Lesson One: Find your Niche

Welcome to Blog like the Experts.


Lesson One: Find your Niche

One of the first obstacles I ran into early in my blogging career was what do I want to talk about? Do I have anything interesting to say? And thus began my foray into the vast world of how do I do this?

I found a huge variety of sites talking about finding your niche. But what does that mean? After fumbling around, I realized it was a geek speak for saying if you want to write a blog, great! So pick something to write about. Sounds easy right?

Well not so much. If you are writing a blog about something you personally are interested in, and don't care about traffic, or anyone ever being able to find your blog online then that makes sense. You can ignore finding a niche, grab a blog and start typing away.

This in fact was what my first blog was like. And it still exists. It's my personal journal, which very few see. But how do you deal with working out a niche when you want traffic? Then life gets a bit more complicated. Can it be something you are interested in still. You bet! Nothing more boring than writing about stuff you don't care about. However as you get more experienced, you'll find writing about anything, becomes easier and easier.

So what does find your niche really mean?

To a blogger it means finding and blogging about content that people actively look for on the web. Whether it be current events, how-to, information on products. The list is pretty endless considering how many people surf the net everyday. But a niche needs to be something people are looking for all the time, if you are interested in creating a blog that gets traffic.

For example: The niche for this blog is Blog like an Expert. Meaning I am specifically targeting my blog posts towards people who want more information about how to blog, and the various tricks and ways to blog successfully.

How do you find that niche?

This is where something called keyword research comes in. Keywords are the next lesson, but since they flow together, I'll speak a bit about it here. Keywords are what drive traffic to your site. There is no sense picking a topic to blog about, where your keywords don't match or have no meaning in relation to the entire blog.


I'll pick for examples:

My personal blog. Which is called The Lane Account. On the Lane account blog I talk about whatever I feel like. Therefore keywords are random, change constantly and my blog has no focus. so it's almost impossible to find if you google it. That's fine by me, that blog is for me.

Secondly I'll use this blog as an example. I have named it Blog Like the Experts. My keywords will also focus on that. Blog like the experts, blogging basics, how to blog and niche. (which you will see at the bottom of this post if you click on the 'keywords' section), as well all my posts. Hence the 'niche' of this blog is easier to find by search engine queries. See the difference?

Now I'll give you another blog to look at. It's another one I write. Which is an example of a small niche blog. Plant a Kitchen Garden The reason I am adding this one, is you can see the topic, the keywords and how I've used a niche to create a blog that isn't related to 'how to blog' but it's still effectively driving traffic. The niche is very small, the first day I created it I have 40 views. The Lane Account which had been around much longer had a maximum of 80 views total over the entire time the blog has been active. So the difference is pretty amazing.


I tend to think of keywords like brand names. We all know what Adidas is. Why? because they took time to develop brand name recognition. Some one says Adidas, and you immediately think of shoes, and sports wear. That is what keywords are for your blog. It's what brands your niche blog with a distinct feel, name and consistent topic matter.

Thank you for reading Blog Like the Experts. I really hoped you enjoyed Lesson One: Find your Niche. I love comments, so be sure to leave some!