When coming up with blog topics, it’s important to keep the needs of your audience in mind. Finding interesting topics to write about works best when your business content ideas connect with the questions your target audience types into search bars, giving them an incentive to visit your blog.
But how do you determine your audience’s search intent and generate evergreen content they enjoy?
In this post, we’ll examine how your customers search for content, how to find effective keywords, and how to create a content ideation process. By learning how these processes fit together, content planning and connecting with your audience becomes more manageable.
How to generate blog topics your audience will love
Think about the last time you searched for something online.
Odds are, you were looking for a solution to a problem or an answer to a question.
More than that, you were probably looking for in-depth, easy-to-read information that offered useable solutions — not basic answers repeatedly rehashed in other online articles.
Guess what? Your audience wants the same thing when it comes to blog topics. And they find this content in multiple ways, including:
Online searches
The simplest way to find something online is to look for it with a search engine like Google, Bing, or Yahoo! Your audience types search terms related to their area of interest and selects from a list of options, usually from the first page of results.
To win, you need to develop an effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy to increase the visibility of your blog content. The higher your content ranks on a search engine results page (SERP), the more likely a reader will visit your blog and read your posts.
To use effective SEO writing:
- Incorporate keywords your audience types into search engines into your posts’ headlines, headings, and body. This step helps search engine “spiders” find your content.
- Create eye-catching headlines for your posts related to your audience’s needs.
- Craft long-form blog posts (usually between 1500-2000 words), allowing you to provide the in-depth content your audience wants to read. This step also helps you rank higher in search results.
Social media shares
Valuable online content gets shared on social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Such content is known as “curated content,” or content people believe will be of interest to their audience.
Your blog posts have a higher chance of being read if posted on people’s social media pages with large followings. Even better, if their followers like what you’re posting, they’ll promote your blog posts on their channels, increasing your online visibility.
Backlinks and internal links
Backlinks are incoming hyperlinks from one web page to another website. Once other bloggers see the value of your posts, they’ll link to your posts in their online content. The more backlinks that lead to your blog, the more your blog’s popularity increases.
You can also create internal links within your blog. This is when you link from one blog post to another one of your posts that provides related content. Internal links provide your users with a way to navigate your blog and read more of your content.
How to do keyword research for your blog
Keywords and key phrases are the search terms your customers type into search engines. By anticipating which keywords or phrases they’ll use — and incorporating them into your blog topics — your content will rank higher in their search engine results. To do this:
Invest in keyword planner tools
How do you find the right keywords? An excellent place to start is with a keyword planner tool like Google’s Keyword Planner. By typing possible search terms into this online tool, you’ll see how many people searched for different keywords over time. You’ll also find related key phrases and their traffic.
Consider your customer’s search intent
Based on their search intent, a customer uses keywords to find content that’s:
- Navigational: Helps customers find another web page
- Informational: Helps customers learn more about a topic
- Commercial: Helps customers buy a product or service
For instance, a customer who types “email marketing tactics” likely wants to read an informative post on ways to use email marketing. By contrast, a customer who uses the keywords “buying email marketing software” will want commercial content to help make a purchase.
You should create online content that uses keywords in all three categories. Blog posts are particularly well suited for informational posts.
Use long-tail keywords
“Head keywords” are only one or two words long (like “email marketing”) and return millions of search results, making it hard for users to find your posts.
However, “long-tail keywords” are over four words long and bring back more focused results — increasing the likelihood that people will find your posts. By concentrating on long-tail keywords and use them in your headlines, headings, and body copy, your posts will connect with your desired audience.
One way to find long-tail keywords is to type possible keywords into Google’s search bar and watch the phrases Google’s autocomplete menu brings up. Since Google identifies these key phrases as important, they can help refine your keyword search.
How to create a content plan
When developing your content ideation process, identify the purpose of your blog and the audience you want to reach. For instance, your blog could:
- Educate customers about your product or service
- Generate leads
- Convert leads into clients
Your blog’s purpose influences the blog topics you cover and where your ideal readers are in the sales funnel. Once you decide what to focus on, generate business content ideas with the following tactics:
Create pillar topics and cluster content models
Organizing your blog posts around topics helps improve your blog structure and SEO strategy.
To create an effective topic cluster model, first, develop a “pillar topic” related to your main product or service. For instance, a copywriter blog might use “SEO copywriting” as one of its pillar topics and create a blog post that defines SEO copywriting.
From there, you can come up with multiple “cluster content topics” built around related long-tail keywords. For “SEO copywriting,” you might write posts on “The 5 Best SEO Writing Tools,” “How to Research Keywords to Improve Your SEO Writing,” or “Best Jobs for SEO Copywriters.”
Once you create your online content, connect your pillar page to your cluster topic posts with internal links. This way, if even a single post performs well, your entire cluster will get an organic boost in traffic thanks to the links.
Learn your customer pain points
Every customer has pain points or problems that need to be solved. This should influence the blog posts you create for them.
For example, a customer becoming aware of your marketing software company may be looking for a way to track and measure the impact of their lead sources to improve their sales efforts.
Thus, if you create a blog post on “The Best Way to Track Lead Source Data” (which can be linked to a pillar page on “Lead Source Data”), that customer will want to read your post—giving you a chance to share how your company’s marketing attribution tool helps solve their problem.
Follow hot topics and trends in your industry
Researching hot topics on websites like Google Trends helps uncover the types of questions your audience wants to be answered.
Google Trends analyzes the popularity of top Google Search queries in different regions, using graphs to compare the search volume of the queries. By studying when interest in a particular topic or query rises, you can plan to release blog posts related to that topic when interest spikes.
For instance, if you run a sports equipment company, a review of the past few years will show when people start using terms like “running shoes” or “soccer training gear for sale.” This should influence when you release related blog content to connect with your audience.
Likewise, you can find what people in specific regions are searching for at different times. If your target audience resides in a specific geographic area, check to see which topics or queries rank best there — and create blog posts that answer those questions.
Get started
Coming up with creative blog topics that connect with your audience comes down to learning your customers’ needs and making your blog posts easy to find.
By studying the problems your audience experiences in your industry and learning the keywords they use to search for solutions, you’ll know what type of in-depth content you need to create for your blog.
As your audience finds your content, they’ll share it online, improving your visibility and reputation as a valuable resource.
Need help coming up with SEO blog topics that will help you get more organic traffic, leads, and conversions? ClearVoice’s team of professional writers, editors, and SEO experts will handle the research, writing, optimization, and editing for you — so you get high-performing, publish-ready content every time. Talk to a content specialist today to get started.
