Blogging is one of the biggest, most popular forms of internet marketing today. Anyone can learn how to blog and write down their thoughts, share their experiences, relate information, or just provide some interesting content.
In fact there are now millions and millions of blogs all over the web covering everything from sports results to how to guides for making a bomb. Then again, there are also some blogs which seem to emulate the old TV show Seinfeld – they are about nothing in particular.
As an internet marketer, your blog needs to be about something. Here’s some reasons why choosing a niche for your blog is important.
The Goal Of Your Blog
The reason to start a blog is for internet marketing purposes. This could mean that your blog is developed as an adjunct to your established e-commerce website, or it could be that you are promoting affiliate products as a means of blog monetization. Either way, you are ultimately blogging for dollars.
That being said, you certainly have an idea of your business goals, right? Even if your site doesn’t focus on one particular product or service but offers a variety of items, you still have to have a niche market to focus on. You can’t optimise a site with a large jumble of unrelated keywords, you have to narrow down your place in the market. So if your site sells everything and anything related to gardening and landscaping, for instance, you still have to figure out what your business does differently than the competition.
Maybe you focus on providing the lowest price, or the highest quality, or the most unusual products. Whatever it is, capitalise on it. This is your niche, and this is where your keywords come from.
Search Engines And Indexing
Now, getting back to your blog, you need to optimise it based on the keywords related to your market niche. Use those keywords in your text, your titles, your URL, your image tags, etc. If one post is written about your Aunt Ida’s gallstone surgery and the next provides the top ten tips for getting a garden ready in the spring, it will not only confuse visitors to the site, it will confuse search engine crawlers, too. Crawlers can’t adequately index the pages unless they are consistent in regard to content, keywords, and focus because otherwise the crawlers will have problems determining relevancy.
Another consideration is the ability to drive traffic. If your blog does not have a particular topic, how is anyone going to find it? If what you really want is to attract visitors seeking information about gardening, then burying that post between the one about Aunt Ida and another unrelated subject is not going to help the average person find it. Digressing in a post relevant to your niche might be a good way to slip in talks about your Auntie if you really must, but think like a search engine indexing bot and look at your posts for commonality.
And still another factor involved is the overall ranking of your blog. The more information you provide regarding a particular topic, the higher your authority. Not only will you get better search engine ranking on certain keywords, but so will people consider you an authority. Over time, as your subscriber list grows, your blog is sure to become known as the place to go when anyone has a question or concern regarding an outdoor project, driving additional traffic.
Use your time blogging to its best advantage by choosing a niche. Define your market niche and then provide good content relevant to this topic – and do so consistently.
About Sean Rasmussen
I am most concerned there appears to be only one real niche these days.
That niche seems to be Internet Marketing. I notice none of the gurus out there ever reveal anything else.
Is there money to be made in anything OTHER than how to get rich on line?
Internet marketing certainly is a huge niche Steve, it’s also extremely competitive. I definitely don’t agree that it’s the ONLY niche, there are literally millions of profitable niche opportunities out there and there are millions of people making money online, do you think they all promote internet marketing?
I’m with you Sean. I think it’s one of those cardinal rules to find a niche.
While the Internet Marketing niche is massive and many think that is the niche to get into, I’d really like to see some stats on how many people are actually successful with that niche. It is super competitive and while many claim to know what they are talking about there are really only a handful of true guru’s.
Hi Steve,
I agree with Sean – there are lots of other niches that create money online (eg holiday bookings etc.) and they also need to be found first, so they use Internet Marketing techniques.
I guess you are interested in Internet Marketing and this is what you are looking for online. So you come across all the “Gurus” that teach internet marketing and earn their money that way.
Check out another of your interests and you will find blogs and pages that make their money in that niche. But they have to target that market (niche) to be successful.
Hi Steve,
I can understand your frustration as internet marketing is promoted heavily on being a get rich quick tool which it is quite often made out to be by unscrupulous internet “gurus”. It takes a lot of time and effort and as more and more people get online to buy products, I believe it is the way to go. Good Luck with your journey.
Hi Sean,
If your business or business interest is in a highly competitive niche, would you suggest breaking that niche down to a sub-niche as well as targeting Longer Tail Keywords (4-5 words), in order to rank highly enough. I guess it depends on how much traffic those keywords receive.
Niching down is not a bad idea Cade. It depends a lot on your long term goals I guess. It will obviously take a lot of effort and possibly a long time to gain traction in a highly competitive niche. If you are in it for the long haul stick with it and keep working on the competitive niche. While doing so, you can also target sub-niches and long tails to rank highly in those areas within a shorter timeframe.
Hi Sean,
I think choosing a niche is one of the most critical steps for making money online. If you focus on a really broad market that’s highly competitive; you’ll certainly be doing it tough.
I’ve made the mistake of starting to write my blog in a highly competitive market when I had no clear idea of who my target market was. So, you can imagine my results or lack thereof. I now understand a little more about choosing a niche.
I agree. When it comes to niche, ‘focus’ is the word. I guess that is a meaning of ‘focus’. The question is how focused? Too little and there is too much competition. Too much and there is no traffic. Choose a niche with great care, forethought and planning.
Hi Wal,
I completely agree with you. I think there’s a fine line sometimes between finding a niche that you can be competitive with and one that has very few customers.
I’m still learning to get this right.
I chose to do a blog on Internet Marketing even though it is a very competitive niche because we have the opportunity to sell fantastic products like the Year of the Afiliate and “The Internet Marketing Program of the Year”, at our finger tips. There are so many topic’s you can cover and best of all you are learning at the same time.
Belinda
That was my thoughts exactly Belinda. There’s probably a million and one websites and blogs out there talking about Internet Marketing. However I believe that I am using my blog as a sort-of learning tool, to both learn and present the concepts I learn to others in my own way. What I learn there I can duplicate in other niches.
I think both your sites are fabulous. Your opposition must be enormous. If you can get to number one in this niche then you will be totally amazing IMers.
The ability to confuse search engine crawlers! I hadn’t thought of it that way before. I can see I will have to re-define my niche and set rules about what I can and cannot blog about. Category redefine and restructure coming up. Where’s that thinking hat? I can’t have those poor little crawlers confused can I?
It’s a good idea to be fairly direct with the search engines to avoid confusion
Hi Sean,
The more reading, the more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are starting to fit together. (fingers crossed)
Could you tell me, if I start blogging about a niche on my uwcblog what will I do with the two unrelated blog posts I have on there now? They have comments etc. I wouldn’t like to lose them. I would you suggest I move them off the blog?
If you really don’t want them there Jill and they don’t fit in with your niche, I would consider deleting them and moving them to another site that is related to the content. If you do so, consider changing the articles up a little.. as in the title and parts of the content etc.
HI Jill,
I was in the same boat. Before I decided on my niche, I was blogging about all types of things – no wonder I was never indexed. Once I narrowed down my niche, I deleted all other unrelated blogs and now I am able to find my site on google for particular keywords sometimes even ranking in 1st place.
That is really cool Jackie and great advice. You are also an inspiration, Thank you.
Hi Sean
There is so much to learn, when I first started I thought all I had to do was write my story I and I would be found boy have I come a long way since then. now I know about, market niche, Keywords, long tailed Keywords, search engine ranking, content, and I have only scratched the surface I am enjoying the journey of discovery.
Rita
You certainly have come a long way Rita! Great to hear you are enjoying the journey and learning all the time
Choosing the right niche must be the most important part of niche blogging right?
I have started to play with in a few different niche markets for a variety of reasons.
Firstly I started with an area that I had an interest in and fund that your main theme keywords are very important when it comes time to produce content because it has to be relevant to your actual interests.
Secondly I picked separate market that showed a potential in ad revenue but had I little experience and interest in it which proved harder to produce content.
I think it pays to have a good plan & do your research when choosing a niche in order to be successful within your target market.
Hi Sean,
This is a dilemma I have been having on whether my niche is too broad. I am blogging about pregnancy, parenting and babycare so some posts are about pregnancy while others are about parenting (eg. teenagers) and other posts are about products to do with the above. Am I confusing google?
Sticking to a niche and related keywords should help with keyword indexing, now off the market samurai to find something good. I am learning lots by reading Sean’s blogs.
Hi Sean
I have found my niche, I have two actually and neither one relates to the other. That’s ok with me as I will get one going and monetised and then the other later.
I know I can create sub niches but I am not sure how concentrated I will be able to go. I guess I will have to analyse keywords and have a look at the competition.
This sentence you wrote “you have to figure out what your business does differently than the competition’ has really got me thinking and I need to rewrite my marketing plan. Back to the drawing board for some tweaking.
Thank you Sean
I am planning on having several blogs with each one focusing on a different niche so that way I am covering a few niches, but i am being specific in what each one is offering and that will hopefully have a bounce on effect with SEO. I have been too braod in the past – even within a niche and have learnt that lesson!