Local blogging challenge becomes a new opportunity
Posted by Matt Hayden on Tuesday, February 23, 2016
One thing I've learned from years of blogging in different niches is that you should keep your blogs alive if you can. This is because the longer they're up there, the more SEO value they accrue. Blogs and websites are a bit like wine and cheese in this regard. The older they are, the better they get!
I've also learned that local blogging is a really good niche to get into. Firstly, they're really easy and fun to write. You really don't have to do much research. Just by having lived somewhere for a while you will have gathered heaps of valuable local knowledge. You've just got to organize this content into post form.
The other reason they're great is that as long as you're offering interesting and/or useful information in these posts, getting search engine traffic is pretty easy. It's a lot less of a challenge than writing more generic, globally relevant content in a crowded niche, that's for sure.
The experience that made these things absolutely clear to me was writing a blog about Perth when I was living there. I did this for several years and racked up hundreds of posts. Many of these rank pretty well for local searches, so it's accumulated thousands of Google and Bing hits over the years.
I moved to Sydney several months ago. I just left the Perth blog up there, not really sure what to do with it. I figured that maybe I would just resume it if and when I returned to the west in coming years. (Never say never, as they say.) I assumed there was no point in posting to it if I wasn't living there any more. Now that I was in a different city I felt that it just wasn't right.
But I logged back into my dashboard for this blog a few days ago and had a complete change of mind. Being in Sydney didn't disqualify me. It actually gave me a whole new and valid way to approach the project. Firstly. I could write about my Perth experiences with a bit more "distance". Not living there any more, I could be more objective.
I could also do a lot of comparisons between the two cities. And there are many blog post ideas that come to mind here. For example, I can write about the architecture, the lifestyle, the beaches... the list goes on. As long as the content is focused on Perth and relevant for that audience it will continue to be an enjoyable blog to maintain.
And the longer I keep it going, the more traffic it will accrue, and the more it will lift my profile, and so on.
A good feeling. Because you don't want to put a lot of effort into something and then finally have to let it "die". Always better to keep something going if you can. The trick is finding a new angle, so you can renew your enthusiasm for it.
I've also learned that local blogging is a really good niche to get into. Firstly, they're really easy and fun to write. You really don't have to do much research. Just by having lived somewhere for a while you will have gathered heaps of valuable local knowledge. You've just got to organize this content into post form.
The other reason they're great is that as long as you're offering interesting and/or useful information in these posts, getting search engine traffic is pretty easy. It's a lot less of a challenge than writing more generic, globally relevant content in a crowded niche, that's for sure.
The experience that made these things absolutely clear to me was writing a blog about Perth when I was living there. I did this for several years and racked up hundreds of posts. Many of these rank pretty well for local searches, so it's accumulated thousands of Google and Bing hits over the years.
I moved to Sydney several months ago. I just left the Perth blog up there, not really sure what to do with it. I figured that maybe I would just resume it if and when I returned to the west in coming years. (Never say never, as they say.) I assumed there was no point in posting to it if I wasn't living there any more. Now that I was in a different city I felt that it just wasn't right.
But I logged back into my dashboard for this blog a few days ago and had a complete change of mind. Being in Sydney didn't disqualify me. It actually gave me a whole new and valid way to approach the project. Firstly. I could write about my Perth experiences with a bit more "distance". Not living there any more, I could be more objective.
I could also do a lot of comparisons between the two cities. And there are many blog post ideas that come to mind here. For example, I can write about the architecture, the lifestyle, the beaches... the list goes on. As long as the content is focused on Perth and relevant for that audience it will continue to be an enjoyable blog to maintain.
And the longer I keep it going, the more traffic it will accrue, and the more it will lift my profile, and so on.
A good feeling. Because you don't want to put a lot of effort into something and then finally have to let it "die". Always better to keep something going if you can. The trick is finding a new angle, so you can renew your enthusiasm for it.
