Some people are really great at coming up with content ideas. However, generating content ideas takes more strategy than just writing whatever comes to the top of your mind. If you want to grow your website’s traffic, you need to create content that your readers are searching for and want to read.
Before you start writing a ton of content ideas for your website, you should have a content strategy. A lot of new bloggers start their blog without a content strategy, only to get frustrated when nobody is visiting or reading their blog.
If you want your blog to be successful, you need more than just good content, you need a content strategy that brings the right visitors to your blog.
These days most people don’t follow blogs, they find them in Google. If you want people to find your blog, you need to create content people are searching for in Google. You don’t just want any content though, your content should bring the right people to you.
Your content strategy should focus on search-engine-optimized content. Social media is important, but when it comes to traffic, search engine-optimization dominates. SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic social media (Source: hubspot)
Developing a Content Strategy
Before you start whipping out tons of content for your website or blog, you should have goals for your content. So many business owners and bloggers invest tons of time writing content that nobody actually reads. On top of that, it’s the wrong type of content.
Your content should attract your target market and convert. Generating content ideas that target your audience is one of the toughest parts of executing your content strategy.
Are you attracting one-hit wonders that will visit your site and leave? Or are you attracting the type of people you want to visit your website, stick around, or buy your products?
This is particularly important for business blogs. Before you invest months writing content that doesn’t perform, develop a strategy that will convert your visitors to customers or subscribers.
Getting someone to visit your blog and read your article is not enough. Who are they? Are they even the audience you are trying to attract? Think very carefully about who you want to find your blog before you start writing content for them.
Once you have identified your website’s target audience and the goals for your content, you can start working on generating unique content ideas for your blog. How do you come up with good titles and content for your blog?
How to Generate Unique Content Ideas For Your Blog
Once you have a content strategy, you can start working on a list of content ideas. Ideally, you will create a one year content calendar. Having a content calendar will help you stay on track with your content strategy.
If you know in advance what you are going to write and have a calendar to map it out, writing those unique content ideas for your blog will come easier. This way you aren’t sitting around trying to think about what to post. You can just start writing it!
1. Brainstorm
The easiest way to generate unique content ideas for your blog is by having a brainstorming session. Sit down and think about everything you would like to write about for your blog.
When you write your list, make it comprehensive. If you have an idea for a topic, write a list of related topics.
Ask your friends and family to give you ideas. Don’t worry about the titles. Start with a list of keywords. Keep a running list and add to it as you come up with new ideas.
2. Write down every topic you search for
Start documenting every topic you search for. Your own Google searches are a great way to come up with content ideas.
Unique long-tail keyword articles perform really well in search-engines. However, it’s hard to think of long-tail keyword ideas when you brainstorm.
Using your own long-tail keyword searches can help you create great content. And you know if you searched for the topic, and read the content, someone else probably will!
3. Look at your competitors’ content
Your competition is one of the best sources for content ideas. Dive deep into your competitor’s content and content strategy. Write down every topic on their blog that you would be interested in reading.
You are looking for content ideas that get your attention. If it is something you are interested in reading, odds are it’s something your audience would be interested in reading too
1. Look for content ideas you are missing on your blog
Does your competitor have content you don’t have? Chances are you have written some similar content on your own blog. Look for ideas you haven’t thought about or written about.
Additionally, spin their ideas. Say they have a topic you like. Come up with your own unique title and keywords for the same idea.
The goal is to make it your own. You don’t want to rewrite other people’s content. You want to borrow their ideas and create your own unique content using their ideas.
2. Analyze their content
If you find your competitor in a search engine, it probably means your competitor is good at search engine optimization. One of the best ways to beat your competitor in search engines is to analyze what they are doing. Look at their posts for keywords, structure and design.
What do you think about the way their post looks visually? How many photos and visuals are on their page? Did they include research or infographics? How many words are on their page and how do they space their content? You might notice that content that performs well in Google has some patterns you can copy.
Look at their keyword title for their page and then write down how many times they used the keywords within their post and headers.
Look for words that are similar to their keywords and write those down as well. You can easily do this by using the find on page tool on your website browser.
This will give you an idea of how much search engine optimization you need to do on your own posts to compete. If they rank well, use their posts as a guide for getting your own posts to rank well.
3. Sign up for their newsletter!
Does your competitor have a lead magnet or newsletter? If so, subscribe to it. Email marketing is a very effective form of marketing.
Websites that have a newsletter send out content regularly to bring people back to their website and nurture leads.
Sign up for your competitors’ newsletters and start documenting any marketing ideas or content ideas that grab your attention.
One of the best ways to get better at marketing is to watch what other people are doing. Use the ideas you like for your own blog or website.
4. Look at unrelated websites for content ideas
If you only look at your competitors’ website, you could be missing out on tons of content ideas. Visit a completely unrelated website and look at their content. Check out their titles and use them to create your own titles.
For example, a wedding blog might be completely unrelated to content marketing, but you can still get tons of title ideas just from scrolling through their content. Titles like “how to plan”, “what to do when/if”, or “7 solutions for” could all be converted to marketing topics.
5. Use Google’s autocomplete
If you have a brainstorm list of seed keywords from your brainstorm list, you can then start working on generating unique long tail keyword titles for your blog posts. Google’s autocomplete is an excellent and free way to generate unique keywords.
Just go to Google, type in the phrase you are thinking about using and let Google’s autocomplete fill in the rest.
For example, for this post a Google search for “how to generate unique content ideas for blog’ resulting it several variations for titles including “how to generate content ideas with topic research” and “best way to generate content ideas”.
6. Use Google Analytics and Search Console
Google Analytics and Search Console provide you with data on your website’s performance.
By reviewing your reports, you can see which pages get the most traffic, what keywords people use to find you in search, and information about who is visiting your website.
The Acquisition information tells you how people found your site and is very useful for planning your content.
1. See what topics your readers are finding you for
Evaluate the landing pages people are visiting when they search in Google and land on your site. Also look at your Search Console data. Google’s Search Console will provide you with a list of search queries people have used to find your website.
Many of the search queries are not queries your visitors have actually clicked on. Still, this list gives you an amazing list of content ideas to work on. Use the list of keywords to generate content titles for your blog.
2. Expand your content ideas
Read through the list to see what position you are in for each keyword. Start working on the easy wins. Any keyword that is close to being on the first page of Google write down and start working on. If you already have content on that topic, work on building links to it.
You may discover you have a post that is ranking on the second or third page for a keyword that you haven’t actually written on. Use those keywords to develop out your content and create a new blog post using the keyword.
7. Use a keyword tool
There are quite a few free keyword tools. UberSuggest is a free tool for bloggers. You can use Ubersuggest to generate content ideas and titles for your blog posts.
Just go to Ubersuggest, type in your keyword and select keyword ideas. The free version of Ubersuggest only allows you to do 3 searches a day, but this may be sufficient for a small blog.
You can see a search for “content ideas” generating 293 suggestions, 22 questions, and over 3,000 related keywords. UberSuggest also tells you the approximate search volume for each keyword as well as SEO difficulty
If you have a newer website, you’ll want to go after the titles with a low SEO difficulty score because they are easier to rank well for in Google.
8. Search for content ideas on Quora and Reddit
Quora and Reddit are both great sources of content ideas. The nice thing about these sites is that you know that the topics you find are ones that people are actually interested in.
Search through Quora and Reddit for your keyword and see what pops up. Look for the posts or questions that get the most comments and answers. You can then create content to match the content.
9. Use social media to generate content ideas
Follow your competition on social media. You can get an idea of what content performs well on social media by looking at the number of likes and shares it gets.
When you see a content idea that is performing well, write it down in your brainstorm list. You can also use Twitter or Facebook hashtags to find new and trending topics.
10. Use Google News and Google Alerts
Your content calendar should include evergreen content. Evergreen content is the kind of content that is not time-sensitive. It is always going to be searched for and read. Evergreen content is the key to having consistent traffic to your blog, but you should also write on current and trending topics.
Current topics are only popular for a short time, but can be easier to rank well for, especially if you create a unique keyword title. Using Google News can help you keep up with trending news stories.
To use Google News, customize your Google News account by following topics you are interested in. Just do a search for the topics you are most interested in and click follow.
If you don’t want to miss a news story, sign up for Google Alerts. Google Alerts sends you an email whenever a new story is published on the keyword you’ve signed up for.
You can set up as many news alerts as you want. Set your preferences to receive emails once a day or once a week. You can also filter the results so that Google only sends you the top stories.
Once you start using these ideas and tools, you should find generated content ideas so much easier. There are so many resources for bloggers now.
Even if you think the content market is saturated, you can create content people are interested in, and that they will read and share.
These were some tips to generate unique content ideas for your blog. What are your thoughts? Tell me how you come up with content and blogpost ideas for your blog in the comments. I’d love to know!
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About the author
Patty Malowney is a digital marketing and SEO consultant in Albuquerque, NM. She manages an internet marketing blog for female entrepreneurs at BadassWebGoddess
These are actually very useful ideas. I will definitely be using these in the future!
Thank you Sarvesh!