Posting regular, relevant content to your site is crucial if you want to improve your search engine rankings, but coming up with topics several times per week can be downright impossible. So what is the best way to find new topics? Through keyword research. As a bonus, using these keywords will also help you rank higher in the SERPs. Here’s what you need to do:
First, you need to come up with a list of topics that you think will most interest your readers. HubSpot says you should aim for at least five general categories. For example, as a Digital Marketing company, some of our general categories would be SEO, content marketing, and website design. The best way to find categories is to consider your most important services, an think about what questions you are commonly asked by your customers (ask your frontline for help) and then group them according to the main subject.
Now that you have 5-10 umbrella topics for your business, it’s time to break each one down into relevant keywords. This step is just brainstorming—nothing is final until you complete the keyword research. First, just write down anything you think someone would search in order to find your business. Next, take a look at your Google Analytics and see what keywords you are already ranking highly for. Another easy way to come up with keywords is to type one of your obvious keywords into Google (like digital marketing) and then scroll to the very bottom of the page where is says “searches related to <your keyword>”.
Make sure you are using a combination of both long tail (three or more words) and regular keywords. The one and two word keywords may get more searches, which means a greater potential for traffic, but the long-tail keywords are much more specific, so if someone finds you through one of them, they are more likely to convert to a customer.
Then take this list and head over to Google’s Keyword Planner to make that list much longer. Now that you have a long list of potential keywords, it’s time to find the ones you are most likely to rank highly for. To do this, you should turn to the Keyword Planner in AdWords. When you enter your specific keywords, the Keyword Planner will tell you how much traffic each one gets, and how much competition you have for it. Ideally, you should focus on keywords that have a decent amount of traffic but very little competition.
Another tool that comes in very handy when using keywords to come up with blog topics is Google Trends. Maybe some of the keywords that have very little search volume now are rising in the trends, so it would be worth it to apply some of these keywords to your blog posts early. Google Trends is very useful for understanding which keywords are more popular.
Once you complete your keyword research, it will be easy for you to come up with blog topics that will both engage your readers and help you rank highly in the search results. If this seems like too much work, or you would like some help getting started, contact Zero Gravity Marketing. We are experts at keyword research and we would love to find the best ones for you.