(The Entrepreneur Ridealong) Building A Healthy Food Niche Site From $0 to $10,000: Niche Selection
Updated on July 31, 2023
Niche Selection
This blog post is a summary (rather than a direct transcription) of the screen share video, repurposed for improved clarity.
I used to sell starter sites and bought new and aged domains regularly. I just pick one that is from a closed restaurant with a nice and clean link profile then I turn it into a food blog.
So, for this food blog, here’s how I selected the niche:
Step 1. Look at what the market wants
First, I looked at a report that showed the highest-searched niches. Food blogs are amongst the top 10 most searched on this list. I also like sites about food and hobbies because they are not in the your-money-your-life (YMYL) categories so you do not need to have a strong EEAT.
If you want an easier time building a blog, do not choose YMYL-based content sites like finance sites.
Step 2. Check Google Trends for stable trends or growing trends
So first, I’ll look at the general trend of the niche. So I typed in “cuisine”. It looks like it has remained stable over time.
Step 3. Dig further into Google Trends to look for sub-niches
Next, I’ll look at related queries and look for anything with significant upward trends. So I see there’s “Cooking Mama”, which unfortunately is a brand, so I cannot use that.
Next, I see Indian cuisine, and this could be something worth looking into. I also see Thai cuisine. To get a better idea of the most recent activity, I’ll look at the trend over the past 90 days.
And then I’ll look over the past five years to see how stable it is. It looks like Indian cuisine is stable and rising so it’s a good niche to enter.
Step 4. Compare your niche’s search volume to “orchid care”
This is something my mentor taught me, where in order to determine if a niche I’m researching is large enough, I perform a side-by-side comparison on Google Trends with my target niche and “orchid care”.
So if Google Trends shows the search volume for your niche as below orchid care, your niche is too small. You need at least the same or greater search volume compared to the “orchid care” search term. You also do not want to be too far above “orchid care” as that might imply your niche is too broad.
Step 5. Check the main topic/keyword against the top SERP
Lastly, we need to check the competition. In order to do so, you’ll want to install a Google Chrome plugin that can show the DR of the sites that appear under your niche and the niche’s search terms.
It’s a good sign if you see sites appear under these search terms with a DR of below 25.
