How to Research Blog Topics Best Practices

A phrase you will often hear in the SEO world is ‘content is king’. But to get great content that will drive your site up in the rankings, you’ll need relevant and interesting topics that answer searchers’ questions. This blog post will explore some of the best blog research practices to follow. Discover how to research blog topics, choose the right keywords, and more below!

Identify Your Audience

Before you begin choosing your topics, consider your intended audience and what you aim to communicate to them through your blogs. Think about age, gender, profession, and what they are likely to already know about your business offerings. You don’t want to patronise potential customers with content marketing that is too simple or go way over their heads with overcomplicated content. By Identifying who your customer is, you can narrow down your topic choices by a lot, so this is always a great place to start.

Topic Brainstorming

A great way to get the ball rolling is to brainstorm as many topics as possible relating to your industry. At this point, don’t worry about search volume or keywords; just get your ideas down on paper! Here are a few questions you can ask yourself if you need some inspiration:

• What are the most discussed topics in your industry?
• Are there any topics that are currently trending?
• Are there seasonal trends or holidays that can be related to your industry?
• What problems are your customers looking to solve?
• What are your customers trying to achieve?
• What information do people want about your product or service?
• How do users search for your product or service?

Once you have a list of ideas, you can move on to the next research phase and streamline these topics into useful content.

Keyword Research

Begin brainstorming keywords that relate to your business. Start broad with general topics, and then break those down into more specific areas. From a consumer’s perspective: what exactly are they typing into a search engine?

More general topic keywords are known as head terms and contain one to three words. They have a generic, frequent, and high search volume, but usually with high competition on SERPs.

Long-tail keywords generally contain three or more keywords, are more specific, and generate less traffic. On the plus side, they are less competitive and can result in more qualified traffic. Utilising Google’s ‘people also ask’ feature is a great way to find long-tail keywords.

Have a look at Google Trends; it is an excellent research tool that can show you what keywords people are searching for. See what people are searching for around the topics you are considering, and add these terms to your content list. Compare terms and topics and see which ones perform best or get the most search traffic.

Once you have a list of relevant keywords, use a keyword research tool, like Semrush, to determine important factors such as search volume and keyword ranking difficulty. This will help you determine which keywords and topics you will have a chance to rank for and which are not worth writing about.

Scope out Your Competitors’ Content

Look at your competitors’ content and the keywords they target and rank for. Find opportunities to create something better or unique and improve your chance of ranking with topics targeting these keywords.

Type your potential topics into Google and perform an organic search to get basic information about your competitors’ positions. From here, decide whether you want to improve your ranking for similar keywords or prefer to target their neglected keywords with different topics.

Be Willing to Be Flexible

While developing a strategy and content calendar in advance is always a great plan, you must be willing to change the plan if need be. For example, if a sudden trend or news story related to whatever you are selling pops up, use it to your advantage! Develop blog topics surrounding this while people are still interested.