Let Your Own Frustrations Work For You
They say that there’s nothing new in this world, and that any idea you could possibly have has already been done. That’s not true, but even if it were, that doesn’t mean that every possible thing has been done enough. Search engine optimization often involves knowing what areas to capitalize on because the competition is low.
Think about your own recent searches. Did you ever find yourself getting frustrated because you couldn’t find what you were searching for online? Surely, it was out there, right? Everything is out there, so they say. Whether it is or it isn’t, if you can’t find it, then it hasn’t yet been overdone.
What does that mean for you? It means that there is still room for you to serve that under-served area. If you are frustrated, others are as well. Use your own frustrations to create content.
We all know how difficult it can be to continuously find something new and worthy to blog about. But if you can give your readers some content that they were unable to find, you’ve managed to accomplish quite a few things.
- You’ve set yourself up for some good search engine rankings, because the competition is low
- You’ve given your readers something that they’ve likely been unable to find before
- You’ve solved the problem of blogger’s block for that day
Just today, I was frustrated because I couldn’t find what I was looking for online. So, I bought a domain name, and I’m creating a whole new site just to serve content for those people who are looking for the same things, and are as irritated as I was because it can’t be found. If the subject matter had been remotely related to any of my current blog topics, I would have just created new content there instead, but in my case, I had to jump into a whole new niche.
All you need to do, however, is find the information that is missing from your own niche. What were you recently searching for that you couldn’t find? Deliver it yourself, earn some nice rankings, and make your readers happy.
Kevin | October 27th, 2007 at 9:04 am #
Very good tips. Your right, you can find everything on the web but a lot of the time that information is either hard to find or placed around hundreds of sites. By simply collating information from a wide range of sources you can provide a real service to people.
Jamie Harrop | October 27th, 2007 at 4:26 pm #
It’s not often I can’t find something when I’m searching for something. However, since launching my blog several months ago, I have found that by tracking my visitor stats, in particular the key phrases in search engines that are being used to find my blog, there are many things not related to my blogging niche that I rank high for because the topic hasn’t been covered by others.
For example, my blog ranks high for the phrase “How to say ‘Burger’ in Spanish” as well as all phrases similar to that. This was because of a post I wrote on my blog, totally unrelated to how to say ‘burger’ in Spanish (although I mentioned that as an example in my post).
Through tracking my visitors stats, I began to find that many people wonder how to say ‘burger’ in Spanish and many were hitting my blog as a result, only to be disappointed when the blog they just got to has nothing to do with what they are after. The solution? I started a small site with the word “burger” in Spanish, a short story of how that site came about (the story was similar to this comment), as well as some other common Spanish phrases. I also put a few Adsense ads and other advertising material on the site. I knew full well I could get it ranked high in search engines because there wasn’t any competition (apart from my very own blog post).
I guess what I’m saying is, look at what people are searching for when they find your blog. You might stumble upon an open niche that is easy to capitalise from.