grills (Main category name)
Keywords: charcoal grills,charcoal,grills,weber,smokers,design,north american,barbeque,stainless,drop in,royal oak,foldable,folding,stainless steel,deals,buy,sell,used,new (Keywords of the top products/items)
Description: Charcoal Grills for sale from Grill Auctions. Our selection of Charcoal grills includes Weber Charcoal Grills, Charcoal Smokers, Charcoal Grill Designs, North American Charcoal Grills, Barbeque Charcoal Grills, Stainless, Royal Oak, and many others. Shop and Buy your Charcoal Grill today.

Content: Copy and paste your description into this box.

Category Number: 11700
For the category number, you want to grab as many results as possible under the main store listings. We have already eliminated the categories that have NO grilling related items in them, thus, by choosing the MAIN store category, Home and Garden, we will be able to show the results from EVERY subcategory already listed in the store.

Search Query: charcoal grill

Parent Category: Home and Garden
By choosing our MAIN store category, we are assuring that the menu item will appear on the main page, in its own heading.

Page Name: Charcoal Grills
The page name is the exact link that displays on the left side menu on your main page.

File Name: charcoal-grills
File name is a process of the BANS software and will show a search engine friendly filename to both visitors and search engine spiders when they index the site. There can be NO SPACES in the file name, but you should use an underscore “_” or hyphen “-” to separate your words. I prefer the hyphen as search engines recognize the hyphen as a word separator.

Press the Update Store Page button at the bottom and you now have a targeted category on the main page of the site.

Repeat this process for every one of your main categories until you have your 10-20 main categories on the main page of the site. I am going to jump out of this post and do the same on the Grill Auctions website myself, so I can keep up! If you want to try and save time, go ahead and generate your full parent category list so the main page of the site is beginning to show more promise as a Niche Store. Skip over your keywords and description fields for the time being, you can go back and add them after.

Once you have the 10-20 MAIN categories complete… you get to repeat this same process for all the sub categories beneath them! Sounds like fun huh?

At this point, I am sure many of you are getting overwhelmed with the amount of information you need to gather in order to get your Niche Store developed and ranking well. In order to find the best phrases and keywords for your Grill Auctions Niche Store, you want to be armed with as much data as possible, so you can ultimately feed the search engines with information they can deliver to consumers looking for grills.

Feel free to link, digg, post and participate.

Mark

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 and is filed under Build a Niche Store, Everything Else. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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Related Posts:

• Build a Niche Store Process FAQ
• Adding Content to your Build a Niche Store
• Creating a Niche Specific Category Structure - Part 1
• Registering Your New Domain Name
• Effectively Researching your Niche Market

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