But – with the right ideas – your traffic will grow every week.
Are you curious about how to find the right topics to write about?
Well then…
… You might as well read on..
Look: Google is changing.
I’m sure you have noticed.
So many algorithm updates.
Panda, Penguin, Pelican, Partridge…
Ok…. I’m messing about a couple of them. Just giving Google some ideas.
But…
Google is just trying to pick out the best-quality articles to deliver the best content to people who search for it.
I’ve heard a lot of debates about whether writing should be focussed on keywords or topics.
So, lets have a bit of fun and do a bit of exploring on this topic (or keyword…).
Keywords Versus Topics
What is a topic? It’s a bunch of keywords!
The SEO guys will say that you write for topics instead of keywords.
What they mean is that, years ago, to rank for content you had to create content around keywords. You’d stuff a load of these keywords in various places of your article and this would help you get ranked.
Now… if you have too many of the same type of keywords, it looks unnatural and Google won’t like it.
But, if your article is about the topic of those keywords, then you are more likely to have a broad range of keyword combinations that are relevant to main, targeted keywords.
What do I mean about the blog topics?
Let’s say you decide to write about the top Twitter analytics.
You’re not going to mention Twitter analytics all the time but, if you’re writing a detailed article about this topic, you’d expect to see words and phrases like: Twitter statistics, Twitter reports, retweets, shares, engagement, mentions of Twitter analytic tools etc.
So, you’re writing a post about the full topic and you consider all the keywords for that topic.
But your article is still focussed on the ‘Twitter Analytics’ keywords… i.e. your topic.
Get it?
Google gets smarter all the time, and it now understands that, when you talk about one topic, there can be lots of relevant words and phrases.
It is getting better and better at understanding the context of the words in a search.
This Google search is for ‘social media class’, and you can see from the search results that Google understands that, in this context, the word ‘class’ can be swapped for the word ‘course’:
Google is getting better at understanding the context of search terms
What this means is that you don’t have to repeatedly use a single keyword phrase any more – it doesn’t look natural, it reads strangely, and Google doesn’t like it. Instead, use a mixture of keywords that are relevant to your topic and Google will get the message!
Tip – When you are creating content around a topic, treat sections of your blog post like mini blog posts and have good descriptive titles that include the other keywords you’d also like to rank for. See the heading for the next section!
How do I find all the keywords that are related to a topic?
Here is a range of places to find related terms to create that ‘topic article’:
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner allows you to enter in keywords and displays keywords that Google think are related, as well as related topics.
For example, if I put in ‘blog topics’ I see keywords like:
- Blog ideas
- Topic generator
- Blog ideas for writers
- Vlog topics.
In this video, Sean Agnew shows how to use Google Keyword Planner to export keyword ideas to Excel and choose topic ideas:
Google search
If I search Google for ‘blog topic’ and go right to the end of the page, I see topics that Google thinks is related to my search:
A selection of related keywords
You may not use all of these but it’s worth considering some of them. For example – How to come up with great blog topics.
You should also look at the search results.
You want to see what types of keywords are used in the titles for the top 10 search results.
The search results for ‘blog topic’
What’s interesting in this list is that ‘topic ideas’ is in the list twice, so I’m going create a section in this document about topic ideas!
You should also analyze the content in each of these blog posts. Google thought these were relevant and important enough to rank them in first 10 so it’s likely:
a) They have good content that is related to the main keyword and related keywords.
b) They have a reasonably high domain authority (read this article to understand about domain authority).
c) They have good, relevant links from external sites.
InboundWriter
I use a tool called InboundWriter, which helps me to understand if I have a chance of ranking for particular keywords.
When I put in blog topics I got a big thumbs up!
Green means it’s good to go!
What’s really cool is that is also picks out the keywords that drive traffic, based on the main keyword. A lot of these can be sub topics within our article.
These are the related keywords
Can you use a blog topic generator?
If you are struggling for content ideas, you could use a tool like Hubspot’s Blog Post Generator to come up with titles for you.
You enter in up to three nouns and it will give you a broad range of ideas.
Enter in a range of keywords
Based on these, here are the suggested blog post titles that were returned:
A list of suggested titles
Of course these are not perfectly optimized – and they are not even perfect titles – but it will give you a starting point if you’re stuck.
Another tool that’s worth trying is Portent’s Content Ideas Generator.
I entered ‘productivity’ as the keyword.
Keyword ‘productivity’
Then, I clicked the arrow.
Here is the suggested blog topic that Portent has generated:
Suggested blog topic idea
You’ll notice that there is a ‘refresh’ button – I had to click this a couple of times to get a title that made sense!
But it finally came up with a pretty interesting-sounding blog topic idea, so it is worth persevering.
Other ways to come up with blog topic ideas
Remember that there are many different types of blog posts at your disposal.
You can write long, in-depth posts, answer lists of questions, fill a post with quotations, or share a tutorial with your readers.
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, always writing the same style of post…
… But there are actually so many blog post types that Digital Marketer came up with this infographic to act as a springboard for your ideas.
Summary
Google is looking for detailed content based around a topic, not just focussed on a particular set of keywords. It likes to link to high-quality, authoritative content and you can demonstrate you provide this by writing in-depth content on your topic.
Pick the right topic and you’ve a much better chance of getting ranked.
Do you ever get stuck for blog topic ideas? Which of these ideas will you use to help?
The post Blog Topics: How to Come Up With Blog Post Topic Ideas! appeared first on RazorSocial and was written by Ian Cleary
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