Bringing in Blog Traffic With Micro Niches
February 27, 2009 by
Adam
Filed under
Blogging, Website Traffic
Today I’d like to talk to you about a technique for generating more search engine traffic. This is something I stumbled on in my own blogging and I am shocked at how well it works. Obviously it isn’t fool-proof, but if it is done right, you will see a huge amount of supplemental traffic coming to your blog. For lack of a better term, I’m going to call it “blogging with micro niches.”
Most bloggers have identified at least one niche in their industry and have based their blog on it. For example, simply blogging about “Business” would be difficult to develop and focus in-depth content unless you further defined it as “Online Business” or “Home Based Business” or “Women Owned Business.” Each of these niches provides you with a substantial enough subject that you can write every day—yet it limits your topics and gives your blog clarity. Blog readers are often drawn to niche blogs that speak to them personally, and are more likely to subscribe to these blogs as well as recommend them to other people.
But in addition to your main blog subject, it is possible to dissect your blog further and add even more refined niches that create an even finer point to the subject matter. You don’t have to try to manage a huge number of these micro niches—even one or two can be effective.
The key is choosing a micro niche that is not covered extensively in the blogosphere but which still ties into the main theme of your blog. So, for example, if your blog is about your catering business, you could choose to write about the latest season of Top Chef—the Bravo Network reality show contest for professional chefs. Each week you might write a recap of the episode, or dish about who won and lost the challenge. What does this do? For one thing, it brings in traffic that has nothing to do with your catering business. Many people watch Top Chef and do online searches for information about the show regardless of their interest in catering. By writing about it every week, you’re building up a cache of keywords that will bump your blog up to the top of the search engines when people make specific searches about the show, the contestants, or the guests.
Another example: If you write a blog about entrepreneurship, you might regularly post book reviews by popular business gurus. Having their names and book titles on your blog will bring in traffic long after the post is archived as people do searches for these books and authors. You’re going to be reading them anyway for your own use—why not make the most of your reading by blogging about it, too? Or if you have a favorite business guru, you may choose to follow their career on your blog, writing about new book releases, speaking engagements, television appearances, etc. The more content you have about this particular person, the more likely your blog will come up in the top results when someone searches for them.
Micro niches are also a great way to keep yourself motivated. Writing about these topics can be fun and help you break out of the mold of the same old style of posting. You can have fun with these micro niches—use humor and a little sarcasm to make them entertaining. Investing a small amount of time each month into building up a micro niche or two on your blog will help your blog stay fresh, current, and give it a broader appeal.
Are you blogging on any micro niches? Leave a comment and let us know what has worked for you!
Good common-sense points! And don’t forget about monetizing such posts via the Amazon or eBay affiliate program - such places will often have extremely targeted niche products that would greatly enhance your site too.
Your post is an example of being focused, and to the point.
KISS lives!
Mine is a great example of a ‘micro-niche site’
PAELLAPROFESSOR.BLOGSPOT.COM
This post is a great example about how simplicity and consistency leads to success in the online blogging market. Very true. I feel that the more that your topic is narrowed the easier you will be able to convince people to be subscribers. Thanks for the post!
Adam,
An excellent post, and some great advice here!
One of my favorite micro-niches has been vegan resipes that can be prepared in 30 minutes or less. On the same blog, I’ve used low-fat vegan recipes to bring in subscribers.
It’s a common misconception that you can only focus on one micro-niche per blog - you can use several as long as you compartmentalize your marketing strategies for each.
Indeed that is very good idea. Especially the part where writing about famous names is involved. No wonder we are seeing popular gurus interviews on your blog :), that is a good prove that those tactics really work.
You are absolutely right Adam. In fact, I get a majority of my traffic from some niche topics that most people would never think of of. Since my business is localized real estate, I have to be pretty creative in order to get a decent amount of traffic.
I totally agree with you Adam. Picking a micro niche and running with it can really bring in a large amount of traffic to a blog. I have had great success with this and need to continue to pick more topics similar to it to bring in more traffic.
It is an impressive post.
it would bring high traffic for our site as the result .
thanks,
One of the best help I have found in finding micro niches is the Wordstream keyword niche finder tool.