🔍 death to niche blogs

Once you have a content strategy, it’s time to start writing…

But what should you write about?

Google has always been the way to build organic traffic…sometimes called “search traffic”. These are the users that you attract to your website or blog through “rankings” and “keyword research”.

Keyword research is basically the process of finding phrases and terms that people search a lot on Google. It’s a good way of anticipating your market. If a “keyword” has thousands of queries per month on Google then it’s possible by ranking highly for it, you would be able to capture some traffic.

The more traffic you capture, the better chance that someone “converts” in either buying your product or seeing an ad that they then click on.

More on that in a later edition…

In the age of AI though, being top ranked in Google isn’t exactly the best way to attract eyeballs to your website anymore. That’s because Google place paid ads and now their “AI Overview” over almost all of the top organic results.

It does not stop people from doing SEO and gunning for that coveted #1 position in Google. But it’s mostly a vanity metric at this point.

It’s not what it used to be and doesn’t spell instant success for your blog like it used.

If you look at the top of the search rankings these days, you will find the knowledge graph, YouTube videos, and relevant website posts.

If it’s just blue links, you’re maybe in luck! Unfortunately, those blue links and the top search results are probably giant publications that you will never outrank.

This is what makes it so tough for the little guy these days.

There was once a day when the top organic results for something like “fondue recipes” were niche, microblogs run by your Aunt Sally. Google loved niche blogs run by passionate people. But once word got out that people could monetize ranking for niche things, it became a race to the bottom.

Keyword research became a term used by pseudo experts. People looking to make passive income started blogs because they found a vertical that had low competition and high search volume.

I know because I was one of these people.

Soon, everyone and their mother (not just Aunt Sally) were starting niche blogs. It became oversaturated quickly. The YouTube channel Income School (which has >200K subscribers), for example, taught its viewers how to throw up blogs quickly with little to no expertise.

It only got worse once those big media companies (that, again, you will never outrank) started acquiring niche blogs and backlink to each other. In bulk, they became huge content farms, producing bad content. It was over.

I’ve written that Google won’t bite the hand that feeds when it comes to search…yet.

While niche blogs are mostly dead, organic results are still seemingly important to Google. They still do algorithm updates, and they’re trying to right the ship. Hell, there might come a day when they prioritize niche blogs again and our rankings rise like a phoenix.

I’m skeptical. But in my bones, I feel that blogging is still important and I want to give this a full-go.

Rankings and keywords shouldn’t stop you from honing your content strategy on a website of your own. Sure, it’ll be discouraging for a while. I know mine is. I just got my first click in the Google Search Console after weeks of posting new content.

Yes…I’m absolutely cooking. But I’m learning about my niche and vertical through the massive amount of data Google provides to me through the search console. “Keyword research” is helping me see if there really is a market for me here.

Only time will tell, but I’m going to have to get more creative in order to get more clicks to my blog…but how?

Next week, I’ll start experimenting…with AI.