After some time, it can become difficult to think of fresh ideas for your blog, especially when it seems you have covered every subject under the sun.

If your creative juices are evaporating or writer’s block is setting in, don’t worry. You can adopt many different methods and tactics to develop compelling ideas for a blog topic.

Why are blogs good for SEO?

Blogs are a critical part of most content marketing strategies. While they are typically informal pieces of content, they can do wonders for demonstrating your knowledge on a certain topic.

Readers seek out information for different reasons. It could be to learn something new, find a solution, or give them the confidence to make the final step in their buying journey. It’s also an opportunity for a user to discover your brand concerning a product or solution.

Regularly updating your blog with engaging and search engine-optimised content encourages customers to revisit your site, potentially driving conversions. It also reinforces other direct ranking factors, such as having more indexed pages.

Every great blog topic needs a catchy title that piques the reader’s interest and encourages them to click. Think about the language, numbers, and data you use in your title — they should point to concrete takeaways that appeal to your target audience.

If you provide authentic and transparent answers to what your target audience is asking, you can spark an emotional connection and cultivate brand loyalty. Loyal customers might promote their favourite brands to friends and family or share your content, which can expand awareness of your brand and potentially attract new users.

Circulation of your blog content can be beneficial for SEO as it helps spawn backlinks and signals to Google that other sites vouch for the credibility of your work. Backlinks are closely associated with strong SEO performance — a study by Ahrefs of over one billion web pages discovered that 66.31% of the 90.63% of pages that got no organic search traffic from Google had zero backlinks.

How to find blog topics that improve SEO and organic reach

Blog posts are not always designed to be a traffic driver in the SERPs. Sometimes they are created to fill a content gap or specific stage of your marketing funnel, but that doesn’t mean they can’t help your content in other areas.

Think about what blog topics you are missing and how they can slot into your content architecture and customer journey maps for a well-rounded user experience.

Search engine users are interested in discovering solutions to their problems, so try and use these specific queries as the basis of a blog topic. Creating how-to articles and guides that answer these questions and query types is a great way to drive traffic to your blog. You’re also showing you understand your audience when you come up with blog topics that can successfully solve real issues.

How to generate blog ideas

You can’t rely on one method to create engaging blog posts weekly. Blog inspiration is all around so let’s run through some of the different tools you can use to ensure you don’t end up with an empty or stale blog content calendar.

Communicate with your customers

Talk with your sales team and find out what customers are frequently asking. Even if some questions aren’t suitable for a long-form article, look to use them elsewhere on your site, such as in a support section or FAQ section.

Collating data from live chats is another shrewd method for understanding your customer’s pain points and triggers. Listen to your audience’s words to quickly translate their voice into interesting and valuable blog posts.

Check out your competitors

Look at the blog topics and types of blogs your competitors are producing. If they are performing well, you can use them as inspiration and invest your creativity in producing a version with your own added value.

Use medium and long-tail keywords

Think about how people search. Most experienced Google users will use a series of specific words to drive a more specific set of search results. These are known as medium and long-tail keywords — because they are more specific they are often less competitive. These customers are in specific stages of the buyer’s journey and will likely increase your click-through rates and conversions.

Try and develop blog post topics that focus on answering the questions these long-tail, specific searches are asking. Even if you receive fewer site visits, you will attract a high-quality audience interested in your products and services.

Don’t forget to analyse your website’s existing keyword portfolio. Google Search Console will tell you what keywords you’re already ranking for, so consider how you can develop new takes and angles around your most popular posts and keywords.

Be mindful that Google favours unique blog ideas and value propositions that reflect what your audience is searching for instead of a series of blogs around keywords in your niche.

Quora and Reddit

Another source is sites like Quora and Reddit. Quora is a question-and-answer website with a social network feel, while Reddit is a social sharing site of knowledge, great for keeping up with important news and content trends.

Reddit is one of the most visited global sites, with 430 million people using the site every month. Look for posts generating a lot of upvotes and being read by the community in your niche. For instance, if I’m in the chocolate niche and see discussions about chocolate tempering failure, I can rewrite this into a blog post.

While it’s advantageous for sneak peeks of the types of questions users are asking, it’s also pivotal to be active in communities relevant to your expertise. Reddit has strict guidelines on self-promotion, so build relationships with users before sparingly posting links to your blog. If your discussion contributions are relevant to the thread and serve as helpful to users, your blog post is more likely to be met with open arms.

The fact that the topic is also popular on Reddit will make it more likely to attract readers. Conversations around hot topics can quickly spiral to hundreds of comments, generating extra referral traffic to your blog.

Like Reddit, Quora also relies on user-generated content. When you enter a word or phrase on Quora, it will come back with a list of questions that users are asking about a particular topic. This can help you reel off blog topic ideas. To further cement your ideas, filter your search by “Type” and select “Topics” for an overview of how often questions about that topic have been asked. If the topic has a high volume, it’s worth consideration in your blog topic ideas.

Answer The Public

This clever SEO tool uses searches from Bing and Google to show you questions and autocomplete searches around a particular topic. It’s a great place to quickly get a list of ideas or angles for blog topics based on what people ask on the web.

Google Trends

Be quick to jump on rising trends. If a keyword has a high volume over a prolonged period, it’s a fantastic opportunity to create an evergreen blog post.

Google Trends is also effective for seasonal content as it gives you an insight into what topics might be popular at different times of the year. Remember what we said about coming up with topics that match your customer’s current search intent? Check out the “Trending Searches” tab for anything related to your niche.

Google Autocomplete

Google’s autocomplete feature speeds up searches by predicting search terms based on those typed into Google. As you continue typing, predictions adjust accordingly.

We suggest typing in your topic first, followed by a word that begins with a question (how, why, when, etc.). For example, if you type in “guitar how”, Google will suggest searches such as “guitar how to play faster” and “guitar how to tune”. Take these ideas away, and check the search volume and type of blog content performing well on the SERPs for robust blog ideas.

Keep your blog topics concise

Begin with a clear, concise idea that your audience can understand. A broad or long-winded title or blog post will put readers off as it’s unlikely to provide an answer to their question. Even if an answer lurks in the body of the content, it won’t be immediately apparent or easy to find.

Specific topics attract a condensed, more targeted audience, which tends to be higher quality, straight to the point, and more likely to convert satisfied visitors.

We hope this guide has given you the energy and know-how to feed your content calendar with unique and refreshing blog ideas that coincide with the things your customers search for. Find the tools that work best for you and your situation to develop killer ideas for your blog.