Linkrain Articles

Recently I have discovered a very useful tool that can be used to define your future blog posts. The Technorati Chart tool shows the activity in the blogogsphere for particular search terms in a time period that can be set from 7 days to 1 year. Probably this tool is nothing new on Technorati but have you ever thought to use it to decide about what topic you are going to write tomorrow?

This blog is related to many topics, from Search Engine Optimization to Web Design, from Wordpress plugins to Domain names, from Google Adsense to Social Bookmarks and so on. These great variety of topics attract lot of different visitors that are interested in different subjects. For wich of them am I going to write an article tomorrow? For the visitors interested in SEO or for those interested in Photoshop Tutorials?

Since I started this blog I focused more on “Blog frequency” instead of “Blog subject”. Writing 1,2 or maybe 3 fresh articles every day is hard work (even if I love it because I consider blogging one of my favourite hobbies) but it is something that has to be done if you are going to build a quality blog. I never thought about the possibility to get a huge traffic boost by writing about specific subjects that other bloggers are NOT writing about!

How can i use the Technorati chart tool do decide what to write about?

After analysing for a month my website traffic, I realized that some niches receive much more traffic than other ones. The “Photoshop Tutorials” for example, recieve more traffic than the “Social Bookmarking” related articles. After comparing these to subjects with the Technorati Chart tool, the result was that the number of articles about Social Bookmarking is increasing every day:

while the number of articles about Photoshop Tutorials is increasing, but there are much less Photoshop related articles than Social Bookmarking related articles:

In average bloggers write 70-80 Photoshop Tutorials each day and 900-1.000 Social Bookmarking articles. It is much more difficult to compete in a big niche like Social Bookmarking than in a small niche like Photoshop Tutorials.

After comparing a lot of other subjects I came to these conclusions:

• If you are going to write about a very popular subject like “Search Engine Optimization”, “Social Bookmarks”, “Web Design” and so on, you have to make a very original article to get lots of traffic because there is much competition in the big niches.
• If you write an article about a subject that not many blogs are talking about like “Photoshop Tutorials”, you will get good traffic even if the content of the article is nothing really new.
• If you find a subject that has a decreasing Technorati graph, it is because blog owners don’t have any update on that subject. This means that if you have some big news about it, you will drive hundreds or maybe thousands of visitors to one single article.
• Subjects that have increasing Technorati graph are subjects that are becoming popular. Once they have become a “Big Niche” it will be much harder to convince people that you have the best news about that certain niche.

Targeting a small niche is more profitable in average. Writing articles about subjects that are already discussed in hundreds of blogs won’t give you the same benefits. Anyway, if you really discovered something that nobody else has discovered before (about a subject belonging to a big niche), you are going to recieve an incredible traffic boost.

These technique can be easily used to organize your whole blogging activity