Picking a niche for your blog can be quite difficult, especially if you have multiple topics you’re excited about. For this reason, some people wonder if they really need a niche or if they can write about anything they want. If you’re blogging for fun, then it doesn’t really matter. However, if you want to eventually make some money, then picking a single niche is best. There will be times though when a multi-niche site can work (more on that later).
Why you should have one niche per site
While you may be excited to blog about various topics, you want to have each site focused on just one niche.
There are a lot of benefits to this, including:
- Topical authority: When you focus on a single niche, Google will view you as more of an authority on that topic and rank you higher. You’ll also have more opportunities for interlinking pages.
- Mailing lists: If you decide to build a mailing list, you want to make sure you’re sending emails that your audience wants to read. If your emails are about different niches, your readers might lose interest and unsubscribe. While this could be solved by segmenting your subscribers to only receive certain emails, it does make things more complicated. Sticking to one niche will help you grow your list better.
- Social followings: Just like having a mailing list, building subscribers on social channels will be much easier with a single niche. If users see too many topics they aren’t interested in, they are more likely to unsubscribe.
- Branding: Another huge factor is branding. It’s not really possible to build a brand around unrelated niches. By having a single niche, you’ll be able to build a much better brand.
All of these reasons listed are about building a targeted audience and building trust with users and Google. With good trust and branding, you’ll increase your chances of getting backlinks and partnership opportunities.
If you need help choosing a niche, I’ve created a comprehensive guide to choosing a niche.
Can a multi-niche site work?
While I believe picking a single niche is best, a multi-niche site can be fine in some cases. For example, I once had a camping site that I expanded to include hiking. This works because the two niches are closely related and often share the same audience. Those who enjoy the outdoors usually hike and camp. I could have expanded this further into fishing and hunting.
However, be aware; the further you expand your niche, the harder it will be to maintain your brand and authority. There are indeed some general outdoor sites that are successful, but part of their success could have been attributed to their experience and starting with a more narrow niche that was expanded later. Knowing this, my recommendation would be to start with a single niche first and pick a good domain name that won’t be too broad or too narrow.
What about lifestyle blogs?
Lifestyle blogs are a loose term to define blogs centered around one’s life, often sharing personal thoughts, feelings, and stories. A lot of these blogs are created by women and discuss topics such as travel, recipes, relationships, parenting, finances, DIY, fashion, and health.
While there are successful lifestyle blogs that exist, they have two challenges:
- Discussing too many topics makes it difficult to become an expert in all of them
- SEO will be much harder when posts are centered around personal experiences rather than keywords
That being said, it may still be possible to get traffic from other sources like Pinterest and social media. If you do create a lifestyle blog, try to keep the number of topics to a minimum.
What if I just want to blog for fun?
If you want to blog for fun, then feel free to write about anything you want. I actually do this myself on Medium. I don’t make money from it but rather use it as a creative outlet. The good thing about Medium is that the platform will show your blog to other members of the site. This means you can take advantage of existing traffic instead of relying on SEO.
Takeaways
- If you’re blogging for fun, feel free to write about any topic you want
- If you’re blogging for profit, sticking to a single niche is best
- Focusing on a single niche allows you to build authority and a brand
- Multi-niche sites can work if the niches are closely related
- Focus on a single niche first before expanding into multi-niche
- Lifestyle blogs can face challenges with topical authority and SEO