5 Tools to Help You Research Blog Niche Viability

When it comes to picking your blog niche, knowing which one to go for is vital. Your niche will determine your audience, your content focus, and ultimately your ability to monetise your blog.

And whilst there are literally thousands of different niches to pick from, not every one of them will be a good fit.

That's where niche research comes in! Niche research is the process of researching (duh!) various niches to find the area in which your interests, expertise, and overall audience demand align.

In this guide, we’re going to look at five super helpful tools that will help you evaluate the viability of your blog niche.

These tools are designed to give you insights into audience demand, competition, and monetisation opportunities, so you can make an informed decision before diving in.

Let’s explore the tools!

1. Google Trends: Gauge Interest Over Time

Google Trends is a free tool that helps you track the popularity of search terms over time. This is an invaluable resource for understanding whether your niche has a consistent or seasonal interest.

It allows you to search for keywords related to a given subject to identify the frequency with which people are searching for it, as well as compare them to similar keywords. You’re then able to analyse searches by region, allowing you to fine-tune the potential audience you have to work with.

If you look at the image above, we can see three search terms being displayed – Fragrance, Beauty, and Vegan Beauty Products. Beauty is the term being searched for the most, which we’d expect as it’s much broader than the other two.

What does this tell us though? It tells us that if we were considering starting a blog about Vegan Beauty Products, the search volume would be very low when compared to other related subjects. With this information, we’d do well to tailor our content to target much larger keywords to get viewers to the blog first, then create some posts around Vegan Beauty Products which we point those visitors to.

We may also say that the subject of vegan products isn’t being searched for at all, and instead change the focus of our content to focus exclusively on fragrances or the beauty industry.

Something to note is that the higher the search volume, the more competition you’re going to have. We explore this in much more detail in our guide explaining how to select a profitable niche.

2. Ahrefs: Analyse Competition and Search Volume

Ahrefs is a premium SEO tool, but its value for niche research is unparalleled. It allows you to deep dive into keyword data, including search volume, difficulty, and top-ranking competitors.

Using this tool, you can identify low-competition keywords with high search volumes, as well as analyse competitors' content and backlinks to understand what’s working in your niche. And with this information, you’re able to discover gaps in the market that you can capitalise on.

With Ahrefs, you can see whether your blog niche is oversaturated or if there’s room for you to carve out your space. For instance, niches like budget travel tips may have moderate competition, but targeting budget travel for families could be a profitable sub-niche.

3. SEMrush: Evaluate Monetisation Potential

SEMrush is another excellent SEO tool that doubles as a resource for evaluating monetisation potential. By analysing keywords and competitors, you can get a clear picture of whether your niche has advertising, affiliate, or product-selling opportunities.

SEMrush is more geared toward the paid side of running a blog, which means you can analyse paid advertising trends for your niche, and discover affiliate programs and sponsorship opportunities.

And through the too, you’re able to research content ideas that attract high-paying ads, giving you an idea of the potential for monetisation your chosen niche will have.

For example, SEMrush might reveal that niches like personal finance or DIY crafts are highly profitable due to their strong affiliate marketing potential. This insight can guide your content strategy from the start.

4. AnswerThePublic: Discover Audience Questions

AnswerThePublic is a unique tool that generates a list of questions people are asking online about a particular topic. It’s perfect for understanding your audience’s pain points and interests.

We’re huge fans of AnswerThePublic here at the Side Hustle Blueprint, and it’s a tool that we use on a weekly basis to identify new areas in which we can create content.

It’s great for generating blog post ideas based on real audience queries and identifying subtopics to cover within your niche. It’s also super helpful for understanding the language and phrases your audience uses. Insights into the specific phrases and words they’re using let you know how you should word your content to best resonate with them.

If we look at the wheel of questions generated by AnswerThePublic for the keyword Smartphones, we can see a whole list of questions it’s found that people are searching for.

If we run a blog that’s all about smartphones, we can take some of those questions and transform them into blog posts, answering the questions that readers interested in the topic are searching for.

5. Ubersuggest: Affordable Keyword and Niche Insights

Ubersuggest is an affordable alternative to premium tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush, offering comprehensive keyword data and niche insights. It’s especially useful for beginners.

It’s great if you’re just starting, as it lets you find high-traffic, low-competition keywords within your niche, as well as analyse competitor websites to see what’s performing well. If you’re really into the SEO game, there’s a lot of backlink data available too, helping to guide your SEO efforts.

But if you’re not ready to jump into using Ubersuggest, you can download our free 25-point SEO checklist for online articles!

Conclusion

As we’ve already said, choosing the right blog niche is a critical first step in building a successful blog.

By leveraging tools like Google Trends, AnswerThePublic, and the others we’ve mentioned in this list, you’re able to make data-driven decisions that set you up for success.

You should keep in mind that there’s no one-size-fits-all tool. Each one in the list does something different, with varying price points. If you’re just starting, it’d be best to use free tools like Google Trends to give you an idea of the competition you’re likely to expect in your selected niche.

Once you’ve got a few articles published, then branch out into paid platforms to give you some more power behind your work.

But if you’ve already picked your niche, and are ready to get started, head to our ultimate guide to starting a side hustle blog to learn everything you need to know!

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