Do you ever find yourself wondering if your blog is too broad?
Maybe you’re blogging about fashion, but also love to post videos of your favorite recipes.
If so, this blog post will help.
It’s hard to find the sweet spot between having things to write about and not going too broad.
I’ll share some tactics to narrow your niche and increase blog traffic. Let’s begin!
What is a blog niche?
A blog niche is a specific topic that a blog is about.
For example, if you blog about cooking, then that is your niche.
Within each niche, there will be several sub-niches that go into even more detail. For example, there may be a sub-niche for cooking Italian food and another sub-niche for cooking vegetarian dishes.
This can go into even more specific categories, such as cooking vegetarian food on a budget.
In other words, blog niche defines a blog’s topic and the areas of interest within it, and it can be as broad or as narrow as you choose.
How to find your blog’s niche?
When deciding what topics they want their blog to cover, many bloggers choose whatever comes naturally from their interests and life experiences.
For example, if someone has spent years working on farms and ranches, they might write a blog about ranching and farming.
This approach works well for some people, but also you could consider what topics are trending, and which topics will provide you with a steady source of unique content.
Consider the following factors when choosing a niche:
- What is your expertise?
- Are there related blogs that already have a lot of traffic from search engines?
- Can you be an authority on this topic?
- Is there a high demand for information/products/services related to your blog’s niche?
- Are there enough people interested in this topic to make it worth blogging about?
To find a niche for YOUR blog, try these steps:
- Brainstorm some ideas on paper.
- Make a list of topics that you could write about.
- Then, try searching for these topics on google (better yet, enter specific questions related to the topic).
- Analyze the search results to determine whether you found a good niche for your blog. Here’s what you should note:
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- Are the topics already extensively covered by other websites?
- Are the websites on the first page of Google small blogs with mediocre quality content, or well-established web giants?
- Are the search results answering the question exactly (meet the search intent)?
If you answer yes to these questions, it means that your blog can be successful on the subject.
Broad niche vs. narrow niche
Finding your blogging niche is an important job.
However, what are the differences between broad and narrow niches, and how do you know that you chose wisely?
Downsides of a broad blog niche
In the age where blogging is crazy popular, a broad niche can result in lower traffic.
This is because there is less targeted content available and you don’t look like an expert on one topic in Google’s eyes.
For example, if you are starting a blog that is within the “sports” umbrella, it might be difficult to stand out in traffic because of its broadness.
However, if you narrow your blog down to “table tennis”, there will be less competition for readers which makes it easier to get new visitors.
A blog with a narrow niche can gain SEO traffic faster and easier than blogs with a broad focus. If you are counting on SEO traffic for your blog, you need to make sure your niche is not too broad.
Downsides of a narrow blog niche
On the other hand, there is such a thing as too narrow.
The more specific your topic gets, the lower the search volume.
Generally, this means you will have to write a lot to start seeing good traffic coming to your website.
An extremely narrow niche can also be quite limiting. A very narrow topic might make it hard to come up with new blog post ideas and to find good keywords.
Which is better?
Some bloggers managed to achieve success with broad niches.
However, if you would like to maximize your chances of success with blogging, you might want to consider a more narrow niche.
Writing many articles on the same topic can convince Google that you are an expert on this subject, and it will reward you by sending users to your blog.
Is my niche too broad?
If you find yourself wondering whether your niche is too broad, consider the following:
- Is my target audience too general, or can I give a detailed description of my average reader? For example, if your target audience is “people who like to read books,” that’s too broad. If, however, you can describe your audience as “millennial bookworms who want to learn how to apply Stoicism in their daily life,” you’ve got a much better chance in terms of competition.
- How many categories can I divide my content into? If you find that your blog is attempting to address more than 3-5 closely related categories, consider narrowing down and writing more about fewer subjects.
- Is my traffic very low despite having a lot of content on my site? If your blog has been around for a while, you have a tonne of blog posts published, you pay attention to SEO and promote your blog in other ways, but you are still not getting enough traffic – definitely consider narrowing your focus.
These questions can be a helpful tool in answering the question “Is my niche too broad?”
How do I narrow down my niche?
You need to take a long, hard look at your website and audit its content!
Stop fixating on categories that are not relevant.
Yes, it took you time to write these blog posts, but archiving them could do you a favor.
It’s not always about quantity over quality – narrow down your niche by removing the posts that are irrelevant to the context of your niche.
You could also try to repurpose the blog posts which currently don’t fit your niche.
Otherwise, if you don’t want to get rid of them, consider exporting unrelated content to a different niche blog.
Finally, narrow down your niche by actually writing new blog posts that are tightly related to one another and your niche. The more you write about the same thing, the more Google will trust you with SEO over time!
You need to know what your goals are.
Narrowing down your niche will allow you to more easily achieve those goals because you will have a more streamlined content strategy.
How to find keywords for your niche
The main reason people choose broad niches is that they don’t need to think hard to come up with article ideas.
However, if you know what you’re doing, you can find a tonne of keywords for a narrow niche.
Try these methods:
- Google autocomplete – type in your main keyword and see what Google suggestions are. Experiment until you find something that is low competition and that you could write about.
- Use other websites as inspiration. Search for websites in your niche to see what they are writing about – and more importantly, what they are NOT writing about. Try to cover those topics.
- Type in your keywords to Youtube to get even more ideas. You could do the same with Quora and Reddit.
- Use a keyword tool to get ideas for blog topics. There are free and paid versions depending on your needs. For basic inspiration and brainstorming, you can use Google Keyword Planner or a free version of Ubersuggest. If you are serious about blogging though, you might want to invest in a tool like Keysearch or Moz.
These ideas should get you started. It’s important to take the keyword research for your niche site seriously because that, combined with a narrow niche focus, is the formula for blogging success.
Micro niche blog ideas
If you feel stuck and cannot find a narrow-enough niche to blog about, here’s a list of blog niches to take inspiration from:
- Dog training
- Rare coin collecting
- Product photography
- Car restoration
- Wedding planning
- Make your own baby food recipes
- Watercolor painting
- Keto dessert recipes
- Carpentry tools
- Knitting patterns for beanies
- London food truck reviews
- Wild camping in Scotland
- Baby shower planning
- Bird watching
- DIY furniture
- Haunted places to visit in England
- Mushroom growing
- Ceramics making
- How to self publish a book
- Gardening tools and techniques
How do you know if a niche is profitable?
It can seem difficult to find niche ideas that are both profitable and niche enough to be worth targeting.
But there are some questions you can ask yourself to determine whether or not your niche idea is profitable. Here are some examples:
- What is your competition like?
- What kind of content can you create that has not been created before by other niche blogs. What unique value can you bring to this niche?
- Do people already spend money on products and services related to your niche?
- Is there enough of a community in your niche to earn money from people looking at ads on your website, buying ebooks, or signing up for newsletters?
- Is there enough search volume for the topic you’re targeting?
You can find this information with some quick research, that we talked about in this article.
Summary: Is my niche too broad?
If you feel like your blog is too broad, consider narrowing the scope of your niche.
A more specific focus will allow you to not only establish yourself as an expert in a certain field but also get targeted traffic coming through your website faster than ever before.
What steps have you taken to narrow down the topic of your blog?
