How to Break Into a Saturated Blogging Niche
If you are new to blogging, you may be overwhelmed by the number of successful blogs that are currently out there. You might even wonder if it’s worth diving into such a competitive market. In short, you might feel that the niche you want to blog for is already saturated.
However, just because a niche is popular doesn’t necessarily mean you need to avoid it. In fact, you can view it as an opportunity. The niche is saturated because people are interested in what you have to say or sell. You simply need the right approach to get their attention.
In this post, we’ll discuss how to step into a saturated niche and find a new approach in an existing market. We’ll also give some advice about how to improve your search rankings in a field that offers extremely stiff competition. Let’s get started!
What Is a Saturated Niche?
A saturated blogging niche is one in which there is overwhelming competition for a single audience. Of course, there is some disagreement over whether or not a niche can be truly saturated. No matter how many people are out there blogging about the same thing, you always have the opportunity to break into the field.
A saturated niche is not necessarily a bad thing. It proves that there is a ready audience for your content, and means you have a larger community with which to network as you gain traction and authority. On the negative side, however, it’s more difficult to stand out from the competition in this kind of niche. If you can’t find a way to differentiate your blog, you won’t gain your share of the audience that’s out there.
If you are up for the challenge of entering a saturated niche, there are some ways to improve your odds of success. Let’s take a look at some of those methods now.
Tips to Effectively Break Into a Saturated Blogging Niche
How well you do in a saturated niche is going to depend on your approach and ability to follow through. Ideally, you want a strategy that both helps you stand out and provides value for your target audience. These tips should help you with both aspects.
1. Refine Your Topic and Target Audience
If your chosen niche seems saturated, you can still stand out by taking a unique approach to your content. Instead of trying to cover everything in your niche, find a particular aspect that you can mine for ideas. You can do this by researching your competition, and then using your unique skill set and expertise to find a new angle from which to approach your content.
The Penny Hoarder blog is a great example of finding a creative angle in a saturated niche. Rather than providing traditional investment advice, it provides advice on how to gain financial prosperity a few cents at a time. This focus speaks to its target audience, which is made up mainly of young adults who are new to budgeting, saving, and investing.
If you aren’t familiar with the term, your target audience is your intended readership, or the people you expect will gain value from your blog. When you have determined your specific topic or sub-niche, you can hone in on the right audience for your content. Once you have determined both your focus and your target audience, you can begin to attract attention by using marketing tools such as email lists and social media.
2. Find a Problem in Your Niche and Offer a Solution
No matter what niche you choose, there will be some common questions that are asked about the topic. For example, let’s say you have an e-commerce blog, and one of the items you sell is gaining traction. However, you start to notice there are complaints about the same product on a larger retail site such as Amazon.
Blogging about the complaints or issues and offering a solution will put you ahead of the curve. People searching for a fix to this problem will find that you have preemptively addressed it. They will feel more confident in their purchase, and you’ll benefit from increased customer loyalty.
Staying up-to-date on the latest trends in your niche can help you identify problems or complaints, and address them early on. You may even decide to focus your blog on solving a particular type of issue, which is a great way to find a unique angle.
3. Provide Value to Your Niche and Your Audience
Offering solutions and monitoring trends to solve problems is one way to provide value for both your niche and your audience. However, your content must also be worthwhile. When you create content that is better than your competitors’, you’ll naturally attract a larger audience.
Another method of being found in a saturated niche, while also adding value, is to implement a link building strategy. We recommend the skyscraper technique for link building, which involves three basic steps. First, you’ll need to find link-worthy content. Look for articles and web pages that rank highly in search engines for specific keywords you’d like to target, and that are linked to frequently
Then, make something even better. Find ways to improve on the original piece of content by being more thorough, updating out-of-date information, or improving the visual design. Finally, reach out to the sites that linked to the original piece, and let them know you have a more comprehensive and updated post on the same topic.
4. Hone Your SEO to Make Your Blog Competitive
SEO is key to getting ahead in your niche. Making sure you optimize your site for search engines helps you rank higher in page results, enabling your audience to find you amidst the sea of similar blogs.
When it comes to bolstering your SEO, you’ll need to focus on killer content and a solid link building plan. Then, apply common SEO strategies to your pages, such as by incorporating keywords and optimizing links.
There are also a lot of WordPress SEO tools that can help you improve your SEO. If you don’t have a favorite option already, we highly recommend Yoast SEO. In addition to being highly rated and easy to use, it enables you to improve all aspects of your blog’s SEO. Yoast also provides a handy guide to WordPress SEO, to really supercharge your ranking efforts.
Getting started in a blogging niche, especially a saturated one, can be both daunting and exhilarating. The good news is that you know there’s an audience ready and waiting for you, if you can just find the correct way to tap into it. Exploring and truly understanding a saturated niche can help you attract attention and stand out from the crowd.
Do you have a question about how to break into a competitive or saturated niche? Let us know in the comments below!
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