Ok to have diverse/unrelated topics in blog?
Hey all!
I feel I am not in the position to indiehack yet. So I thought it would be fun and useful to start a blog. Therefore, I started one on WP hosted on AWS lightsail and using a WP free theme. I might look into purchasing a better theme some time in the future but it works fine for now.
However, I am a newbie at SEO and was wondering both for SEO's sake and generally whether it is a good idea to have diverse topics in a blog.
For instance, I plan to write coding tutorials, programming/tech related tips/opinions, poetry(non-tech obviously) and finally book (entrepreneurial/non-fiction) reviews.
Would these categories be too diverse for a blog and maybe limit the possibilities for growth? Is it better to focus on one of these topics?
Originally, my aim was not to monetize or make any money but I also don't want to prevent that from ever happening.
So glad to have found this community :)
It really depends on your goals and niche.
Google is incredibly crowded. It used to be that just by creating content you could be discovered but the fact is with billions of indexed pages and more being published each day it's getting more and more competitive.
Google is on a mission to provide the best answer to every query. If you want to rank on Google and maximize the impact of your content, then you'll need a strategy.
Strategy, in simplest terms, is making coordinated decisions designed to win. This means committing to a topic, having a persona in mind, answering questions that persona cares about, and creating content that is valuable to them.
Otherwise you're playing to participate rather than win. There is nothing wrong with that if you are blogging for the fun of it.
I have a persona blog where I write about entrepreneurship, SEO, and faith. It's a mix of topics but that's because I write for the sake of writing rather than to rank. I don't intend for my personal blog to rank, and if anything does it's a happy accident.
I run an SEO strategy company though where all we write about is SEO strategy because we want to rank in that space. It's a competitive space with established players so we have developed a strategy to take them on and compete.
At the end of the day, it depends on your goals and the niche you occupy.
Thank you for your insights. So what you are saying essentially is to target a niche if I want profitability and the blog to rank. At the end of the day there is a tradeoff.
No problem!
And yes, if ranking is the goal your best bet is to pick a niche and dig deep into it.
I cloudn't focus on just one topic, so on my blog I cover a few loosely related ones. As for whether it's good or bad for SEO or growth, I want to bruteforce such a multi-topic approach into eventually showcasing and promoting my work. It'll take time but, in the long-term, it'll make creating content seasier.
Yes same here, I like diversity in topics when writing.