Wondering how to choose a niche for your blog? I have five easy tips for you to figure out what to blog about!
How Important is Having a Niche for My Blog?
Deciding on a niche for your blog is very important if you want to begin your journey toward a profitable blog. Not only will picking a niche make content planning a hell of a lot easier, but picking a niche (that you are passionate about) will help your ideal readers find you which is essential if you want to take this blogging thing full time.
Figuring out your niche, however, can be quite the challenge but you’re in the right place!
What is a Niche?
A niche is essentially what your blog is all about. Some examples would be: hiking in Oregon, knitting for beginners, and new twin mom tips.
What Are the Benefits of Choosing My Blog Niche?
Having a blogging niche benefits bloggers in many ways. If you have an audience who loves reading everything you post, they are more likely to buy products or services from your site if it relates specifically to something you talk about often. This can be anything from makeup tutorials relevant to beauty blogging all the way up to supplements helpful for fitness gurus out there!
Another key benefit of choosing a blog niche is the ease it’ll bring when it comes to content planning. If you write about too many topics,
One last benefit I will mention of picking out a niche for your blog is the power it can hold when it comes to ranking on Google. Your goal with your blog will be to generate organic site traffic and with that, you’ll want to be in good standing with Google. By selecting a niche and sticking with it, Google will begin to recognize your expertise on the topic, and with the proper SEO tools, you’ll be able to rank higher in the Google search.
Ranking high in Google means that your blog post will come up within the first few (or even first!) pages of Google when someone searches for a sub-topic within your niche. Pretty cool, right?!
For example, my first blog, twinsandcoffee.com, ranks on the first page of Google for many topics within the motherhood and twin motherhood niche. This post about baby led weaning is a prime example of that. Google registered that my blog was geared toward new moms, specifically new twin moms, and with the SEO I put in place it has since ranked on the top page of Google for many related search terms including “baby led weaning recipes for the family”.
How to Choose a Niche for Your Blog
Now that we have gone through the importance of a niche and what a niche for your blog actually is, let’s dive into how to choose a niche for your blog.
Step 1: Brainstorming
The first thing you are going to want to do is to take note of all the topics that interest you. Write down any topic that interests you, even if it seems random or unusual. You never know what blogging niche will be popular this year or next so keep your mind open when taking notes during this step!
Ask yourself these questions:
- What am I passionate about? (example: hobbies)
- What am I knowledgeable about? (example: something you’ve done for work)
- What could I talk about for hours on end and never get bored? (example: a core interest of yours that you are always learning more about)
- What is something relevant to my life that I don’t see going away? (example: being a work from home mom)
At this point, you should have several ideas noted down that you would enjoy writing about. Do any of them stand out to you more than others? Could you see yourself diving in and talking about one of the topics before thousands of people? Put a star next to the ones that you do.
Step 2: Market Research
Now comes the time for market research. You want to make sure your niche has potential. You don’t want your niche to be too wide, but you also don’t want it to be too narrow.
A great way to figure this out would be by utilizing Google AdWords Keyword Planner (you will likely have to sign up).
My suggestion would be to type in one of your topic ideas, let’s say you are interested in talking about Hiking in Oregon, one of your favorite hobbies.
You would type in “hiking in Oregon” in the search bar of Google AdWords Keyword Planner and you’ll see a list similar to this pop up:
What you’re looking at now is related key phrases, the number of searches monthly, and the competition level. Ideally, you want to pick one of the related key phrases with a low competition level that also has a substantial number of monthly searches. Thankfully this idea alone has very low competition so it would be a great topic to write about on all fronts! You could even expand a bit and include the entirety of the Pacific Northwest.
If you were to search for a term, such as Knitting for beginners, that ends up showing high competition levels, don’t let that discourage you. You can still go with that niche if that is something you truly want to do but you’ll have to figure out how to put a spin on it to make yourself stand out from the crowd.
Step 3: Check Out Your Competition
Now that you have a few ideas that you could potentially rank for, it’s time to check out your potential competition.
A simple way to do this would be to search your potential niche followed by “blog”. For example, “Hiking in Oregon Blog”.
From there, I would suggest going through some of the blogs that pop up and reading through some of their articles. Could you see yourself writing about these topics? Do they excite you?
If so, that might be a good call that specific niche is a great idea for you.
Step 4: Find Out if it is Profitable
If your goal with your blog is to turn a profit, which I imagine it is, you’ll need to figure out if the niche is actually profitable or not.
Here are some different ways blogs make money:
- Affiliate marketing
- Brand sponsorships
- Ads
Affiliate marketing is when you share a specific link to a product and you make a small profit off of your audience’s purchase. So ask yourself, “what could I market on my site?”
Within the hiking niche, you could easily market your favorite hiking gear along with hiking gear you’ve tried along the way.
Then comes brand sponsorships. Who could you work with inside of your niche? When it comes to hiking, this could mean hiking shoe brands, clothing brands, camping brands, and more!
Now for ads, I would just advise you to post content appropriate for the general public if you’re hoping to make an income from ads one day.
Step 5: Decide on Your Niche
You might have decided on a niche by now, but if you haven’t, now is the time! Go through all that I have shared and pick a niche that really stands out to you. This will (hopefully) be something you’ll be talking about for a long time so you want to make sure you’re set on it!
With that, obviously, you can change your mind down the road, but getting started with an initial niche that excites you is ideal when it comes to creating a profitable blog.
I hope these tips have helped you choose a niche for your blog! If you’re looking for more tips, make sure to check out my TikTok and Instagram accounts. I share tips every weekday over there!
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