What is a niche for a blog?
At its core, “niche” can be thought of as a word synonymous with “topic”. It is a specific, targeted field that you understand and provide service for. Each niche can have its focus on geography, industry, population demographic and even lifestyle. The niche of your website will depend on the nature of your business. When a website contains content for multiple sets of audiences, it’s called a multi-niche or multi-topic website. The essential point to remember in both cases is that you need to be clear about your niche or topic or category. It is needed to help you create relevant content.
Let’s try to understand this more with the help of an example. Let’s say you are an eCommerce business for men’s clothing and accessories. Your website content, including blogs, will centre around men’s clothing. So, that can be called your niche. It is interesting to note that some people may describe it as a multi-niche website because ‘hey, T-Shirts is a niche, you can’t club them with Ties!’
Single-niche vs Multi-topic Websites
Let’s make a comparison between the two and learn about their pros and cons.
Single niche websites
The pros of single-niche websites include:
- Comparatively easy SEO: You’ll be able to optimise your website for search engines quickly. Doing the required market research and data analysis will need lesser time, effort, and cost.
- Community: It will be easy to build and maintain an engaging community when your website is single-topic. Your audience will find it easier to rely on and trust a source that provides them what they want without the fuss of filtering through content they’re not interested in.
The cons of single-topic websites are:
- Need more content research: When you centre your website on a single topic, you have to establish yourself as an expert to get enough traction. To do that, you will have to do more in-depth research for your content.
- Less reach: One of the major cons of single-niche blogs is that they generally have less reach over social media. It’ll be harder to make sure your website gets to the general public, which is not exactly a bad thing if your aim is to reach a targeted audience.
Multi-topic websites
The pros of multi-topic websites include
- More social media reach: For content creators, social media is a hub for traffic sources. Compared to single-niche websites, this type of website earns you a wider reach and more traffic.
- Content: As mentioned, the scope of content you can create in multi-topic websites is almost limitless. You’ll have more resources to develop content as every day, something new happens. Content research will also be easy due to the constant availability of resources.
- Adaptability: Multi-niche websites offer your business more adaptability and longevity. You can focus on topics that generate more traffic at the moment and move on to the next when the hype dies down.
The cons of multi-niche websites are
- Complicated SEO: As your website branches out to different fields, SEO will become more complex. It will require you to put in more effort and time.
- Professional help: It is almost impossible to manage a multi-niche website on your own. You will need an expert team to create relevant content and maintain and run such a website properly.
- More expenses: Compared to single-niche websites, multi-niche websites have higher operating costs. You’ll have to spend more on your supporting team as well.
Should your business have a niche website or a multi-topic website?
There is no one solution that fits all – it depends on your business needs and goals. If your website is primarily a blog or a news website, a multi-niche website will help keep your audience engaged. If your business relates to a specific industry, then a single-niche website will be more helpful in building authority. It doesn’t have to be ‘either/or’ scenario. Let’s say you have a multi-business company. You can create multiple single-niche websites catering to each business vertical. You will need to take that decision based on your business’s legal and functional structure and the target audience.
Both multi-niche and single-niche websites have benefits and drawbacks. Multi-niche websites help you create content quickly and gives you a more expansive social reach. On the other hand, single-niche websites have less complicated SEO and help you build a solid audience. If you feel neither option suit your business, you also have the option to run multiple single-topic websites. Do you want to discuss further about niche websites vs multi-topic websites before making a decision? Contact us or email us at sales@computingaustralia.group, and our team at Perth will be happy to help you!Jargon Buster
SEO – Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques and technologies that allow you to improve web pages’ ranking in organic search results.
Content research – Content research is the process of understanding a topic and presenting it to withstand competition in the existing content landscape.