Off-Topic Blogging - To Do Or Not To Do?

If your blog is all about search engine optimization, will you consider blogging about the latest breakthrough in cancer treatment or the impact of global warming to low altitude countries like Kiribati? Or, will you just stick to your niche?

Off Topic Blogging is what we call it when niche blogs deviate from their usual blog topic. This blog practice has been a heated discussion around the Blogosphere. Most bloggers remain doubtful of the benefits of off-topic blogging, while some bloggers are convinced that it is a healthy blogging practice. I don’t know about you but I’ve got three good reasons why you should RE-consider off topic blogging before jumping into it. Note: this post assume that you’ve got a niche blog.

Off Topic Blogging Alienates Your Readers And Subscribers

The obvious drawback of off topic blogging is the impact it brings to your readers and subscribers. You see, most people subscribe to your blog because they are interested in the topic you are writing about and they want to receive updates from you. If you noticed, niche blogs (blogs that covers a specific topic) are more popular, authoritative and have higher feed subscribers because they concentrate on a particular topic.

Assuming you subscribe to the feed of SEObook’s blog because you want to receive tips on search engine optimization directly to your email. For the first week, you’ve been receiving useful and practical SEO tips but then all of a sudden, you started receiving feeds on pinay sex scandal and pinay sex videos. What will you do? Your immediate response is most likely to unsubscribe or mark the email as spam. The same case applies when you are a frequent reader of a blog then all of a sudden off topic posts started to show up. Ultimately, you’ll lose interest in reading the blog and worse, you’ll swear not to visit the blog again.

Off Topic Blogging Could Lower Your Search Engine Ranking

In case you haven’t noticed, niche blogs occupy the top ranks of search engine result pages when people search relevant keywords to a niche. I tried searching “link building” using Google and almost all the websites shown in the firts page of the search result are all blogs with Search Engine Optimization as their niche. Here’s a screen shot.

So how does off topic blogging affects your search engine ranking? Well, it all boils down to your use of keywords. While some SEO would argue that keywords do not have a huge impact on search engine optimization, I still believe it does. I believe that doing off topic blog posts dilute your keywords and keyphrases.

I tried an experiment before with my first blog, BloggingMix. BloggingMix.com then was ranked 14th in the search result page of Google for the search term Blogging Tips. But after doing some off topic blogging (I did sponsored reviews, which are not related to blogging), my search engine ranking went from 14th to 42nd. Worse, my Google Page Rank went from 4 to 0. This leads to my final point why off topic blogging is not advisable.

Off Topic Blogging Could Affect Your Google Page Rank

Well, off topic posts do not necessarily lower your Google Page Rank but the fact that they are highly suspected as sponsored reviews, you might end up being bitch slapped by Google.

Evidently, most off topic blogging occurs when a blog accepts a sponsored review. Although the product or service to be reviewed is totally irrelevent to the blog doing the review, it gets accepted because the blogger can’t just say no to a handsome incentive. This then gets picked up by Google or some A-holes reported your blog to Google, resulting to being penalized. In case you do sponsored reviews, make sure you review products or services related to your blog topic, otherwise, you’ll be suspected of doing sponsored reviews even if you’re not.

For these reasons, I’d prefer sticking to my blog topic. But then again, if you are a creative blogger, you can always find ways to relate a seemingly off-topic subject to your blog’s niche. What do you think?

Thank your time and like always, you’re comments and suggestions are kindly sought.

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