When you first started your website with the intention of becoming a successful blogger, chances are you thought the hardest part was going to be creating and launching the site. But with hosting providers guiding you through the process, building a website is not the hardest part of being a successful blogger.
In fact, sometimes the hardest thing about being a blogger is doing the thing you thought would be the easiest, which is coming up with creative blog content that your readers will love. No matter what niche you’re in, know that every blogger (even the most successful ones around) experience writer’s block at one point or another.
After all, there are there are over 1.5 billion websites on the web today. And, while it seems that only 200 million are active, it’s safe to say there’s a lot of similar content floating around. But you can’t let other websites get in the way of your success. Not to mention, if you want to maintain high search rankings, you’ll need to push out high-quality blog content regularly.
Luckily, we’re here to share with you some of the easiest ways to brainstorm new blog ideas and get your creative juices flowing for those times you feel there is nothing left to blog about.
So, let’s get started!
Use Google Analytics
If you don’t know by now, Google Analytics is an amazing (and free!) way to find out how your site visitors find your website and what they do once on your website. But this analytics tool goes way beyond metrics like bounce rate, page views, and session duration.
The easiest way to use Google Analytics to get more blog ideas is to go to Acquisition > Search Console > Queries.
Here, you’ll see the following data:
- Actual terms people are putting into Google searches that lead them to your website
- Number of clicks on a search term that brought people to your blog
- How many times each search term appears in a Google search result
- The clickthrough rate of each search term
- Average rankings for each term
Knowing these metrics is great for learning what people are looking for so you can craft blog content around the needs of potential site visitors.
Research Your Competition
Your competition is competition for a reason; they’re doing something right and pulling away readers or customers that should be coming to your blog instead. That’s why checking out the kind of content they’re posting is so helpful. After all, if a lot of traffic comes to their blog because the content they’re writing is valuable, you can take inspiration from their ideas and add your own twist. If you’re worried you won’t be able to come up with your own viewpoint after reading someone else’s content, that’s okay. Just scan headlines to get ideas and craft your blog posts around those instead.
Adding to that, you can always use a blog idea generator to help you come up with a creative headline based on the ideas you’ve come up. HubSpot has an incredible Blog Ideas Generator that helps give you tons of actual blog headlines that you can use for your blog.
Results will look like this:
Of course, not all ideas that HubSpot gives you will work for your blog. But these headlines can get you started in the right direction. In fact, you might even take the search terms found in the Search Query Report in Google Analytics to see what HubSpot gives you for ideas.
Here are some of the other popular blog idea generators:
- Blog Title Generator by SEOPressor
- Portent’s Content Idea Generator
- Blog Title Idea Generator by Inbound Now
- Impact Blog Title Generator
- Linkbait Title Generator
Just make sure that any blog headlines you use are modified to fit your brand identity so you can build awareness about who you are as a blogger, or even as a company. You still want to make sure you stand out in your industry and won’t if you use the same blog titles everyone else can access using the same idea generator tools.
Perform Keyword Research
As an aspiring blogger or professional content writer, conducting keyword research is one of the skills you need to learn. Keywords not only make sure your content attracts the right audience in search engines and other distribution channels. By weaving them into key elements of your post, you also improve its overall engagement factor and skimmability. With a tool like Ubersuggest, you can also look for lucrative long-tail keyword ideas that can be used to generate useful topics for your blog. All you have to do is enter a seed keyword and let the tool do its work.
Below is a list of tips on effectively using keywords in your blog:
- Add your target keyword to your post title
Apart from improving your website’s rank worthiness, adding your keyword to your post title can also boost your click-through rate. Just try to insert it as naturally as possible — prioritize writing something impactful and thought-provoking.
- Optimize your meta description
A keyword-optimized meta description can also increase the click-throughs to your site. Although it doesn’t directly affect your site’s rankings, it can help improve your traffic by helping users get more context on what your post is about.
- Use your keyword on your domain & URL
Finally, adding your keyword on your domain name and URL would both result in higher click-throughs and search engine rankings. That is why, when buying a domain name, it is considered a good practice to include your target keywords.
Read User Comments
People are always telling you what they want more of, what they need, and what they hope to see concerning blog content, without even really knowing they’re doing it. Just check comments left on your blog, social media platforms, and YouTube videos. And don’t forget to check the same platforms for your competition and their audience. Take for instance Neil Patel’s blog comment section.
Notorious for responding to all comments left on his site, you can gather tons of ideas just from his commenters if you look hard enough.
Notice the commenter asks Neil which is better: shorter content published more often, or long-form content published less often.
Regardless of what Neil’s response is (though he is an expert in his field and you can learn a lot from his answers), you can craft your own blog post ideas from this one comment:
- What is Better: Short or Long-form Content?
- How Publishing Shorter Posts More Often Drives More Traffic to Your Site
- The Only Time It’s Ideal to Publish Longform Content
And so on.
If you’re new to blogging and don’t have an active comment section yet, check out your competition or popular forum sites like Reddit or Quora to get ideas of your own.
And make sure that one of the reasons you’re not getting a lot of interaction on your blog posts isn’t because your site loads too slow. People are sure to abandon slow websites before finishing blog posts. To prevent this from happening, make sure to leverage a CDN to reduce latency and deliver site content to your visitors as fast as possible.
Using a content network delivery will improve the user experience, your site’s SEO, and your chances of getting more blog comments on your site.
Expand on Current Blog Posts
No one ever said you could only post one blog post per topic. In fact, as you gain more knowledge about your industry, and continue to blog on a consistent basis, it’s likely you’ll pick up new information along the way. This information can easily be added to an existing blog post, or serve as the perfect follow up post. For example, Postcron separated a very long and detailed blog post into two separate ones.
Doing this provides many benefits:
- The chance to break long content into easier to digest sections to keep readers’ attention
- An opportunity to invite readers of the first post a chance to come back and check out part 2
- A way to bring new readers to your site to check out both pieces of content
Lastly, it helps you build upon existing blog content and continue publishing killer content, even when you feel you have nothing left to write about. If you decide to expand on current blog posts to create new content, make sure you stick to only one topic.
If you find yourself straying from the original topic that’s okay! Change your direction and make a fresh new post instead.
Final Thoughts
It’s comforting to know that bloggers of all kinds – seasoned or beginners – have trouble coming up with blog post ideas sometimes. It’s just the nature of creating a significant amount of content on a regular basis.
That said, you don’t have to let a little writer’s block hinder your progress as a blogger. Instead, think outside the box, reach a little further into your industry, and see what’s out there. You’d be surprised how much content there really is that you’ve never even thought to write about right there in front of you. You just need to know where to look for ideas that’s all!
