8 Suggestions on How to Find Topics for Engaging Content on Your Blog

Most marketers today know that quality content is key to running a successful marketing campaign. Without it, you might not show up in searches or keep your audience’s attention for very long – if at all. While it’s widely understood that you need to produce good content, it can be difficult to understand where and how to find topics that are engaging and trending.

Searching for content ideas sometimes takes longer than producing the content itself. The question of “Is anyone actually going to be interested in this?” might be ringing in the back of your mind during your topic pursuit. A quick Google search of how to find blog topics also produces a dizzying amount of ways you can find a good subject to write about.

Focus on the Most Effective Ways to Find New Topics

Luckily, you don’t need hundreds of ways to find good topics if you have a few tried and true methods to pull out of your back pocket. Below are some of our most efficient ways to find topics and ideas to form into blog posts to keep your visitors engaged and continuously coming back.

1. Utilize Google Search

Google is the most popular search engine, so it’s a great starting place to find topics for your blog. Start typing your subject into Google and look at what it suggests as an autofill. These suggestions are highly-searched terms related to the main subject you started to enter.

If you see a topic on this list that’s relevant to your company, you’ll know it has a decent search volume behind it. Bonus tip: if you hit “enter” and actually search one of those terms on the list, scroll to the bottom of the results page and take a look at the section titled “Related searches”. These are similar topics that might work well as a standalone blog post or a supporting topic for your existing idea.

You can also utilize Google image tags in a similar way. If you’re an e-commerce company selling running gear, try searching for “running gear” and click over to the Images tab. You’ll see at the very top image tags related to your query, some of which are “cold weather” and “stylish”. You could combine these into an article discussing stylish running gear for cold weather and have links to your products that fit the bill.

2. Take a Look at Google Trends

Another useful tool Google has, particularly when it comes to finding trending topics, is Google Trends. Google Trends lets you see the amount of searches your keyword has had overtime and what specific areas within your chosen sub region search that trend the most.

Enter either a single or a couple of keywords into Google Trends and you’ll see their respective search volume and how they compare to each other. You can also narrow your search to specific regions or time periods.

Google Trends can be particularly useful if you’re wondering what version of a keyword to use. As an example, if you’re debating on whether to choose electric cars or electric vehicles as your keyword, you can use the compare tool to see their respective data. A quick look shows that electric cars have had more search volume overtime, so that should be the keyword you use.

The Related Queries section can also be a gold mine within Google Trends. This section is similar to the related searches at the bottom of a Google search results page. If you find a topic relevant to your business from this section, plug it back into a Google search to see what kind of articles have already been written on it. You can use this to inform the way you structure your article and fill in gaps of knowledge on the subject.

3. Use Google Analytics the Right Way

Google Analytics has a ton of useful data and there’s one section in particular that comes in handy when searching for topics to write about. Keep in mind this method only works if your website already has some traffic coming to it, so if your website is brand new, you might be better off looking at the other tips we discuss.

This useful section in Google Analytics is called Landing Pages. To reach this, go to the Behavior tab > Site Content, Landing Pages. This section will show what pages on your website are most trafficked. To see just organic traffic (excluding social media and paid sources), drill down into sources and show only traffic from search engines.

Analyze those pages and see if there’s an overarching theme or subject that you could write more content on. This is particularly useful because you already know that the keywords those pages focus on are popular with your readers. By expanding on the general topic, you have a higher probability that your new blog will also bring in readers.

You can take this a step further and plug in those recurring topics you see into a tool like Ahrefs or SEMRush to really figure out what longer tail keywords you should focus on to rank for that subject. Take a look at our section on Ahrefs below to see how to utilize that tool for topic exploration.

4. All About Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an SEO research tool that is pretty powerful in its capabilities. It’s one of a few popular topic research tools. A couple of others you can look into are SEMRush and Moz. At Jack & Bean, we use Ahrefs so we’ll be focusing on this particular tool in our article.

The tool within Ahrefs that is one of the most useful is called Keywords Explorer. This tool has over a billion keywords indexed to search through. Enter your keyword into the tool and filter by organic traffic (high threshold) and referring domains (as close to zero as possible). This will result in the content people are searching for in high volume with little to no backlinks – aka the sweet spot for your content to rank well.

You can also enter one of your competitor’s domains into the main dashboard search bar. This will pull a ton of information on their website including their 5 top pages and keywords they rank for on the Organic Search tab. Take any relevant keywords and plug them back into the Keyword Explorer to see other related subjects you could write a blog article on. Spend a few minutes also looking into the top pages of their website and see if there is any way your company could improve upon their content.

5. Answer the Public

While not as robust as some of the other tools on this list, Answer the Public is still a great avenue to start gathering topics to write about. This tool gathers autocomplete data from search engines, like Google, and outputs useful phrases and questions searchers have around your keyword.

When you search a subject, the answers are broken down into 5 groups: questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabetical, and related. Depending on what type of article you’re looking to write, you can dive into any of these umbrella categories. We recommend plugging these search terms back into Google or a tool like Ahrefs to see what type of content has already been written on it.

The free version has a decent amount of functionality; it allows up to 3 searches a day and you’re able to download the results into a .csv file. If you find yourself wanting more, the paid version gives you unlimited searches, the ability to compare data, region specific results, and saved reports.

6. Check Out Ubersuggest

This tool is fairly similar to Ahrefs, but not as robust. It gives plenty of information, though, including search volume, cost-per-click (CPC), paid difficulty (PD), and SEO difficulty (SD). The interface is pretty straightforward and easy to use, which is a bonus to utilizing this tool. To start, just type in a topic and hit search.

Scroll down to the section labeled “Keyword Ideas”. This will give you related keyword ideas and their associated data. Look for keywords that have a high volume and a low SEO difficulty (SD) for the sweet spot of finding a topic that will generate traffic to your website.

Below Keyword Ideas, there’s a section called Content Ideas. This section has some useful trending topics and articles. It shows you the estimated visits that article receives, as well as how many backlinks and how many social shares they’ve garnered. Using these top pages to inform your future content can help improve your overall SEO and bring in more visitors.

7. Look at Competitor Sites

Your competitors’ websites are a goldmine of topics waiting for you to write your own version. To start, visit one of your top competitor’s sites and analyze their content. This entails reading not only the titles, but also the blogs themselves. As you go through their content ask yourself, “Where can my blog fill a gap?”

Remember the goal is to never copy the content, but rather add to it and add your own unique thoughts. Maybe your competitor has left out an important perspective on a service or problem, or your company has a new way to approach your customers’ issues. These are a few examples of gaps that your company’s content can look to fill.

You can also use analytic tools, like Ahrefs, SEMRUSH, and Moz Explorer, to crawl a website and show you their top performing pages that are actually driving visitors to their site. Check out our section above on Ahrefs and how to harness that tool to find good blog topics.

8. Try Looking at YouTube

This topic exploration tip is similar to our first tip with Google – and since YouTube is owned by Google, you’ll have a plethora of topic ideas to choose from. While this method is best for finding video topic ideas, you can also write an article based on information or an idea you found from a video.

To get started, go to a competitor’s YouTube page and sort their videos by Most Popular. This will sort the videos from highest views to lowest and will show you which ones have performed the best for their channel.

Take a look at the titles and watch a couple of videos that you think are applicable to your business the most. Then whip up a brand new article based on the information you learned. Again, be sure to add your own unique thoughts and perspective to it to make it yours. Not only will this help you stand out, but new perspectives and ideas will help you become a thought leader in your space.

The fact that those subjects performed well in a video format gives a good amount of confidence that they’ll perform well as written content as well. Try this out a couple of times and see what your results look like.

How to Find Trending Topics

Content is king, so when you start running out of content ideas it can seem like a big stagnation in your marketing machine. Remember that writer’s block happens to the most seasoned writers. Although it’s certainly frustrating, it’s nothing to be worried about.

With the tools discussed in this article, you’ll have a great starting point for new blog content to keep the ideas and visitors flowing in. Whether it’s through Google’s tools, popular SEO tools, or through doing a little reconnaissance on your competitors, these tips will help you find fresh topics to write about that your customers will want to read.

If you’re still struggling to find topics, you can also seek a third-party agency to help you. At Jack & Bean, we specialize in content writing and SEO strategies to help grow your business. Contact us today to learn how we can help you find relevant topics your audience would be interested in reading about.