Ever since I got into the world of food blogging, this is a question I find is asked quite a lot. I have asked this to myself often enough, and I have also had this question thrown at me on several occasions.

How do I make sure my food blog fits into a niche?

Before we attempt to answer that question, let’s go into what a niche is and why it is important for your food blog to have a niche in the first place.

A niche is ideally when you cater to a distinct segment or a specific set of people, tastes, ideologies etc. From the perspective of a food blogger, it is when you are writing mostly about a something that falls into a niche, like a certain cuisine, a certain food habit, or a specific type of cooking. A typical example of a niche food blog would be a vegan blog, like Vegan Richa, or a baking blog like Joy of Baking etc.

But what are the advantages of having a niche food blog?

One very important result of writing for a niche is that you are more organised with content creation, and it makes it easier to create that content. For instance, if you are a vegetarian, and your niche is a vegetarian blog, you are not forcing yourself to come up with that content. It comes naturally. And you know that your next meal is going to be a vegetarian meal. To organise your content calendar and make the food and create the content is a lot easier, because of the focus and passion you feel for your niche.

SEO. That’s a big plus for a food blogger. Now writing for a niche doesn’t immediately translate into SEO advantage. But if you are writing for a niche, your blogs keyword density for recipes that are searched very often by that niche, will be pretty high. We have noticed this at Cucumbertown too. For those who write for a certain niche, search traffic is higher than comparable blogs. Besides this, being a niche blogger could give you the chance to be written about by other websites with higher page ranks, thereby giving you the opportunity to accumulate valuable backlinks. For instance blogs like Vegan Richa, are featured on nearly every “must-follow-vegan-food-blogger” list out there. Similarly, pretty much every article on baking recipes is bound to have a recipe from Joy of Baking. This means traffic is going to increase, exponentially. And backlinks from any high authority website is the holy grail of SEO!

It also helps you create the identity of an expert faster. If you are exclusively blogging about Sous Vide cooking, it means you are not only serving a niche audience, you are also carving an expert identity for yourself in that niche. This is also because you will immerse yourself into that niche to the point where you will eventually be an expert. A baker will certainly know more about how to roll out the perfect puff pastry than an expert at South Indian cooking, even though their expertise falls under the broad blanket of cooking. The same would apply to blogs too. And once you have the reputation of an expert, your direct traffic will grow immensely.

Another big advantage with being identified with a particular niche is that you will then be able to attain a loyal fan base faster than it probably will take without one. Marc Matsumoto, of the famous blog No Recipes, told me something very interesting about this:

“I don’t have a niche on my blog, but I do post a lot of vegan recipes. So when I post a vegan recipe on, say, Instagram, I suddenly see an increase in my followers. And then I’ll post a meat recipe, and then I’ll see a lot of the vegan followers have unfollowed me, or left a comment about my questionable choices.”

And that kind of branding translates into MONEY. If you are the expert in a niche, and people look up to you, there are high chances of sponsors reaching out to you. When a new milk replacement product is created, that brand will reach out to non-dairy and vegan bloggers for endorsements. Similarly, when a weight loss meal delivery service opens , they are bound to reach out to the healthy living bloggers. And everyone knows that sponsored content is a big way to make money for bloggers.

So what this demonstrates is that people want consistency in your content if you want them to become your long term followers.

Now that we have established what a niche is and why it is important, let’s look at how one can write for a niche in their food blog.

If your lifestyle, food habits or even allergies are a niche in itself, this becomes a pretty easy process. If you are vegetarian, vegan, allergic to gluten, etc, it is easy to cater to those niches. But if you, like me, are not restricted to that kind of a niche in terms of your own passion and taste, the most important thing to remember is not to force a niche. Because if you do that, it will become evident in your writing, and that will alienate readers.

Instead, think of what gives you joy in cooking. Or what sets apart your approach to cooking and food, from that of others. Is it discovering a healthy alternative? Is it making easy versions of what are normally difficult meals? Is it giving step by step instructions to someone? Is it adding indigenous ingredients to international recipes? Is it about cooking for a young couple on a budget? All of these things could become your niche.

Something to remember, however, is that you shouldn’t feel that your niche is going to limit your own experience with cooking. Even when you are advised to have a niche for your blog, it doesn’t mean you cannot post something outside of that niche. Just like we are in terms of our own tastes. For instance, even though you may be a couple on a budget, you will have your occasional indulgences. Similarly even though you may be primarily writing about Italian cooking, there is nothing stopping you from trying a curry once in a while, right? Remember, your blog is a reflection of you and your choices.

So, if we were to get a little broader with what is traditionally thought of as a niche, then a niche is simply something that sets you apart from the horde, so someone with a similar interest to yours can appreciate that special something about your blog. And over time, this will build into a solid following.

To follow more stories on how to make it big as a food blogger, don’t forget to subscribe to the Cucumbertown Magazine. And stay tuned for more updates.