The fastest way to grow a brand new site to a $100,000 valuation is to target untapped keywords.
Keywords that get searched a lot but have no relevant results.
You can find these keywords in almost every niche especially if it's broad like tech, home & garden, finance, etc.
Here's an example:
Niche: Finance (known for being very difficult).
Keyword: "credit card limit for 30000 salary"
1,300/mo search volume with a CPC of $8.75 according to Keyword Surfer.
By the metrics, a great keyword.
But it gets even better.
None of the results are well-targeted and only a few are loosely relevant.
Even doing an allintitle:keyword search reveals only 3 very spammy looking results.
A well done article EVEN on a tiny, new site could easily rank on the first page.
But wait...there's more!
Swap out the 30,000 for other salary numbers.
Boom! Dozens more keywords to target, all with high search volume and virtually no competition.
Feel free to steal this keyword if you're in the finance niche :)
Say you find 30 keywords like the above.
You publish a well-done article targeting each keyword.
You'll rank very quickly, because Google doesn't have anything better to rank.
(This is theory. Reality will always be a bit different because there are so many variables at play).
If each article brings 1K visits/mo, your brand new site could be getting 30K visits/mo in a matter of months, not years.
In the finance niche with $100+ RPMs (ad and affiliate combined), you're looking at $3K/mo.
Minimum $100K site valuation assuming average earnings of $3K/mo for 6+ months.
You can get there pretty quickly by targeting ULTRA low competition keywords as well.
You don't only have to find untapped keywords.
If forums and sites with a super-low DA are ranking on the first page, those are great keywords as well (if they get search volume).
But how do you find these keywords?
I've shared some info on my website.
But I share EVERYTHING (including step-by-step videos and a keyword scorecard I've never shared publicly) in my full course:
course.smartkeywordresearch.com
And starting today, I’m running a Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotion:
50% off with code BFCM
Update on my $0 to $100,000 niche site case study:
I published 3 new articles targeting extremely low competition keywords.
These articles were written by Passion Posts and were fairly good, although I did have to edit them.
The biggest problem was that they were stuffing my keyword a bit, so I toned that down a lot.
But there were a few other minor edits I had to make as well.
One of the articles (listicle style) totally missed a pretty major point. So I did all the research for it and added it in myself. I could have asked for a revision, but I just wanted to get it published and didn’t want to wait around any longer.
I also found a few relevant images to include in each article, and created graphics for the featured images.
All in all, it probably took 4 hours.
Based on what I’ve seen so far from the agencies I’ve used, Hands Off Publishing is the highest quality and value for the price.
I’m testing out another agency that reached out after my last email, so we’ll see how they perform.
But right now, I’m thinking Hands Off Publishing will get most of my business :)