5 Free Tools Every Online Niche Marketer Needs

The keys to online niche marketing are the ability to identify niche markets and the ability to get high keyword rankings in the search engines. Over the course of the last couple of months I have found several free tools that have become invaluable to improving my niche marketing efforts. With these tools you will be able to both identify new niche markets to persue and optimize your niche sites to rank high in the search engines for your target keywords.

5 Free Tools Every Online Niche Marketer Needs

1. Digital Point's Keyword Tracker - This very powerful tool allows you to track your site's keyword rankings on the three main search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN). Since the tool also stores the data, you can view a graph of your websites ranking trends over time to see how well you SEO efforts are working.
   
   How I use this tool: - I use this tool to measure the effectiveness of my SEO efforts for my sites. Using the historical data, I can see if my sites is trending down in the rankings. This let's me know that I need to work on optimizing that particular site.



2. Digital Point's Keyword Suggestion Tool - This tool will provide you search data from Overture and Keyword Tracker for keyword phrases related to the entered keyword. With this information you can design your site(s) to target popular keyword phrases.
   
   How I use this tool: - I use this tool as a start to find potential high traffic keyword niches. Once I have found a keyword niche using this tool, I will then research it further using some of the other tools on this list before I actually pursue the niche.



3. Niche Watch - This tool will let you analyze the top 20 sites for any keyword phrase (it will also diplay your site's analysis for comparison.) With the information that this tool provides, you can quickly determine how competitive a niche is for a target keyword, or you can see how well your site stacks up against the competition for your target keywords.
   
   How I use this tool: - I use this tool to determine the competitiveness of the keyword niches found using the suggestion tool above. I am looking for a niche that I can fairly easily rank in the top 20.



4. URL Trends - This site allows you to track some key metrics of your sites over time (the free version let's you track up to 10 sites.) The statistics are only update once a month, but it is a good tool to see how you site is developing over time.
   
   How I use this tool: - I use this tool to track my sites, so that I can see how well my sites are progressing over time. With this tool I can see the key metrics of all my sites on one page.



5. Directory Tracker - This tool will allow you to track your directory submissions for it's list of around 300 directories. It allows you to track submissions and listings.
   
   How I use this tool: - I use this tool to track the directory submissions for all my new sites. Once I have submitted the site to all the directories, I then go back periodically and run their directory checker to see which directories have listed my site.

This information brought to you by the http://nichevalue.blogspot.com

Google Analytics and Blogger Sites

One of the first things that I do when I find a potential niche market is to create a blogger blog. I then add content to the blog for a couple of weeks and see what happens. If the blog starts to take off and get a lot of traffic, I then create a full blown site around the niche.

The reason I like to use blogger sites is that fact that they are easy to maintain and update from one account. But blogger sites do have one major drawback: no built in statistics.

This is where I pair my blogger sites with the power of google analytics. Using google analytics I can view the traffic trends for each of my niche blogger sites. I can see which sites are growing in terms of traffic and where that traffic is coming from. Using this information I can invest my time into the sites that have the most promise and ultimately the highest ROI.

The one drawback is you can only monitor 5 sites at one time with google analytics. For me this isn't really a problem, because I can only keep up with 3 to 5 sites at one time.

This information was brought to you by http://nichevalue.blogspot.com

Adsense Revenue Sharing

I have been dabbling and testing to see if I could make any money by participated on adsense revenue sharing sites. Obviously I got the idea to look for other revenue sharing sites from my membership to Digital Point.

I mixed things up a little by joining several different types of revenue sharing sites. I joined several adsense revenue sharing forums in addition to Digital Point, a couple of adsense revenue sharing article directories, and an adsense revenue sharing content site. Over the last couple of weeks I have posted at all the forums, added articles to the article directories, and posted new content to the content site in an effort to earn some extra money from adsense.

The result was a lot of impressions and $0.24 added to my adsense account. So for all the effort, I only made $0.24. In addition the large numbers of impressions with a low CTR may start affecting the other sites in my adsense account, so I am removing my adsense information from these revenue sharing sites (I know that low performing sites in your AdSense account can affect your other sites click values.)

Here are the list of adsense revenue sharing sites that I have joined:

Forums:

1. Digital Point - Webmaster Forum


2. HTTPPoint - Webmaster Forum


3. Webmasters Home - Web Master Forum


4. Webmasters Talk - Web Master Forum


5. Hosting Refuge - Web Hosting Forum

Article Directories:

1. Xpress Ideas


2. Articler


3. Article Muse

Content Sites:

1. Senserely Yours - This is a very unique site that lets you add to their content either in the form of blog entries or book entries.

I had fun playing with the idea for a little while, but now back to creating content for my niche sites.

This information was brought to you by http://nichevalue.blogspot.com