I don’t know about you all, but I struggle to find the time to write blog posts. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes it isn’t the most exciting of tasks, and more often than not, gets bumped down to the bottom of my to-do list.
However after a few years in the marketing world there’s one tip/trick I want to share which will help you to come up with fresh and interesting content.
So, firstly, why are blogs important?
Blogs increase the chances of your website being found on search engines. They are great for making your website keyword-rich, and therefore eligible to show up for some of the search terms that people type into Google. Blogs are great for businesses wanting to increase the traffic to their website, and so the more content you have, the greater your chances are of being found!
Now you know that you need blogs on your website, you may be wondering what to actually blog about.
So in order to come up with new content, I want to share with you what I find to be the most helpful. It’s just one great tool for you to use and it’s called…
Google Adwords Keyword Planner
This tool is one of the most handy things out there. It basically allows you to find relevant keywords for your business, by showing up a huge list of search terms that real people have typed into Google. You can view the number of searches, the cost of bidding to use that keyword, as well as related search terms. It’s primary use is for the creation of Google PPC campaigns, but you can also use it to find what else your target audience is searching for.
To access this tool you do need to have a running paid ad campaign with Google. There are other sites such as SEMrush keyword tool, but a way round this is to simply create a campaign with perhaps a 10p budget or simply pause one once you’ve made it live.
Head to the tool here: https://ads.google.com/intl/en_uk/home/tools/keyword-planner/
Simply type in a few keywords which you feel would be relevant to your business, and then download/export the result and have a read through of all the keywords that are similar, and use these ideas to come up with blog ideas.
For example:
You sell a range of horse feed.
You type in “what to feed a horse”, “horse feed” and “horse health” and hit enter.
The search results will look something like this:
Looking at this list I can already see that people are also searching for ‘horse supplements’, ‘the best horse feed’ and further down there are suggestions such as ‘horse vaccines’, ‘horses diet’ and ‘best senior horse feed’.
What you now need to do is click the “download keyword ideas” in blue in the right hand corner, and export them to an Excel/Google Sheets document.
Now this can be quite a timely process, but now you need to go through the list and start to get a general idea of related topics. I would recommend putting a couple of hours aside and grouping keywords into relevant subject areas, so that you have a detailed content plan that could last you months!
So for this example I would group them by blog post how to’s, feeding tips, horse health questions etc…
From this I would then be left with a range of topics that will form the content of my blog posts.
After a quick look through the keywords produced for the above example, I came up with the following blog post titles:
- The best feeding tips for senior horses
- Our favourite homemade DIY treats
- Top recommended feed brands
- Different types of horse feeders
- How much does horse feed cost?
- The best feed to help your horse put on weight
- Signs your horse is malnourished
The list can go on!!
Of course if you base each blog around a keyword, make sure you optimise it for said keyword so that your blog will show up in Google when people type it in. So a blog post about what to feed your horse in the Summer months would show when someone types in ‘Summer horse feed’.
Clever right?!
Yes you may be reading this and be thinking blimey, this is going to take some time.
The honest thing is that yes it will do, BUT you will have a content plan which will last a long time, and you will find that your website traffic will increase, as well as your social media reach (because of course you will be sharing all your wonderful new content to your social platforms too!)
If you’re still wanting more ways to generate blog content, here’s just a final few tips…
1) Put yourself in your customers shoes.
Who are they? Want do they need? What would make them click through to your website? What are their common interests? By asking these questions you get an idea of the sort of content they will want to read!
2) Research your competitors
No this doesn’t mean copy and paste their content (this is plagiarism, and you WILL get penalised by Google). Just have a look what’s proving popular with their followers, what sort of material they are posting, and possibly think of ways you can be different.
3) Don’t write essays
Blogs don’t have to be lines and lines of text! Honestly you could have a blog as short as 500 words! Obviously the more keywords the better, but if you’re content is short and to the point, your readers are more likely to enjoy it and stick around.
Hope that gives you something to go on, and as always, if you want some help just drop me a message and I’ll help you brainstorm!
