Has Your Blog Outgrown Itself?
September 4th, 2007 by ses5909Looks like you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single conversation! Thanks for visiting!
How many blogs do you read that tend to talk about everything under the sun? I see this happen a lot with personal blogs, but occasionally I will see this also happen in more niche blogs. Something to be mindful of is that your blog, much like a business can actually outgrow itself!
What blog shouldn’t be split?
If you have a personal blog that you post to every week or so and you ramble on about whatever topic comes to mind, whether it’s sports, news, gossip, money, etc., you are probably better off keeping your one blog (because of your posting frequency) and just spending time growing it. If you are a niche blog (let’s say you focus on Football or Soccer) and every once in a while you publish something unrelated or something personal, I would say that is ok and there is no need to split the blog. Just make sure your unrelated posts aren’t very frequent.
Who is it right for?
A lot of blogs start out as personal blogs where the author writes about anything and everything! As time goes by though, they may find that a certain topic dominates their blog and it would be worthwhile to either take those posts (or the remaining posts) and move them to a different blog. This will all depend on the bloggers goals, but is definitely something to consider. Our football blogger would benefit from having an additional “personal” blog if they tend to post off-topic as often as they post on-topic.
Things to consider
This isn’t something that should be taken lightly and there are a lot of things you need to consider before you decide to split your blog.
- It takes time to set up a new blog! You need to choose your design and port over your old posts!
- You now will have at least two blogs to market and try to get links to. You are losing any incoming links and page rank you previously had. You’re basically starting over in the eyes of the search engines.
- Your audience is likely to split too!
Benefits
While there are negatives, there are also some benefits!
- Cross-linking is a nice benefit. You can repeatedly reference your other blogs to help draw attention to them.
- You will have the potential for larger audiences. You can definitely lose visitors to your blog because they were there to read about your dogs and you start posting about your car. By focusing your now two blogs, you really have the ability to market them individually. I always hated submitting to blog directories and choosing a category for my blog! This helps to eliminate that.
- You’re giving your visitors what they want and that is what it all really comes down to. If they are there to read about your dogs, write about your dogs. That doesn’t mean you can’t write about your cars, just do it on your other blog!
At first glance it may seem that splitting your blog is not worth it when you look at the negatives but a little hard work can really overcome those negatives. If you wonder if your blog is a good candidate, I’ll be happy to tell you.
Have you ever split your blog or do you run more than one blog for the reasons I mentioned?
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September 4th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I started off with one blog that had different sections, then switched over to four separate blogs (including one that was a sort of catch-all), then to another that was sort of like the first, and now, I’m quite happy with the one-big-blog approach.
Let me know, though, if I ought to split it into (insert number here) different blogs. And while you’re there, feel free to sort out my categories.
September 4th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
I started off with the one blog for personal posts and rants. Then I started chatting about money making so after a while I split this off into its own blog on the same domain as it seemed a better idea. I split off the personal side of my now Tech and Business blog for a while but I found that I didn’t post to it as often as I’d hoped so I just go for a weekly roundup. Most of my posts tend to be about business, photography or tech stuff anyway as that’s what I live and breathe!
I set up my foodie blog on its own domain originally, wanting to get some sort of diet diary but it’s moved into just posts about food, my gardening and the occasional drink. However knowing that some people want to read everything I post (for some strange reason!) I pull the most recent posts from each of the 3 blogs into a main front page and offer a feed for that too. This way I cover everyone.
Sometimes I do worry as I don’t always post as often on one or the other blog but if you put them together then there’s probably an average of one a day. It can get to a point where you’re spreading yourself too thin but because I know certain people only read individual blogs then I’ll keep it as it is.
September 4th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
It’s amazing how fast a blog takes on a life of its own!
I started blogging in July with what was supposed to be just a personal blog for my poetry and opinions. However, the majority of my readers were interested in my posts on freelance writing and business so I’ve just started another blog for my poetry, prose and personal opinions.
September 4th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Well, I’ve got my family blog that now pretty much is just stuff about our family and our comings and goings. In its early days, it also included my random political rants, but I’ve held back on that. I’ve realized that most of the people who go there are just keeping up with my family.
Then, I started a new blog that I’ve since destroyed. (*tear*) It’s back, though, in “free” Wordpress form. You guys are the first to know: http://everyeveryminute.wordpress.com
It’s sort of a personal reflection blog with a niche theme of “accentuate the positive.” It seemed to be attracting readers before, hopefully it will again!
September 5th, 2007 at 4:55 am
Well if your porting posts across you can 301 redirect the old posts to the new ones - that way you don’t lose link juice.
September 5th, 2007 at 6:12 am
In answer to Adam… I only wish I had link juice!
September 6th, 2007 at 1:06 am
@Sam - You write so often you could definitely get away with having a more niche/targetted blog. Obviously that would require you choosing which topic you wanted to discuss, but I think you could do a pet blog pretty easily. As far as sorting out your categories….well, looking at your categories makes me blind
September 6th, 2007 at 1:08 am
@SarahG - I had noticed how you have your blogs split and I like how you do that. I imagine another topic for discussion could be, if you DO split your blog do you want to create a new domain or do like you did. I would imagine there would be positives and negatives to both sides!
September 6th, 2007 at 1:25 am
@everyone - sorry for my multiple comments, i kept hitting the button after each one without thinking!
@Linda - You have definitely split your blog off wisely and I know what you mean about having so many ideas
@Bob - Glad to see you are back up and running!
@Adam - thanks for mentioning that and you are completely right!
September 8th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Hi Sara (and everyone else). This is very interesting. My blog is intentionally diverse. I’m fully aware that the majority of readers come to it through a single topic (chess) and that a focused chess blog would garner more links from other chess sites, etc etc. But the blog is actually a tool that helps ME learn about new areas (particle physics, mushrooms and fungi…) and explore interconnections between various disciplines or branches of knowledge. So I refuse to specialize.
In fact, I found this post while I was poking around in Google, looking for other diverse blogs to read.
September 8th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Hi Derek, thanks for commenting! I think a deciding factor on whether to split your blog has to do with your goals. The main reason I split my first blog was because my family and friends who weren’t into programming quit coming to my blog as they didn’t understand a lot of my posts. So I wanted to make a blog JUSt for them. If your blog is fitting your needs, then by all means, keep it just the way it is!