Blogs and Blog Topics

Bloggers often wonder what topics they should or should not include in their blog. Many bloggers have interests and views they would like to discuss on their blogs but are not sure how it will affect their search engine ranking and readership. The fact is that a large amount of unique content will attract a higher ranking. The variety of topics covered will strengthen the domain making it easier to rank well for new keywords. However, this move may cost the blogger his/her readers.

What makes a great blog?

Five qualities make for a great blog and content counts as the first three. Content, content, content, interactivity and syndication will ensure successful blogging. Readers will visit your blog, return to it, reference you and subscribe to your feeds as long as you provide content which is interesting, informative and relevant. Having established that, it stands to reason that bloggers trepidation with regards to the selection and presentation of blog topics is completely justified.

Topic selection

Topic selection and the leeway you allow yourself with regards to relevance will depend on the blogs purpose. These days, blogs are commonly found on commercial and corporate websites in-which the author discusses topics related to their products, services, industry and organisation.

In this case delving into related topics is interesting and adds spice to the content however straying too far from the main topic will cause readers to lose interest. Chances are you will probably attract a great deal of irrelevant traffic thus skewing your analytics and conversion ratio. The point is that content should always be written with the target audience in mind.

In the case of personal or social blogs, the author is often looking to attract the interest of a wide circle of like-minded individuals. Although this model allows more room to express views on a wider variety of topics, it is important to keep the discussion general and not get too specific. This type of blog will benefit from the diverse cross section of incoming links driving their search engine ranking upwards whilst at the same time keeping readers enthralled by the shifting content.

The niche blog on the other hand focuses on a very specific topic and usually contains a number of advertisements. Straying from the main topic of a niche blog would be counterproductive however I have come across a number of content portals containing several niche blogs in one website. These sites obviously require a great deal of resources to maintain and may be better served by having several blogs with a unique topic.

In answer to the question, is one blog with many topics better than many blogs with a single topic each, I would like to reiterate that the number of topics a blog includes should depend on the nature of the blog and its purpose.

Also, including more topics in a blatant effort to improve search engine optimisation may be transparent to regular readers. It is a good idea to consider topic selection carefully and test the waters by gauging reader’s reactions to changes in the topic.