Some of you have asked me questions about Market Samurai, since I wrote about promoting it and shared my Squidoo review on that nifty keyword research tool.

I wrote a detailed email response this weekend to another WA member, and I thought it might be mildly interesting to those of you who are trying (as I am) to get into your niche discovery and keyword research groove.   I'm not trying to pretend I've done anything so successful or emulation-worthy here...I'm still just an eager, niche-hopping grasshopper.  But what the heck...since I kind of went through the research process I've been using, I thought it might be cool to share.  And, by the way, the Market Samurai tool doesn't do anything so wildly different from the other tools out there.  If you read my Squidoo review, though, it does make parts of this process easier to edit/manipulate/filter--and more intuitive.

Oh, and one more thing before I quote myself (Didn't you hate it when college professors used to do that?!)  I know that in sharing this little niche, I might find that all of the numbers suddenly change. Quite all right if that happens.  (And if you want the CSV file I reference, just PM me.)  There's always another tasty micro-niche waiting to be discovered by grasshoppers amongst the tall blades of grass.  And you might get a kick out of knowing that I researched this one as a result of our earlier discussion about my local dive-pub bartender and his compost-producing commercial worm farm....

So here is an interesting little search I did on composters.  I don't remember now exactly what got me to do the search on "tumbling composters." I'm sure it was one of those drilling-down things that sparked some interest in that green-living micro-niche.

So, just because I wanted a little education in the jargon, I first did the search with no filters applied (except to say it had to be at least 2-word phrases in the results that would be generated).

So it spat out a whole bunch of stuff--including a lot that was clearly more for gardeners' information than for commercial intent.

Then I applied my SEOC filter.  I've been setting it at 12000 max.  I'll stay under 10000, but I still want to see the things that are slightly above that range.

Here's what came back with the exact-match setting on (attached file).

Now, you and I both know about the intuitive end of this.  I pay more attention to my history as an info-hungry consumer and online buyer than the commercial-value indices that MS uses.  But I DO still look at that final SEOV.  Why not?

I also want to get ideas as I look...if it's product-oriented (as this search was), I want to see if I could get a cluster of keywords that would form the nucleus of a credible review site.

Well, look at what I found:

a brand name:  the envirocycle composter:  145 exact-match searches per day (wow!),   60 SEOT,  7270 SEOC.

Now, for something more generic--because I don't want a campaign that's dependent upon anyone's brand name:

Ah, looky here:  "kitchen compost bin"  (Using the same data sequence as above).  This would make a good general term for a review site, of course.
145    60      8,860 

(Now, I'm  a little concerned, b/c why are those traffic numbers the same?  But I can double-check that with the free tools...)

Moving on to look at the others with the higher traffic numbers. Interesting mix....

"urban compost tumbler"  (Not sure if that's a brand name or generic name, but I'm guessing a brand)

53    22        6,070

"tumbling composter"  (this one was generic--it was actually the kind of thing someone would search on if they couldn't quite remember the correct term "compost tumbler."  Cool!)

43    18       4,940

"best composer" (nice umbrella term--could be better traffic, but look at the nice low competition!)
29    12      2,520

"composters for sale"
33    13      7,220   

"compost sifter"
33    13     3,390

Why didn't I apply daily traffic filters to get minimum daily traffic results?

Actually, because I'm trying to see if I have the skeleton of a blog review site for this particular keyword search.  I want a collection of words, and I'm okay with some being lower traffic as long as there are one or two that would be real finds.  If I were just trying to grab a single keyword phrase (or two keywords) for a Squidoo lens, I'd probably use that filter as well--and try to make sure it's at least 1200 searches a month.

You can look on the .csv file to see what SEOV prices MS applied.  It's an intereting exercise--though not what I am ultimately getting most excited about.

What really excited me in this little exercise?

a few things.

1.  General upward trending for most keywords relating to this niche.
2.  one great brand to promote, with low competition and surprisingly high traffic volume
3.  one great general term to work from
4.  one low-competition umbrella term to use

I don't have the street cred yet to say if my instincts mean much of anything--but that is the research approach I have been taking with the MS software.  Trying to keep the big picture in mind for any niche I am exploring.  Remembering to check results against the free tools. My logic tells me this is a good niche (the home composting products) to build a review-site blog around.  Particularly if I can use Amazon plug-ins to keep the product feeds current and draw in user reviews.

Oh, I do also do the competition analysis--it shows the competition in red, yellow ,and green for all the important factors you already know about.  It's as simple as selecting that keyword and clicking "SEO Competition"  Comes up in a separate tab.

I've actually got such a review site (composters) in progress.  We'll see....

Hope that was the kind of product use feedback you were looking for. :-)