Content marketing is a continuous effort. Studies have proven that once you write between 21-54 blog posts, blog traffic generation increases by up to 30%. But, sometimes, when you’re on your 54th blog, you can struggle to think of an interesting topic to write about. And then on top of that, you need to ensure that your content is easy to find.
In this blog post we’ve listed 5 ways that you can find content topics that perform well as keywords.
1. Do your homework!
Done correctly, keyword research will prove to be priceless for your content topics. Once you find out what your target audience are discussing, and what language they are using to search for such topics, you will be able to place your content directly under their noses.
On the other hand, if you never research, you never know. And, if you never know then you will continuously struggle to optimize your site.
A great way to start keyword research is to brainstorm ideas about your brand, website, and the content you create. By doing this you’ll come up with a few keywords and key phrases that your ideal target audience will be searching for. Next, type these keywords into a search engine for inspiration for content topics, and to confirm whether your content would be well-placed among these search results. For further clarification, you should also use a keyword tool, but more on that later!
2. Find a niche, then find a niche within your niche!
Too many people have the misunderstanding that writing for a niche audience doesn’t earn you any exposure, or any cash. But, time and time again that has been proved incorrect. Take the highly popular Beardbrand.com as a perfect example. Beardbrand is an online store that sells beard-care products, such as beard wax and moustache combs. They also produce great content about beard-care on their blog and their YouTube channel. But, beard-care products? Too niche to make any real money, right?
Wrong.
This time last year, Eric Bandholz was said to be raking in $60K a month from his newly created brand — proving there’s no such thing as ‘too niche’.
Niche blogs allow you to stay focused on what your audience want, and this generates more exposure for you. Focusing on one niche also allows you to expand your knowledge and grow into a reliable source for content. Niche content topics perform exceptionally well as keywords because the only people that search for them are the people that are really interested in this topic. This means less competition within the search engines, and therefore higher rankings within your specific topic.
3. Branch out to your ‘Linkerati’
Linkerati is a relatively new term, it refers to those on the internet that are most likely to make an impact. The linkerati could refer to anyone, from a high-quality blogger, to an influential celebrity that uses social media.
If you’re struggling to come up with content topics that attract attention then you could change your direction slightly and start writing content that would appeal to the linkerati surrounding your topic. For example, if your content is focused on ‘How to grow a beard’, and you’re always uploading content to help your users grow beards, maybe change direction once in a while, and link out to popular beard-care businesses, like Beardbrand.
The best way to use the linkerati, is to write blogs that will appeal to them whilst ensuring that you don’t come across as a competitor. So maybe you write a blog titled: ‘Beardbrand’s beard-oil really helps growth!’ and then let Beardbrand know you have written this piece of content. If you’re lucky enough, they’ll share it with their mass of followers resulting in a huge increase in SEO for you. And, even if they don’t share it, having the name of a ‘linkerati’ as a keyword in your content is always a bonus!
4. Stop promoting and start helping!
It’s time to face the facts, as much as you love your brand, and as much as you want to make money, no one is going to be searching the internet solely to read content about you promoting yourself. No one has the time for that!
The only content topics that make great keywords are those that people are actually searching for. Topics that will help them, interest them, inform them etc. If you start writing content revolved around topics like this then you will definitely see an increase in your SEO ranking, and ultimately the amount of people that see, share, and talk about your content.
5. Use a keyword tool!
Continuing from the point above, we don’t really do much self-promotion here on the Keyword Eye blog, we’re all about helping our readers. That’s why this final point is about our Keyword tool, it’s completely free and will absolutely help you to find content topics that perform well as keywords.
It works like this:
You type in a keyword that you’re thinking of using (we might as well stick with the beard theme now!) then you simply click run report. Your report will look like a word cloud:
The traffic light colour system shows the competition for each of these keywords — red for high competition, and green for low. The size of each keyword also determines how competitive it is — the larger the words, the more they are searched for. Therefore, judging from the image above, a low competition and highly searched keyword would be: ‘Beard Styles’. And voila! You’ve found the keyword for your content. Additionally, you’ve discovered which keywords not to use, such as: ‘beardski’ or ‘beard trimmer reviews’.
We hope this blog has helped you. As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments box below!