Part 1: The Beginner's Guide to Creating a Lead Generation Business
Start Here - Finding a Lucrative Niche.
Disclaimer:
This is the first of a multi-part series with specific, actionable directions for creating a lead generation business. If you have questions or suggestions, please reply in the comments.
Lead generation is a fantastic starter business as it is low-cost to begin and has a specific process to follow. Almost anyone can do this with consistent effort.
A business always needs new customers, so providing this service is a straightforward “sell” to the owners. Even during hard economic times, this is a low-risk, low-cost venture that anyone can start. The best part is that once you understand the fundamentals you can easily scale the model into your own digital empire.
This guide will cover those fundamentals and offer step-by-step instruction for niche selection, building a website, SEO, Google My Business setup, and much more. Part 1 will cover the first steps and choosing a niche. (Note: Niche selection is based on ranking organically in this part of the guide. I will cover Ads (CPC) in another part.)
My only ask is that you please subscribe and offer any suggestions you have below in the comments. My goal is to make this the very best guide on the subject!
Finding a Lucrative Niche
For our references, niche selection refers to a specific industry or sector of the market and a particular product or service in that market. Our focus is on services that happen when someone from a business goes physically to a customer’s home, like a plumber.
Niche selection is a major sticking point for those new to lead gen. People are constantly asking “what do I sell,” or “how do I select a business.”
Overall, we are not reinventing the wheel in terms of niche selection as you will see in this guide. I will show you that many of the first steps are not as difficult as they may seem because we will be replicating and building onto what already works.
Our first step is to familiarize ourselves with a couple of existing tools.
Keyword Tools
Keywords are search terms that you type into a search engine and cause the engine to display to you the websites that use those keywords. They are the starting point for most Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as they give a focus point for what kind of results your site should return to Google or another search engine. The goal is to optimize your website with relevant keywords to your niche so that you can appear on the first page of search results.
Essentially there are two types, short-tail like “plumber Miami” and long-tail like “plumber in North Miami beach.”
***Note the difference in search volume and CPC price for each.***
Both types of keywords are important but a key difference is that the long-tail words are usually the most specific and can signal that the customer is closer to the point of purchase. The results for each search are often different and having consideration of both will help expand your on-page SEO capabilities on your site.
There are two plugins that I recommend starting with to help identify keywords.
Keyword Surfer (free plugin on Chrome)
Keywords Everywhere (paid but $10 gives 100,000 credits which are more than enough)
Keyword Surfer is probably the easiest option when just starting and is what will be displayed in the screenshots in this article. When searching Google with this tool it will display both the search volume per keyword phrase and the estimated Cost Per Click (CPC) as seen below.
Display of search volume:
Display of estimated CPC:
Pro tip: Not all searches will show traffic in these keyword tools. If you look hard enough, you will know about services in your local city that could show low search volume. This is something to consider as these tools are not perfect and you might be able to identify a service that is in demand, and that people are using but the keyword tools show zero volume. Sometimes opportunities like this are gold mines.
Next Steps
After you install one or both keyword tools, our next step is to find a starting point in your keyword search and niche selection. Traditionally with lead gen, we are looking for leads from a service business. If you have had experience with lead gen, you will know that services like plumbers, electricians, pool cleaning, and roofing are the most famous as websites have been created for these niches for years.
Should you start with any of these specific services or are they saturated?
Well, it depends. If you consider the internet as a replication of the digital version of a city landscape, then you will understand that there is still opportunity with everything. A medium-sized city probably has multiple Chinese restaurants, gas stations, and hardware stores for instance. Does this mean you shouldn’t try to compete? No, but the ideal situation is that you learn how to differentiate what is high competition vs low competition which we will cover in this guide.
For now, I will break down a basic process that will help identify multiple niches and sub-niches for basic services and as you will see, the opportunity is vast.
Pro-tip: From this moment on, make a Google Keep or One Note file on your phone. Every time you travel, start to notice the local service business you see. Things like guitar repair, language classes, dance classes. All of these local services are things you see in real life that can be replicated into online lead gen businesses. Many times you will find that they might not have any web presence and it will be easy to link your website to their service as your first client to sell the leads to.
Generating Service Niche Ideas
Our first step is to start with visiting HomeAdvisor.
Once on the site, click on Start a Project at the top of the page and you will see many services listed.
Select a service of your choice. For this example, I will select Drywall & Insulation.
On the next page, they will ask to enter your zip code. Which is optional (see step #4)
Instead, I recommend scrolling to the bottom of the page and selecting a city. For this example, I will select Houston, TX.
If you followed the process and selected Houston, TX, you will now see a large list of services. This is the part where I recommend you start clicking on them and exploring each to become familiar with what is on offer.
Click on different cities and explore all of the opportunities. As you will see, there are so many services outside of the main ones I listed and you can likely compete for everything somewhere.
The next recommendation is to make a Google Sheet page and start writing down services you are interested in. Remember to also write down sub-niches, for example, there is Drywalling and Plaster Repair.
Pro tip: You can find other websites similar to HomeAdvisor and replicate the same process. Angie’s-list and Thumbtack are examples.
Download MozBar (It’s Free)
Now, you should have a list of potential services that you can search for in your Google Sheet. The next step is to download a free extension via Chrome called MozBar. This extension will give you the Domain Authority and Page Authority of local websites.
Note: You will need to make an account with MozBar once downloaded.
Explanation of Each:
Domain Authority: is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). Domain Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater likelihood of ranking. (click the link to read more)
Page Authority: is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages (SERP). Page Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank. (click the link to read more)
The use of this tool will be explained in further detail but the screenshot below shows what the Moz bar looks like on top of a website.
Ahrefs Backlink Checker
Ahref has a free backlink checker that we will be using more at a later point in the guide. You should go to the site and bookmark it.
Essentially it lets you paste a website and see all of the backlinks that the site is linked to. It also shows a Domain Rating which is essentially a metric that estimates how hard it would be to rank against the site in a Google search.
Pro tip: There is a manual way to do this without Ahrefs by going to Google Search and typing "niche.com" -inurl:niche.com
into the search bar. (Note: replace the word niche with whatever the website name is.)
What Type of City to Select
Remember, lead-gen is a business that can be 100% remote, so do not restrict yourself by state or even country. However, for the first site start closer to where you are from or in an area you know well, this is just to get your feet wet.
When searching for a niche we want to keep in mind a few things about city size and demographics.
First, depending on the niche the higher population areas will be much harder to rank for than lower population areas and the suburbs. What this means for you is that you should start with a region or area in mind, select some large cities and work away from them. Your goal is to target areas with a 50 -250k population (variable by niche) and areas that are potentially high in income. Wikipedia and datausa.io are your friends for scouting cities within a region.
Pro tip: Small, wealthy communities can be very lucrative for certain specialty services, always keep the demographics in mind.
If people are living in an area then you already know some services exist for that region. This is where you can try your hand at roofing for example as it is something extremely saturated in large metropolitan areas but anywhere that has houses requires roofers.
Pro tip: Add a column next to your niches for cities so you can track areas to start in.
Analyzing the Competition
Your list should now contain cities and some niches to go after. The next step is to research your competitors.
Process Explained:
Keyword Surfer is already downloaded on Chrome. This tool allows you to change the country from the sidebar menu (right side of Google Search) as seen below by clicking on the flag image.
Look at the search volume, again represented by the number next to the flag (just hover your mouse over it). This amount tells you how popular this keyword phrase is and indicates that the service is in demand.
Add keywords with high search volume to your spreadsheet and also write some of the words the tool recommends when using it.
The goal is to find keywords with a monthly volume of at least 100 estimated searches per month. The ensures demand for this service.
For any niche in the city you have chosen, you want to analyze the first 3-5 websites that are shown on the first page of google.
Pro tip: Large corporate sites like AniesList, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor and Yelp will show up frequently. Do NOT worry about this as it shows the competition is lower for the localized service businesses because these sites are mostly directories. Google prioritizes local businesses over directories so it is easy to outrank them.
Your main competitors are localized service businesses that show up on google like this:
We want to select their website and now go to Ahrefs Backlink Checker. Paste the website link which will show you the list of backlinks and the Domain Rating.
We will cover backlinks in more detail in the later guide. For now, you should know that if the Ahrefs tool shows a number greater than 200, this is an indication that you would NOT want this city/niche combo.
For now, focus on the Domain Rating. If this score is greater than 10, it is an indication that the site will be hard to rank against. Lower competition will be between 0 an 5.
This domain has a Domain Rating of 1.5 but it has over 12k backlinks, this would not be a great niche and city combo.
This domain is for Homestead, FL Plumbers and has a Domain Rating of 0 with 6 backlinks. This would be easy to rank against.
As a beginner it is recommended that you search for the easy locations/niche combos to rank against.
The next step is using MozBar. When on the site click the Moz plugin icon which will drop a grey bar on the top of the screen.
This will show a score for “DA” and “PA” which are the Domain Authority and Page Authority. Both scores are from 1 and 100 with the higher score signifying that the page is ranking higher in google.
If the DA and PA are higher than 20, this indicates the site is high competition. As a beginner, search for locations/niches with DA and PA scores of less than 20.
Pro tip: The scores for MozBar are not 100%. It’s just an estimate, hence the reason why I mentioned before about local services that have demand. If you know people are buying something with low or no search volume or DA/PA. You should try it.
This domain has a MozBar DA of 7 and PA of 16. This is low competition.
Next, we want to review the websites content and website. A professional web-design can be duplicated but professional grade content can be harder to compete against. If the overall content of the website is minimal, then this is an indication you can compete against it. Less than 700 - 800 words per page is ideal. (Note: I will go over content creation in future parts of the guide.)
Pro tip: Add the Domain Rating, DA, PA and number of backlinks per city and by each niche in this city. Highlight the columns by red, yellow and green to signify niches to select (green being the best, red the worst.)
The last step is to analyze the Google My Business (GMB) Map Pack. Meaning the reviews listed by each business as they show up on Google Search. The higher the ratings, the higher the competition. (Note: Some will show up from CPC Ads, you can ignore some of those)
You could probably rank against these businesses as they have few reviews.
Summary
If you followed all of the steps then by now you should have a list of locations, keywords and niches where you think you can compete.
As a recap, the factors you were considering were as follows:
Domain Authority (MozBar): Should be less than 20.
Page Authority (MozBar): Should be less than 20.
Domain Rating (Ahrefs): Should be less than 10 (0-5 is ideal).
Backlinks (Ahrefs): Should be less than 200. (more explanation in later guides.)
Don’t worry about Yelp, HomeAdvisor and other directories, they are easy to rank against.
Look at web-design and SEO optimized (professional) content. If less than 800 words or sloppy, this is easy to rank against.
Analyze the GMB Map Pack to see what the customer reviews are.
This was Part 1 of the Beginner’s Guide to Creating a Lead Generation Business. If you liked this or if you have suggestions/questions, please comment below. In the next part of the guide, I will cover what happens after you select the niche and building your first website.
See Part 2 of the guide.