Many Niche Blogs Or One Collective One? (from: Priya Shah)
http://www.blogbrandz.com/2005/04/many-niche-blogs-or-one-collective-one.htm
This is a question I’ve been pondering for a while now.
As a professional SEO, I’ve always known that tightly-themed niche sites get better rankings than more generic sites. They also tend to build up a more loyal base of readers with a greater interest in that niche topic.
But I publish close to 10 blogs (not all regularly, and some for different reasons than others) and I’d been contemplating moving many of them to a single domain under different categories, if only to make publishing easier.
Then Denise O’Berry posted on the Blogging for Business network about Problogger Darren Rowse’s experiences with a single blog for many topics.
Darren (who publishes 20 blogs! ) started out with just one and ended up losing readers because the posts had too much variety and weren’t of interest to all his readers. So he now recommends splitting up your blogs into different niche topics.
Here are the reasons he says many niche blogs work better than a single generic one.
- Loyal Readers - Niche blogs develop a loyal readership who bookmark or follow the blog via RSS because they know what they will get there.
- Specialist Authors - Authors of these blogs have the freedom to really focus upon a topic and don’t feel guilty about doing so. This can lead to increased quality and depth of articles.
- Build Credibility and Profile - Blogging on one topic alone can build your profile and perceived expertise on a topic or in an industry.
- Good for contextual Advertising - Ad programs like Adsense seem to work better on sites that are tightly focused. You get better targeted ads and higher click values.
- Good for Search Engine Optimization - Search Engines like sites that are focused on one topic, that have multiple pages on the one theme and that are integrated sites.
- More posts - There is only so much you can write on a blog each day without overwhelming your readership. The more posts you are able to add the bigger your sites are and the more potential entry points you have for readers from Search Engines.
- Attract Advertisers - Niche blogs are usually more attractive to private advertisers or sponsors who are looking for content to place their ads on that is relevant to their product or service. Yellow Widget advertisers will
I have personally seen that many of these reasons are what has helped my blogs work well for my business. I will be discussing the reasons for this in more detail during my interview with Denise and Patsi. So do register for it.