6 Free Tools to Help you Choose a Niche Blog

Yesterday we wrote an article outlining 10 reasons why niche blogs are successful. Of course, that doesn’t address the issue of just what is a niche blog and how do we go about choosing a topic. Today, I present a list of 6 free tools which you can use to help you pick a niche for your website.

Remember, the key to a successful blog is to choose something you are passionate about whether it is football, bird watching, antiques, reality TV or fashion.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

This is the main tool that I use when trying to assess the feasability of a topic. The Google Adwords tool is completely free to use and is a very valuable tool. Simply enter a generic keyword and you will be displayed a list of related keywords, helping you to find a specific niche. Click on the “Approx Avg Search Volume” column to sort by the most common search terms, showing you approximately how many searches that term gets each month.

The Advertiser Competition column also shows how many advertisers are competing for this term. While the ideal scenario would be a high number of average searches combined with low advertiser competition, these combinations are difficult to find. If advertiser competition is high, it is a good indication that it is a profitable niche.

Google Trends

Another tool from Google is the Google Trends tool which is useful if you are looking for search volumes on Google for different search terms. You simply type in your generic search term (it only tracks the most popular ones) and choose your region (ie. UK, USA, etc) and it will produce a graph showing the trends in this search term over a period of time.

This is a great way of establishing whether the niche you are considering is expanding or shrinking.

Technoranti

Technoranti is a blog search engine which gives you the ability to see what others are writing about your chosen niche topic at any given time. It also has “popular” tools which show what blog topics are hot at the moment. It’s a good way for seeing what information people are currently craving.

Google Blog Search

Google’s Blog Search will help you get a feel for who else is blogging on a given topic. It is also a useful tool for generating ideas for articles.

Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a very popular keyword-research tool. It is a paid resource, but it does have a free trial that is very useful for helping you determine how many people are searching for particular keywords. Similar to Google Adwords Keyword tool, but it adds a feature to show how many other sites are competing in each particular niche.

Yahoo Buzz

Yahoo Buzz is a summary of information on what people are searching for at the Yahoo search engine.