My Experience With Google Penalty – How Can We Recover from Panda or Penguin Penalty?

I am blogging for last four years and have seen many ups and downs. But there is nothing like a Google penalty; it can destroy your online business in a day.

Google is most important for blogs, we need it for traffic, monetizing, and even analyzing data. And for a lot more things.

For me, Google search contributes about 90% of the traffic, the remaining comes from repeat visitors, social media, and referring sites.

Fall in Live Visitors – First Indications

I was sipping coffee in the morning of 19th September, when I checked the live visitors in the Google Analytics dashboard.

Usually, the Analytics for my Blog Candytech.in shows over 150 live visitors in the morning.

But not today, there were only 40 visitors, something was wrong, deeply wrong. I could sense it but was not sure what it was, so I checked if the website is live or having loading issues.

Live visitors usually fall when the site is having connectivity issues.

*Note – Candytech was started in 2014 and has over 2000 articles and over 57000 social media followers.

The traffic drop was sharp and it was painful

First Look at technical Issues

After testing for some time I knew something was wrong, so I called my developer, and he also probed for common issues, but all seemed to be fine, technically.

Hours and days passed, we made several changes starting from the structured data, to theme change, plugin change, speed optimizations and many other things.

However, saw no improvements in traffic.

Next, we removed a lot of Affiliate links, in fact, removed ads and anything which could make money. Apparently, there was a Google update (Google Fred) in March 2017, that targeted heavily monetized websites.

I had no clue or understanding about the Google penalties back then and what to do when you get hit. So I read for hours and days, everything that is published on Google Penalties.

But now I can probably write a thesis on Google penalty without referring anything. This post is a result of 6 months of research and experimentation. 

What To Do When Your Traffic Drops Suddenly?

Importantly, if you see a traffic drop wait for 15 days before making any significant changes to the content or website.

First and foremost, check the Google Webmaster Console if you have received any manual action warning.

The traffic drop can vary from site to site, it can be 30% to 90% or even more.

Seeing such a massive traffic drop is painful, moreover, to see years of work getting wiped out for no fault is even more distressing.

We were not doing anything blackhat, no not at all. Then why were we hit by Google so badly? I had no idea at the moment.

After the major drop, we saw a more gradual traffic decline for the next couple of weeks. Most of our keywords vanished from page 1 on Google search.

But some of my best articles continue to rank but with reduced visibility and for fewer keywords. I was already tracking keywords in Semrush before the penalty, and all of those were now showing a decline.

It was horrible, terrible time, nothing we did seem to work.

But we need to have faith and continue our work with more rigor.

External Help and SEO Experts

Next, I consulted several SEO experts and even the likes of Neil Patel and Marie Haynes and lot more top SEO firms in India.

There was no apparent answer, just theories of what could have happened.

Also, not to mention these guys ask for a couple of 1000$s to start working with you, and there is no guarantee of success or time limit.

I would have happily paid someone 1000 USD if I got an assurance that they can help me get back to previous traffic levels.

Google being Google is a mystery to everyone even the top SEO experts.

Then I turned to the Google Webmaster forum, where some of the moderators pointed that the content was unoriginal or low quality and that Google is penalizing such sites.

But it was all self-written or edited content, not copied from anywhere.

Also, there are a lot of members who will discourage and demotivate you, rather than helping in this tough time. But don’t bother about them.

Can Paid tools like Ahref or Semrush help?

We also checked the backlink profile and paid a couple of hundred dollars to ahref.com and Semrush to deep dive into the link metrics and other technical SEO issues.

The money spent gave good insights into link profiles and data points, but it can’t get you out of the penalty. Our situation was becoming grim day after day.

It was painful to see the daily traffic drop, I was checking the analytics every 15 minutes to see if things are getting better.

There would be some hope for a couple of minutes when the Analytics will show more live visitors, and after some time it will be dead with a big Zero.

Frankly, the pain of a Google penalty is unbearable, and more painful is the fact that you don’t know what caused the drop.

To be truthful, no one can tell you the reason for the traffic drop with 100% surety, apart from the guys at Google search, and they won’t tell.

Does Disavowing Bad Links Help?

Meanwhile, after the link analysis, I uploaded the disavow file that had lots of spammy domains.

Disavowing itself is a troublesome process, it is difficult to check which domains you need to add and which you need to leave. You can take help from Semrush and also visit every website to see if it is worth linking.

There are some definite No and some clear Yes, but there are many websites in the Grey area, should you cut them or leave them. No one knows which domains are actually helping or harming you in the search.

Anyways, I uploaded the file in October and kept my fingers crossed that something good will happen.

Nothing happened.

So I re-analyzed the domains and re-uploaded the file and kept it as it is for the next 1 month.

Again, nothing happened.

So I realized it was not penguin after 30 days of the first disavow upload. In fact, our traffic declined more, but we kept the disavow file for 5 months, in the hope of revival, but nothing happened.

When Google Panda Strikes

So what else can be wrong, oops it is Panda.

The Penguin update impacts sites with shady unnatural link profiles, on the other hand, Panda attacks sites with copied, thin content or sites with quality issues.

So next quest was to find the thin content. I knew this could be the problem, so we started improving content in November itself and updated several posts.

We didn’t have too many posts with 100 or 200 words, everything was above 300, and most articles are over 500 words.

Anyways, I spend hours and days correcting everything, adding more information, improving readability, and grammar, and doing spell check.

So was hopeful something may click, but yet again nothing happened.

Quest of Finding and Removing Thin Content

The next step was to cut out low-quality content, delete, merge or no-index it. It took weeks to check and remove the content (mostly no-index or merge).

It was more painful to remove posts that I have once written passionately but were not receiving any traffic for the last 6 months.

Note – We removed those posts that were getting very low (0-10 visits) in the last 6 months.

Nevertheless, I bit the bullet and cut the site in half. So waited for 20 more days, in hope maybe after so many quality changes, Google will notice some improvements.

To my dismay, nothing happened.

Now it was 5 months, and we have literally no traffic, from earlier a million monthly readers. I cut more of the site, no-indexed posts and merged them to reduce it to one-third the original size.

Even after waiting for a month, there are no signs of improvement in traffic. Meanwhile, I am continuously following SEO community and Google for any updates.

Also, I selected around 20 other websites in our niche and analyzed the traffic pattern and other parameters for these, for the last couple of months.

With each passing day, the pain became more, and with so many confusing suggestions, you can feel directionless.

So, here is the thing, it was not Candytech alone but several other competition sites were also hit by the Google update.

Here are some of the websites that are impacted by the recent Algorithm updates.

These are just some examples, I tracked many more sites that are in the same boat.

Notably, all these sites are legitimate with good content and are managed by professional bloggers.

Why Are these Sites Penalized by Google Suddenly?

I analyzed around 20 websites for Content Quality, Technical Seo, backlinks, Content Quality, Indexed Pages, Site structure, Page Speed benchmarks, Google AMP implementation, blogging frequency and a couple of more things.

I am tracking these for the last few months to see similarities and find reasons for the traffic drop.

Of course, I have plenty of time, but there is not much going on for my own website. I came up with some theories that I have documented after the research, but the reason for the traffic drop looked obscure.

All these sites are live for years and have an excellent social following, plus the content quality is not bad.

Moreover, these are relevant sites for their target market and audience, but then why Google was penalizing these sites in the search?

It is a deep mystery to unravel.

Smaller Blogs Vs. Bigger Websites

I am even monitoring traffic movement on these websites and the changes that they are doing to improve rankings.

But the things look difficult for small bloggers, at the moment.

On the other hand, there are large websites that are violating lots of Google guidelines but are continuing to do good in the search.

There are News websites sprinkled with affiliate links in posts, but there are no actions against these.

Several posts are written by such authority sites only for the sake of making more affiliate money, but so far search giant is ignoring such things, at least for high traffic volume sites. (Eg. NDTV Gadgets).

However, smaller websites are penalized more often as they seem less credible.

I know it is not fair but who told you that you will always get a fair deal in life.

I met Gary Illyes From Google

So one day, I came to know that Mr. Gary Illyes from Google Search was in India. I was able to contact him and went to meet him and shared what has happened.

Gary gave me a couple of suggestions and told me it has nothing to do with either Penguin or Panda.

The adviCe was to make the site more authoritative and create A brand affinity.

Also, to work on the social media channels, leverage Instagram, Twitter and Facebook more.

He advised me to look for creating more value for the readers and do unique and innovative things.

Gary gave some useful information, and that is one of the reason, I want to share this with bloggers who are struggling with a Google penalty.

I have shared more details about what you can do in the below paragraphs.

What is Google Saying?

Google recently posted that some of the web pages will see lower visibility in the SERP results and there is nothing webmasters can do about it.

Here are the official Tweets from Google about what you can do about the traffic drop.

There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) March 12, 2018

As with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded….

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) March 12, 2018

So after 5 months and spending an insane amount of time reading about Google penalty on different blogs, SEO’s forums, and studying several sites it is difficult to discern the reasons.

Google is also not giving any clear guidance on what should webmasters, do in such situation.

Based on my research & meeting with Gary, here are some of the top things that you need to do, to avoid a Google Algorithmic penalty or to get out of it.

Top 5 Things To Work On To Get Out of Google Penalty

1. Don’t create average quality content, you can’t have similar content as rest of the websites in your niche. You need to write more articles that standout, help people and are detailed.

2. Offer a Unique perspective or share Original work with readers. Do original reviews, research or opinion posts. Google may not rank well all the sites that have similar content.

3. Build a Brand – Bigger brands are least affected by such updates. Building a brand may sound insane for a small blogger, but that is what Google wants from you.

4. Establish Trustworthiness, expertise, and Authority: If you are an expert in your field, say you are a doctor and write a blog on curing illness, Google sees it as trustworthy information. But if you have no expertise in the field, then it is going to be difficult. Get the expertise, or do some real work in the field to substantiate your experience.

5. Think Again, Why should people visit your website? Are you offering something unique to your visitors? If you are same as other 9999999 websites, chances are Google may filter you.

Hmmm…. These are really tough problems, not what you can solve in a day or maybe a month. It will take time and an insane amount of effort.

So apart from these top suggestions here are some suggestions from SMX conference recently held in Munich.

What Are the Suggestions from SMX To Get Out of a Google Penalty

Here are some clarifications on the above slide from Glenngabe who is an SEO expert and a Columnist at Search Engine Land. Let’s look at the website audit and what you need to do.

Website Audit is a big task

Some of the top of the mind things that you can do are as follows:

1. Check the Number of Indexed Pages in Google (type site:example.com in google search), Remove pages from search by no-indexing useless pages such as tag pages, etc.

2. Check Google Web Console for any warnings such as missing author, missing update, or duplicate title meta or description and solve it.

3. Find and no-index any low-quality pages which don’t attract any traffic, have low word count <100 words or have useless information.

4. Improve Site Speed, especially for the mobile version. Add Google AMP to improve performance.

5. Delete unnecessary tags or categories.

6. Improve readability and user experience.

7. Find posts with a high bounce rate, and see if you can add related articles, or improve the post content.

8. Remove unnecessary plugins, sidebar elements, affiliate links, and footer links.

What Else To DO?

Post more Content, become more regular, and post more often. If you post 3 times a week, increase it to at least 6-7 times or more.

Improve the Quality by a significant amount, update your old content and improve your old posts.

Improve your brand equity and try to be more helpful to your readers.

Google has made several changes in the recent months and recently around 9th March there was another major update that has impacted many websites.

You can use this guide for most Quality updates by Google and how also to improve your website’s search visibility.

Also, I have shared my exact experience, nothing concealed or exaggerated, and the whole purpose of writing this is to tell you that don’t take bad advice from the so-called SEO experts.

Don’t waste your time on disavowing or deleting useful content, instead focus on what can really get you back on the road to recovery.

Your turn, Share your experience in the comments and let’s discuss what you need to do next.

Also, Read:

How Can you Master the Blogging Skills for More traffic and success?

Blogging is changing and becoming more competitive every single day. There are professional bloggers who are struggling to make the ends meet, and there are beginners who are tasting early success and later finding it difficult to expand and grow blogs.

Making money from Blogging is not an issue if you have the readership and traffic. Rather than focusing on making money from Blogging, I think you should create an astounding blog for your readers, money and everything else will follow.

There are a lot of things you can do to create an incredibly successful blog by using this guide as a starting point.

Reading this won’t make you a pro-blogger but practicing will.

I have been blogging for years and mastered the art and science of blogging by learning from professionals, voraciously reading and trying different things.

If you want to speed up your learning process and want to be successful at blogging, you need to read more, and experiment even more.

Trying different things will help you find out what works for you.

Without further ado, here are the skills I think every aspiring blogger need to master to create a blog that is unique as well as worth reading.

Important Skills To Create An Incredibly Successful Blog

1. Master the Niche

First and foremost, you need to master your niche (your blogging topics). No one likes to learn from someone who has a superficial knowledge. Remember that lecturer in your school or college who used to dictate his notes from a book and had poor subject knowledge.

You don’t want to be that, building trust and Authority takes efforts.

You need to deep dive and understand the topics you wish to write about. It takes time and patience to master anything and more you read and experiment, things will become easy and simple for you.

2. Do Consumer Research

What you know is good for you, but what about the readers are they seeking what you know or something else?

You need to understand your readers. Like any other business, they are your valuable customers. If they are coming to your website, try to understand what they are looking for.

If they want reviews, create that, if they want quick news, share that. Understand what different people are looking for and what topics they are interested in.

Also, understand what posts they are not liking and leaving in a hurry and which posts they are spending a lot of time. (Leverage Google Analytics to find this information and use it wisely).

Furthermore, you can dig data to understand the demographics of your audience, age group, and their likes and dislikes.

Solve Your Readers Problems 

Content is still the king and it will always be. So focus on creating in-depth content that will help your readers genuinely. More helpful your articles are, more user satisfaction, and higher Google rankings you will get.

Remember, Google’s aim is to provide the best information to its searchers. If you are the best no-one can stop you.

3. Create a Website for Readers

A lot of new bloggers tend to create a website for search engines and focus on things which are not very important for readers. Google is getting smart and understand this.

In fact, Google even understands when readers like a website and it is helping to solve user issues.

Also, learn to code a little bit so that you can make some minor adjustments to the site with the help of your theme developer and may take help from a dedicated site developer.

There are a couple of important things that you need to remember when designing a website:

Blazing Fast – It should be fast loading – Use Caching Plugins and a faster-hosting provider, can even add Cloudflare or any other CDN to make sure it is quick. No, you don’t need to go mad in getting the 100/100 page speed score anything above 80 is good.

Readable – Text should be easily readable. Format your posts to make them easy to read and glance through. Use headings, sub-heading, and images to make them interesting.

Interlinking – Make sure you add hyperlinks to your own posts and add external relevant articles wherever needed.

Navigation – Make Navigation as easy as possible. Don’t overuse navigation elements. Your site menus in the header and footer should not be too cluttered and should be easily visible.

Site Structure – Don’t overuse tags and categories, this is one of the mistakes people make when they start and later regret it. Structure your site with Tags and Categories for easy discovery of content but keep things simple.

Mobile Friendly – Google recently pushed the mobile first index and over 70% of traffic is going to be mobile which makes optimizing for mobile a top priority for everyone. Make your site is mobile friendly and easy to read on all mobile devices. (Check your site on Chrome, Safari, UC and Opera Mini).

4. Understand SEO

Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to Google and its infinite rules of SEO. Break some and you may be out of favors from the traffic god. I would strongly suggest you read more on SEO no matter which type of website you are creating. Understanding SEO is a must for everyone.

There are several sites like Shoutmeloud, Searchengineland, Semrush Blog, Neil Patel, Wpbeginner and so on that you can read to learn basic and advance SEO. You can also read the official Bible of SEO by Google here.

Like everything else, understanding the rules of the SEO game takes time. It takes years and years to unravel the mysteries and keep pace with the ever-changing environment.

5. Learn to leverage Social Media

Each Social Media Network is different and what works on Facebook doesn’t work on Twitter. You will need to work on each Social Media platform and understand the type of content that does well on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

Should you invest time on an infographic to share on Pinterest or Instagram or create a video on Facebook or Twitter? It depends on the niche and type of work you are doing.

Social media giants have reduced the organic reach in the last couple of years and if you have a new brand you may want to leverage paid campaigns on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to create an initial following.

6. Engage With Readers

A lot of bloggers who found early success tend to ignore the followers who constantly share, tweet or comment on the blog posts. It is utmost important to stay connected with your readers.

Not only it helps you gain more insights but helps you create a community that can expand the readership.

Your followers help you spread the word about your new business, treat them great and be friends with them.

7. Learn Keyword Research

Keyword Research is another important area that you need to master in order to gain an advantage over your competition.

Writing content for readers is paramount, but doing keyword research will help you gain lots of insights about what people are searching in Google. It helps you to create content which answers those search queries.

I am not in favor of writing posts that are purely written to target keywords. But to write meaningful posts and include the right keywords which benefit the searchers as well as the writer.

To learn keyword research you can start with Google Adwords or Semrush.

8. Learn Grammar and Improve Vocabulary

If you are already a Pro at grammar, sentence formation and vocabulary you may just need to brush up. For others who are starting a career in writing, I would suggest to pick up the grammar book or find online resources to learn the basics.

Also, create a Word list with synonyms that you want to remember. I usually write new words in the Google Keep App that is always accessible from mobile or laptop. It is easy to memorize new words if make it a daily habit.

Also, to enhance your writing and make it less prone to mistakes, utilize free software like Grammarly to avoid spelling/grammatical mistakes. Lastly, learn to write in active voice and make shorter and clear sentences.

9. Learn Photoshop

I started learning Photoshop as soon as I began blogging back in 2014. It is one of the most amazing tools to add creativity to your posts. Also, once you learn it you can do things much faster in comparison to other software.

Another big advantage of using photoshop is optimizing your images for the web. Photoshop can reduce the size of images for uploading on your blog using the save for web function which is a life saver.

You don’t want to upload very large size images on your website that drag your page load time or want to upload images that lack detail due to poor optimization by other not so effective Apps.

10. Master the Art of Making Videos

Videos are growing and with a huge number of internet users coming to Youtube, makes it essential for pro-bloggers to learn filmmaking.

Let me tell you it is not easy to make great quality videos. You will have to experiment and learn the basics of filming, voice-overs, audio, lighting, and editing.

All of these come together and take months of practice before you can create that first amazing video. Keep trying and you will get there.

So, these are some of the skills that you can master to begin blogging in 2018 or in the coming years. If you think there is anything else that is essential for success at blogging, share with me in comments below.

Have a Great Day!

I Also, Wrote on – How to Find the Domain Name and Niche For your Blog, Should you Use Google AMP or Not?

Google AMP is a new technology that can help load web pages much faster on mobile.

If you have not come across the AMP pages below are the screenshots, to help you understand what an AMP website is. On the left are the results from Google search on a mobile device that shows AMP pages with a bolt symbol. On the right, we can see an AMP website.

Why Are Publishers switching to AMP?

Google is vehemently pushing for the AMP implementation. This is undeniably making website owners and publishers adopt this new technology whether they want it or not.

Moreover, the Tech mogul wants a faster web, especially on mobile, so that’s a Good thing, Right? I will answer that, but let’s first know some more details about AMP.

The publishers may or may not want to switch to AMP, but there is fear in the community. The fear of losing the search ranking traffic, if they don’t adopt the new Tech.

Why Switch to AMP Platform?

Aforementioned, it loads faster compared to the standard mobile version of your website. A faster mobile website is especially useful to help people on a slow internet connection 2G or 3G to access your site without any hassles.

 AMP as a Ranking Signal

There is ambiguity if the Google AMP is a direct ranking signal, but there are stronger hints it can be.

Google recently in a blog post shared that they’re rolling out a new algorithm change that will rank websites based on the mobile version. Importantly, on 17th Jan, Google has said from July 2018 the mobile page load time is a direct ranking signal.

Nobody knows how this change will impact publishers and how much will be the benefit of implementing AMP.

Should You Make Your Site Load Fast?

Hell, Yes. You should make your site fast not for Google or anyone else, but for your readers. I am obsessed to have a faster website for years.  Right from theme selection to plugins, everything is optimized.

We use a lot of technologies like Nginx, FastCGI Cache, Super cache and CDN to make the site blazing fast.

But at the same time, I am a lot more concerned with minor details like fonts, time on site of visitors, their reading experience, and user engagement. You may have to fine-tune your AMP site to reduce the bounce rate and user engagement.

Also, here are some of the Results for Profound Blogger Load times:

These are pretty impressive load times for any website. I am all for a faster web with least bloat and unintrusive ads.

Issues in Switching to AMP?

Technical issues –

People coming from Google search on Android for mobile will be able to visit this version.

Other mobile browsers use your standard mobile website. So, AMP is only for Google search visitors and that too on mobile Chrome browser.

If you are a small publisher, who doesn’t have a technical background you may find the implementation daunting.

Besides, you are already managing two versions of the site, the mobile version, and desktop, here is the third one.

Not to mention, the faulty implementation of AMP can create duplicate content or other similar technical issues.

Design and Engagement Issues

Moreover, you will need to optimize ads on the AMP version, manage bounce rate and pages per session too. I have not seen post-implementation any major changes to these parameters but it can be different from site to site.

You may have worked hard on the mobile design of your site but for AMP you may need to put in some more effort.

Also, there can be some issues related to AMP that may reflect in your Google webmaster console after you implement it or when you do a structured data testing.

Even if you manage to do all that correctly, your AMP site may not look similar to your desktop or mobile site. You may want a consistent experience for the readers and this is slightly difficult to achieve.

You may have to spend some money on development or buy an AMP theme that can help you with the customization and experience.

Is Google AMP Making Web Faster or Ruining It?

Let’s come back to the original question. Is the Google AMP a good thing or a bad thing for small publishers?

The real issue is several Bloggers who are not so tech savvy, probably have the best content, but are not able to deal with all these changes.  They are at a disadvantage.

On the other hand, for large publishers with deep pockets and dedicated resources, it is not a big deal.

But for a small blogger already burdened with running a blog, dealing with technical issues, writing content daily, editing it, maintaining the site, hosting etc. It can be overwhelming.

All said, AMP is a feature that makes the web faster and Google is strongly promoting it. Obviously, it has its merits and demerits. However, I will advise you to go ahead and try and experiment with it.

Some people may not like it, but the choice we have is limited, and it is beneficial for you to use this feature.

Furthermore, Facebook introduced the Instant articles, even that helps websites load faster. But keep your readers locked on Facebook platform. It helps Facebook make more money and people stay on its platform rather than experience your uniquely designed websites.

But this a topic for discussion on some other day. Thanks for visiting, hope the article helped you make up your mind whether you should or shouldn’t use the Google AMP.

Also, Read My Previous Post on How to Find the Right Nich and Domain Name.

Thanks to Berner Lee without whose contribution you would not have been able to read this post. If you have no idea who is Berners Lee, he is the father of the internet, who in the year 1989 successfully tested the first HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and created the first web browser.

When I started blogging 4 years back, I had no clue about selecting the right blog topic and domain name.

If you are starting your first blog or even if you have been blogging for some time, and want to recap on the basics, this is an article which will guide you to get started.

The Two Most Important things when you are starting a new Blog

1. Finding the Right Topic or subject for Your Blog.
2. How to choose the right domain name (website name or your blog name)

Are you serious about blogging or if you are just starting a casual blog? The whole advice in this blog post is very strategic and is meant for someone who is planning to start a blog for success and run it professionally.

It does not matter if you want to write about baby food, technology, food recipes or yoga, the fundamentals for choosing the domain name remain same for everyone.

If you already have a brand and want to start your own blog, tips may be a bit different in your case, but basics still remain the same for everyone.

We are not thinking of short-term or quick wins here – this article will teach you how to start a real website to make some real money and have some serious traffic. Everything starts with the right domain name and niche.

How to Find the Right Topic or Niche for Your Blog?

There are a lot of websites which write articles on diverse topics like Mashable or Forbes and there are also websites which write on a single topic GSM Arena or 91mobiles (on mobiles) or Autocar (about vehicles).

But these are big websites and have several authors with different experience and expertise.

When you are starting a new website it is always better to start with a particular topic or niche.

Why Have a Niche, Why not just write on Anything?

I think there are 4 major reasons for doing this:

1). Your readers will understand and follow you for a particular type of content. If you have a food blog and you post about new food recipes they will come to your blog again to read about latest topics.

But if you post food recipes for some days and then start writing about technology, your readers will get confused and you may not be able to create a community.

2). Since you are starting you want to establish yourself as an authority in your niche so people can follow you and take advantage of your experience. It is better to concentrate on one field and offer the best experience and content to your readers.

3). It is great for SEO, in short when you write about a topic and its related topics, Google understands that it is a website which has good content in a particular field and you get SEO benefitted.

4). You have limited time and resources and there are a huge number of websites on each topic and field, Why should people come and read your website? You need to be thorough with your topics and should have deeper content in your own niche.

How to Choose a Niche for Your Blog?

This is one of the most important things when starting a new blog.

I have been blogging for 4 years and prior to that have 9 years of experience in marketing and branding but before starting the Profoundblogger.com, I have spent years learning the basics of blogging and have a very successful blog Candytech.in (on technology).

I thought of starting profoundblogger in 2015 but waited for 2 more years and learned a lot about coding, SEO and WordPress development and million other things before writing the first post on profoundblogger.

Also, I have this domain name registered for a couple of years before I actually started writing on it. But I wanted to be sure when I start it, I have enough knowledge of the subject and experience to offer something valuable to readers.

What matters most in creating a successful blog is your experience and expertise.

If you have a good experience in any field if it cooking or fashion, you should choose that as your blogging topic.

Don’t worry or think about what people say about which niche is more profitable, which keywords will give you most traffic and money.

If you have passion and knowledge in a particular area, you will be able to do your best and write in-depth content. On the other hand, if you choose a topic you are not familiar with but have high PPC keywords and traffic opportunities, you are bound to fail.

Follow your passion and heart and your blog will be super successful.

Expertise in a Topic is a Must

As I shared my own experience, some expertise or experience is always good to have. It will help you gain a following faster and sooner compared to most other people.

Also, you will be able to add value and help others. I would humbly request, don’t start a blog to earn money, it is a terrible idea.

Start a blog about something you believe in and then scale it up for success.

What if You don’t have any experience with the topic?

Would you like to learn from someone who has no idea about the subject? Think about it.

It would be better to learn as much as you can, about the topic, you want to write about, get the first-hand experience.

I would suggest you get a lot of experience before launching your first website.

Also, if you want to start can do so but have a slow start and keep learning along with blogging.

Starting is important and more your work in your niche better you will become with time.

Should You Choose a very limited topic or have a broader topic for your blog?

This is a bit specific issue and more of a personal choice, if you are writing on cars should you write about all type of cars or should you write on premium cars only.

Before choosing a niche, write down at least 20 article topics, which you can write about your subject when you start blogging. If you are unable to do so, you need to think of a different area where you can have plenty of topics to write about.

Afterall, you are going to blog on the similar topics for years to come.

I think you should start with what you know better and then slowly experiment and see what your readers like.

Your Article topics should be in Sync to Your Blog

Search for the topics you want to write – it should gel well with your Site – say we are going to write about blogging or online marketing or analytics on profoundblogger. The subjects we are going to write about and the blog name is in sync.

What if we choose a name like chandigarhmetro.com and start writing about all these topics – it looks ridiculous to readers and doesn’t look like a long-term strategy by the blogger.

To Sum It Up

• Select a topic you have experience or expertise.
• Better to have a niche and focused content strategy than to write on diverse topics.
• Select a topic that you are passionate and can write a lot of content.

So, lets now move to our second question of how to find the right domain name for your blog?

Why it is important to choose the right domain name for your blog?

Firstly, It is very difficult to change the domain name at a later stage so whatever you will choose, you will have to live with it forever.

If you choose a ridiculous name it is going to stick with you and no matter how much you hate it later.

It can’t be changed because that domain name will become a brand for your website and maybe you will also have an associated Facebook page, Google Plus Page, a Youtube Channel and twitter handle for your brand.

But Can You Change the Domain Name later?

You have an option to change the domain name and create redirects for all post and pages to the new domain but believe me, it is not what you would want to do.

Your Domain Name Should go with the theme of your blog Topic

You Don’t want to write about making sandwiches on a blog named as techoftommorrow.com nor people would like to learn about sandwich making on a tech blog.

There are 3 different type of domain names – Keyword Based Domain Names or Pure Brand Names or a Hybrid Domain Names.

Keyword Based Domain Names 

It is not bad to have a keyword you want to rank for in your domain name it is actually helpful and Google gives it significant weight in search engine ranking. But Google has stopped giving it too much importance in recent times.

Keyword Stuffed Domain names – Bestsmartphonunder or top10mobiles or nokiapoweruser.com.

These seem to be keyword stuffed domains and don’t actually sound like a brand name, remember we want to create a brand which is going to have 1000s of readers, the name can’t be a let-down.

Also, You can Watch this Video from Matt Cutts From Google to understand How Google Treats Keywords in the Domain Name

Branded Domain Names

Your blog domain name can be a unique brand name like – Moz, Yoast, Shoutmeloud or Google or Yahoo, which actually don’t hint at what these sites are about.

But these are unique brand names with a very high recall value and fairly catchy and easy to remember.

The Hybrid Brand Names

I love the hybrid brand names, which are good sounding, easy to remember, and also hint about the topic of the site.

Some examples are Techcrunch, AndroidAuthority, ProfoundBlogger.com, Candytech.in, Gizmodo.com, Yourstory.com and so on.

There is a connection between the Niche and domain name, which makes it even easier for the readers to recall.

6 Things To Check in a Domain Name

1). TLD – Try to get a .com instead of .in or .co.in or any other TLD. If you are not doing a local targeting the .com represent a more global domain name and no matter your users are from The US or UK or India it is going to be more neutral TLD for them.

Also, Google prefer the geo-specific TLD for the local web traffic like .ph will get a decent ranking in the Philippines but the .com don’t have any such limitation.

Moreover, the .com TLD (top level domain) is easy to remember for users and by default, they type .com instead of .org or .net

2). Avoid Copyright Issues – Don’t use another brands name like Google-Tech or lakmeindiablog.com or something like that to avoid legal issues.

3). Don’t use symbols – or numerals bloggerpasssion12.com – bad example of domain name tough to remember for readers and

4). Short Domain Names – Using a very long Domain Name is a bad idea, it is difficult to remember and users will have to type that name every time in the browser. It cannot be too long – short is good

5). Don’t use a very specific and limiting domain name – dosareciepies.com or wordpresswizards.com – you are limiting your future scope.

6). Choose a unique and Catchy domain name – This is Easier said than done.

It is a Your Brand Name Not Just a Domain Name.

Getting Ideas to Find a Good Domain Name

Check existing sites in the niche and see if there is some catchy name you can think about.

Check some book names on the topic – you may get lucky. But don’t copy an exact domain name.

Spend at least 3-4 days, consult friends and family, and give them some options and see which one is more preferred.

Lastly, where can you buy a domain from – there are many services like Google domains, Namecheap, Hostgator, or Godaddy to get a domain name. All are same just don’t worry and go and register it.

So that’s all if you need any further help from my side, let’s have a chat in the comments. You can bookmark ProfoundBlogger to check out later or can sign up for our monthly newsletter if you find this article useful.