How To Pick A Blog Topic: Free Tools and Winning Strategies

Know your audience

Build an audience… Have loyal readers… Also turn people into customers… Oh, all this giving you a headache? First and foremost, you need a personal touch to build your own community.

So, go back to the beginning of your blogging adventure. What story do you want to tell over and over again? Importantly, knowing what you want to write about will help you find a topic that fits your audience.

But how can you attract visitors to your site? Every audience has its own search intentions, and you can use that information to find the best topics.

Once you know your audience better, you can make them feel important by including relevant details in your text.

Come up with original ideas

The only way to make a blog popular is to market it properly. But no matter what kind of marketing you apply, quality content is the be-all and end-all of a successful blog. Without good content, you’re nothing more than another blog page.

How should be a quality content?

• Answer a common and valuable question.
• Focus on the search intentions of your target audience.

Also, your blog will suffer if your content and ideas aren’t fresh and original. However, it’s understandable that it can be difficult to find original ideas. Besides, you’re unlikely to find original ideas if your topic doesn’t make it seem worth blogging about. Not all of your blog posts should be industry reviews. Instead, produce content in a variety of formats. Moreover, focus on topics that resonate. Give your readers a reason to read your blog posts.

Stuck and don’t know what to blog about? Any writer can have trouble finding new ideas, but I’ve given you some ways to find blog topics below.

Free tools to pick a topic

Free title generator tools to find new ideas

After you determine your topics, you can create your content strategy and prepare your calendar. However, in my opinion, it’t suitable for long-term use because if you used them several times, the titles can get repetitive. Also, they suggest clickbait or catchy headlines, not search intent. Avoid headlines that contain clickbait because they degrade the quality of your page and increase the bounce rate.

To sum up, try to produce content that adds value and has high engagement.

• HubSpot Blog Topic Generator
• ImpactPlus Blog Title Generator
• Portent Title Maker
• ContenTrow Headline Generator
• Suma Kickass Headline Generator

Create a poll

Why don’t you ask your readers? Furthermore, you can create a variety of polls across the platforms where you interact with your audience.

By sending out an email, you can directly ask your audience what they want to learn from you or what content they like most on your social media accounts. Additionally, why don’t you boost this Facebook or Instagram post for a small fee to increase the number of responses. Moreover, don’t forget to ask the opinion of members in groups and forums related to your industry.

When preparing a survey, you can get help from Google Forms and Survey Monkey. Then, all you need to is sharing the survey link with the appropriate text on the desired channels.

Google Analytics

With Google Analytics, you can find out the most visited content on your website in the time period you choose. You can also narrow your focus by adding specific filters. Additionally, by examining the search box on your website, you can determine what words visitors use to get to the content.

Google search results page

As a panacea, Google is also the easiest way to find content ideas, and it’s free! If you search Google for the topic you want to write about, you’ll find the searches people are most interested in because Google presents these recommendations based on users’ previous searches. Also check the “users have asked this” and “related searches” sections. Of course, don’t ignore Google’s autocomplete feature, either. If you type your word in the search bar and don’t enter, you’ll see the search queries Google suggests for you. You can also try the same method in the YouTube search bar.

So, how can we get effective results without getting lost on Google’s results page? With time-saving formulas, of course. For example, with the formula [keyword] + “forum” you can find out in which forums the topic is discussed. Also, results on Google News and Google Images pages can give you new content ideas.

Search Trends

Current events can also impact your content flow of the month because some titles belong to specific periods. For example, publishing an article about skiing in the summer makes little sense. If you search Google Trends for keywords related to your topic, you can access which regions and date ranges attract the most attention. You can also find out which topics are queried the most on which dates. Therefore, these results may give you a clue about your next blog topic.

Check out Q&A sites

Quora is a trendy question-and-answer site. So, here you can find questions on any topic. They’re primarily in English, but they can still give you some ideas.

Reddit is another an actively used platform. Access the most discussed topics quickly by sorting the best content. Additionally, why don’t you subscribe to related Subreddits too?

Read the comments of popular blogs’ articles

Find similar popular blogs and see how your readers have commented on their posts. Consequently, these questions will enrich your article and allow you to address issues that the author missed. Yes, it’ll take a lot of time to review many blogs, and a shortcut might be helpful for you. You can access some blogs related to your topic by typing the following formula into Google: “site:disqus.com/home/forums/”your-keyword”.

Analyze the content and keywords of the competitor pages

Which of your competitors’ websites does your target audience follow? You can find new ideas by examining the websites on their radar. For this purpose, you can use tools like Ahrefs. So, go to the Site Explorer page and paste the link of the website you want to analyze. Also see the most popular content on the “Best by shares” tab.

On another note, Semrush’s Keyword Gap page is also a useful tool. Whatever you prefer, you can get a detailed analysis. The free services of these tools are sufficient for me for now. Plus, you can try out all the features of the tools with trial versions.

Buzzsumo

BuzzSumo is one of the tools I use frequently. You can see the most shared articles on the web about the topic you want to write about. Or you can see the most shared articles on the site you’re interested in. Vary your search by playing with the filters. It’s also a suitable method for competitor analysis and will give you new ideas. The free features are also quite sufficient.

Get help from published books

Look at published books on the topic you want to write about. Believe me, you’ll find that they’re great sources to get new ideas, and they’ll give you ideas so that you can produce valuable content.

Tools for keyword research

Let’s talk about keywords now. Having a basic handle on keywords is helpful when creating content. If you don’t have any SEO knowledge, I recommend you to educate yourself a bit. A content writer should also have knowledge about different fields to enrich our work and give us plus points.

I mentioned earlier that we need to know our target audience well to come up with a compelling headline. What’re most people looking for, what problems do they want to find an answer to? The moment you get this information, bam! Here are the topics you’re looking for to write valuable posts for your readers. With the right keywords, you can also increase your organic traffic.

You can use the various SEO tools I mentioned above to find these keywords or phrases. Now, I want to talk about the tools I’ve experience with.

• MOZ: Go to the Keyword Research page. Enter your target keyword and select your target region. On the Overview page, click Keyword Suggestion. In this section, you can see potential titles. The Relevancy column shows how closely the search term matches the first query you used. Plus, the Volume column also offers monthly organic search traffic forecasts. You can try the Pro version for 30 days, and the free version allows 10 calls per month.

• Keyword Tool: With the Keyword Tool, you can do as much keyword research as you want. It’s very easy to use and has a sleek design. You need to be a Pro member to see search volume, trend and CPC values. Of course, you’ll get more results with the paid membership, but even the free membership can show you pretty good lists. It gives you ideas for questions.

• Word Tracker: Word Tracker also has an easy-to-use interface. The good thing about it’s that we can see the search volume of the keywords. Of course, only a certain number of words are displayed. To get more results, you need to switch to a Pro account. However, in the free version you can perform 9 searches per month. You can use the 7-day trial version.

• Zutrix: Another tool you can use for keyword research is Zutrix. You can see the search volume and SEO difficulty. Check out these pages for keyword research, Keyword Planner or Google Suggest pages. Unfortunately, only one search per day is possible, but the prices for the paid membership are affordable.

• Ubersuggest: Ubersuggest is one of my favorite tools, and I love its design. It lets you get results like search volume and SEO difficulty, and it also lists popular articles related to your search. The free version allows 3 searches per day, and you can get more results in the full version. You can also try it for 7 days.

• FAQ Fox: It’s easy to use and free. It helps you find your audience’s most frequently asked questions about the topic you’re interested in. Just enter the relevant keyword and the sites you want to search, then press the button. When you select a category, the query will automatically add the sites you can search and add your own links.

• Answer the Public: On the website, you’ll find different question types for each search. You’ll also find prepositions and comparisons to the search intent. There are 2 free searches per day.

• Soovle: It provides ideas about the keyword you’re searching for on Google, Answers, Wikipedia, Amazon, Yahoo, Bing, and YouTube sites. When you click on the word or phrase you’re interested in, it redirects you to the original source. The usage is free of charge.

BONUS: Headline Analyzer

Once you’ve found your title, what’s next? Do you think it’s clickable? The Headline Analyzer scores and analyzes your headline. So you can improve your title based on the data. Even the free version is effective. Also, it’s an add-on. Therefore, it automatically sees and analyzes WordPress and Google Doc headers.

“How To Pick A Blog Topic: Free Tools and Winning Strategies” was first published on Medium.