Is your blog focused?
It is the beginning of a new month and one of the things I do each month is to go through and check what happened last month. Doing that brought a few interesting things to light. Thus I decided to ramble on here a bit. Aren’t you lucky 
?
First to back up a bit. 2 months ago I hired a full time writer and started reviving a few of my niche blogs that were getting a bit stale because of lack of time. They were still getting some traffic but it had started to drop off from my neglect. Since then we have been adding content at least once a week.
Traffic has picked up nicely but that is not the point of this post. I was charting the signups to the various email series versus the traffic and then the sales of the specific product for each of my blogs.
Now I do that each month and I have also been watching a good friend of mine Doug Champigny and what he is doing. See Doug focuses his blogs quite tightly. He has a different blog for affiliate marketing information, PLR information, article marketing information and probably a few others.
The key though is that after looking at my niche blogs and the results per visitor and seeing what Doug is doing that a light bulb came on. Now I don’t know what Doug’s results are but I do know mine in the various niches.
See my general blogs like this one and my marketing blog do well and get quite a bit of traffic. They generate signups but not at the rate per visitor that the extremely focused blogs do. The niche blogs convert to sign ups at a rate about twice as well per visitor.
Those rank quite high for their respective long tail keywords and but do not get huge traffic but do an excellent job of converting those visitors to the actions I want them to take compared to the general blogs.
So the question becomes is your blog focused and is it getting the actions you want at the rate you want?
I know for me I am going to be focusing certain aspects of my business to more specific blogs. If I can double my most wanted actions (which focusing should allow) and get at least half the traffic I am now in a month or two I will break even. If I can get just 75% of the traffic my ultimate results will be much higher and that should be doable with a bit of very specific keyword research.
So back to the original question – Is your blog focused?
Let me know by leaving your comment and feedback.
Mike Paetzold
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Disclaimer: Some of the links mentioned within this post or posts it may lead to are my affiliate links and in such case I will get compensated for recommending those products. However, I will never recommend something that I don’t personally believe in and I welcome your questions and feedback.
7 comments
Fred Lotgering on May 2, 2009 at 10:05 am
Great post Mike.
I think focus is important on all what you are doing on the internet.
A general blog is great for name branding, recognition etc. But a targeted list you get only through niche focused blogs. Visitors are there because of the niche and more likely willing to sign up if you offer something related to that niche.
I think I have to keep focussing more….
Fred
Captain Affiliate on May 2, 2009 at 10:16 am
Once again you’re dead on, Mike – while there is obviously some spill-over in audience, having a separate blog for each sub-niche does get better results, if only because a tightly-focused blog on a single topic ranks better for SEO purposes.
The only drawback is the extra time it takes – it means either extra time spent blogging, or one post a week on each instead of 7 posts on one. But that’s outweighed by your targeted audience and the benefits of cross-linking between your posts.
Keep up the great work – looking forward to watching the blog evolve to a more-tightly-focused asset!
Earl Netwal on May 2, 2009 at 10:42 am
Darn it their is that other four letter word fcus. It means more work. And more discipline. But your point is well taken.
Joel Osborne
Twitter: JoelOsborne
on May 2, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Good tip Mike. I recently started a new targeted blog on affiliate marketing, and I have a few others… like you said, you will probably get more sign ups and sales because of the targeted traffic.
Warren Gibbons on May 2, 2009 at 7:31 pm
It’s funny you posted this. Right before I came to your site, I was thinking to myself “what do I blog about next?” and in effort to answer that I thought of your site – so here I am.
And now I am going to brainstorm on how I can make my blog more focussed. I think I have been trying to be too broad-brushed (I’m just getting started).
Thanks again for being focused and consistent. I know I can rely on your blog to always provide helpful information that is easy to understand and apply.
Ron Barrett on May 4, 2009 at 10:07 am
Mike,
Excellent info on how having a tightly focused blog will lead to targeted traffic to that site.
Keep the good info coming.
Lonnie Minton on May 5, 2009 at 10:35 am
Thanks for the reminder that we need to stay focused. I have tried to make my blog focused. I hope that it is and that I will start getting traffic and that it is more targeted. Very good post.