The Niche Blog: Is There Really a Benefit?

When it comes to marketing, the idea is that niches usually generate the most interest or the biggest following, and therefore are the most profitable. Likewise, creating lots of valuable content in a particular niche can help to build your credibility and reputation as an expert in that particular field or niche. The better that reputation, the better your chances of making money in that niche. Think about it, if you're claiming that x product is the best on the market, or that you give the best training in x industry, wouldn't it be a good idea for potential customers to find you and your content when they search for x product or industry in the search engines?

While concentrating your efforts can be a good thing, the concept is a little different with blogging. The thing to remember about blogging is that it is meant to be a continuous conversation between yourself and the rest of the Web. That means there is big potential for readers to come back again and again to see what's new in your neck of the woods. With RSS feeds & subscriptions driving the world of blogging, readers are gravitating toward content that captures and keeps them. The keeping part is important. Why? Because blog subscribers want and expect fresh, unique content that will give them a reason to keep on subscribing. Coming up with that kind of fresh content can seem impossible when you limit yourself to one topic. But wait, isn't that what you're supposed to do if you're blogging within a niche? If you stray off topic, will you hurt your SEO efforts and chances at building a successful niche business? My answer is absolutely NOT, and here's why...

Now I know we said that developing your message & content around a niche can be most beneficial for your business, but that doesn't mean that sticking to just one topic is the best thing for your readers. You can (and should) give your readers variety in order to keep them coming back. But doesn't this conflict with the concept of a niche? Not at all, and I'll explain why.

Most folks don't realize that a niche can easily include a variety of topics. They assume that a niche means you must stick to only one topic and center all of your efforts on that one topic. But in reality, that's not the case. Take iBuild^TM Branding for example. Our niche is personal branding - it's the main focus of our training & services. So if you visit our blog, you'll notice a good many posts that have to do with personal branding. But in reality, personal branding is part of a much bigger picture. On a grander scale, we work primarily with MLM & home business distributors and affiliates. That's a bigger niche, and lends to a larger variety of topics. So while we can still focus on personal branding, there is room to expand into other topics that are important to our target market, such as prospecting or web 2.0. The thing to remember is that while you don't have to stick to one topic, any other topics you choose to write about should be somewhat related. This will help your readers get a better understanding of where you're coming from as an author, and still plays an important role in your overall SEO & targeting strategy.

Diversity in your content can go a long way with your readers. It offers them more insight into more of the areas that interest them, making your blog a one-stop shop for them! It also gives you more opportunities to be found by your target audience in organic search results. By writing about a variety of topics, your blog becomes more relevant to a wider audience. In turn, you have a larger selection of keywords to choose from, and more options for places to post your blog's link or RSS feed. It also gives you more in terms of potential content. I can update my blog much more regularly if I I blog about 6 or 7 related topics, as opposed to blogging about only one. Likewise, readers can contribute more easily. If your readers are well versed in your chosen topic, they're less likely to comment. However, blogging about several related topics increases your chances at drawing readers who will comment.

Just remember, while diversity is important in your topics, it's also super important that those topics be related. It will help your blog to flow better and help you to connect your posts more easily, be easier to optimize in terms of SEO and be more relevant to more readers. Not to mention, it will build you up faster as an expert in your industry rather than an expert in just one topic.

Ok, so now that you know that blogging about a variety of related topics is ok, how to integrate all those topics smoothly so that you don't confuse your readers? Well, implementing one simply technique will do the trick. Most blogging platforms allow you to create multiple categories for your posts. Creating a category for each topic you choose to write about, and then categorizing each blog post accordingly. This is the equivalent of putting relevant documents into the right folders in a file cabinet. It helps to organize your content and group like posts together so that your readers don't have to sift through every post to find what they need.

You can even take this organization a step further by designating a specific page to be the "home" page of your blog. Let's say you've created an "about us" page. You can designate this as your blog's home page, and then your readers can simply click on the category that interests them to explore the posts for that topic. This functionality is available with both the free/shared-hosting version of Wordpress and the self-hosted version. It's not clear whether Blogger allows the designation of a home page at this time.