Understanding WordPress

Blog Writing Tips

Frank — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:16:41 +0000

In addition to writing keyword-rich content, here are some tips to help you keep readers reading, and to keep them returning to your blog.

Don’t just show, show and tell.
Write clickable titles.
Make your point in the first 200 words.
Make your words timeless.
Don’t waste words.
Explain jargon.
Use descriptions in images and links
Use descriptions for flash, podcasts, videocasts and screencasts.
Present a problem, the solution and the results.
Originality will always win.
Blog paragraphs are short.
Use command verbs to teach.
Punctuate properly.
Teach your readers.
Visualize who you are writing to.
Write kinda like you talk.
Avoid screaming.
Write with conviction and passion.
If you don’t have anything to blog, don’t.

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What do search engines see on your blog?

Frank — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:46:18 +0000

Remove the style sheet from your blog’s layout and design and you will see what search engines see when they visit.

What do they see first? What is left when you remove all the pretty? That’s what search engines see.

Things you need to know about search engines when they visit your blog:

Search engines don’t “see” your design, only the words
Search engines hunt for keywords
Keyword usage and placement influences their importance
Layout matters. Push content to the top of the physical page, not the bottom
Frames, iframes and tables can block search engines from finding your content
HTML/XHTML errors can stop a search engine from visitiing
404 page not found errors, dead, or moved links lead nowhere
Flash, DHTML, or JavaScript which replaces text and have no descriptions are ignored

It is critical to ensure all such errors and road blocks are fixed. Search engines are now sophisticated enough to verify if your design and structure meets web standards. A poorly coded blog can lower your page rank score. And a poorly designed, error-filled blog can lead the robot or spider in a wrong direction, confuse it, or stop it in its tracks. If it has difficulty moving through your pages, it will stop.

Well-designed and web standard code allows the crawler to move easily through your site, which tells the search engine the site is designed with care and attention to detail and web standards.

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Reasons why people comment

Frank — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:26:13 +0000

A comment requires some forethought by most people. They want to get it right, have it well thought out, and appear like they know what they are talking about. While some can comment without much thought, others ponder the answer.

A good blogger appreciates the effort the goes into leaving a comment. But the urge to compel someone to comment by begging, demanding, or whinning about the lack of comments can turn a commenter away quickly. They want that appreciation and the natural flow of the conversation.

Most blog readers admit that a post is most likely to get comments if:

They know the blog author personally.
They feel a personal connection to the issue.
They have something to say about the issue.
They are asked a direct question they feel qualified to answer.
They feel the comment will be useful to the blogger or other readers.
The post makes them angry.
The post offers wrong or inadequate advice.
There’s a misspelling or gramatical error in the content.
If others have left at least two comments, they feel it is safe to comment.
There is a chance that their comment will get a response.
They want recognition and links to their blog.

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What is a ping?

Frank — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:31:01 +0000

Ping, in the simplest terms, is an Internet tool that knocks on the doors of search engines and directories to invite them to crawl your website or blog.

When you publish a post on your blog, modern blogging programs send a signal to a pinging service such as Pingomatic which relays a digital invitation to seach engines, tagging services, and other web crawling services to visit your blog.

If you wish to manually ping, do it more than once within a reasonable length of time can result in penalization. Pinging is like submission to a search engine and carries penalization for abuse.

Manual pinging is a great way to reach search engines and directories outside of the most popular indexing services.

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Tips on Blog Administration and Management

Frank — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:08:26 +0000

Administrating your blog goes beyond just writing posts and tracking your page ranking. It includes the regularly scheduled maintenance a blog need over time.

Managing your blog is a challenge at first as it is all new and there is so much to learn. As your blog becomes more sophisticated, possibly expanding into advertising, you will spend more time, do more research, and work harder at trying new things to make your blog better, and your readers happier.

Here are some quick tips to help your manage your blog better and more efficiently.

Create a blog maintenance calendar
Keep a collection of ready-to-publish posts handy
Don’t expect to reply to every comment
Create a home page for your product or service
Backup your blog
Upgrade your blogging program
Update plugins, widgets, gadgets and add-ons
Update blog content
Check for dead links and 404s
Validate and optimize your blog’s code

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Tips for Building Blog Content

Frank — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:07:15 +0000

Writing with keyword-rich content helps your blog be found and readers to fully understand what you are writing about. Write consistent and purposeful content.

The more inline your content is with your blog’s purpose, the more concentrated your use of keywords will be throughout the entire blog, not just on a per-post basis. The more diverse your blog’s content, the more diffused your keyword usage will be across all of your blog.

Make a plan for your content. Make lists of the topics you will write about in keeping with your blog’s purpose. Stick to those subjects as much as possible to build your blog’s reputation as the place to come for answers on those subjects.

Your blog’s content lables your blog
Readers thrive on consistency and continuity
Write timeless content
Blog passionately
Give readers a reason to return
Give readers a reason to blog about your blog
Don’t regurgitate content
Comments speak for your blog
Blog on a schedule
Publish just before your readers are ready
Keep it interesting

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Create a Static Home Page

Frank — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:44:45 +0000

Almost 90% of blogs use the list of most recent posts as a homepage. However, if you prefer to use a static page as a homepage, the choice is yours. This technique allows you to use WordPress and create different kinds of web sites—not only blogs.

The possibility of using a static page as a homepage is built-in in the WordPress—however, a lot of bloggers aren’t aware of it.

How to do it

Step 1: Log in to your WordPress Dashboard and create a page named Homepage and publish it.

Step 2: On your WordPress Dashboard, go to Settings | Reading. You’ll see a title saying Front page displays.

Step 3: Select the A static page radio button and choose your new front page from the drop-down list. If you please, you can also choose a new template for the posts to be displayed.

For more information check the WordPress Codex: http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_a_Static_Front_Page

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Restoring a Live Blog into a Local Development Blog

Frank — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:30:53 +0000

If you purchased the Intermediate WordPress: Installing a Development Blog, you now have an ‘empty’ blog that is setup locally on your home PC to use for development of themes, plugins, etc.

This is great, but you may need some actual content to test out all your theme or other changes. Creating ‘dummy’ content is one option, but it can take awhile to create and is not the same as the actual content that a ‘live’ blog contains.

So if you already have a blog online, you can follow these steps after you have your local environment (Apache, PHP, and MySQL) up and running (covered in the lesson).

Step 1: Create a backup from your current live blog.

Log into phpMyAdmin (from a web host account), and select the “Export” tab.
Select the database your WordPress blog uses.
Make sure the “SQL” radio button is selected.
Click the “GO” button.
A new screen will display with a textarea box containing many SQL statements. These will re-create your entire database, tables with content when executed.
Copy this script to your favorite text editor

Step 2: Modifying your backup script.

Since we are restoring to a database from a different blog, we have to ‘tweak’ it a bit (database name and url parameters).
Change name of the database to the database of your development blog. This should be the first command in the script starting with CREATE DATABASE.
There are two lines that you need to specify the url of your development (http://localhost/). Do a text search on the ‘wp_options’ table. You will need to change the parameters of two INSERT INTO statements (’siteurl’ and ‘home’).

Step 3: Copy your blog folder structure.

Copy the entire folder struture (and all files) of your live blog to your root directory of your local Apache environment. You can create a subfolder in your root if you wish. I discuss where this location is in the lesson.
Once copied, open up the wp-config.php file and make the neccessary changes. This would involve changing the database name (DB_NAME), database user (DB_USER), and database password (DB_PASSWORD) and MySQL host (DB_HOST). I discuss this in the lesson as well.

Step 4: Execute your modified restore script.

Open up phpMyAdmin in your local environment
Select the “SQL” tab.
Paste the restore script in the textarea box.
Click the “Go” button.
Verify that the database and tables have been created.

Step 5: Open up your local blog

Go to your local blog that you just copied all the files to. This will be http://localhost/. You will specify the subfolder if you created that as well.
Log into you blog

Now you have an exact local copy of your live blog that you can develop and test.

Note: Since we didn’t change any other parameters in the restore script, some of your plugins may not work. Also, if you use custom permalinks, you may need to modify your .htaccess file. Change your permalinks to the default setting (Settings->Permalinks), if you cannot see certain pages in your local blog.

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Highlighting Searched Text in Search Results

Frank — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:13:00 +0000

I must admit that I’m not a big fan of the WordPress built-in search engine. One of its weakest features is the fact that searched text aren’t highlighted in the results, so the visitor is unable to see the searched text in the context of your article.

Luckily, there’s a nice hack using regular expressions to automatically highlight searched text in search results. This code has been created by Joost de Valk who blogs at www.yoast.com.

1. Open your search.php file and find the following:

1	echo $title;

2. Replace with:


$title = get_the_title();
$keys= explode(" ",$s);
$title = preg_replace('/('.implode('|', $keys) .')/iu',
'\0',$title);
?>

3. Save the search.php file and open the style.css file. Append the following line to it:

1	strong.search-excerpt { background: yellow; }

4. You’re done. Now, the searched text will be highlighted in your search results.

How It Works:

This code is using PHP regular expressions to find the searched terms in the text returned by WordPress. When an occurrence has been found, it is wrapped in a HTML element. Then, I simply used CSS to define a yellow background to this element.

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Importing and Exporting Content

Frank — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:22:50 +0000

WordPress features a very useful script to import your posts, comments, and links from another platform to WordPress. Of course, it is possible to export your current blog content.

To access the Import tool, log in to your WordPress Dashboard and click on Tools | Import located at the top of the screen. To access the Export tool, go to Tools | Export.

Importing content
WordPress is able to import your previous blog content and automatically create post with it. WordPress can import content from Dotclear, TypePad/Movable Type, LiveJournal, Greymatter, Textpattern, Blogware, and Blogger.

To import your content from another blogging platform, you have to follow a platform specific procedure.

Importing content from an export file
The blogging clients, namely, LiveJournal, MovableType/Typepad, Blogware, and WordPress allow you to export your content into an xml , opml , or txt file. Follow this procedure to import your content from one of these blogging platforms:

1. Connect to your old blog and export your content. Save the file on your hard drive.
2. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard, then go to Tools | Import.
3. Select the blogging platform from where you’re importing the content.
4. On the next page, click on the Browse button to select the exported file located in your hard drive.
5. Once done, click on the Upload file and import button.
6. You’re done! Please note that depending on your exported file size, this procedure can take a while.

Importing content from database
If the blogging client you’re using is Dotclear or Textpattern, you have to import your content using your old blog database. Carry out the following procedure to get started:

1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard, and then go to Tools | Import.
2. Select the blogging platform you’re using.
3. On the next page, fill out the form to let WordPress know about your old blog server, database name, password, and so on.
4. When you’re done, click on the Import button.
5. Your content will now be imported. Note that the process can take a while depending of your database size.

Importing content from Blogger
Blogger is a very popular blogging platform—owned by Internet giant, Google. If you wish to move your Blogger blog into WordPress, carry out the following simple steps:

1. Make sure you have a Google account and an upgraded (New, was Beta) blog hosted on www.blogspot.com.
2. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard, then go to Tools | Import.
3. Select the Blogger option.
4. On the next page, you have to authorize WordPress to access your Blogger account. To do so, click on the Authorize button.
5. You will be redirected to a Google page, where you’ll see your Blogger blog listed. Click on the Allow accessbutton to authorize WordPress to access your old blog.
6. Once done, you’ll be taken back to your WordPress Dashboard, where you’ll see your Blogger blog’s name. Click on the Import button to start importing your content.

After you have finished the import process, you can clear the account information that has been stored into WordPress database during the content import. Simply click on the Clear account information button to get rid of your old account information. This will not affect any of your posts or comments.

Exporting content
For some reasons—such as, moving to another blogging platform, re-using your posts on another blog, and so on—you may want to export your content into a file that can be imported on another blogging platform or a different WordPress blog.

Exporting content is a very easy process, simply carry out the following steps:

1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard, then go to Tools | Export.
2. Select an author to export if you want to get the posts from a specific author only, otherwise select the All Authors option.
3. Click on the Download Export File button.

How it works

After having a look at the Import and Export tools, let’s have look at how they work:

Export tool

When the Download Export File is clicked, WordPress generates an XML file and prompts you to download it. This file—often referred to, as WXR (WordPress Extended RSS)—will contain your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. It can be imported on any WordPress install by using the Import Tool.

Import tool

Depending from which platform you’re importing content, the WordPress Import Tool
functions accordingly. For some content, you just have to submit a file (for example, suppose you want to import posts from a previous WordPress installation), whereas in some other cases (for example, importing from Dotclear blogs) you have to connect to the old blog database in order to import the content into WordPress.

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Themes – An Overview

Frank — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:04:14 +0000

Themes determine the look of your blog and save you the time of having to deal with most of the code involved, although WordPress allows you to get your hands into as much code as you like.

Most people (but not us) will be happy keeping the default WordPress theme, which is known simply as WordPress Default (formerly called Kubrick, created by Michael Heilemann)

The WordPress community makes many themes for you to choose from and many are free. The best place to find a theme is the WordPress Theme Directory at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/.

This directory is run by the same people who control WordPress itself, and they’ve set up some ground rules that a theme has to follow to be listed:

All theme files must be included in a single .zip file.
The theme must include a file called screenshot.png which is how the theme will look like.
The theme has to support widgets.
The theme must not contain any hidden or sponsored links.

You can change some of the functionality of your theme in two different ways: by adding widgets or using template tags.

Widgets are known as “side bar” accessories which are defined as WordPress add-ins which allow you to add design elements and functionality to your “sidebar” of your theme. The sidebar is normally an area on the right (sometimes on the left or bottom) that gives more information to the reader about the information in your blog. This can be a category list, a monthly archive of posts, blogroll, calendar highlighting days with posts, tag cloud, images, etc.

A template tag is a code that instructs WordPress to “do” or “get” something. It is a piece of PHP code that is encapsulated in a function. These code snipets are stored in the various PHP (.php) files that make up your WordPress theme.

Here are some videos (.zip) giving an overview of the topics covered in the class. In the class I cover these topics in much more detail as well many other topics.

Understanding Themes
Installing Themes
Customizing Themes
Modifying CSS
Modifying PHP

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Code to Display the Most Recent Comments

Frank — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:44:32 +0000

There are a few plugins that will retrieve the most comments. But if you want a little more control or like to get your hands dirty in a little PHP code, there is a code snippet that will do the trick:


 
global $wpdb;
$sql = "SELECT DISTINCT ID, post_title, post_password, comment_ID, comment_post_ID, comment_author, comment_date_gmt,
comment_approved, comment_type,comment_author_url, SUBSTRING (comment_content,1,30) AS com_excerpt
FROM $wpdb->comments
LEFT OUTER JOIN $wpdb->posts ON ($wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID = $wpdb->posts.ID)
WHERE comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type = '' AND post_password = ''
ORDER BY comment_date_gmt DESC LIMIT 10";
 
$comments = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
$output = $pre_HTML;
$output .= "\n";
foreach ($comments as $comment) {
   $output .= "\n".strip_tags($comment->comment_author) .":" . "\"" . get_permalink($comment->ID) .
   "#comment-" . $comment->comment_ID . "\" title=\"on " . $comment->post_title . "\">" 
   . strip_tags($comment->com_excerpt) ."
";
}
$output .= "\n
";
$output .= $post_HTML;
echo $output;
?>

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WordPress 2.8 Available – Highlights

Frank — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:25:15 +0000

WordPress, version 2.8 “Baker,” is available for download. Version 2.8 contains improvements to themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed and has over 790 bug fixes.

Highlights:

New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation.

Check out the official WordPress blog for more information on this latest version.

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Top Ten Search Engine Optimization Tips

Frank — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:50:03 +0000

The term Search Engine Optimization (SEO) describes a diverse set of activities that you can perform to increase the amount of targeted traffic that comes to your website from search engines (you may also have heard these activities called Search Engine Marketing or Search Marketing). This includes things you do to your site itself, such as making changes to your text and HTML code.

It also includes communicating directly with the search engines, or pursuing other sources of traffic by making requests for listings or links. Tracking, research, and competitive review are also part of the SEO package.

SEO is not advertising, although it may include an advertising component. It is not public relations, although it includes communication tasks similar to PR. As a continually evolving area of online marketing, SEO may sound complicated, but it is very simple in its fundamental goal: gaining targeted visitors.

There are thousands of professionals all over the world who earn their living by providing SEO services to website owners. The good SEO pros spend large amounts of time and resources learning the skills of effective optimization. This goes to show that you could easily spend years learning SEO since there is so much to learn.

Here are 10 top tips that I found from various resources on the internet that are sure to help you:

Be Unique or Cast into Oblivion
In a web world of “me too” web sites, products and services, nothing is more exciting than something totally unique. The side benefit is that people will search for keywords that belong only to you – think “Macintosh,” or “iPod.” Before Apple invented the products and made the words “Macintosh” and “iPod” into household names, how many people would have searched for those words?? Nobody, except maybe the creative people at Apple. Create a web site that reflects your uniqueness. Create a unique theme and you will boldly stand out from the zillions of other sites on the Internet. Plus, that way you will never have to try and obtain in-bound links – you will become a link magnet automatically!
Killer Keyword Research
Simply put, nothing else in SEO matters if you don’t get the foundation of your SEO right from the get-go. The foundation of all great SEO is made up of excellent Keyword research and selection. Along with this, never aim for highly competitive keywords when optimizing a site. Use the “long tail” approach and go for a wider reach. If you are in a niche market or your keywords are not highly competitive, then go for the targeted keyword selection approach. If not, go broad in your selection of keywords.
Hot Damn Keyword-Rich Anchor Text and Domain Names
Use keyword-rich domain names. And again, uniqueness here will pay off hugely. Search engines and directories look at domain names when ranking pages, though the benefit of keywords in your domain is small. But to your searchers, it’s huge! These bolded keywords in your domain names will help you stand out in the SERPs.Search Engines factor link popularity into their ranking algorithms and look at the anchor text of in-bound links pointing to your site. Text used in an anchor link that points to your web site should always contain your keywords, if possible. Having these keywords in your domain encourages webmasters to use the same keywords in the anchor text when they grant you an in-bound link from their web site to yours. Simply put, if the keywords are in your domain, you will most likely get links pointing to your site with keywords in the important anchor text as well.
Fabulous File Names, Folders and Paths
Just like domains, the keyword-rich theory also applies here. File names and folders should be short, easy to read and descriptive. The end result is that when your web page shows up in the SERPs, a searcher can immediately see relevant keywords in bold, from your domain name all the way down to the actual HTML file name.Keep the depth of the path shallow. This means, don’t bury web pages too deep. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if a user has to click more than three times to get to the relevant content within your web site, it’s buried too deep.
Radical Relevant Content Wins Every Time
Search engine robots search text to index and rank your web pages. So, give them what they want – keyword rich relevant text. Write body text for humans first, search bots second. Also, try to put yourself in your searchers’ shoes. Ask yourself – What might people be typing into Google’s search query field to find my web site? Then play the search “dating game” and give them what they want: relevant content and keywords sprinkled throughout the text. There are tens of thousand of opinions on how much text should be on a page. Use common sense and visually look at your page. Does it look skimpy in regards to how much relevant content you are trying to give searchers? My rule is a minimum of two hundred fifty words and above of highly relevant information. If a searcher has to scroll down more than a few inches “below the fold,” then I have too much text on the page.
Poignant Page Titles Rock
Web page titles weigh heavily in the algorithms of search engines and are not only important to them, but are also part of the first impression searchers usually look at after they perform a search query of your listing. It is crucial that you have your top keywords strategically placed in your page titles in the order that a searcher typed into the query field (or at least in close proximity). Put your most important category keywords at the beginning, in order of search importance. If you are optimizing a page for a company name or brand name, then consider separate web pages for each. A few good rules are: each page should be unique, with three major keywords for each web page, and three less important keywords.
Meaningful Meta Keyword & Description Tags
Many SEO experts say search engine keyword / description Meta tags are no longer or rarely used – I don’t agree. The proof is that a well-written Meta description tag for many of my clients is in fact picked up in the SERPs! Sometimes a snippet of it is used, along with a snippet of keyword-rich body text. Search engines change and tweak their algorithms all the time. They may, or may not, put more importance on meta tags in the future. I’ll keep playing it safe and use them.Writing a good description tag with a call to action that mentions “free shipping” or a “gift with a purchase” is certainly better than no description at all. Surveys of web searchers show that what searchers read most often is the search query description. Gathering a big juicy list of Meta keywords together helps the professional optimizer focus on which keywords are truly relevant to each and every web page – even if you only use a fraction of those keywords on the actual page.
Hell of a Heading (H1 – H6 tags)
I love these for two important reasons. Always remember: searchers scan text before reading text!Reason 1: The search engines appear to rate my client’s web pages really well when ever I use them.Reason 2: The other benefit is for searchers. Big, bold headings point out what’s on the page. Searchers scan the headings way before they commit to reading the body text. When a searcher clicks your listing in the SERPs and lands on one of your pages, they will read on if the headings contain their keywords. If they don’t contain the keywords, they take off in search of a site that has what they are looking for. Headings stand out and are “scan friendly,” so use them whenever you can.
Love Those Links!
The web got its start with links, and nothing about this has changed except that people (especially web site designers) are forgetting about this! Hypertext links are what search engine spiders follow to index and rank web pages. If search spiders can’t simply and easily follow links pointing to your site from other sites, from your site to their sites, or from page to page once inside of your site, then you will not be found – period. And if your site can’t be found, what is the point of having a web site in the first place? Some common problems that pose roadblocks for search spiders are: all-Flash sites, heavy-duty use of JavaScript, deep dynamic pages that are database-driven, and other advanced technologies. Google states it clearly in its Guidelines to webmasters: “Google has trouble indexing” these technologies. There is nothing wrong with using any of these (and other) advanced technologies on your web site, but you simply must take the search engine’s robot into consideration when using them.
Quick SEO Ranking Tricks and Guarantees (Yeah, right)
There aren’t any guarantees. Bottom line, if you’re the impatient type, you are not going to have any patience for SEO at all. SEO takes time. I repeat, TIME as in “months of time.” If you are the impatient type, I recommend that you open a Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing account, which will suit you much better than doing your own SEO. There is a very good reason that unethical SEO is called “black hat ” SEO. Taking the incredible risk of trying to do anything unethical with the search engines or with searchers will get you banned.

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10 Reasons Why Niche Blogs Are Successful

Frank — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:58:19 +0000

Niche blogs are mini blogs/websites that are designed specifically to appeal to a very specific niche. Due to the size of the internet and the amount of content out there, niche blogs tend to be VERY specific.

My other website, JavaScript Workshop could be considered a niche blog, but I expanded it to cover other topics other than “JavaScript”, but that is the general idea. This blog you are reading now is a niche blog.

Look at the top 100 blogs as tracked by Technorati.com and you’ll find that the majority of them have a defined niche. Some niches are wider than others—but in nearly all cases they’ve carved out a niche for themselves.

There are many reasons why choosing a niche is important to building a successful blog, but here are a few (10 to be exact).

Loyal readers—Niche blogs tend to develop a loyal readership because readers know that when they log in to a blog they’ll get relevant information on topics that they have an interest in, rather than random posts on topics that they have no desire to read.
Community—People like to gather with others like them. Many times when you develop a blog focusing on a single topic, you find that a group of like-minded people will gather around it not just to read what you have to say, but to interact with others who share their passions and interests.
Specialist authors—Authors of niche blogs have the freedom to really focus upon a topic and don’t feel guilty about doing so. This can lead to an increase in the quantity, quality, and depth of articles.
Brand, credibility, and profile—Blogging consistently on one single topic increases the chances of that blog (and its blogger) being seen as a credible, trusted source of information in that area. Work this correctly and you can become the “go-to” person in your niche and become known as a specialist or expert in your field. The flow on benefits of this is huge if you have a product or service of your own to sell.
Contextual advertising—Contextual ad networks like AdSense tend to work best on sites that are tightly focused. They serve more targeted and relevant ads when a whole site is on a defined topic—which in turn increases the likelihood of those ads being clicked by readers.
Direct advertising sales—Niche blogs are more attractive to private advertisers or sponsors who are looking for content to place their ads on that is relevant and closely aligned to their product or service.
Search engine optimization—Google and other search engines tend to favor sites with a well-defined topic with pages that relate to one another.
More posts—You can post more if you only have 1 topic to worry about as opposed to many topics. There is only so much you can write on a blog each day without overwhelming your readership.
Leverage to expand into neighboring niches—One benefit of becoming well-known in a highly focused niche is that you can position yourself to springboard into a neighboring or overarching one.
Higher conversion—If your blog’s business model is to sell something to your readers, it is to your advantage to have a blog that has a readership with interests that are highly aligned with your own focus.

Choosing a niche for your blog enables you, your bloggers, and your readers to become more focused and will enable you to grow a readership and monetize it more effectively.

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