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How to Find an Idea For a WebsiteWondering how to find an idea for a website? Don't worry. Most people who are new to building a website don't really know where to begin. While you may already have some general ideas on what you want your website to be about, it's best to do a little brainstorming before you commit yourself to an idea that may or may not have any potential for success. This tutorial on how to find an idea for a website will help you do this. Deciding what your website is about will be influenced by:
Why should you bother with how to find an idea for a website? Researching possible concepts is like sticking your toe into the water before jumping in. When you figure out what your passion is and pinpoint exactly which group of people you want to reach (and what their needs are), you can avoid wasting time and money. A carefully defined topic is the secret to success By concentrating on a specific area, you can build a theme-based site that is loaded with keyword focused, content-rich pages. These content-rich pages will have the potential to rank high in the search engines, allowing you to reach customers searching for what you have to offer. Get ideas by concentrating on your strengths The first step in how to find an idea for a website is to focus on what you know and are passionate about. Let's begin by making a list of possible ideas. Take your time building this list of ideas, because this will help form the foundation of your business. To help you get started, consider:
For example, you might be a strong tennis or golf player, maybe there is a certain hobby that occupies all your free time, or possibly you have spent years caring for others with special needs, or maybe you have found a unique solution to a problem. The potential for ideas is endless. You just need to pick the ones that get you excited and highlight your interests. Narrow your focus to the three best concepts The second step in how to find an idea for a website is to narrow the list down to the top three best concepts. How do you do this? Choose the three concepts that you are really passionate about. If a concept really interests you, building and growing your website won't seem like work. Therefore, focus on the concepts that you really love.For example, let's assume that you work with horses for a living, but you love to spend your free with your cats and studying butterflies. As a general rule, you don't want your topic to be too broad, because you won't be able to focus your website to get targeted traffic. For this example, let's assume that your main job is that of a horse trainer (this narrows down your topic). Also, instead of cats in general, you like to find new products for your cats. You may decide that the subject of butterflies can't be narrowed down anymore at this time. Find topics related to your concepts Next, list five topics that are related to each of your three concepts. For example, if one of your website concepts is about horse training, your topics might include:
These topics will begin to make up your keyword list. Keywords are the phrases that people type into the search engine to find information about a certain topic. Write down five topics that relate to each of your website concepts. Researching your topics Keyword research is an important aspect in determining how to find an idea for a website. You want to research how many times your keywords are searched for as well as the number of websites that supply the information about your keywords.To do the research, you can use a tool called Search It. This tool will allow you to find out how often your selected keywords are searched for, and also how many pages supply the keywords that are searched for. Why don't you go to Search It now, and either bookmark it or add it to your favorites list. You'll be using this tool over and over again as you build your website. Tracking your research results To keep track of your results, use either a piece of paper, make a table in notepad or Microsoft word, or set up a spreadsheet on your computer. Your table will have four headings labeled keywords, demand, supply, and potential.
Under keywords, you need to fill in the site concept and the five topics for each of the three site concepts you have chosen. Find the traffic potential for your keywords Under Demand, you will fill in how often the term is searched for. To do this, you will need to use the Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool. When the search box loads, type in your main keyword and click "Hit Me". I suggest typing in your website concept first because the results that you get from your concept keyword may include topics that you didn't consider. If any of these keywords interest you, add them to your topic list.When you look at the results, the number listed under "counts" is the number that you need put under the "Demand" heading for each of your keywords (concepts or topics). Continue doing this for each of your keywords, recording the results for each keyword. Determine how many websites supply information on your topics Under Supply, you will fill in how many results are returned from the search engine for your various keywords. To do this, go to Search It again and follow the steps below:
When it returns the results, the number that you will be concentrating is in the shaded area right above the listed results. For example, if you typed in "horse training" as your keyword, google would returned the following: "Results 1-10 of about 301,000 for "horse training". "Results 1-10" tells you how many results google shows on each page of results. The larger number to the right of this tells you how many total pages there are for that keyword. As a special note, if you check the supply information without using Search It, put quote marks on either side of your keywords that you type into the google search box. This will return results based only on those sites that provide the exact keyword phrase. Calculate the potential for each of your keywords Under Potential, you will determine how much demand (from Wordtracker) there is in comparison to the supply (from google). This is where you break out the calculator (or use the Excel division function as described below).For the first term, divide the number in the demand column by the number in the supply column. Put this number under your potential column. I suggest multiplying this number by 1000 so that the numbers are easier to compare. This will give you a rough estimate of the potential for that keyword. Continue doing this for all you concept and topic keywords. If you are using Microsoft Excel as your spreadsheet, you can type the following function =(B2/C2)*1000 into the first cell for potential and then click enter for the result. You can then find the results for the rest of your keywords by clicking the cell that contains the formula you want to copy (the potential cell). Then point to the bottom right of the cell so you see a thin, black plus sign. Drag the plus sign down for the remaining keywords and Excel will automatically copy the formula for the remaining potential column values.
Compare your results You will be looking for keywords that have a high demand with a low supply, and therefore have a higher number in the potential column. In the end it's not the actual figures that you will concentrate on. It's just a way to rank the keywords and keyword terms. Here is an example of the results for our three main concepts and their keywords from above:
As you can see, the cat topic appears to have the best potential overall. Even though the horse training keywords look good, there is not as much demand for these terms as there is for the cat keywords. The only other single keyword that shows serious potential is "Monarch butterfly". This keyword might be worth investigating further. Do more in-depth research on your chosen topic Now that you have discovered how to find an idea for a website, you may be really excited about one certain topic. Before you jump the gun and decide that this is what your website will be about, you will need to do some more research to find out if your topic has the potential for website content development. If you want to save some time during the research phase, you might check out Site Build It. It has a brainstorming feature built into it that can help you pin-point the perfect website concept. Plus, the software does all the calculations for you, saving you countless hours in the process. Next:
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