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 Growing gardens is a wide niche.  If you cultivate a garden of any kind—be it indoors or outdoors, for flowers or veggies you can create a website on it and add content to it regardless of its category or type.  Similar to other specialisations, gardening is rather broad, and gardeners frequently specialise in one or two areas.  That clears the way for someone to have a website on their own gardening sub niche.

For a gardening blog, some of the inputs are obvious –  images or pictures.  Start snapping photos of your plants as they go through the many phases, such as preparing the soil, planting, watering, harvesting, weed removal, and insect control etc.  

The following are some General Categories of Gardening:

Greenhouse farming

Particular crop farming

Multi Cropping methods

Alternative crops with short lifespan

Combined farming with livestock rearing

Watering or irrigation

Maintenance

You can specialise in some of the types of gardening, and generate new concepts, while imparting your knowledge to others.

To be clear, let’s examine a few of the many gardening sub-niches that exist and the areas of that sub niche that can be tackled.:

Gardening Sub Niches

	Sub Niche	Strategies for blog posts etc
1	Watering/irrigation	Techniques
2	Seasonal /alternative crops	Tips/checklists/guides
3	Tools/equipment	Suitable gardening supplies
4	Balcony/indoor/container/greenhouse	Care tips/suitable plants
5	Pest/disease management	Optimising the use of pesticides
6	Herbs/spices	Various types/purposes
7	Landscaping/seasonal garden tasks	Plant combination and arrangement
8	Flowers	Best types of flowers
9	Specific purpose gardening	Butterfly/bees/fish farming/livestock
10.	Seedling production	Tips/techniques

What can I write about my Garden?

Additionally, you’ll get other relevant topics, some of which are below:

• If you are writing on the seasons, you could examine how the plants are affected by the different seasons and what kind of maintenance each plant needs.
• Plants requiring less upkeep like Perennials – are plants and flowers that bloom in one season, persist for the following one, then wither away until they can reappear in a different season. 
• Preservation of produce from your garden.
• Give suggestions on how to make better use of the outside areas of a house.
• Pruning Choice of soil
• Plants to avoid at specific seasons
• The best compost types to use
• Duration of the growing season
• The quantity of light required by particular plants
• Shade-loving plants

However, some decide to cover every topic once it falls within the umbrella of gardening as a whole. Have your own style, make use of aspects you wish to share, adding your original expertise to it.

You’ll also need

Regular refresher training to stay up to date on new alternative techniques

Regular Input for a Gardening Website

Keyword Research: You’ll need to conduct keyword research to fully develop your topic for each of these sub niches. and understand the process of building a specialised website. 

WordPress Theme (Gardening): You should choose a suitable theme for your gardening blog in addition to getting photos.  Also observe how others in the same niche have doneit;

Images: Once you’ve decided on a wide or sub niche and have your images, you’ll need to gather notes or information about the picture or the process that led to them. These will eventually become the blog post entries.  

Images can depict the following phases of your garden:

• Preparation of the soil
• Planting a seedling or
• Hydrating
• Different growth phases
• Upkeep
• Combination of vegetation
• Instruments for pest management
• Plants that are seasonal 
• Items available for purchase

These are only a few of the main niches and sub niches of gardening covered in this post. In case what you’re into is not mentioned here, do research for more to use for your website.

7 Subtle Benefits of Gardening

Are you aware that gardening has physical and mental health benefits?  If so, In what ways has it benefited you or not?  I’ve included a few advantages of gardening below:

 Redirecting one’s attention away from stresses and focusing on the activity at hand can alleviate tension and bring optimism for improved crops, yield, and other outcomes. bringing about a feeling of fulfilment

•  When done correctly, planting and digging strengthen our muscles.  It resembles exercise almost exactly.  
• The memory of routines for plant upkeep and care stimulates the mind. 
• Provides insight into nature
• Additionally, a garden can serve as a location to go and unwind.
• Beautiful, fresh flowers may lift our spirits.
• Redirecting one’s attention away from stressors and focusing on the activity at hand can alleviate tension
• Optimism for improved crops, yield, and other outcomes bring about a feeling of fulfilment

Create a Gardening Vlog

In addition to having a gardening website, creating videos on gardening is another way of blogging.  With your phone installed with a free video making app, you are good to go. A stand alone camera can also be used. My previous post lists Other inputs that go into creating a gardening vlog.

Extra information

Gardening is ideal for electronic books to market or give as a present to blog visitors

Pros and cons of Gardening

Pros

If you’re thinking of taking gardening seriously or even of you already are, here are a few pros and cons for your info:

• gardening is fun; seeing your plants grow from seed to harvest is quite interesting;
• consuming your own organic produce;
• saving cost on some food purchases;
• flowers gives your home a nice ambience.

Cons

• constant monitoring takes time;
• disappointment for beginners when plants do not turn out well;
• find solution for disposal of cut trees;
• buy expensive tools;
• engage the services of a paid gardener.

Importance of Gardening

On the whole, having a a garden is beneficial in a lot of ways. It becomes more fulfilling when it is translated into a blog or vlog, giving room for venturing into training and learning from others in the same niche.

Now you know what a wide or sub gardening niche is. If you’ve enjoyed this post, do share and also leave me a comment.

In these blog posts about niches, I’ll be exposing or revealing the inputs needed for a niche website.  Inputs that will make the blog work well and be successful.  Like all niches, you have to look at the larger subject with the sub niches, and choose a sub niche that you can easily handle.  

10 things to consider for a niche website:  

• A domain name
• A hosting service – bluehost.com 
• A wordpress.ORG or  wordpress.com theme [you can search for one based on the niche you’ve chosen]
• Set up categories/menus for your site
• Set up the first five pages of your site
• Instal an SEO plugin – Yoast SEO recommended
• Keyword research
• Home and/or About Page
• Pillar page/s
• Your audience

You can refresh your memory with some of my posts on the above subjects that are also on my YouTube channel.

 Travel Niche Ideas – Can you brainstorm  by Yourself?

Yes.  That is thinking through what you’ll want to write about that aspect of the travel niche you’ve chosen and making notes of the same.    For example,

• Your passion;
• Knowledge; 
• Things you’re good at;
• Hobbies;
• Things you’ve experience in;
• Preparedness to research;  
• Taking notes.

We all have several interests and can write or talk about them at length.  This is what makes people set up several websites.  There’s no harm in using free sites like blogger.com to start several websites of interest.  It will help you know and decide on the ones you’ll want to focus on in the long term.

The Way Forward – First Steps for Establishing a Website

• Use blogger.com or to set up your sites (as many as you want to try your hands on) and put content in them.  This has several benefits:  Will
• Prevent you from paying for hosting for several domains that are not being used immediately;
• Give you time to see which sites you’ll really like to spend your time on;
• Save time and money in the long run.

You gain an added benefit of learning how to add the following to a blog, to name a few:

• Blog post Images
• Header image
• Footer text
• Add menu/categories
• Upload from Google drive
• Add table of contents
• Use WordPress blocks

Blog Posts Blocks

During this trial period, you’ll learn about WordPress blocks in addition so you can compare it with Blogspot blocks.  With this knowledge, you’ll be conversant with some of the elements before getting a wordpress.com or wordpress.org theme. Remember this is something you are doing in your own time at your own pace; of course you can seek the help of experts when you get stuck.   Additionally, you must have a source of livelihood or be engaged in your regular job till your site has the potential to earn.  As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, some have gone into this without the intention of making earnings, only for their niche to turn out to be profitable. 

Alternatively you can

• Invest in wealthyaffiliate.com to enjoy the benefits of learning from the community – i.e gain knowledge that you may struggle to find on your own; or
• Benefit from using  their subdomain siterubix for your free sites;
• Invest in both free and paid forum/s where you can benefit from discussions;
• Join groups in your interest on social media.

Further steps

• 
  Research both online and offline;
• Plan how to structure and write your posts
• Plan on content

Such research should help you farm out how you’ll go about the niche and what areas to cover.  You can always add more or update the existing information on your niche, whilst having insights into angles to take.  There are more micro niches related to most of the travel niche ideas listed below.

The Perfect Travel Niche

You’ll need to narrow down in this niche too as there are various aspects of travel.  Let’s look at just a few of the many sub niches of travel to specialise on.  

• Arts and culture
  • Photography
• Cruise
  • Group cruises
• Entertainment
  • Festivals
• Adventure
  • Volunteerism
• Interest
  • Ethnic travel
• Corporate
  • Meetings 
• Lodging and transportation
  • Vacation rentals
• Family
  • Family vacations
• Groups
  • Workshops
• Faith based
  • Pilgrimage
• Digital nomad travel
  • Work friendly destinations

Travel Vlog Ideas

If you’re thinking of vlogging (making videos) rather,  you’ll still need the ff:

• A niche or subject that the video will be about,
• Tools for making your videos – there are several videos on youtube to learn this from.  
• Free tools and ways of making videos
• Help of an expert 
• Instal and use a video making app on your phone
• Strategies for making various types of videos
• A script (storyline) for recording

	Research Ideas from other websites in the travel Niche
1	Domain name used
2	About page info
3	Purpose for starting the blog (if revealed)
4	How SEO is conducted.  See if the SEO method used is the one youd like to use, as there are various approaches to SEO that can be used.
5	How links are built
6	Any marketing efforts (affiliate links)/adverts/
7	Content creation process/blog
8	Tools/Resources
9	Efforts at creating an Email list/contact page
10	Knowledge of niche subject chosen plus effort at research

Competitor Website Analysis

 Yours may differ from others in the same niche – but by now you should know what a menu or category of a website is.  Some have a few main categories with more sub categories.  The list of categories below gives an idea of the possible ones to have, to name a few:  

• Destination
• Flights and other means of transport
• Hotels
• Guides/tips
• Tour info  
• Necessary items needed for a trip
• Best things to do
• Safety measures

This post has outlined some of the possibilities for a travel niche blog. If you’ve enjoyed it, do leave me a comment and please share.

Gutenberg is the new editor in WordPress . WordPress is a Content Management System software that is used to create and manage a website. As you are already aware, websites contain  mostly written words.  Such words are written in the WordPress editor.  This editor is like Ms Word document with the ability to bold, make italic, align text etc. making it easy to write and edit posts. The is the known as Classic Editor of WordPress. WordPress themes  are built by a team of web development experts.  Themes for different purposes like a shop,  blog,  photos, etc.  are bought blank before words are added to it.   Therefore, there are multiple WordPress themes that you can choose from for the specific website you want to create.

What is the Site Editor in WordPress called?

Since 2018 starting with version 5, WordPress has added a plugin to themes called the Gutenberg plugin. This adds even more functionality to your WordPress theme.   This means making our work easier.  

The first time you use Gutenberg, you may not like it, especially if you are used to the classic editor.  But over time you’ll find it much easier to use.  The Gutenberg plugin is made up of blocks for everything you do in WordPress, not to mention the frequently performed tasks like 

• adding a title, 
• creating a paragraph
• Spacing 
• Adding
  • an image
  • a video
  • Quotes
  • Table of contents
  • lists
• Move text up and down
• Dragging and dropping 
• Uploading 
• Uses of the Sidebar

When  in a page or post, look at the top left corner of your dashboard and click the plus sign this will reveal the default blocks in a directory that came with your theme.  Hover over a block to see what it does. Place the cursor where you want a block to be, click on the chosen block in the directory and it appears in your post.

Your WordPress theme will come with the latest version of Gutenberg.  

Where are the blocks in WordPress?

If you’re using an older version of WordPress you can do various things to have access to the new Gutenberg blocks, like;

[1] install a separate Gutenberg plugin from the plugins registry or library.  

[2]  Update your current wordpress theme to a newer version or better still invest in a modern wordpress theme that comes inbuilt with Gutenberg

[3]  toggle between the classic and block editors whilst editing a post or page,  if you have both 

Each block comes with the possible uses for that particular block.  For example a table block will come with options to add colour, and  change columns, rows etc.

You may not need all these new features.  If you just want to use basic features of adding text, images, paragraphs, Gutenberg’s user-friendliness in my opinion. makes it faster.

Benefits of gutenberg wordpress editor

• Easy to learn
• Easy to use
• Helps you work faster
• Easy for beginners

Differences between Gutenberg and other WordPress Page Builders

What are page builders you may ask?  Before WordPress introduced the Gutenberg block builder, there were in existence page builders for WordPress sites.  These were developed by individual developers, are sold and downloaded unto WordPress themes.  

I’ve tried my hands on a few and my experience is that they make your web pages very attractive.         Some desirable features are drag and drop elements, multiple templates to choose from for landing page and webinar creation, to name a few.  Much as most of their features are desirable, they are not free.   Their pages also load slowly. Some, to name a few are

• Elementor
• thrive architect
• Divi
• Seedprod

Page Builders integrate with Gutenberg and they both have similarities and differences. You’ll have to check out some for yourself and choose which ones to use based on your needs and preferences.

You now know what is the Gutenberg Block Editor for WordPress to start using for your posts. And also gained an understanding of a Content Management System software. (CMS) If you enjoyed this post, please share, and leave me a comment. .

Watch video of Gutenberg Block Editor Below.

Watch the second part on my YouTube Channel. https://youtu.be/VVM0qvjTP74?si=zLjjDCjO4oe8r38c

An additional way of doing keyword research is by using paid tools.  Unlike free methods, using paid keyword research tools helps you find more metrics about a keyword; like websites using that keyword, frequency of occurrence of keyword phrases in the search engines, and more. 

The best Keyword Research Tools

Online, there are many reliable paid keyword research tools. I’ll only provide a few here, and I encourage you to look for more of these tools, review them, and choose the metrics you believe your website business will need. They are:

• SEMRush
• Moz Explorer
• Ahrefs
• Jaaxy
• Google Keyword Explorer
• Answer the public

What kind of Information is provided by Keyword Research tools?

Some of the information offered by keyword research tools is listed below. There are similarities in the information given though the name used for it may differ from one tool to another.

Search volume – that is the average monthly search volume  of a search term, or over a period of time.  

Keyword difficulty –  refers to whether a keyword would be difficult to rank or not.

Domain or Site Authority – the ranking score of a website from 1-100.  The latter being the highest.

Competitive density – is how often a search term appears in a post, relative to the total number of words.

Search intent – is what a searcher has in mind when using a particular search phrase.

Keyword Analysis – tells you some facts about a keyword e.g whether it is a good keyword to use, and whether it can rank.

Domain availability – whether you can use a keyword phrase as a domain name.

Site rank tracking – shows where your site ranks for some chosen keywords

Keyword Suggestion – provision of  more keywords based on the seed keyword put into the tool.  This is the same as a keyword generator.

Keyword gaps – new and infrequently used keywords

Filters – used to reveal unique keywords.

Content Explorer – checking others sites in the same niche for their keywords.

Alphabet soup analysis – using various alphabets to find more keyword phrases.

Other metrics to look out for:

The listed are other metrics that are also quite important to most businesses:

• Site audit
• Backlinks i.e sites pointing to a site
• Technical SEO giving opportunities to improve SEO

More terms to understand

• Long tail keywords
• Low competition keywords

The Importance of Technical Information on Keyword Research Tools

Such information helps you to know how your site is performing and which areas to improve upon.  

Whichever tool or metric is chosen depends on your needs and preferences.

Are these metrics important for your business? 

If you are just starting out you can use the free tools or lower priced options offered by each tool. Such options may only serve a single purpose.  

Most of them have a Google browser extension that shows these metrics from a bird’s eye view

Indeed most of the tools are great, but pricey and comparable to each other.  If you are operating on a budget you may not opt for a paid option.

How to find metrics on paid keyword tools?

You can learn from videos or guides provided about the above mentioned tools.

You’ll be requested to sign up to the sites to get all the details you require.  Additionally make a Google search for the pros and cons of each tool.  

Are there less priced keyword research tools?

Yes, there are.  Make a Google search for less priced ones, note their prices and features.

Also make a search for, and study reviews of the various tools.

Google  Keyword Browser Extensions Recommended

• Mozbar chrome extension, 
• SEMRush chrome extension. 
• Keywords Everywhere chrome extension  
• SEO Minion chrome extension 

It is advisable to activate only one extension as a start;  as activating all at once can get you confused. You can alternate their use untill you settle for one or two that you find acceptable.  

These extensions show various metrics under the websites listed on the first page of Google.  For example you’ll find the Domain or Site Authority of a site, which is the performance of a site in the search engines.  

Alphabet Soup Technique on Jaaxy

The Jaaxy keyword tool automates the alphabet soup technique. Also check out how to select keywords, using the alphabet soup option of Jaaxy keyword tool. The video below shows how this works on Jaaxy.  

https://youtu.be/D_qH1PTqABI

Now you know what paid keyword research tools do. Don’t hesitate to try them for yourself. If you’ve enjoyed this post, leave me a comment and share.

What are Keywords?

Keywords are the words or phrases people type into Google and other search engines, and social media, when making a search.   A keyword research strategy is one of the essential components for SEO success. Such a strategy helps website owners rank higher in the search engine results pages and secondly to identify their target audience.

Why is it necessary to search for Keywords for a Website?

Keywords are needed to

• meet the purpose of SEO
• satisfy search intent;
• cover a topic in detail;
• rank better in search engines;
• increase organic traffic;
• get more appropriate search terms.

The types of keywords and their Importance

There are two categories of keywords and several types under these two, with overlapping meaning. These two categories are

• primary – for example laptop, and

• secondary – Hp, Del, MacBook, Acer and other types of laptop.

Such categories are used for the search types of keywords mentioned below: Their meanings overlap in some cases.

Information and Navigation Keywords- 

These are used when a search is being made for

• information,
• direction,
• facts, or knowledge,

without the aim to do a transaction related to the search.  The user wants to fix a problem. 

• Question phrases like
• ‘what is’,
• ‘how does’,
• ‘how to’

are used in the former type of search. 

• Whilst Google map directions,
• amazon shopping,
• hotel and plane booking are examples of the latter. 
• It may just bring valuable users to your site depending on the type of information it is.  

How does Google determine Keywords?

In addition, more terms or other variations of words (LSI), are used to give further meaning to keywords. Latent semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords are used by Google to understand what a post is about. Reference Search Engine Journal:

“Google relies on LSI keywords to understand content at such a deep level.” by SEJ

How to find Searchable Keywords for Free

Most keyword tools have free and paid options. The free options are for a period or for making a few searches for a period of time. Below, let’s explore methods of doing keyword research without paid tools.

Let’s say you have a topic niche in mind for your writing and a list of relevant keywords. These are seed keywords, that should be written down or stored in a Google or Word document until you’re ready to perform some research. Seed keywords can be a list of topics, words or phrases related to your niche or subject. 

If the phrases are made up of five or more words they are known as long-tail keywords; and can sometimes be more specifically related to what is being searched for. 

For example “how to start a vegetable garden in a small space”. This is better than just searching for “vegetable garden”.

Step 1:

Google Auto Suggest or Auto Complete Method

1.  Put the keywords on your list into Google one after the other and go through the sites that come up to get more ideas to write on.
2. As you put the keywords phrases into Google, go through the suggestions that come up.  If there are some that youll want more info about, click on it.  It goes back into search and more results are revealed. 

3. Place and click the cursor at the middle or end of the last word in the Google search bar.  More terms are revealed. 
4.  Use as many question phrases as possible including what, why, where, which and action verbs in this kind of research. 
5. Also use the words of the alphabet one after the other in the phrase. The image below show results when the letter ‘c’ is added to the phrase.

Copy or make a screen capture of these results and save in a Google or Word doc to use again.  

Step 2

Use ‘People Also Ask’ (PAA) on Google  

To find more search terms, move to the ‘People Also Ask’ section on the first page of Google.

Have you noticed, that more questions are revealed, when the down arrow beside a questions in PAA is clicked? 

Go through more of these questions with their answers to uncover unique keywords and phrases for your post.

Step 3

Related searches at the  bottom of the first page of Google

Use the ‘related searches’ at the bottom of the page for the same purpose.  Put the phrases one after the other into Google 

Use as many of the steps as possible in your search for keywords;  not to use all at a go, if it’s not possible for you to do so.

Step 4

In addition use Google operators mentioned below for the same purpose:

• Use _ underscore before, in the middle or after the phrase.  This acts like ‘fill in the blank’
• Use “   “  quotes around the keywords.  – This will bring up only websites with the exact phrase in their title or sub titles
• Use * asterisk
• Use @
• Also plurals of some of the words
• Local names or location based searches, and
• Question phrases

User generated Phrases

Step 5

Sometimes you’ll find a question from a forum like Quora, on the first page.  Answer that question thoroughly as a blog post.   This could land your post in that position on the first page. Find below, an example of a user generated question:

 

Step 6. Use social media for keyword research

On social media, use the hashtag (#) symbol and also ‘@’ followed by the keyword. This will categorise the keyword, make it specific and easy to find.

Step 7. Use Keyword Generator Tools

There are several keyword generator tools online like Google Keyword Planner, Jaaxy, Ubersuggest, Wordstream keyword tool, Google trends, Soolve. Most paid tools have free options for several days or several searches for a period of time. Use these options also to find keywords for your blog.

Conclusion

Several factors go into SEO.  These techniques related to keyword search for SEO success are free and some of the best to use.  You may use those that resonate with you and add some more as time goes on.  Use them naturally in your writing, together with quality content that provides value to your readers.

Have you enjoyed this post? If you have, please leave me a comment and also share.