Tips To Finding Targeted Blogs
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You have been working on your blog for a while, and it happens, the thing that all writers fear and dread: writer’s block (enter scary music here).
Even after racking your brain for inspiration, you just can’t seem to come up with anything new to write about! It’s not just you; coming up with new ideas consistently is easily one of the hardest tasks for any content creator. How do you constantly come up with appealing content that will keep your audience engaged and asking for more?
No worries, friend, because here is a list of seven simple ways to come up with creative, traffic-inducing post ideas that you can put into practice today, no matter your niche.
7 Ways to Find Blog Topics
1) Keyword Research Tools (Free)
Keywords are going to be, well…key, no matter what you are writing about.
Using keywords in your blog posts means you will be writing content that people are actually searching for on search engines such as Google or Pinterest.
Using keywords makes your blog post more likely to appear higher up in the search results and, thus, more likely to be seen and clicked on by new potential audience members.
Keyword Research Tools are an excellent resource that tells you exactly what people are searching for so you don’t just have to guess, do a little rain dance, and then cross your fingers that people find your post. In addition to getting some great ideas for your post topics, you’ll also be getting ideas that should generate traffic to your site.
For instance, you are writing a blog all about metal buildings. Using a keyword research tool and searching for “metal buildings” will yield a result like this:
When it comes to content about metal buildings the top keywords that people are searching for are things like warehouses, barn, barndominium, and steel building homes.
Using that information, a good post might be something like “10 Best Ways to Make Your Steel Building Homey” or “Building a New Barndominium with Instant Equity”. The list provided on these websites is much longer than just what’s pictured here, so there are plenty of great ideas to choose from!
WordStream, Google Trends, or Ahrefs Keyword Generator are a few free options that are worth checking out, but there are many different options, so look around and find one that works for you.
2) Keyword Research Tools (Paid)
In addition to all the free options out there, there are also several paid options. A few popular ones include Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush.
All of these websites offer packages starting at $99 a month for the basic plan and jumping up to as much as $1,000 a month. Though, unless you are a large agency that $1,000 is going to carry a lot more meat than you are going to need.
The paid versions of these websites come with many additional features that you don’t get with the free options that can really make the extra expense worth it.
Things like site audits, analysis of competitors within your niche, link tracking, traffic analytics, ranking index, along with a whole host of other features.
Tools like these will help assure you that you are not only coming up with lots of new ideas for your blog, but you’re coming up with the right ideas.
Ideas that will actually help you show up in search engines, making your website easier to find.
Most of these websites offer a free trial of their product so you can try it before you buy, and see if this tool can be helpful for you and your business.
3) Google Questions Box
Whenever you search for something on Google, after the first few links you’ll likely see a helpful little box titled “People also ask” followed by a list of questions related to your search query.
This is another great place to find ideas for blog topics.
Just type in a big topic or product in your niche, or even a blog idea you’ve used in the past, and see what other questions people are asking related to this same topic.
We’ll use our “metal building” example again. After typing in “Metal Buildings” these are the questions that Google says people also ask:
Just using these few questions I could come up with post ideas such as “How to Finance Your New Barndominium”, “Why Metal Buildings are Better than a Pole Barn”, “Metal Buildings: What Will it Cost You, and Why It’s Worth It”.
Basically, if Google says that these are the questions that people are asking then you want to be the one to answer them!
4) The Alphabet Soup Method
Here is Google to the rescue once again! The alphabet soup method is utilizing another function of Google that we all know and love: auto-complete.
This is piggy-backing off the same idea that Google knows what it is that people are searching for the most.
To use this method, simply go to Google, type in your niche or product, and then the letter ‘a’, and let autocomplete fill in commonly searched for content starting with ‘a’. Like this:
Depending on your niche this might result in several locations (i.e. Atlanta and Athens), or other unusable results such as “at home depot”, but, even skipping over all of those results you could come up with several post ideas such as “Why Metal Buildings Make Great Homes” or “5 Reason Why Metal Buildings Make the Best Carports”.
Next, you just erase the ‘a’ and type in ‘b’, then ‘c’, then ‘d’, and all the way through to ‘z’.
Read the results and see what other topics you come up with. After going through the entire alphabet you are sure to have tons of fresh ideas for new posts.
Take what people are searching for, turn it into a question, and then turn your blog into the answer!
5) Hub and Spoke
The Hub and Spoke method, also sometimes called the content hub method, is the idea of writing the main post, and then linking that post together with several other sub posts that go more in-depth about the topics covered in your main post.
There are three parts to a content hub: the hub, subpages, and hyperlinks.
The hub is usually going to be a long, but broad, guide to whatever topic you are writing about.
The subpages are going to take the ideas of the hub post and look at them more in-depth. You then use hyperlinks within your hub page to link to each of these sub posts, as well as hyperlinks within the sub-post that link back to the hub.
You could, for instance, use the post you are currently reading as a hub post and then write a subpage about each of the seven methods.
This means, in this case, you could turn this one blog idea into seven more blogs without too much extra work.
Not only does this make it easier to come up with a whole series of related posts, but these internal links are also something that Google and other search engines look for to verify that you have a robust and trustworthy blog.
It’s a nice little bonus that can help you get a higher ranking on Google in the midst of creating new content.
If you have more questions about this method, here is a great YouTube video from Ahrefs that goes more into detail and explains why it’s so good for your blog.
6) Answer The Public
If you’ve never heard of Answer the Public, this website will be an excellent resource for you when coming up with blog ideas, and it’s probably the easiest method on this list.
Simply go to the website, type in your niche or product and it will automatically come up with hundreds of questions that real people are asking about that topic. It looks a little something like this:
When looking up “metal buildings” it gave me a whole host of questions like “can metal buildings be insulated?”, “how to paint metal buildings.”, and “will metal buildings rust?”.
Just in trying to answer these three questions you could launch into a whole series of blogs having to do with maintenance and installation.
What’s great is that the picture above was just one of four question trees that it offered, so there are plenty more questions to inspire you.
The list is also downloadable as an Excel document.
You could also change your search to more specific parts of your niche or use this to assist you in creating the content hubs that we discussed earlier.
Something to keep in mind is that the free version only allows three searches per day. If you would like more than that you can pay a monthly subscription of $99.
The paid version has a lot of great features like unlimited daily searches, unlimited users, as well as the ability to compare data over time.
7) Blog Comments
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the best ways to come up with topics for your blog is going to be discovering the questions people are actually asking and using a post to answer that question.
Sometimes the questions that your audience is asking might come from, well…your audience.
Go back and check the comment sections on old blogs and read through the comments and see if there are any people asking questions.
Then decide if the answer could be expanded into a whole post.
One thing I love about this method is that the questions are coming directly from people who are already a proven part of your audience.
If you are newer to blogging and you don’t have many old posts or any comments, then try reaching out to your audience and asking them what sort of topics they would be interested in reading.
You can do this via Facebook, Instagram, Email, etc. (This is one of the benefits of having social media in addition to your blog. You can interact with your audience much faster and get some inspiration that way as well!)
Blog Topic Ideas to Avoid
After utilizing this awesome list of ideas, you may now have TOO MANY blog topic ideas.
Woe is you! Just kidding…
Now a whole new host of issues has arisen!
Where do you start?
And how do you know which ideas will actually engage your audience as well as bring in a bunch of new traffic?
Well, there are a few things to consider here that could help you narrow down your suddenly huge amount of choices.
Assess the Competition
One, what is that competition like for this topic?
Does it have dozens of reputable sites already covered with huge 5,000-word posts?
If that’s the case, then it’s going to be hard to stand out and show up in search engines. Maybe try for a topic with a little less rivalry.
Assess the Interest
Two, will your audience be interested in the topic you have chosen, or is it really mostly just of interest to you?
Don’t alienate your audience with a subject that is only slightly related to the main point of your blog.
If your blog is about metal buildings and you suddenly start talking about farming, you are likely going to lose the interest of your audience.
Farming is a wonderful topic, but it’s not the type of content that people came to you for. Stick to your niche!
Avoid Topics That Are Too Broad
And three, avoid topics that are too broad.
“Why Metal Buildings are Cool” doesn’t tell the reader what they’re going to get when they go to read this blog, which likely means they aren’t even going to try and read it.
However, a post entitled “Nine Reasons Metal Buildings Make the Best Backyard Office” is really specific and clickable.
Anyone thinking about a backyard office has a reason to click through to that post.
Conclusion
There you have it, folks! I know after trying all the things on this list you will have more than enough future content to keep you busy for a good, long while.
Coming up with new, engaging content can sometimes be the hardest part of writing a blog, but keeping these few wonderful tools and tricks in your arsenal should keep the content rolling out strong and steady for years to come.
