So here you are, a blogger, thinking about writing an article but you have some doubts. Should you be writing an article that you know you can’t rank for? Or think you won’t rank well for?
When someone searches for something on Google, Google will show them relevant results on the first page of Google and when your article can’t be ranked, people may never find it.
This gives many bloggers a reason to do keyword research (if you don know how to do that, click here) to determine what articles to write so they can maximize the chance of success.
In this article, we’ll talk about the 6 reasons why you should allow yourself to write articles that you can’t rank for.
Let’s go.
Table of Contents
1. Help establish your authority in the niche
Writing articles that you won’t rank for but are relevant to your niche can still help you establish authority in the niche.
Your articles don’t have to rank on Google for them to be discovered by people who are on your blog. And having the right articles on your blog can help cement the idea in people that you are a legitimate source to get their knowledge from.
If your audience comes to your blog to learn XYZ and they see that you also have an article on ABC, they’ll see that as you know what you’re doing.
Authority in a niche isn’t necessarily about DA score, sometimes it’s about how much your visitors trust what you have to say, and having the right content on your blog even if it doesn’t rank well on Google can help you establish trust with your readers.
2. Can be used in interlinking
Did you know that you can interlink your articles?
What is interlinking?
Well, if you don’t know what interlinking is, you really should start from the basics, click here to start.
See what I just did? That’s what interlinking is. I embedded a link in this post onto another post on my blog.
Interlinking can help you drive traffic to your articles. It is time-consuming but highly effective. I have seen it working in my own blogs.
You can certainly write articles that you can’t rank for but embed those articles in articles that you can rank for and you can still drive some traffic to it.
3. Can still make you money
The potential for articles that you can’t rank for can be huge.
Think about this, what if you write an article reviewing different software used in your niche (a money-making post) and then embed that article in a relevant post on your blog which you are ranking for…
Do you see where I’m going with this?
That way, you get to drive traffic to your money-making article even if you can’t rank for it on Google because it’s too competitive.
This is also a good reason for you to produce more content on your blog so you have more chance of some of those articles ranking high on Google thus giving you opportunities for interlinking.
4. Your post can be sharable and help people discover your blog
Sometimes the keywords that you should include in your title aren’t always the most share-worthy title.
You can, however, create an article solely for sharing purposes. You won’t rank on Google because it’s not something people type into the search bar but it is interesting enough that if you were to share the link on social media, it’ll drive some traffic to your blog.
When someone lands on your site, they’ll see that there are more relevant topics and maybe they’ll click on one of those money-making articles with high buyer intent (visitors click on the post thinking they’ll buy something so you can make affiliate income).
You can share your blog post link in the following places:
- Instagram post/reel
- Tiktok video (make the link short and show it on the video because you can’t include a link in your bio if you don’t have enough followers or views)
You can use specific tools to shorten your link. Like this one.
- Facebook forums
- Quora
- Other people’s blogs (be careful with this because it can be seen as spam)
- Stackoverflow
5. Can be something you really enjoy and help keep your passion for blogging alive
If you’re always writing articles that you know it’s good to write but you have no passion for you’re going to burn out very quickly.
This is why I don’t always write articles that will rank on Google or that enough people are searching for.
I write what I want to write while making sure that I’m also writing articles that I should be writing for (enough search volume, low competition, etc) sometimes.
Writing articles that you want to write can keep your passion for blogging alive and allow you to carry on that much further.
It’s okay to write about what interests you even if it doesn’t bring in many readers. You can always unpublish it later on or update the content but it’s so important to love what you do so it doesn’t feel like torture for you to work on your blog.
My first blog had mild success and I got quite a few people on my mailing list but I had to let it go because I was in school juggling way too much on my plate and because it felt like torture to write any word for a blog in a niche I have absolutely no zest for.
You’re going to waste a lot of time and effort working on something you don’t want to work on continuously because you’ll inevitably give up.
Unless you can hire someone to do all the writing for you, you really should try to make sure you are doing things that make you happy with your blog at least once in a while.
6. If you produce lots of articles fast, you can afford to write some articles that won’t rank well
Some people are very against spending any time and energy writing articles that won’t do well because they don’t produce that many articles per year and maybe they hire writers to do it for them.
If the ROI isn’t good, why spend money on it?
So it makes sense that some bloggers only produce articles that they think will do well.
Well, here’s my take on this matter: If you produce lots of articles fast and you do it yourself, you can afford to write articles that just won’t do well sometimes.
Say you only produce 50 articles a year, that’s roughly 1 blog post per week. Each of your articles has got to count if you want to make a living blogging in 2 years or so. But if you produce say 200–500+ or even 1000 articles per year, who cares if some of those articles won’t rank well?
You have to decide what that number is for you that makes it worth it to spend time writing articles you are confident won’t rank on Google or won’t rank well on Google.
If you give yourself 5 years to make it, you can afford to write a bit more low-ranking articles. But if you only give yourself 1 year to make it and you can only produce 100 articles in a year, you gotta make sure you make most of those articles count.
7. You may be able to rank for it in the future
I don’t know the specific reason why you assume your article won’t rank well on google. Perhaps:
- It’s too competitive
- Your DA score isn’t high enough to rank
- No one is searching for it
Whatever your reason, some things can still shift in the future.
Sure you may not have a high DA score now but when your other articles are ranking better on Google, your other articles’ ranking may be boosted too.
It’s worth putting it up on your blog and seeing where it takes you in the future. Especially if you aren’t in a rush to make it.
Final thought
I don’t see any legitimate blog post done on this topic so I thought I should write one.
The only source that covers this topic currently is a Reddit post from 8 months ago and about half the commentators are against the idea of writing articles that won’t rank well.
I really think there is more to it than what people are saying in the comment.
This article is a perfect example of an article that won’t do well on Google because there’s no one searching for it.
However, I can still share it or interlink it to bring in some traffic.
I hope you learned something valuable today.
By the way, if you’re still pondering about starting a blog, here’s a beginner’s guide for you.
Good luck!
