Do you struggle to find topics for topic research when writing for your content marketing? Are you looking for ways to improve your search engine optimization skills? Many people think that the keyword research process is complicated, but it isn’t. There are several ways to find what kind of content marketing works best for your niche.

Topic research is an important part of the SEO strategy; there’s no doubt about that. However, if you don’t have a clear idea of where to start, it can be difficult to come up with ideas quickly. 

That’s exactly why we gave you this list of suggestions. So, before we get into our suggested methods, let’s cover some basics first.

What Is Topic Research Good For?

Before you go further, let me briefly explain what topic research is. It is simply the act of finding out what kinds of things people are searching for based on their keywords and phrases. The more information you’ve got at your disposal, the more improved you will be when creating a plan to market yourself online. This post will outline a few different methods you can use to gather this type of data, so you make better and smarter decisions regarding what to write and where to maximize traffic from searches. Once you’ve gathered all this information, you’ll know exactly what keywords and phrases to focus on when writing your title tags, meta descriptions, page titles, etc.

How to Do Topic Research, So You Find out Which Topics Interest People

Blogs need more than titles. Your blog needs substance, content that attracts people who want what you offer. To get there, you need to research and come up with posts that provide value to visitors.

You need to understand how many people are interested in each topic. If you want to attract and engage a large proportion of your target readership, you must focus on topics that interest people most. For example, if you wanted to write about health care reform, you should be focusing on the subject that interests the largest number of people.

How do we research our blogs? Strategy is key.

Blog strategies vary widely according to topic and audience. But there are some tried-and-true ways to research your blog’s potential. Here are tips to get you started.

Identify the Purpose of Your Blog

Your blog is a section of a larger content strategy that guides users and the entire customer experience. Visitors may start by reading about your brand—for example, on your home page or a landing page. Alternatively, they could arrive after clicking on a sponsored ad. Once reaching the site, they need to know whether they’re ready to buy now or want more information first. You might focus on offering help or education for buyers who’d consider buying now while directing traffic to other pages to learn more about your company for prospects interested in buying later.

Each post should be designed to help the reader achieve their goal or solve their problem. For example, if you want to make more money blogging, your posts could include tips about increasing page views, links to other blogs that teach SEO strategies, and social media sharing options.

Check What’s Trending on Google Trends

Enter your topic titles into Google Trends and check if any other relevant topics are present. This is one part of your topic research you should not miss. You may notice that some queries are more popular than others. Some organic keywords might be more appropriate for a single topic than others. These are your starting points for further research.

In some months of the year, there may be a surge in web traffic around certain organic keywords. Mark those weeks as “seasonal” in your data set so that you can plan for articles about them.

You need to cover a list of topics within your niche as soon as possible. If you’re covering a broad topic, other bloggers are likely doing the same thing. By publishing quality content about trending topics, you’ll be able to stay ahead of the competition while providing valuable information.

Keep Topics Close to Your Goals

To publish articles, you should first determine what kind of information is most relevant to your target audience. Then, be sure to write about a topic related to your goal. Finally, make your content plan as concise as possible.

You Can Choose Topics That Are about a Particular Reader Pain Point

Choose a cluster that covers a particular user problem and write posts around it. Write cluster articles that include your keyword list and also bring visitors to the cluster page.

Keyword clusters and pillar pages both offer different benefits. You might see some traffic from a keyword cluster, but you won’t be able to rank as well for competitive terms. The pillar page gives you more opportunities to rank for competitive terms. While the pillar page may boost rankings for the specific cluster, you’ll see a less overall performance by including more competitive terms.

Choose Topics Based on the Buyer’s Journey

Most websites focus on one part of the buying process. The best sites help users move through the stages of the buyer’s journey. This helps them complete the transaction and receive the product faster.

The best way to target each stage of the buyer’s journey is to create different types of content based on your product categories. For example, if you sell software, you would likely write about new features and tips for using your products. At the same time, other topics might include saving money when purchasing your software or avoiding common mistakes when installing your software.

Choose Topics Based on the Monthly Search Volume

The main thing to keep in mind when deciding what to write about is that you want to be producing fresh, unique, authoritative content for your niche. This means that you need to do organic research into what topics are currently “hot” or popular within your niche. Look at what other sites are writing about and how they are covering those popular topics. Also, try looking for relevant search terms on Google Trends or its Keyword Research Tool to determine which ones are currently showing significant growth.

Choose Topics Based on the Features of the Product

You would write about how your new product or feature addresses the needs of your market and what unique value it brings to users’ lives. As an example, if you were writing about your new mobile app, you might explain how it makes life easier by giving users access to their schedules from multiple devices.

Every part of the customer life cycle should be served by relevant content. Begin blogging about topics related to the awareness phase. Continue serving buyers throughout the purchase funnel by publishing blogs as they move towards purchasing or canceling. Interlink your content so that readers do not lose their place along the sales funnel.

Choose Topics Based on Your Competitors

As part of your competitor analysis, you might want to use competitive keyword research. This approach looks at what other companies are ranking for their main competitors’ keywords. You can also perform competitor keyword research to identify long-tail keywords that may be ranking well but aren’t targeted by your website or products. These techniques can help you create more effective landing pages.

Although competitor research is very useful for creating your list of seed keywords, it’s also worth exploring websites that aren’t listed yet. These are called unlisted or non-indexed pages, and while Google does not index them, they may still offer valuable information.

Instead of using a seed keyword, you use seed websites. These sites are then used to discover other relevant sites.

How User Intent Affects Topic Research

As user intent shifts away from using phrase-match keywords to find what they’re looking for, it makes sense that we need to shift our focus on getting to know our audience better. Understanding their wants, needs, and pain points give us insight into what they want to see on our website or app. Identifying these insights helps us create content that speaks directly to them.

To understand what a keyword list means, you should try to think about the exact meaning of each word within that phrase to see if there is any chance of confusion or misunderstanding.

Search intent helps with SEO. It tells Google what people are looking for when they enter keyword ideas into their search bar. Search intent gives you insight into what people search for on Google when typing a keyword list related to your topic.

It is the reason people visit a certain website. It helps websites understand what users want from their sites. For instance, if someone visits a site to look up a product they’re buying, they are likely looking with the intent to make a purchase.

Tools to Help You Find What People Are Searching For

It’s essential to know what people are looking for and why. Use a keyword tool to help you target your long-tail keywords more easily and understand your audience better.

Google Autocomplete

Entering additional keywords like “what is seo” into Google gives you a long list of suggestions before typing. Some may include relevant keywords such as “how seo works,” but others may point towards completely unrelated products or services. As an experiment, try using this feature to see how much insight a single keyword provides.

WordStream Buzzword

Another way to get good search volumes is to look at Wordstream. By entering a phrase like “seo” and clicking the button labeled “Buzz Words,” you’ll get a quick overview of what organic traffic people are talking about today. From there, you can get to the bottom of specific Google trends and check out what articles are ranking according to popularity or topic relevance.

Moz 

Like Word Stream Buzzwords, Moz offers a free tool that lets anyone access the top 100 ranked links in any given category. In addition, by filtering the results of the search volumes by industry, you can see what pages are being viewed the most in a particular niche, hence, know which terms have the highest commercial keyword popularity.

Answer The Public

AnswerThePublic is an organic search engine designed specifically for users who want to avoid the results that Google and others provide. Its database consists of library resources of answers culled from the web.

Input your topic, and the tool will return hundreds of awesome keyword content ideas to write about. It’s particularly helpful when you’re struggling to develop long-tail keywords or question-based keywords to write about on your website or blog.

Twitter

Twitter’s Explore section often pushes trends determined by algorithms, including common questions on topics determined based on location. For example, in addition to geographic data about your followers, the algorithm also considers factors such as how often certain terms appeared in your tweets and whether you liked or disliked them.

Optimize your website for local search traffic. Local search results are more likely to show up higher than national or global monthly searches.

Hashtag trends are hot right now. You probably know them already, but you may not realize how powerful they can be. Use them as part of your online strategy to get more traffic and boost engagement.

Yoast

Yoast SEO helps authors write meta titles and descriptions for blogs, and it provides tools to help create a sitemap and other valuable information about your site. With Yoast SEO, you’ll be ready to create a great content plan.

You can use the Yoast plugin to analyze your content plan. It’s helpful if you want to know what long-tail keywords you should add or remove. Additionally, there is plenty of information about editing and structuring your content, so it ranks well in search engines.

To End

There you go! Looking for topics for your content marketing isn’t as daunting as you thought it was. But, you need to look in the right places. Are you seeking a professional team to help you with your SEO and content marketing strategies? ITDWebdesign offers a variety of services for online marketers like you. Give us a call.