Last week’s blog post Niche Blogs-Make Blogging discussed that one way you can make money through blogging is by choosing a niche that will be profitable. Choosing this niche will be the most important step in building your blog. The niche needs to be something that there is demand for but that there is not a lot of competition. To start with last week the first step would have been making your list of ideas and turning them in to a list of micro niches. From here is where your research will begin. In general in business and in blogging, the more popular a topic is then the more competition there will be. This is where you need to narrow these topics down from a general topic that everyone is covering to a sub-topic that will not have as much competition. If you are interested in writing about homeschooling you will find some stiff competition for a new blog to be facing. If you find a small niche within this topic that interests you that does not have the same level of competition then you have a chance of being successful.
There are many different tools that can be used for keyword research. Some people like Wordtracker or Wordze, they kind of all have their own set of pros and cons. For now though, to use a free tool to show you an example of keyword research we will use Google. If you type in homeschool as your word to research you will see that it has about a million global monthly searches with a medium level of competition. Underneath this you will see a list of related keywords and with each one it will show you the monthly searches for those terms and the level of competition for each one. You want to find one that has a combination of a high number of searches but a low level of competition. You can set the graph to sort by level of competition to make it easier to look through. Some examples of keywords from this list that would be better choices would be “homeschool laws” with around 14,000, “homeschool association” with around 27,000 fans or “homeschool co-op” with about 12,000. All of these have a low level of competition so even though the monthly searches is not nearly as high as “homeschool” you wouldn’t have as much competition focusing on these keywords.
If homeschooling was a topic you had chosen as a niche but did not know much about you may need to research ideas for keywords a little further. Wordtracker will provide more exact data on the numbers for level of competition. Also, if you use Wordtracker keyword universe they will give you suggestions for related keywords that you may not have thought of especially if you are not familiar with the subject. “Abeka” is a homeschool company that looks like it receives a lot of searches but has low competition. This particular keyword though would not have crossed your mind if you were not familiar with the different homeschooling companies out there. The Wordze tool called Dig is a very helpful tool in research as well. When you enter your keyword it will provide you with a list of related terms from searching the internet. These are terms that if your audience is interested in homeschool co-ops they might also be interested in “used books” for example. Once you settle on your niche this tool is great for helping you come up with ideas to post about. Still not sure how all of this information can make you some money??? Stay tuned for next week’s post.
Related articles
- Marketing to Your Target Audience (smallbizblogforwomen.com)
- Niche Blogs-Make Money Blogging (smallbizblogforwomen.com)
