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How to Choose Content Topics that Boost Your SEO and Keep Readers Happy

This is quite a tall order, right?

How can you possibly make sure that your SEO content is loved by both search engines and human readers?

Oftentimes, people make a clear difference between their sales pages and their SEO-friendly content. But it shouldn’t be this way.

With the right SEO copywriters in your corner, you can get both. In fact, you can get even SEO-friendly blog posts that sell.

At Idunn, the digital marketing agency I write, 90% of our copywriting and content writing clients come to us thanks to our content – mostly our blog posts. They read, they feel confident that we can help them and they contact us requesting a quote.

This is what happens when the proof is in the proverbial pudding.

We have helped clients all over the world sell art through conversion-optimized blog posts or rank high with their SEO- and sales-friendly landing pages.

This is part of the process that helped us do all this:

The discovery/research phase

At Idunn, we take great pride in not being a content mill. We’re a boutique agency that works with a small number of clients.

Why?

So we can give each of them the attention they need.

Creating compelling content is the last part of our process. The first one (and, perhaps, the most important one) is the research phase.

This is the phase where we learn all we can learn about the client’s goals and their competitors. We strongly believe that this is the only way to create content that meets business goals and helps our clients beat their competitors.

There are so many of our potential clients who tell us they want to start blogging. They even have a list of topics prepared.

I know what you’re thinking: that’s great, they know what they want! True. But most often, those topics are something they would like to have on their blog, subjects they would like us to explore.

This is where our discovery phase comes in.

We make sure that the topics we tackle are what their readers want to see. We make sure that those topics are useful for their business goals aka making them cold, hard cash.

Finding the right topic

This is where things get harder.

We have to come up with a topic that’s in demand and that can be optimized for search engines.

I know a lot of people start with researching the keywords they could rank for.

Our experience has shown that working the other way around yields the best results in terms of both page ranking and lead generation or sales. So we come up with a great topic, then move on to keyword research.

How do we find the right topics?

Glad you asked!

There are a few ways to go about this.

1. Competition analysis

We check what competitors do and try to come up with a better piece of content that could beat them. We run our analysis through tools like SEMrush to be as sure as possible that our ranking goals are achievable.

2. Finding the right angle

Sometimes you have a great topic in mind, but it’s a rather wide one. For instance: home decorating tips. What types of homes? Which of the rooms should we consider? What type of décor – modern, country, eclectic?

Tools like BuzzSumo can be of great help here. You can start your research on a broad topic and then narrow it down.

Another handy (and completely free!) way to find the ideal topic is the plain, old Google search. A quick search on “home decorating tips” offered the following related searches (bottom of the results page):

As you can see, discussing décor for small homes is a great place to start narrowing down the topic. Considering the global housing trends and the increased need for downsizing, I would say it’s a match made in heaven.

3. Digging deep into the buyer persona’s needs

Sure, you can always make an educated guess about what your buyer persona wants to read. As long as you know your buyer persona well, this is not a bad idea.

But you can do better.

We use sources like Quora, Reddit or Twitter to find real questions that people need answers to. This is how we ensure that the content we write will actually generate interest.

You see, if a blog post is only SEO-friendly, but people don’t really want to read it, they will bounce off the page as soon as they land on it from the SERP. This is no way to generate sales through blogging. Even worse, a huge bounce rate will also affect page ranking.

So it’s a vicious circle. As I said before – if human readers love your content, so will search engines.

4. Finding trending topics

Keeping an eye on trending topics on Twitter or other social networks is a great way to come up with relevant content. The only problem with it is that it’s typically content with a short lifespan.

Let me give you an example: when we explored the algorithm changes Facebook announced in the beginning of the year, we had a huge influx of traffic. Better yet, our proposed solutions to the lack of organic reach generated quite a few leads for Idunn.

But, in time, the traffic to that blog post decreased. It was not evergreen content and we knew that from the very beginning.

However, a healthy mix of timely and evergreen content is great for any company blog. This is why researching trending topics is just one of the tactics you can use.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is a lot of work to be done before you even consider keyword research. Luckily, this is usually the easiest phase, especially if you have the right tools at your disposal.

I’m not suggesting that keyword research is not important. Of course it is! I’m only suggesting that search has evolved and your content needs to keep up with it.

The main change search algorithm updates brought about is putting the user at the center of everything and creating a great experience for them. As long as you do the same, you will win the hearts of your readers and those of Google bots (yes, I’m assuming they do have tiny, bit-made hearts).

And if you’re looking for help with content that checks all the right boxes, don’t hesitate to talk to us at Idunn. We’re super-friendly!

Adriana Tica is an expert marketer and copywriter, with 10 years in the field, most of which were spent marketing tech companies. She is the CEO of Idunn, a digital marketing agency that helps clients all over the world with copywriting, social media marketing and marketing strategy. Follow her blog here: http://idunn.pro/blog.

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