If you have been blogging for years, then you know the importance of generating blogging ideas and without being able to generate ideas quickly, it’s possible to lose readership. Visitors skim through blogs hoping to find amazing information which solves a very common problem and when they can’t, they leave going to your competition. The good news is with experience comes knowledge and the ability to streamline the research process. Whenever I sit down to write content I have narrowed down my approach to 6 amazing, but effective methods. I’ve decided to make this a “2” part series so I can go into depth on some of the strategies mentioned in this post.
Let’s get started and look at very easy ways to generate content ideas from my own personal experience.
Google Keyword Planner
When I first started blogging, I knew Google Keyword Planner was the way to go. Even though there are many other tools available, GKP still continues to be my number one choice. First, you can filter your search to locality and even find out how the search volume has increased or decrease compared to last month. Secondly, if you are huge into PPC, then each keyword is displayed with a “bid” price. I don’t really use that column, but it can provide a good insight into how popular a search term really is. However, what really is cool it the ability for this tool to provide hundreds of relevant keywords.
I usually compile certain keywords together focusing on question-based keywords. This way when I write content I make each one a sub-heading with other relevant keywords. I know just by the search volume how popular the phrase has become in recent months.
Google Trends
Another cool tool to find out how keywords are trending in recent months, however, I like to pay close attention to the “break-out” column. This column will tell me what keywords are increasing in popularity and I can get a jump start on my competition. I use the same approach of gathering various different related keywords and then writing content using some of them in the sub-headings. Head over to Google Trends and start playing around with the tool because you’ll be surprised how effective it is in providing valuable niche related information.
Here are some of the filtration options:
- Location
- City and state
- Breakout keywords
- Percentage
- Other related keywords
Google Search
Another surprising, but very simple way to generate content ideas that many people don’t think about and they are losing out on many opportunities. When performing a search, Google will generate a drop-down with other relevant, but popular search phrases. Next, you can perform a search and skim down to the bottom to find “searches related to” which will provide you with other closely relevant keywords. I’ve used this strategy effectively in my content and have been able to rank very easily for some of the keywords. Why?
These are keywords that many people don’t pay too much attention to and if you paste them in Google Keyword Planner, you’ll notice each of them have search volume. Make sure when using this method you keep things as relevant as possible because this matters to the Google search algorithm.
Long Tail Pro
There are many tools you can use to generate content ideas however Long Tail Pro is great to find unique ideas. This tool generates topic using long tail keywords which have been becoming very popular lately. Google understands the importance of these types of keywords because they are way more targeted to the user search experience. When people search online, they are much more precise using 3+ phrases so it’s time to capitalize on this pattern. Long Tail Pro will provide you with a list of growing search phrases which you can implement into your content marketing and topic searches. This also increases the chance of you ranking easily within the SERP’s since many of these phrases are currently untapped. However, when using the tool, it’s important to focus on relevant keywords and those with search volume. The good news is this tool provides a breakdown of the current volume per keyword so you don’t have to go searching in Google Keyword Planner.
