Here are a few examples of good and bad topics to cover for new blogs for some of the main niches we mentioned at the beginning of the guide.
- Good topics = low competition, low searches, super specific, perfect for beginning bloggers.
- Bad topics = high competition, higher searches, broad topics that require a lot of trust first.
Here we go!
1. DIY and Crafts
Good topic = how to make christmas light balls with plastic cups
Very specific project, gets about 100 searches (more at xmas), low competition.
Bad topic = diy stained glass
This is a pretty broad topic within DIY, and gets about 2,900 searches per month.
It’s doable, but would be very difficult for a new blog to rank for and get traffic.
2. Home Improvement
Good topic = how to match paint color on wall
This is a specific problem that gets about 200 searches per month.
Bad topic = exterior house colors
This is a super broad, competitive topic that won’t be specific enough to really get traffic.
The first page of results includes sites like Better Homes & Gardens, Bob Vila and Sherwin Williams.
It would be really hard to get any traffic at all from a topic like this.
3. Food
Good topic = what to do with leftover lasagna noodles
Again, a very specific search that’s not too competitive and gets about 300 searches per month.
Bad topic = chicken salad recipe
Too broad, too competitive and hard to beat big sites like Food Network that have been ranking for this recipe for years and years.
Start from the Bottom
When you’re just starting a new job, especially if you have no experience, sometimes you gotta start at the bottom.
You don’t walk in and take the corner office.
Same thing happens with Google rankings and traffic.
You can’t start a new blog and expect to get immediate Google traffic – especially from big topics and searches.
Instead, you start at the bottom, put in the work and prove that you’re useful to others.
Then, once your work is recognized, you can move up.
That’s the exact strategy I’ve used for blogging and it’s always worked well.
Start small, build trust, grow to bigger opportunities down the road.
If you do this right, you’ll be blown away by how well blogging can work, even if you’re just covering small topics that get 200 searches or less each month.
Quick Recap
- build trust by writing about small, specific problems first
- focus on topics more than individual keywords
- move to bigger topics once you’ve built up trust with readers and Google
- avoid the two big rookie mistakes of choosing topics
Homework
If you have a niche in mind, think about some examples of small, specific problems and try to compare them to broader topics that would be too competitive.
This is a great way to get in the habit of finding long-tail topics to blog about.
For example, if you’re thinking about going into travel, a small, specific problem and search might be “fun things to do with kids in London.”
The broad version of that would be “things to do in London,” which would likely be extremely competitive.
Get in the habit of finding specific versions of broad problems and searches.
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