In order to make the Rank & Rent business model successful, you have to start with the right approach to finding the most profitable and easy-to-rank niches.
With hundreds of large cities and counties in America and thousands of different industries to potentially target, it can be a huge task to find those golden nugget opportunities.
The most recent Xagio Freedom update introduced a new feature called Niche Hunter that makes this process insanely easy and fast, using our proprietary automation technology.
Let me show you how to use it to find your next Rank & Rent opportunity with ideal metrics.
How Xagio’s Niche Hunter Makes Finding Golden Niches Fast And Easy
The key to a successful Rank & Rent project is finding a niche with good search volume, low competition, decent cost of paid ads, and an available EMD to get your site set up on.
Here’s the problem, though.
When you combine hundreds of cities with thousands of different industries and services, you have tens of millions of keywords to go through.
It’s like those gold miners on TV who truck thousands of tons of dirt to a washplant to find a few hundred ounces of gold.
Xagio’s Niche Hunter essentially combines the collection of KW data and analysis of that data to make filtering out those golden nugget niches extremely easy.
Here’s the process you need to follow.
1. Configure Niche Hunter Settings
Log into WordPress on an existing site and navigate to the Niche Hunter tab in the Xagio plugin.
Then click on the Settings tab to make the following changes:
- Under “Google Search Windows To Open” select Broad and InTitle
- Add any local domain TLDs you might want to target other than .com, .net, and .org.
These settings will impact steps we’ll get to shortly.
2. Set Your Search Parameters
Click on the Niche Hunter button, and you’ll see an Advanced Filters section. This is where you can fine-tune how Xagio filters the search results so that you go from millions of keywords down to a few hundred.
Let me show you a good starting point.
When I’m looking for a new project, I start by setting:
- Volume to between 300 and 900
- CPC to larger than 15
- Competition to larger than 0.3
- Set language to your target location
That’s generally a sweet spot where you will find KWs with decent search volume, a reasonably high cost for running paid ads, and enough Google ads competition to indicate there is enough industry interest.
Depending on the results you get in step 4, you might need to adjust these settings.
More on that shortly.
3. Enter Keyword
With your search settings confirmed, it’s now time to enter a search keyword.
There are two ways to approach this.
The first option is to enter the name of a city that you’d like to target. This will then return the niches that contain the city, e.g., Miami, and also match the parameters you set in step 2.
The second option is to enter a niche, e.g., “metal roofing”, and Niche Hunter will return all the KWs in different cities and locations that contain that niche KW.
In the first option, you’re looking for all the niches in a specific location, while in the second option, you’re looking for all the locations that match the niche.
Once you click the “Generate” button, Niche Hunter will comb through millions of keywords based on your input values and show you a list of results.
4. Refine Your Search
Xagio has now helped you go from millions of keywords for potential niches to a few hundred.
However, if your search results show thousands of keyword niches, then there are some refinement steps you can do to get to a more manageable list.
What I generally like to start with is to adjust the search volume. You could start by changing the settings to 500-900 and then run it again with 300-500. It’s quite likely that you’ll find great opportunities in the higher range with fewer search results to look at.
What can also happen is that a niche or city keyword returns very few results. Rather than immediately jump to the next KW, you can increase the search volume range.
You can do the same with the CPC and competition values to either increase or decrease them to get more or less results. It’s different from city to city and niche to niche, so make sure you don’t get too rigid with your values.
5. Check If An EMD Is Available
Now it’s time to go through the list and see if you can find some golden opportunities.
When you spot an interesting keyword, e.g., “marriage counseling miami”, the first thing you should do is check if an EMD is available.
Simply click on the Domain Availability tool, and Niche Hunter will check what’s available based on your input value from Step 1.
If one of these is available, there’s a chance that you could rank a site more easily.
If you’re starting with the Rank & Rent model, then I would suggest staying away from extremely high-value niches like lawyers and doctors. These typically have very high CPC, and competing in these niches is very difficult.
If you want to exclude those from the list, then you can enter keywords like lawyer, attorney, doctor, etc., in the “Exclude Keywords” field.
6. Check Google Search Results
The next thing you want to do is check Google for Broad and InTitle searches. To save time, you can simply click on the Search Keywords button, and Xagio will automatically open new browser tabs with the results.
What you’re looking for are keywords that have a low number in Broad and InTitle results.
Also, take a look at how many ads are at the top of the SERPs and if business review sites like Yelp are prominent in the list. Fewer ads and more Yelp-style sites are good indications that it could be easier to rank.
7. Register The Domain
Once you’ve done your research on the full list of Niche Hunter results, it’s time to make a choice.
If there are multiple similar keywords, e.g., “marriage counseling miami” and “miami marriage counseling”, choose the one with the lowest competition and, ideally, .com EMD availability.
Head over to Namecheap and register the domain so that you can get started with full keyword research and building the website.
8. Set Up The New Website
With your domain registered, there’s no time like now to set up a basic website and complete KW research.
Follow the instructions of your hosting provider to set up a site and install WordPress. Then, use the Xagio Get Started page to install the plugin and link it to your email and Xagio Account.
With Xagio installed on your site, the next step should be to choose one of our premium website templates. These templates are designed for local business websites with speed and conversion rate optimization in mind.
Creating a basic framework with four fully designed pages takes just a few minutes and doesn’t require any web design or technical skills.
Tip: Why not set up the new website with Xagiocare.com and get technical support hours to help manage your site as well? It’s super fast hosting, and you can save hours on technical issues.
9. Copy Niche Hunter KWs
Here’s a great feature we built into Nich Hunter.
Go to the Niche Hunter tab of the Xagio plugin on your newly created website and scroll to the bottom of the screen.
Under the History section, you’ll see all the Niche Hunter searches you’ve done on any of your other sites. Click on the one you did in the earlier steps above, and all the niche keywords will load.
No need to spend more XAGS!
Next, you’ll highlight all the keywords that you found related to your main niche keyword and then click on the Copy To Project button.
Enter a new project name and group and hit the Copy To Project button.
This step will copy those KWs to a new project on the Project Planner tab, where you’ll see details about the search volume and CPC.
Project Planner is also where you’ll continue your keyword research efforts.
10. Perform KW Research
The final step involves going through recursive KW research, where you will use Xagio Audits and AI Wizards to find hundreds, and even thousands, of KWs to target for your new website.
This is the most important step in building a solid foundation for your SEO strategy blueprint and will influence everything from on-page optimization to link building.
Start Hunting For Golden Niches Today
Niche Hunter is by far the easiest way to find golden opportunities for Rank & Rent websites.
The tool is highly flexible and can help anyone from a novice to highly experienced SEO find niches with just the right metrics to achieve fast results.
Get started with Xagio today and make sure your account is topped up with XAGS.
XAGS are Xagio’s internal currency that you need in order to use premium features like Niche Hunter and Audits. Learn more about them and how to top up your account in our dedicated blog post.