A well-thought-out content strategy has become a vital piece for business’ digital marketing efforts. Building upon the core pages of your website with supporting content – such as blog posts, buyer’s guides, FAQ pages, etc. – is a great way to improve rankings, increase awareness of your business’s capabilities, and funnel additional traffic to important landing pages. However, coming up with topics for this content can be challenging. To help, we’ve put together the following tips for generating topic ideas for effective supporting content.
Start with Basic Keyword Research
Doing some simple keyword research can help you find topics your target audience is interested in and searching for. The following tools are easy to use and can quickly build a list of new topic ideas.
Auto Suggest (Google.com / Bing.com): The auto suggest feature in Google and Bing provides suggested queries based on user data. Just start typing in the search bar to see suggestions.
Related Searches (Google.com / Bing.com / YouTube.com): After searching on a particular topic, review the “Related Searches” sections to discover other relevant topics. You can use the browser extension Keywords Everywhere to see significantly more “Related Searches.” Similarly, try watching a YouTube video relevant to your industry and see what other types of topics are suggested in the “Up Next” sidebar.
“People Also Ask” Boxes (Google.com / Bing.com): Search result features like People Also Ask Boxes can also provide insight into the types of questions searchers have related to a query. Click the dropdown arrow next to any question to be shown additional related questions.
Answer the Public (answerthepublic.com): Answer the Public is a free tool that provides new topics sorted by questions and prepositions related to the query you enter.
Ubersuggest (neilpatel.com/ubersuggest): Ubersuggest uses Google’s auto suggest data to expand upon a core topic, providing a very robust set of ideas. This tool can be used to quickly gather content and keyword ideas related to a base topic.
Get Input from Your Team
A great source for identifying potential topics that are highly relevant to your customers is to talk with your sales team. They are the ones talking directly with your customers every day and are in a great position to help you understand your audience’s concerns and interests. Ask them:
- What questions they most often receive from customers?
- What are customers common pain points?
- Are there areas that customers complain about the most?
- What industry topics do customers have the most interest in?
- What information has been most effective for converting a lead into a sale?
Review Your Industry’s Content
Review the pages, blogs, and social media of other industry sites (including your competitors) to identify gaps in your own content. Think about ways you can provide more thorough information or a unique spin on topics those other sites have covered that are relevant to your business and target audience.
Revisit Your Past Content
Use Google Analytics to find the blog posts and other supporting content on your site with a history of good performance. Take a close look at them and think about how you could use them as inspiration for writing a new piece of content covering the topic from a different angle.
Brainstorm ways you can expand on aspects of the original content by providing more in-depth coverage, exploring some concepts more broadly, or tailoring the information to a different audience. If the content focuses on outdated industry trends or research, you can write a new version that uses updated information.
