Summary: When you start a new website or blog, should you write articles solely for search engines, or should readers be your number one concern? Find out how why your starting content strategy can make or break your website.

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A lot of webmasters really have a pretty lousy content strategy in place. Here’s an example (based on a question I recently saw asked on a webmaster forum):

Someone wanted to know whether it was better to write for bots (search engines) or human readers. Their purpose seemed obviously to lean towards making a solid content-rich site. Because SEO is always a hot topic (because frankly most people are either too lazy or too dense to look beyond it for quality traffic sources), you’ll find a lot of information like this around (paraphrased):

“Write for search engines first to get rankings and traffic, and then start writing for readers to keep them.”

I had a total “duh” moment when I read that, thinking I must be on a total idiot binge lately on the webmaster front.

Actually, that suggestion is beyond stupid as far as content strategies go. Let’s break it down into to your two most basic options:

1. If you want to build an authority website or blog in a niche, and have a site with long-term potential, you write for the readers.

2. If you’re building sites only thinking about the short term quick buck (driving search traffic to sites loaded with high paying keywords), then you write for the bots.

If someone had the goal of number one above, but started off with the model of number two (as the forum “geniuses” suggested), the site might very well find itself doomed to failure. Why?

Because if the starting content (which is ranked well and the reason viewers are getting to the site) is nothing but SEO’d-to-death content for those rankings, those visitors aren’t going to come back. The only way to get visitors coming back (necessary if you want to build an authority site of any level) is to always write unique and interesting content for your readers.

Starting off with the wrong content strategy can seriously screw up the reputation of your site or blog even before it really gets going. Don’t make that mistake. Know what your ultimate site goals are from the beginning and tailor your content strategy to the right audience.

Summary: Do you take your online business seriously, or are you setting yourself up for failure? Find out why you need to treat your online business as a real business venture and not a casual hobby (such as blogging for profit) if you want to reap the most rewards and keep it all legal.

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I know there are plenty of “serious” online ventures. At the same time I think there are infinitely more webpreneurs, webmasters, bloggers, etc. who are essentially running online businesses but not taking them seriously as such (and of course I’m only talking about the ones blatantly trying to make money here – a blogger on a personal journal-style blog doesn’t count). Why is this?

I think the biggest problem is that it’s extremely easy to set up an online business, and there’s little to no startup capital required for many of them. Therefore it really is possible for “anyone” to start an online business these days.

However, being easy doesn’t make it any less of a business, and there are a few benefits to taking your online business seriously from the start:

• Avoid legal and tax problems down the road
• The more serious to treat your project, the more likely you’ll stick with it in the long run (and more likely you’ll earn a significant income)
• Others can tell when you don’t take your work seriously, and it can hurt your credibility

Here are a few basic things you should consider doing to take your online business more seriously:

• Register it as a formal business if appropriate
• Keep thorough financial and administrative records
• Invest time and / or money into adequate marketing tactics
• Take the time to do market research on your audience and their behaviors before getting into your online business to begin with

What else do you think people can do to take their businesses more seriously, and what other benefits do you see in doing so?

Summary: Learn how to find a niche for a new blog, from choosing general niche market ideas to doing keyword research and evaluating the competition in a potentially profitable niche market. This post is a part of the “Start a Blog in 7 Days” series, designed to help new bloggers launch their first blogs, from choosing a niche to launch marketing.

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When you want to set up a new blog, the first step is to find a niche (a topic) to blog about. How you choose a niche for your blog will depend on your blogging motivations: whether you’re blogging simply for pleasure, to promote something, to monetize the blog, etc.The information here and in the rest of the “Start a Blog in 7 Days” series is designed to help bloggers setting up blogs for their own use (not people setting up blogs solely for making money, where they don’t intend to actually blog themselves – such as setting up splogs or hiring other writers / bloggers to do all of the writing).

Blogging Goals

If your primary goal of launching a new blog is to promote a company, product, service, or person, then you already have your niche; what you’re promoting.

If your blogging goal is to manage a personal blog, then your niche topic is yourself and your life or business.

If your primary goal of blogging is to write about something you love, and you’re not concerned with making money, then you will simply choose something that you’re interested in enough to write about it regularly without running out of things to say (perhaps your favorite local sports team, a specific type of craft, a style of cooking, a hobby, etc.).

What poses a bigger problem for new bloggers, or experienced bloggers launching a new blog, is how to find a niche for a new blog where the goal is to treat it as a business (or at least supplemental income stream). Let’s talk about finding a profitable niche for blogging.

Factors When Finding a Profitable Niche for Blogging

• If you plan to use contextual ad networks (like Google Adsense), you’ll need to find a niche with a good selection of keyword phrases that are heavily searched for as well as ones that have a good bit of advertiser competition (advertisers will pay more for the clicks).
• No matter how you choose to monetize your new blog, traffic will play an integral role (the more traffic, the more potential clicks; the more traffic, the more private advertisers will pay, etc.). You have to find out if there’s truly a big enough need for information in niche to keep traffic coming. You’ll also need to evaluate the level of competition (if a niche market is over-saturated, it can be much more difficult to rank well in search engines and steal a decent-sized piece of the niche traffic pie).
• You should always choose a niche that you’re passionate about when launching a new blog, even if your primary goal is to make money blogging. Blogs aren’t like static content sites (if you’re using them in their true sense and not just using a blog platform to launch a content site). You don’t just put a few posts up and leave the site alone. Blogs are designed to be regularly updated, and if you’re not interested in the subject matter, you’ll find yourself discouraged (especially in the beginning when earnings can be quite low) and you’ll risk running out of blog post ideas fairly quickly.

What are you Passionate About?

The best place to start when learning how to find a niche for a blog is to sit down and write a list of everything you’re passionate about – your work or area of expertise, your hobbies, your favorite places, etc.

Go through that list several times narrowing it down to just a handful of topic ideas that you love, where you think you can come up with enough post ideas to get you at least through your first year (if you think it would be unlikely that you could post once per day, or close to it, without running out of ideas, delete a niche idea from your list).

Once you have a few ideas bouncing around in your head, it’s time to do some keyword research and to evaluate the competition to determine which idea would make for the most profitable niche that you could maintain an interest in blogging about.

Keyword Research and Market Research

I find that Google’s Adwords Sandbox tool is an excellent resource for keyword research (even if not highly specific) when finding and choosing a profitable blog niche. The process is simple:

• Enter one or more keywords or keyword phrases to check (if you’re interested in cooking for example, you might search for cooking, recipes, or more specific phrases such as low-fat cooking, low-carb cooking, holiday recipes, etc.).
• Google will return a list of related keyword phrases (including the ones you’ve entered) – meaning it’s a keyword suggestion tool as much as a keyword research tool for search and advertiser information.
• The Adwords Sandbox doesn’t give exact search numbers, but instead a bar showing search frequency, and another showing advertiser competition. The concept is simple: you should preferably want keywords ranking high in both areas.
• If it looks as though there are a good number of keyword phrases available in the niche you’re interested in, you may be onto something. Now do a Google search for some of those keyword phrases, and look at the number of results being returned (search in quotes for multiple word phrases to find exact matches).

In an ideal situation you’ll find a topic that you’re passionate about, which gets a lot of monthly searches, which has a good bit of advertiser competition (if you’re using contextual ads), and which doesn’t have an obscene amount of competition.

Is Your Niche Narrow Enough?

If you’re really interested in a niche, but you’re finding a lot of competition, you can always consider narrowing your niche. For example, if you were interested in writing about holiday recipes, you would find that Google returns one and a half million results for that search phrase. You can narrow it down more by choosing topics such as “Thanksgiving dinner recipes” (which has around 25,000 results), “easy holiday recipes” (with around 67,000 results), or better yet “vegetarian holiday recipes” (with just over 1000 results returned).

If you really still wanted to go with the more general niche for the blog, a good strategy would be to create categories or sections of your new blog to take advantage of more specific niches within your larger choice (like categories for the niche examples given above).

At the same time, if you find that there is almost no competition at all for a niche, it may be because there isn’t enough interest to make it profitable. In that case, see if there’s a way you can expand the niche to a larger topic encompassing the narrow niche you’d like to cover.

Before you start thinking about the technical side of blogging (where to host your blog, what blog platform to use, etc.) or your blog’s overall content strategy, make sure that you’re comfortable with your blog niche choice.

In this seven-part / seven-day series, I’ll be walking you through the steps of launching a new blog. This is set up in a seven day set for those who can’t devote a lot of time up front. Others will be able to complete all of these steps in a matter of hours (something I actually do myself periodically).

The seven day series on launching a new blog will generally target newer bloggers rather than more experienced and advanced bloggers. The topics will include things like:

• Choosing a niche
• Choosing a name / domain name
• Hosting options for the blog
• Coming up with a blogging / content strategy
• Preparing startup content
• Launch marketing and other blog promotion
• Encouraging reader interaction

Be sure to check back tomorrow for our first post in the series on niches and naming your blog.

EDIT: You can access the full list of posts in the “start a blog in 7 days” series here (as they’re published):

Day One: How to Find a Niche for a New Blog
Day Two: How to Choose a Name, Domain Name, and Web Hosting Company
Day Three: How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your New Blog
Day Four: Creating a Content Strategy for Your New Blog
Day Five: Creating Start-Up Content for Your New Blog

Business blogging, or corporate blogging, has potential PR value for even small business owners. If you’re considering setting up a company blog for your small or online business, there are several things you might do with that business blog, including:

1. Using the business blog to present company news, or the owner’s (or other high level executive’s) take on industry news issues.

2. Using the business blog as a way to educate the public, and more importantly your target market, about your products, services, etc.

3. Using the business blog as a tool to offer free industry information or articles, as a means of then driving Web traffic to other areas of your business site.

By creating a business blog for any of those reasons, you also have a free or inexpensive, yet powerful, PR tool. There are a variety of public relations benefits to business blogging, such as:

1. The ability to disseminate news.

2. The ability to quickly and directly gather feedback from your target audience.

3. The ability to build a company or personal reputation as an authority source in an industry or niche.

In order to best take advantage of the PR benefits of blogging (sometimes referred to as the marketing benefits of blogging), it’s important to keep the blog honest and ethical by industry standards. As much as blogging can be a PR benefit, it can also lead to negative publicity just as easily (such as if you were to release false information or just hype about a new product release), so always keep your business motives in mind when deciding to launch a business or corporate blog, and when deciding whether to blog yourself or hire a ghost writer as your business blogger.