You're about to see Asa, one of the cameramen for Ahrefs, use the 5 part framework to find a niche market.
How Ahrefs Taught a Complete Beginner to Find a Niche: Full Video Breakdown
Why Niche Selection Still Matters in the Age of AI
Everyone's talking about AI changing SEO. Search results are shifting to AI overviews. Content is easier than ever to create. And if you're just starting out, this all probably seems like way too much to take in.
But I still believe that the fundamentals win, and it all starts with picking a niche. A niche is important because it'll affect everything that comes after. In this video, I'll be revealing the four principles to picking a niche and then teaching them to a complete beginner.
Meet Asa: A Perfect Candidate for the Experiment
My producer works on Ahrefs. He helps make SEO videos every week, but he's never actually done SEO, which makes him the perfect candidate.
Principle 1: Competition -- Choose Your Battles Wisely
So Asa, before you get to work, it's important that you understand the four principles to picking a niche. The first, and probably the most important, is competition. You got to make sure that you're choosing your battles wisely. Actually pick a niche where you have a chance at ranking.
You're a solo person. You're not going to beat the Salesforces and HubSpots of this world.
Principle 2: Commercial Value -- Find Queries Where People Pay to Solve Problems
The second thing is commercial value. You want to ideally find a way that you can make money. Things like lists, "best product name" -- if there are a lot of those type of queries, there's definitely going to be commercial value, because those people are actually searching for solutions and they're willing to pay for it to solve that problem.
Principle 3: Breadth -- Enough Topics to Grow, Narrow Enough to Win
The third one is breadth. There has to be enough topics to talk about. Don't make an entire website on just pulled pork sandwiches. You'll probably cover all the topics within like a month.
But you don't want to go as wide as food either, because it's just way too broad and really tough to tackle. You want to find a niche -- something like smoking meats. There are a lot of different things you can talk about in there, and then you can expand out from there after.
Principle 4: Personal Interest -- You Have to Actually Want to Work on It
The fourth one is personal interest. If you're not interested enough in the topic, you're probably not going to want to work on it. And SEO is a long game, so you're going to have to keep working at it. Choose something that you actually enjoy.
Asa responds: "I think this is a really good framework for me to get started on."
Asa Starts with What Interests Him: Food, Travel, and Hiking
For me, I feel like the easiest one to start with is what's personally interesting to me. I love food. I love restaurants. I also love travel. I love hiking. I feel like those are two separate niches that I'm going to think about and do a little more research on. I'm going to dive into the keywords and see what I can find.
At this stage, Asa isn't choosing a niche yet. He's identifying options worth validating. The goal here is to narrow the list.
Testing the Hiking Niche: Starting Broad Before Drilling Down
I'm going to start with travel. I feel like hiking is actually kind of a niche within that. I could either do product reviews or create listicles like "best waterproof and warm weather hiking boots." That feels relatively niche. Maybe I could actually rank for that. I have to do the research. I'm going to use Ahrefs Keywords Explorer.
Once he has a few ideas, this is where Ahrefs becomes useful -- not to find a keyword to rank for, but to understand the overall landscape: how competitive the space is, how commercial the queries are, and what kind of authority would be required to compete.
Why High Search Volume Can Be a Warning Sign for New Sites
I'm going to put in hiking. I don't want to get stuck with something too difficult that I'm never going to rank for. When Asa looks at hiking, one of the first things he sees is search volume. This is something beginners often focus on.
High search volume usually means the topic is well-established -- and well-established topics tend to have stronger competition. That's why Asa starts filtering by lower keyword difficulty.
Realizing the Need to Niche Down: Authority Matters for New Sites
I think hiking is a pretty good niche for commerciality. I almost think I need to niche down at first because my site's going to have no authority. There's a lot of lower keyword difficulty I'm seeing on this. I feel like targeting just "best of" lists on relatively small niches could work.
He's trying to see whether there are opportunities that would make sense for a new site. When he adds modifiers like "best," "versus," or "review," he's checking for commercial intent. These terms usually indicate that someone is comparing options -- a good signal, but only part of the picture. You still need a realistic path to ranking.
Narrowing Hiking to New England -- and Why It Still Falls Short
Let's look at "New England hikes," "best hikes New England." The keyword difficulty is low, but the search volume is also pretty low on all of these. So it doesn't feel like the best match. "Through hikes USA" -- the search volume just isn't there. It feels like a hiking page where people aren't searching in any major way. I don't know if I'm going to get the traffic I need.
After looking at the data, hiking starts to look difficult for a first site. So Asa moves on and keeps testing ideas.
Pivoting to Restaurants: Too Broad, So Getting More Specific
I'm going to try restaurants. I mean, restaurants is hardly a niche -- it's so universal. Massive search volume: 51 million. My first thought is I can hone in right on New England. Restaurants in New England, food in New England. Maybe I can start looking at things like best Thai restaurants and best Mexican food in the Boston area. Those are where my mind immediately goes, and I know there must be some search volume for that.
The same pattern shows up again -- very high search volume. Instead of trying to cover everything, he starts narrowing by location. This is where local niches can work well. There's usually clearer intent, less competition, and more opportunity to go deep in one area.
Finding the Sweet Spot: Local Food Niches in the Boston Area
Best restaurants in New England -- the search volume is only 150. I definitely could write that and post it on my website, but I'm thinking if I break it down into more of the hubs throughout New England, like Boston restaurants, I can do more with that. I already have pictures of these places. I'm limiting keyword difficulty to 20 and looking at the best-of terms.
Best Italian restaurants Boston is a keyword difficulty of 10. That feels doable. It has commercial value -- Ahrefs is showing me the user is comparing products or services before making a purchase decision. 1.1K search volume. Not bad.
As Asa looks at cities and neighborhoods, the data changes. Keyword difficulty drops and the competition becomes more realistic. SEO isn't about beating the biggest sites. It's about earning visibility where it makes sense for your business.
Checking the Competition: Can a New Site Break into the Top 10?
I've been to most neighborhoods in Boston. I live just outside of the city, so I know these areas well. The search volume is still pretty good, and the keyword difficulty is actually only four. That could be a really good first article. I feel like maybe I can rank for that. It says "easy."
I'd have to rank against some pretty strong sites -- I'm seeing Trip Advisor in the domain ratings. Okay, so maybe I won't beat Trip Advisor, but if I could get in the top 10, I think that would be a pretty big win. Ranking in the top 10 is often enough to start seeing results.
The Final Niche: Best-Of Lists for Food and Restaurants in New England
So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to do best-of lists and recommendations for food in and around New England. I'm going to really hone in on the local market because I feel like that's the best chance I have of actually ranking right now. I'm going to start by targeting neighborhoods that I know, and then probably start to target other ones around New England. At least that's my plan.
When Asa settles on a New England-based food and restaurant niche, it fits the framework. The competition is manageable, the intent is clear, and there's enough breadth to expand over time. It's also something he can realistically write about. That doesn't guarantee success, but it avoids many of the common problems that stop sites early on. That's the goal of niche selection.
Now that the niche is set, the next step is keyword research -- finding topics the site can realistically rank for and prioritizing them in a way that makes sense for a new site.
If you followed along with your own niche research tool, you now know the 5 part framework and the exact steps you need to take to find a niche market.
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