These days, there’s a blog about everything you can imagine. If there’s not, that’s likely because there’s not a big enough niche to make it popular, and there have probably been many bloggers before you who have tried and failed. This means that if you want to make a name for yourself blogging or create a monetized blog, you’re going to have to compete in a very saturated market. Standing out is going to require more than great skills; you’re going to have to get technical.
Blogging about how to keep a neater house or a Paleo-friendly diet, for example, have been covered in depth by bloggers who are more experienced than you. However, that doesn’t mean you should give up no your dreams of sharing your information and personal style with the blogosphere. If you Google “Paleo blog,” there are going to be certain hits on the first page of Google. Figuring out how they got there and competing from that level is what will give you an edge.
Understanding SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of best practices that’s ever-evolving, and what search engines like Google use to decide which websites appear in what order when somebody searches for a keyword or phrase. In the above example, “Paleo blog” is a short keyphrase and it’s very competitive. A better approach is to focus on long-tail keywords or themes, which can include geo-targeting if that makes sense for your blog. For example, “Paleo blog Phoenix low carb” will narrow things down dramatically and better connect your potential audience with you.
Most blogs and businesses aren’t quite as “broad” as people think, so you probably have a number of niches and specialties you can focus on. Another aspect of SEO that newbie bloggers (and the non-tech crowd) can focus on is avoiding black hat tricks and focusing on quality content. Black hat tricks include any shortcuts that search engines frown upon, such as buying multiple similar domains and copying and pasting the content (this is “duplicate content” and easy to catch).
Quality first
The goal of SEO and why search engines are constantly changing algorithms to better it is simple: To best connect people with the websites they’ll benefit from. It should be a win-win for everyone, including the blogger. The quality of your content, whether written or in video or image form, will play a huge role in where you are in search results.
