There are millions of blogs created every day, but very few of them get real traction online. The main reason for all the failing blogs is that they do not have content or they produce content that no one wants to consume.
The real secret to having a successful blog is that you need to create great content and the content that people are looking for, do not create content for the sake of creating it. That is why in this post, I am going to share with you, how to find content ideas for your blog.
Two types of content for your blog
Before you write a single word for your blog you need to know two types of content you can publish on your blog.
The money content
This is the content in your blog that when someone reads it and decides to take action you will make money, this content includes, the sales pages( could be your own product or a link to an affiliate offer), your leads capture pages ( when people join into your email list, you can make money by using the power of email marketing, and your review pages( these are the pages when you review a specific product or service.
The money content is very difficult to get traffic because everyone wants it and the competition is very fierce especially if you want free search engine traffic( for new blogs), so the solution is to combine this type of content with what I can traffic content.
The traffic content
This is a type of content that people are not looking to buy anything when they search for it, but they have the same problem that your money pages can solve.
For example, if someone types in google, How to lose weight before summer, there are looking for a quick weight-loss method, but if you write content with that keyword, it will be difficult to rank this there is a lot of competition.
but if someone types in google how many calories are in a banana, this is a person who is either fat or does not want to get fat, this is a low competition keyword, you can produce content and rank easily and in the content link the first content.
One gives you money another gives you traffic and if you keep doing this many times you will be able to rank for both.
This is the type of content you need to publish in your new blog, after people and google start to trust you, you will be able to rank any type of content.
How to find content ideas for your blog using Semrush in 6 steps
There are many tools that you can use for this, but for me the best tool right now is Semrush.
I use Semrush for finding content ideas, looking at what my competitors are doing, checking broken links on my site, checking my social media growth, etc, this is a great tool to have.
Step 1: Get a Semrush account
Just go to semrush.com or click on the image below, add your blog domain name and then click start, if you do not have a blog just click join.
They will take you to the registration page, it is straightforward, just put your name and email address, they will send you a verification code to verify your email, after that they will ask you few questions to know you, they will offer you a free trial ( I recommend it, credit card needed, it is for seven days, it is enough to find all content ideas, you can cancel at any time).
Step 2: Search for your main keyword in the search bar.
After login in, you will find a search bar, just type your main keyword, your main keyword is that keyword that you used to build your blog, if your blog is about manifestation, just type that and hit search.
Step 3: Click on Keyword Magic Tool
On the left hand of the page, you will land in step 2, you will find the keyword magic tool, click on it to find suitable keywords for your project.
Step 4: Apply filters for keyword difficult
Semrush just updated their keyword tool and it is even more accurate than before, if you have a new blog, I will recommend picking the very easy option and check the results.
After filtering them out I was able to get 1670 easy to rank content ideas, if I create a piece of content a day, it will take me 4 years and 6 months to create contents around those searches, this is real information that people are searching in United Stated alone, in the whole world the number is bigger.
Since 1670 keywords are too many for me, I decided to and one more filter. If you click on the advance filters, a small window will pop up, in this example, I wanted to show only keywords with more than 6 words.
These are what we call long-tail keywords, longer phrases mean people are searching for specific information, and if you can provide that information in front of them they will go to your blog and consume your content.
After applying the second filter, I got 381 very easy to rank keywords. Imagine each day you wake up you create one piece of content from that list ( it can be a podcast, youtube video, or a blog post), six month from now you could be earning a good income and one or two years you can quit your job and do this full time.
Step 5: Export the keyword list to excel
After reviewing your keyword and if you’re satisfied now you can export them to an excel document and save them on your PC.
Just click on the checkmark on the keyword tab to select all the keywords and then hit export, it will download them to your pc.
The problem and workaround
If you have a free account, they will find all the keywords but they will show you just 10 results for free, and if you want to export them, a popup message will come that ask you to try their paid version.
The workaround I found is to take the Semrush free trial, in those 7 days you will be able to do all the keyword research you need, save those on your PC, and cancel your account before the trial ends and they will not charge you anything.
Create content around the ideas you got, and in the future when you start making money you can come and pay to have a pro account if you wish, if you can afford it now, I really recommend this tool.
Step 6: Click on the related tab for more keywords
If the number of keywords you got in the above step is not enough for you, you can click on the related tab, the tool will find all the keywords that are related to your main keyword and bring them to you.
You can apply the same filters as we applied in step 4 and when you find your keyword you can export them to excel as in step 5.
An alternative way you can use find content ideas for your blog
If for any reason you do now want to use Semrush, I will recommend using a free tool called keyword shitter.
In order to find content ideas, just go to https://keywordshitter.com/.
You will see a page like the one below, write the main keyword for your blog, and then click on hit keywords.
Leave it for few minutes, magically it will generate a lot of keywords that you can use to create content for your blog, for example, you can see 624 keywords on manifestation, just use those keywords to create content and then post the content in your blog.
You do not have filters here, what I do is to copy those keywords into excel then use excel filters to reduce the one or two words phrase keywords, then I will have a list of my keywords.
In both methods, I usually print the list of my keywords, and each day I will pick the keyword to work with and put a tick on the keyword.
Final words
That is it, this is how to find content ideas for your blog, the strategies I shared in this post work the same way if you have a youtube channel or a podcast, you know people consume content in a different way and you just need to match their intent.
My recommendation is to create one blog post per day, be consistent, in 90 days you should have 90 blog posts and you will start to see sales coming in. After 180 days the income should be able to pay some bills and after one year you can make a full-time income just from one blog.
The reason why many people do not make these figures is that they do not focus, they will try for one month and when they do not get results they will just quit and say it does not work. Hope that is not you.