You have decided to make money online. Now you are looking for the best niche for blogging.
And if you give me 5 minutes of your time I will tell you all you need to know about how to find that best niche for you in your role as a blogger.
The good news is that there is a best niche for blogging.
This best niche for blogging will suit you perfectly and you will enjoy creating value for your customers.
And there is no real “but”.
You will however have to accept that finding that best niche is part of a process where you hold all the answers.
Do not fall into the trap of looking at other bloggers' success stories or level of affiliate payouts in specific industries. Accept and embrace that your path will be unique to you.
You see, there is no “one size fits all”. There is however a best niche for you as a blogger.
Here in this article we will look at how you find the best niche for blogging for you. We will then explain why you should spend 30 minutes to create a niche strategy and how it will help you reach success.
Finding that best niche for new bloggers
I get the questions all the time.
- What is the best niche for Pinterest?
- Which niches are best for affiliate marketers?
- How do I choose a niche to make the most money on Google?
In the free guide Build A Website With WordPress The Right Way we learn that you find your niche where
- you can offer value, expertise and relevance (passion)
- there is a demand for the information you publish
- your new blog or website can compete
- the niche holds money making potential
Step 1: Offer value, expertise and relevance
Take a good hard look at yourself.
You are looking for the best niche for blogging but you need to ask yourself what value you would bring to your potential readers.
Where do you know more than your friends, colleagues and people in general?
What qualifications do you hold?
Do you have hobbies where you are passionate?
For your information to hold value you need to be an expert. Gone are the days when people show interest in vague observations and thoughts on a subject.
Your readers will expect answers to questions with real actionable solutions to problems.
Selecting a niche and passion
I did put passion in parentheses.
And it does help to be interested and even passionate about your potential best niche.
Your readers will expect up to date information. You will need to expand your knowledge as your blog or website develops.
Could you be successful choosing a subject where you have no interest, passion or level of expertise?
Of course. It is an option. But it will require a lot more work on your part.
After all, where is the value if you learn from websites you find online and then simply repeat the information in your own words?
Being passionate about the niche is not necessary. But it does help.
It is however a must that you are knowledgeable and can offer the perspective of an expert.
Action point: List subject matters where you consider yourself an expert. Steer away from areas involving matters like for example money, health, legal advice or insurance unless you hold a relevant degree and qualification.
Examples can be:
- Take great photos with your mobile or cellular phone camera
- How to live frugal with a good quality of life
- Advice on camping in a particular area
- How to look after a bike
- How to grow and look after fruit trees in a garden
Be specific and drill down as much as you can. Are you taking photos with an iPhone or an Android phone? Is it a general purpose or racing bike? Camping while hiking or camping in one and the same place?
And finally, do not be too hard on yourself. Noone knows everything. But make sure you bring something valuable to the table.
Compile a list of ideas for niches before you move on to step 2. At this stage you should ideally have a list of at least 3 possible niches.
Step 2: Demand for the information you publish
For you to make money from your website there needs to be people looking for the information you publish.
You need to provide information that people are actually looking for.
The good news is that there are several good ways to get an indication of the interest for your chosen best niche for blogging.
There are free tools and there are tools and services where you need to pay a monthly fee.
When you first start out it is sufficient to use one of the many free tools that are available.
I have used the free Chrome extension Keyword surfer and it works perfectly for this purpose.
You can download the extension by simply searching for “Keyword surfer extension” in Google. Read more about the program here.
Keyword surfer requires that you download and use the Google Chrome browser.
When you have installed the Keyword Surfer extension you will see the number of times any search term was searched right there on in the Google search box on the Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP).
Yes, the number of searches will be listed in the search box for each and every search you perform.
You will also be given examples of related searches with search volumes right there on the Google results page.
Here the trick is to reverse the order. The default is to show the keywords with the most searches first. These high volume keywords are too generic and broad. How will you know the user intent behind the search?
Instead we click on the sorting arrow of the Volume column and reverse the order. These keyword phrases have less searches but there is a clear search intent and a problem to solve.
One point before you start searching. As you can see from the example above you do not want to be too generic in your searches.
You will not learn anything useful if you search for “camping”, “photography”, “bikes” or “fruit trees”.
This type of generic search terms are usually highly competitive and vague. You are here to solve problems and provide answers to questions.
How can you possibly know what information to give on a broad search term like “camping”?
Instead search for relevant questions someone looking for answers in your potential niche would have.
- DIY camp lighting ideas
- best phone for travel photography
- bike frame restoration
- plum tree pollinators
Needless to say these search phrases are just examples to illustrate a point.
Compile a list of relevant search phrases for each niche from step 1. Remember to search for phrases where you feel that you could add value.
Action point: Install the Keyword Surfer Chrome extension and start searching for relevant keywords for the niches or topics you listed in step 1.
Note the number of searches for each search. Remove any keywords or keyword phrases that do show any searches before you move on to step 3.
Step 3: The niche holds money making potential
There are many different ways to make money from a website. (LINK)
But one thing does remain constant.
You need to attract visitors by delivering relevant content that matches the intent of the search.
Finding the best niche for blogging while not understanding user intent will make it extremely difficult to monetize your website.
User intent may sound like any other word. But trust me. Understanding user intent is critical if you want to be successful and rank in the search engines.
What is User Intent
User intent is simply what the searcher expected to find for any given keyword.
And who knows or decides this you may ask?
Google and the other search engines do. For simplicity we will stick with Google.
Google uses what is referred to as the Date Network Effect to learn what users want.
Data Network Effect simply refers to the fact that a system becomes better and more valuable the more it is used.
In a simplistic model Google would measure “clicks from the SERP” and “time on page” for any clicked result.
Google would learn that a customer searching for “bikes” will click on 4 different listings in the SERP before finding a website that sells bikes.
If this pattern stays true Google would learn that the search intent for the keyword “Bike” is a desire to buy a bike.
This would logically mean that Google would list e-commerce stores as the top results.
Why?
Exactly, because it matches the user intent.
So where does this leave us?
It leaves us wiser. Now we can remove all keywords where Google would never list our articles and guides.
And how do we know this?
Because when we search Google the SERP lists e-commerce websites like Target or Amazon.
Google shows us the search intent for any given search we do.
All we need to do is to look at the type of results Google returns.
Action point: Search Google (or your chosen search engine) and note the type of websites that are ranking in the top 10.
Is it e-commerce stores? Youtube videos? Informational blog-type websites?
You are looking for the keywords to match the search intent of your chosen format.
There is no right or wrong answer here. You are simply looking for the search intent to match the format you are planning to produce.
For example, videos in the SERP is great news if you are planning to record videos for the Youtube platform.
In some ways this step is more of a qualifier of your chosen keywords than your niche.
But as choosing the right keywords is instrumental to your success you need to make sure that your list is relevant before moving on to step 4.
Do not get frustrated if you have to go back to step 2 or even step 1 and start again.
It is better to do it now than to realise the problem in 6 months with 50 articles written and not a single article ranking in Google.
You are ready to move on to step 4 when you have at least one list of keywords where you feel that you could match the user intent.
Step 4: Can your new blog or website compete?
Finding the best niche for blogging requires that you analyse or look at the competitive landscape.
Stay with me. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is.
I try to stay away from industry jargon and I know that certain words seem vague and may alienate a reader. But rest assured, whenever I use words like strategy or analysis I will break it down into actionable points in plain language.
So how can we possibly know if we can compete before we have written a single word?
It is true that it is hard to know. But we can look at the likelihood of success by analysing our competition and the overall competitive landscape using our keywords and phrases from step 3.
Competitors are of course just other websites or blogs operated by other people. We will have to compete with these websites for visitors and readers.
The competitive landscape is an overview of the top competitors in any given industry or niche. When you search for a keyword you simply look at the SERP and ask yourself if the top 10 websites listed are
- e-commerce websites that sell products
- large Fortune 500 companies
- bloggers and content providers
To gauge the strength of our competitors we are going to use another free tool.
The tool we are going to use is called the Mozbar and is offered for free from the website moz.com.
Sign up for a free account with Moz.com. Next you download the free MozBar from moz.com or by searching for the MozBar extension in Google. Again we need to use the Chrome browser.
With MozBar installed our Google SERP will look like below.
Here we can see the strength or authority of each domain or website and the actual page listed in the SERP.
The domain’s or website’s authority is measured on a scale of 0-100. The score is referred to as the website’s Domain Authority (DA). The larger the number the stronger the authority.
By the same logic we are also given a PA score. This value, the Page Authority, measures the authority of the individual listed webpage.
Compare the 2 images below to understand the difference. You can see how the DA remains the same for both the Moz.com home page and the Moz.com Blog.
But the Blog section page is viewed as having a lower Page Authority of 44 compared to the homepage (73).
Here you will focus on the DA value as you are looking at your competitors overall strength.
Also, any DA value above 40 can be viewed as high and established. And do not worry, there are ways to compete even when you first start out with the lowest possible DA.
Actionpoint: Download and install the MozBar. Using your search words and phrases from step 3 you note the DA of the websites that are listed in the top 10.
At this stage you will remove any keyword phrases where there are no results in the top 10 below a DA of 30.
You may not find a DA of 30 in the top 3. But look for top 10 listings where there at least is a mixture of high and low DA values.
Summary and conclusion
When you have completed step 4 you should be left with a number of niches and hopefully several keyword phrases for each.
Now, at this stage you need to do some soul searching and compare the alternatives in front of you.
Remember that when you choose your niche for blogging it should also be the best as in the best for you.
Sure, you will focus on providing excellent information.
But one thing is for sure.
Your chosen niche will be your companion for a long time. So choose wisely.
The alternatives that you are left with after step 4 have all passed your analysis and are all viable candidates. They could all potentially be your best niche for blogging.
Now it is up to you to choose and execute.
