As a marketer, you know that blogging is an important business that allows you to share content around your business with the whole world in a safe and enjoyable way. More than that, it's a marketing strategy that helps you cultivate a healthy relationship with your readers and positions you well in your market.
In the process of launching your blog, the crucial step for your success is choosing your niche, that is, a specialty in a market that is relevant to your product or service.
How important is finding your niche in blogging?
Many people start a blog and lose interest in it after a while. Blogging then becomes like a chore and they begin to realize that they have nothing more to say on their platform.
Different things can happen when you run a blog. If you can't support what you're doing because you're not passionate enough to write, then blogging will always feel like a chore. In addition, by focusing on a niche, you strengthen your credibility and your profile online.
This begs the question: should you choose a niche based on passion or profitability? Whatever you are looking for, here are the different steps to find a perfect niche for a profitable blog.
1. Check the popularity of keywords using the Google Keyword Planner
The Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword planning tool originally designed for online advertisers. It helps identify the most relevant keywords for a campaign in order to optimize the targeting and performance of their ads.
As part of blogging, it allows you to choose the precise field of intervention of your blog. You can enter a country, city, or region. By entering a keyword specific to your activity on Google Keyword Planner, you get search results that will help you discover the competitiveness of a niche and have useful information on ideas that people are interested in. From there, you can start to position yourself in the market.
2. Check the performance of certain keywords using Google Trends
Another practical (and less used) strategy for doing your niche research is Google Trends. While the Google Keyword Planner can tell you how popular your potential niche is at the time, Google Trends shows you how a keyword or idea is performing over a period of time. This will help you predict the likelihood of your niche's short-term survival based on its stability over the past few months or years. When researching Google Trends, if you notice keywords that experience sudden spikes at specific times of the year, it doesn't immediately mean that the niche is profitable in the long run. Most importantly, try to understand the reason for the sudden increase in people's interest in a topic. Did something happen?
If you want to target your niche site to a specific geographic location, Google Trends tells you exactly where in the world your topic is most popular. This information will help you optimize your SEO campaigns and get the best possible return on investment.
3. Visit affiliate networks to find products that sell well
Bloggers looking for an affiliate niche can take inspiration from the physical and digital products of popular affiliate networks. These products are selling well.
Amazon is a potential affiliate network that you can use to find profitable niches that appeal to you. Enter your niche keyword into Amazon's search bar to get ideas on interesting products. If the results show you "Best Seller" items, and with thousands of customer reviews, that indicates you are probably on the right track.
Here are other affiliate networks where you can validate your niche ideas:
4. Find out how the top sites perform in your potential niche.
Are there high-performing websites in your field? By visiting these sites and monitoring their performance, you can get a good idea of your niche site's ability to grow.
You just need to enter your keywords into the Google search box to get a list of the top-ranked sites. These show signs of a high level of internet user engagement. You can also visit the social media pages of these sites to check the number of their followers or fans.
Finally, if a website invites other bloggers to post comments, you should be able to see a high number of guest authors. This tells you that there is a chance that you can build strong partnerships with other bloggers and business owners in your niche.
5. Find out the problems people face and the questions most of them have
One thing you need to know about most people these days is that they actively use the internet to express their feelings and opinions on things that matter to them.
People who are passionate about something will make sure to discuss it on social media platforms and active communities like Facebook, Quora, and Reddit. They ask questions on these sites because they want their urgent issues dealt with quickly.
For example, if you want to check out Facebook for active discussions in your niche, go to your Facebook account and type the niche you want in the search bar. Because these audiences have a need, they are willing to pay for a solution. And you can be that solution.