What do you use to come up with content ideas?
-
Buzzsumo charge and not sure it's worth it. didn't find Quora helpful. Any others?
-
Hi,
I'm working on a presentation that helps brands answer this question. It really feels like one of those questions that should have a great, simple answer.
My quick-fast-dirty process looks a lot like this.
Brand-level
- Determine goals for brand
- Ascertain how content can help brand attain those goals
Competition
- Do a simple Google search to see which brands are competition for the same audience (e.g., using your money keywords)
- Pay close attention to the content they've created that's ranking well
- Try to create a short list of things you can do content-wise better
Audience
- Figure out who they are being visiting social media, Quora, Reddit, etc., and doing a keyword search to see who is using your terms
- Make at list of the folks who are influencers and what questions, concerns, issues are being raised
- Use this information to find other such platforms where similar audiences might be congregating (i.e., do a Google search or Twitter search or Facebook search to see what other groups key members might be a part of)
Content
Armed with your keywords, the questions you can likely answer and the types of content your competition is creating, you can being to think about the types of content you can and should create based on your brand's needs and goals.
For example, if you have an existing product that is now newer and better than ever, but you need to get people to learn about the changes, maybe you write a top of the funnel piece that includes your brand as part of a solution to a problem you found from online discussions. The maker of a sleek, redesigned wallet for millennials, say, might write a post titled "Why Your iPhone Case Should Never Double as a Credit Card Holder."
The key is to focus as much on the execution as the idea. That is...
- Have a clear goal with regard to each piece of content
- Know in advance which segment of the audience you're attempting to reach and what desired actions you wish for them to take
- Understand that publishing content is only part of the process. (It must be shared, promoted and, hopefully, amplified to be successful)
To help you get started, here are a few indispensable resources:
For help with what questions you should be answering:
For how to come up with better ideas more easily:* Creating Demand for Products, Services, and Ideas that Have Little to No Existing Search Volume - Whiteboard Friday*GENERATING BETTER CONTENT IDEAS
-
Thanks, all. Regarding trying to guess what our customers are looking for, I've found from previous jobs that attempting to surmise a searcher's language can be tricky. I used to do digital marketing for a cookware company and we'd have a word for a saucepan, for example, whereas we found that searchers were using different language and terms.
Google Trends I like but doesn't it just give you an idea for the search volume over a defined period, and allow you to filter down geographically etc? I want to make sure that there is significant call/traffic to justify the pages that I'll be creating.
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Go to SEMRUSH. Check keywords that bring competitors big traffic and where I am not yet competing. Make pages that will defeat theirs.
-
Amanda is on point with her suggestion. The 90 foot view is always where I start.
What are you user's actually looking for? Like really step into their shoes - they're human too remember - and ask yourself what kind of questions they have. We marketer's all have fancy terms for different levels of marketing funnels but ultimately it's very simple. A human being has a need and they look to Google for their solution. Given what you know about your customer/user/visitor - how can you make their journey easier, faster, simpler? Add value, be authentic and don't cut corners.
Once you have a few idea's that start with the person, use the tools Amanda has recommended to validate your theory and gain more understanding.
Good luck!
-
Sounds simplistic but keyword research categorized by estimated volume based around semantic relativeness, Google Trends, competitor research, and the 90 foot view of those three things together to then define a content strategy.
~Amanda
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Geo Targeting Content Question
Hi, all First question here so be gentle, please My question is around geo targeted dynamic content; at the moment we run a .com domain with, for example, an article about running headphones and then at the end - taking up about 40% of the content - is a review of some people can buy, with affiliate links. We have a .co.uk site with the same page about running headphones and then 10 headphones for the UK market. Note: rel alternative is used on the pages to point to each other, therefore (hopefully) removing duplicate content issues. This design works well but it involves having to build links to two pages, in the case of this example. What we are thinking of doing is to just use the .com domain and having the product page of the page served dynamically, ie, people in the UK see UK products and people in US see US products. What are people's thoughts on this technique, please? From my understanding, it wouldn't be any problem with Google for cloaking etc because a googlebot and a human from the same country will see the same content. The site is made in Wordpress and has <....html lang="en-US"> (for the .com) in the header. Would this cause problems for the page ranking in the UK etc? The ultimate goal of doing this would be to reduce link building efforts by halving the number of pages which links would have to be built for. I welcome any feedback. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | TheMuffinMan0 -
Duplicate Content Issues with Pagination
Hi Moz Community, We're an eCommerce site so we have a lot of pagination issues but we were able to fix them using the rel=next and rel=prev tags. However, our pages have an option to view 60 items or 180 items at a time. This is now causing duplicate content problems when for example page 2 of the 180 item view is the same as page 4 of the 60 item view. (URL examples below) Wondering if we should just add a canonical tag going to the the main view all page to every page in the paginated series to get ride of this issue. https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=180&p=2 https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=60&p=4 Thoughts, ideas or suggestions are welcome. Thanks
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Should I use canonical?
I'm working on a site that sells audio tracks, the site is a Wordpress build. I've got Yoast and XML Sitemaps running for SEO. The site has been developed (not by myself) to use a flash based audio player. Now this player offers the ability to share, sell products etc... The player has been placed on the homepage and the main music catalog page. The main catalog page has had a custom page type created for itself. This page has been created in such a way that if you visit the actual page from dashboard > Pages and add content then no content will appear on the page. Even the page header is pulled from the PHP. So really as far as I am aware no real content is being seen on the page by a search engine. Except the content on the side bars (it has 2 sidebars on either side of the page.) The homepage has an introductory paragraph and header which are editable via the normal method in Wordpress. A custom post type has been created specifically for music items. When a music item is uploaded it is added to the music item feed on the homepage and music catalog pages. It also creates a separate post for the item itself. These items at the moment also have 'no content' as they are only sidebars with a flash music player. I've started to add short paragraphs and headers to them so there is content on the music item posts. I cannot however, in the time frame/budget start entering deeply descriptive content about each item. (I considered adding the intro paragraph from the homepage and using a canonical tag to the homepage on every music item). So here is my question. What do I do with these music items? Do I use canonical and point them toward the music catalog or the homepage? If so which one? I want the homepage or music catalog page to rank well and I am concerned that search engines aren't going to see these most vital parts of the site. I don't think individual items ranking is helpful, so what do i do?!?! The home and catalog pages are the two main pages of the site. I am going to advise a new player, page type etc... be utilised but at the moment I need a solution quickly. Any help will be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | benyamin0 -
Is adding reviews to your site using schema structured data markup considered duplicating content?
A client of mine whats to add reviews from other sites such as Judys Book and Yahoo to their site. (Yes the actual content of what was posted in the review. They are proud of what their clients are saying). I am not sure if using schema mark up and including the review body on the clients web site was safe or would it be considered duplicate content? Is there a "good practice" for this? Any assistance or suggestions are welcomed. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mgordon0 -
Duplicate Page Content
I've got several pages of similar products that google has listed as duplicate content. I have them all set up with rel="prev" and rel="next tags telling google that they are part of a group but they've still got them listed as duplicates. Is there something else I should do for these pages or is that just a short falling of googles webmaster tools? One of the pages: http://www.jaaronwoodcountertops.com/wood-countertop-gallery/walnut-countertop-9.html
Technical SEO | | JAARON0 -
How do i deal with duplicate content on the same domain?
I'm trying to find out if there's a way we can combat similar content on different pages on the same site, without having to re write the whole lot? Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | indurain0 -
How do you measure content on a website?
I never thought of this question before. Maybe because i didn't focus myself on content but only on optimizing existing content from clients. So how do you measure the content on a specific page?
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0 -
Using the Canonical Tag
Hi, I have an issue that can be solve with a canonical tag, but I am not sure yet, we are developing a page full of statistics, like this: www.url.com/stats/ But filled with hundreds of stats, so users can come and select only the stats they want to see and share with their friends, so it becomes like a new page with their slected stats: www.url.com/stats/?id=mystats The problems I see on this is: All pages will be have a part of the content from the main page 1) and many of them will be exactly the same, so: duplicate content. My idea was to add the canonical tag of "www.url.com/stats/" to all pages, similar as how Rand does it here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps But I am not sure of this solution because the content is not exactly the same, page 2) will only have a part of the content that page 1) has, and in some cases just a very small part. Is the canonical tag useful in this case? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | andresgmontero0