How To Find Best Topics to Write About in Your Blog

Have you heard about the blank page syndrome? One of the ways to overcome it is to start writing something.

Perhaps the first lines you write are not the best, but you can always replace them later. 

However, if you treat your blog as a business and want it to be your income stream you need to create value for your readers.

What to write about so that it's interesting to your potential readers and customers? I'm  sharing a research method and  answering this question in this post.

The good idea is to start with topics. You don't always need a paid software to do that. In fact, you can start with a pen and paper to brainstorm some content ideas and topics that come to your mind.

I will assume that you've already started your blog and wrote some blog posts, but even if not, you can easily find out what others write and talk about in your niche.

Here are some starting points for Niche and Problem-related topics.

Niche Topics

Brainstorm topics that tend to receive the most traffic and generate income in your niche and related niches. 

Here are several questions that will help you to write a list of niche topics:

What topics in your niche are trendy?

Use tools like Google Trends to figure out if the topics you want to write about are trending. This will also give you an insight into whether a topic has an increasing interest or it's declining in recent times.

What topics are most discussed in your niche?

It's good if you've already joined online communities where people have discussions, but if not, you can start by searching these communities on Facebook groups and Subreddits.

Read through posts and threads, try to understand what are the most discussed topics in these communities. That will instantly help you to understand what to write about.

What do the niche experts discuss?

Find experts in your niche and go through the topics they're interested in lately. Find out what is the most popular content they've created. Check the comments section and dig into discussions. Think about how you can to this discussion or what you experiment with. Maybe you have a different experience, and you're willing to share it with your audience. This leads to the next question.

What topics are the most controversial?

People like to disagree, disapprove and have intense discussions, especially online. You can use that and create debates by writing some controversial content in your blog.

Of course, this is not for everyone, but it's one of the ways to go.

I'm still testing this idea, and I believe if it's done right then, cool results can be achieved. 

For example, your controversial blog posts can go viral, and you can gain a lot of interest in your blog. However, make sure it builds a reputation that works for you.

Problem-related Topics

People read your blog and find some of your articles probably because they search for answers and solutions to their problems.

Common questions that you can answer in your articles:

• What problems do people have in your niche?
• What are they trying to achieve?
• What fears do they have?

Informational content can help people to handle their situations in the right way. You can easily grow your audience by creating guides and tutorials or writing how-to posts in your blog.

But what if you want to sell a product or service using your blog? Here is a method that allows you to do that efficiently.

Product or service-related Topics

What products or services are you competing with?

It's a good idea to know your competitors. What are they doing on the market? What products and features are they releasing? Do they have any reviews and feedback from the community?

Sometimes it's hard to understand competitors because part of the processes is happening in-house, and not much goes public. 

However, it became popular lately to share behind the scenes online using social media accounts and basically build a transparent company. 

It's a good idea to understand how your competitors present their products and services. How they talk about them, what words they're using, and so on.

What related products or services are popular in your niche?

You can reach a bigger audience if you understand what popular products/services exist on the market, even if you don't directly compete with them. Those can be plug-ins or separate software features, ebooks instead of workshops, a webinar instead of a private consultation.

How do users search for a product like yours?

You need to understand how people find the products and services of your competitors. What keywords are they using, what content are they focusing on?

You can use paid software like Jaaxy, Ubersuggest, or SEMrush to research these, but I understand that you might not be ready to invest in software at the start. And generally speaking, this can be expensive especially, if you're just trying the waters. So there is a Free solution that not many people aware of...

What you can do for now is to create a Google Ads account and use Keyword Planner. Basically, it's a Free tool to do your keyword research, but be aware that Google might ask you for credit card details at some point, but even then it's free until the point you start running your ads using them.

It's important to understand key metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty. I'll explain a little bit more about how to organize your research in detail below...

Keywords

Researching Keywords

Collect all the topics you have identified in a file with your main topics.

Broadening Your Keyword List

The next step is to dig deeper with the keywords you found and find longer keywords for those you think are promising in your case.

Focus on these 3 types of expanded keywords:

• expanded keyword phrases
• long-tail keywords
• semantically-related keywords

Related Questions

Answering questions in your blog posts is helpful and brings value to your audience.

Filtering and Grouping of Researched Topics

After collecting a list of topics and keywords, you need to select those that could perform the best in your blog.

Focus on keywords that are:

• High volume — the higher, the more popular;
• Lowest keyword difficulty — the lower the metric, the less competition.

You can use tools like Ubersuggest or Semrush to research those metrics, and if you find high-volume keywords with up to 60% keyword difficulty, you'll perform well with your content.

The low volume and low difficulty keywords might be useful as well. You can use them to reserve a good position for future searches.

Grouping Keywords

You need to identify 5-10 main topics from the keywords you researched earlier.

Try to dig deeper into each keyword and find related but more specific keywords.

Generate Headlines

To come up with an attractive headline, you need to understand your audience's expectations. Basically, what and how are they going to search on the topics you've researched.

Common search requests

• Informational — usually include words like "tutorial", "guide", "how", "who".
• Navigational – specific website or a web page. Users want to learn more about a particular product or service.
• Commercial — usually include commercial keywords like "best", "cheapest", "top", "review". Users considering two or more products that they likely want to buy.
• Transactional — means they search to purchase something, and often they're almost ready for it. Requests like this may include such words as "buy," "price," "coupon."

Using search Intent and Keyword Modifiers

Identify search intent for every keyword and mark them depending on the stage you think your potential customer is at.

• Search intent (informational, commercial);
• Funnel stage (pre-awareness, awareness, consideration).

Post Headlines

As I mentioned above, Informational posts usually starting with "how-to," and commercial topics contain such words as "best," "cheapest," or "reviews." These are powerful modifiers that help to generate attractive headlines.