If you have a successful niche blog, which has a decent Page rank and good SERP, it is tempting to diversify your blog / website.
These are the advantages of diversifying
1. Topics often overlap.
People interested in mortgages are probably interested in general finance issues. Thus you don’t have to just blog about mortgages but can talk about debt, loans, interest rates, house prices.
2. More Traffic.
Increasing the range of articles which will enable higher traffic, more chance for links and a more powerful blog.
3. More Articles to Write about.
It can get a little boring just writing about mortgages, a greater range of topics will stimulate more writing and keep you interested, this is very important for the long term success of a blog.
4. Saves Duplicating effort
Saves effort of starting a new blog, and getting all the necessary links, new design e.t.c. There are definitely economies of scale in blogging.
Problems of Diversifying a Niche Blog
1. May lose RSS readers.
If your blog becomes a potpourri of topics, you may put off regular readers. People won’t know what to expect. With successful blogs you can usually predict what kind of posts will come.
However, there is a way around this. Don’t just rely on the one blog per domain name. There is no reason why you can’t add pages within the website, or even have 2 blogs on the site. One blog could be just for the niche, the other can be a more general diversified blog.
2. Harder to rank
May not be as easy to rank for unrelated keywords. Google give rankings depending on the relevance of keywords. Therefore, if you have a blog about blogging, your anchor text links will reflect this. If you now try to monetize for personal finance, google will see it is not relevant to your existing blog, therefore, you may not do as well in rankings.
However, I have to say, that quite often you can rank for many unrelated keywords, like my personal site richardpettinger.com
It is important that the content bears some resemblance to the domain name. If you have a blog “netwriting” but start having articles on mortgages, people will not give the article has much authority as if it was on a domain like: mortgageguide.com e.t.c
(This is one reason for choosing a neutral domain name.)
Conclusion.
I have tried several niche blogs, however, one Mortgage blog become clearly the most successful. When I concentrate on this blog it gives the best return, in terms of traffic and monetary potential. Therefore, I have started to diversify the topics on this domain name, whilst staying within the general framework of personal finance. I don’t worry too much about RSS readership, my main target is to write good articles that are of value. If you can offer real articles of value then, whatever you blog about, it will be easier to be successful.
More resources on niche blogging at Blogging Fingers.
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Thanks,
I have a blog that started as a test so it is several blogs tied together. Yes, it is different topics. So many people have told me I am doing it wrong. I am in the process of deciding what I should do. So, this post has helped me.
Thanks for keeping it simple!
Sheryl
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