Krakken is a market analysis, market segmentation, market research, and keyword-dna blueprint creation tool.
In this document I’m going to show you the procedures for using Krakken to analyze your market and how you could go further to segment your market.
Here’s an outline of the Vertical Online Market Analysis (VOMA) procedure:
1. Create a cluster. The cluster names are tags – changeable after the fact.
2. Drill into your primary keyword term for your project. The theme names are your seed keyword term – the theme you want to investigate we often refer to this term as a “parent theme”.
3. Drill 3 or 4 themes to do the initial analysis of your market and see if you are happy with where you are going, and where the money is. This should be
- your primary keyword for the project,
- the keyword that would be immediately above that in the vertical market and
- the top of the vertical market.
Example: primary keyword “first time home buyer”, immediate vertical “home buyer”, top of vertical “real estate”.
Another example: primary keyword “peanut butter cookie”, immediate vertical “cookie”, top of vertical “baking” or “food”
There are often several vertical markets for your primary theme – which you choose depends on your positioning. This is not a pass / fail test. There are no right or wrong answers, though some verticals are more directly above your niche than others would be. Clues for what to drill into will be found in the upper level bubbles in the bubble chart at the top of your theme when you drill into it.
6. Consider if you want to reposition yourself in the market. Sometimes this repositioning is extreme.
7. If so, revise your questions and start with number 4 again.
8. When you are happy with this stage, proceed to market research
9. Drill into all of your core positioning keywords (It’s ideal to discern these keywords using our Industry Solution DNA process, available in our member’s area)
- make notes along the way of synonyms for your original keywords.
- make notes along the way of other REALLY interesting keywords that apply to your market and positioning
- drill into these new synonyms and really interesting keywords, too
9. Look at your themes from the theme overview screen – switch between Vertical Market and Synonymic Net views to understand your market better
- understand who your top competitors are
- understand where the money is
- note which themes are most profitable and take a look at why
10. Check to see if you have multiple segments that you need to be aware of and consider if you want to break them out into different clusters for further analysis
11. Go back to your core positioning keywords now that you have a complete understanding of where there is pain in the market place and evaluate for the last time if you need to update your positioning. Usually this repositioning is minor.
Here are some sample videos that demonstrate the above.
Summary and additional information:
In order to do an initial market analysis I drilled into the following:
1) my main prospective theme ‘first time home buyer’
2) up one level to ‘home buyer’; cutting off the long tail of “first time”
3) all the way up to ‘real estate’ to get an overview of the entire market
On the Themes Overview Screen I compare these to see how much money is in each segment vs the overall market
Follow the money through the segments to verify that this niche has a substantial percentage of the money in this market. I look at the average values of the keywords in the theme, the total searches, the average competing pages for an idea of the competition and obviously, the Yearly ORV which is a function of paid cost and search traffic.
What I don’t talk about is that “home buyer / home buyers” are synonyms that I’m going to add to my spreadsheet as a way to reword my questions.
Summary and additional information:
video is fuzzy - click on picture to see full size
I realized that I wanted to examine the actual short take for ‘first time home buyer’ – ‘home buyer’ should represents a larger chunk of the market than ‘home buyers’ so it’s valuable to look at this theme in comparison to the others I’ve already drilled out.
Interestingly we find that as a theme this term falls below ‘first time home buyer’ for Yearly ORV, the same way ‘home buyers’ does, but as a keyword it floats above it. This strengthens my thoughts that this niche is a very good one, because the keywords that comprise the theme of this niche are pretty valuable when compared to larger sections of the market.
If you really want to understand why this is the case you need to do some basic analysis of each of the themes to understand what market segments of the real estate market are predominant in each one of these themes. It’s rare that a theme consists of just the keywords that belong strictly the market segment represented by the parent theme in VOMA. Usually you will find two or more market segments that overlap heavily and this is represented in these themes. It’s useful to see this representation because you get a feel for what market segments are related.
In contrast, when you drill out a blueprint in Krakken, we set the LSI requirements much higher so its more likely that those themes will contain only a single market segment.
It’s possible (though I don’t go into this on the videos) that the majority of the keywords in the ‘first time home buyer’ theme are loan oriented, skewing the value of that theme. Then I would need to decide if those keywords are of value to me, and if they are not, then I need to take that into account and mentally adjust the value with which I weight that theme.
If, however the majority of the valuable keywords turn out to be first time home buyer related, such as first time buyer grants, programs and other terms specifically geared toward my market, then the value of the theme stands as represented by Krakken and I’ve got a good niche that I would want to build out.
This will also come clearer as I import my keywords into DWS and let DWS shake out the good terms from the bad. Because most of the mortgage terms will be highly competitive, too, that will most likely put them out of the reach of my marketing campaigns.
Summary and additional information:
This phase of market analysis shows how to use the “important keywords” bubble chart on the Theme Screen to see the relationship between the important aspects of the market in the theme.
What I don’t mention in the video when I’m looking at “real estate”, is that “investment” shows up in the important keywords because there is a significant overlap or co-occurrence between real estate and investment. The term ‘investment’ must show up frequently on the real estate pages or it would not be listed on this chart. ‘Investment’ sits to the side indicating it’s a tangent market rather than a segment of ‘real estate’, however this chart shows that they are closely related.
Summary and additional information:
I give a brief description of how keywords are chosen for the bubble chart and how that differs from the interesting “buyer’s intent” keywords in the table below. Also, I touch on the fact that the the additional keywords displayed by the “show all keywords” function lean more toward the technical and educational direction and have less of a buyer’s intent.
I start by looking at the keywords with the default sort of competing pages, I scroll down to where my parent theme is and then scroll up the list to see how far up I can go before I loose relevance. Usually that’s only a handful of keywords.
Scrolling higher than that should show me keywords that are too broad for my market, meaning that those keywords include other market segments in addition to my own. It’s good to be aware of those terms, and I might find keywords that I want to drill into to see what other concepts they include beside my market. You can find great tangent markets that way.
I also want to look at the keywords immediately below my parent term so I have an idea of other closely associated terms that didn’t make the cut on the bubble chart. I will often find synonyms this way.
Next, I want to follow the money – sort by TSMV and see what floats to the top. Usually the same broad terms that were on the top for competing pages – TAKE NOTE of keywords that are here that were not on the top when sorting by competing pages… that denotes keywords that may well be “low hanging fruit”.
Now scroll down the list, looking as you go for keywords that you didn’t see on the previous sort, until you get to your parent term. Check out the 5-10 keywords under the parent term. Usually here there are new terms and some may be very interesting.
You need to understand that the new stuff that has floated up has a lower competing pages value than the keywords that were there before – that’s the definition of low hanging fruit – high value, lower competition.
It’s possible that a “low hanging fruit” keyword sits in front of an entire low hanging fruit theme. Drilling into these ideas can often net you entire droves of valuable keywords.
Summary and additional information:
I Continue my analysis of keywords when sorted by TSMV. I talk about being interested in any keywords down to about the $1M mark. I know this sounds high. This would vary directly, depending on how rich my market is. Also, keep in mind that I’m still in market analysis mode, not in keyword selection mode; that’s why my filter is set so high. I’m looking for aspects of the market that are “interesting” – following the money and realizing what opportunities lie in the market.
I came away from this analysis with questions that I asked my broker friend, for example are there still government tax breaks, either local or national; and what kind of programs are offered that folks can take advantage of when buying property in AZ. I’m also going to go look for mortgage opportunities either in CPA offers or otherwise that I can include on the sidebar of my website and link to inside my PDF. These questions and ideas would not have occurred to me without this process.
I go on to sort by traffic. Sometimes on this sort you will get some surprising things that float to the top. If the CPC is low, then it indicates more of an educational term – those can be very valuable for catching people early in the buying cycle and hooking them to come back to you when they are ready to buy.
Finally I sort by CPC and of course the terms that deal with money float to the top. In other industries you might find lawyer or legal terms float to the top.
No matter what floats, you know these are going to be the areas where the biggest pain is. Look for the repeating themes there, not just the stray keyword. Consider that pain and think of how you might use that to enhance your market positioning strategies.
The broker I’m working with has a pretty good strategy for helping people get loans; working with them to find an agency that will underwrite them and help them with a program to increase their credit score, if necessary. Looking at these keywords has made me realize that I should have a silo that makes use of some of these terms and presents this as a strong selling point to my first time home buyers.
Summary and additional information:
After your basic analysis you will want to drill into all of the keywords that came out as a result of analyzing your core positioning keywords. Those, along with your initial market drills, will start to paint a very interesting picture on the Theme Overview screen.
Try switching to Synonymic View to see who your main competitors are across just your parent themes. If the competition is highly fragmented with no clear market leaders, one of two things has transpired. Either no one in your market has thought enough about their SEO to clearly dominate the landscape, OR you are looking at more than one market segment.
A quick comment about your competitors here. Take note who your main competitors are.
1) Make sure they are indeed your competitors and you have not gotten off-track with your keyword selections.
2) When you start the syndication and promotion blueprint you will get a chance to look at different platforms for your website’s main theme. Keep an eye out at that time for any of these competitors so you are aware of what platforms they are utilizing in their online marketing campaigns. You might want to dig a little deeper at that time and see what their positioning is on those platforms. If they are making special offers, free give-aways, or drawings, you may want to counter with your own.
Look down through the themes in the table. Radical shifts in TSMV, competing pages or CPC can be a clue that you have more than one market segment.
Look at the keywords themselves. Do they all pertain to the same idea? Or are different aspects of your market represented there?
If you recognize that there are different segments of your market, you may want to segregate those themes into different clusters, so that each cluster represents a segment. You have to delete the theme and redrill it in the new cluster, we don’t have a move feature yet. This lets you analyze that cluster easier. You can see the competitors for just those themes and you can evaluate how the money flows easier. This is not as important for niches as it is for large markets.
Regardless of whether you separate the themes out into different clusters, you should keep those segments separate when importing into DWS.
For example, I’ll go back to my favorite little cafe that has the yoga studio and does weddings on the weekends. You would want to import all of the yoga keywords together, set up the silo(s) based off those terms. Then delete the keywords that you have not chosen to use in your blueprint. This way you can import your wedding terms and you don’t have to sift around the previous yoga terms when trying to decide what keywords to use in your wedding silo(s).
Summary and additional information:
Competitive White Paper shows you the top ranked sites for your parent term and any synonyms you may have chosen. What you want to do is cull out the sites form this list who are not your competition. Some educational sites WILL be your competition because they are monetized, so don’t assume you know too much. 
Educational terms or terms with a lesser degree of buyer’s intent are displayed on the “show all keywords option on the theme screen. If your budget is limited, this is a great place to find keywords that are more on par with your spending limitations, so remember to show all keywords and then export the list for DWS. This way you will get more options AND you’ll get a broader range of terms that will be found throughout the buying cycle, from education through purchase.
Also, if it turns out that your main theme is too competitive for your current pocketbook, you can look on the “show all keywords” screen for terms that are more in line with the degree of competition that you want to take on. Drilling into these terms will often provide themes that will be more appropriate for your marketing efforts.
You will need to adjust your positioning accordingly, perhaps finding ways to reword your questions with synonyms found in these keyword lists. HOWEVER, don’t necessarily abandon your original core positioning terms just because the ranking for those keywords is beyond your budget. We recommend you use a combination of social traffic as well as search engine traffic and terms that are hard to rank for on the search engine will still get their day in the limelight on the social side. Social marketing is not bound by the same limits as rankings.
If you are uncertain how social marketing best integrates with natural search and your online web properties, I recommend checking out Domain Web Studio. We designed Domain Web Studio to lay out a blow-by-blow blueprint complete with scheduling and outsourcing facilities, to show you exactly how to do this. It’s available now, at an insanely inexpensive introductory price.
If you are going on to do your blueprint in Krakken, then you can flip the flags beside your desired themes to green and move over to the blueprint tab.
If you are importing your keywords into DWS and building your blueprint out there, then you’ll want to watch this last video here:
Summary and additional information:
Here I remind you to show all keywords before hitting the export button so you have a long list of keywords from which to choose.
You want to make sure that you have a full range of direct response, technical and educational keywords available for your blueprint.
Remember when you are in DWS to grab more than just the keywords that float to the top as those will be predominately high buyer intent keywords. Look down the list and grab some educational keywords along with the juicy direct marketing terms.
You will want to adjust the conversion values DOWN for those terms because the traffic that educational terms generate will either not convert as well, or they will have a long lead time prior to conversion, depending on the market, how much education it needs, and how far forward in the education cycle your terms are.
The broader the term is, the more toward the beginning of the education cycle it is. This is not bad, because you want to catch people as they enter the buying cycle. But it will also represent traffic which will never actually buy anything from anybody in this market. For this reason, the conversion numbers should be adjusted down to be more realistic.
You certainly don’t need to adjust those numbers to make everything else in DWS work, I’m just trying to help you to not be disillusioned by the values that DWS gives you. The more accurate the values you give it, the better the estimate it can give you for what you will make from your website.
Ok, at this point you should have all your themes exported, a basic understanding of your market and your competitors, and hopefully some new ideas that you can use in your marketing strategy. Grab your keyword lists and let’s go back to DWS.
