Update: This blog post on blog post ideas was first published in 2014, since then it’s been updated for relevancy and freshness

One of the main thing that kills most of our time while blogging is finding the ideas to blog about.

However, this is the misconception, as the stream becomes narrow, it will be easy for you to research upon your particular niche.

Once you complete reading this post, you will get to know, why it’s easy to research for blog topic ideas as the niche becomes narrower.

Here are some of the ways I use to find the never-ending list of blog topic ideas.

Look within your blog

Many of the newbie bloggers spend most of their time brainstorming blog ideas.

They assume that finding best blog topics in niche blogging are difficult as stream becomes narrow.

Undraw People Search Wctu (1)

Dig into old posts

Old Blog Posts

Finding blog topics by using old posts is highly beneficial in terms of both interlinking and retaining visitors.

While writing posts, you may have noticed that you come across several other topics that try to drive you away from the topic that you’re blogging about.

You may think that I have to blog upon this other topic and interlink it, but the idea and topic will fade away.

After it fades away, you still have a chance to skim through the old articles and recall the ideas of blog topics that you once thought of blogging upon.

After skimming through old articles and finding some of the topics to blog about, create a new notepad file and name it like the “ideas”, “ammo”, and list down the other blog topics you come across.

Scribble that idea in your scribble pad or notepad and check it when you find difficulty in finding a topic to blog upon.

This is one of the effective strategies, which I have found myself to save my time hunting for blog topics.

Create content on what you already ranking for

Writing Undraw

Visitors visit your blog. They return back to SERPs, unable to find what they are searching for.

How about satisfying them by creating content they are looking for?

Sounds cool.

With the strategy that I’m going to introduce you, no visitor would turn back from your blog without finding content what they are looking for.

Search analytics

Go to Google search console, go to search analytics.
Now in here, you’ll find all the keywords that visitors are searching, along with impressions, clicks, and position.

keywords with clicks

Now sort the keywords in ascending order of their CTR. Note down all the keywords that have more impressions. These are all the keywords for which your blog is appearing in search results but not getting clicked.

Hunt for the keywords which you never targeted, yet ranking for. Create a relevant piece of content for the keyword.

That’s a topic idea.

Here’s another killer strategy…

Follow this guide and get Google search console keyword data on Google Analytics.

Go to Analytics>Acquisition>Search Engine Optimization>Queries.

finding queries

Now in the search box, search for question words like “how, what, and why”. This will return all the long tail keywords that have the potential to be your next blog post title.

These are some of the simple methods to find ideas from what you already have.

Analyze comments

Comments

By this, you can get great blog topic ideas. There will be some of the queries or questions that you may not have answered on your blog or site.

This strategy will be very useful if there are lots of conversations going on your blog around interesting topics on your niche.

By answering the questions of the commenter via blog posts, you increase the chances of your blog gaining more readership.

Just figure out your blog posts with more comments and dig deeper into them and analyze them.

Pro tip: Spy on comments on other blogs to get blog post ideas and inspiration.

Determine what readers want

Ask them to answer the question, “What to blog about next?”
I use Hotjar pro, for asking users for blog topic ideas and also to rate the content on my blog. Because feedback and data is gold.

made by the user

Determine what people are searching on your blog. If they are searching for some content that’s not in your blog, then try to produce content on the same. For this, go to landing pages under Google Analytics. Search for the term “?s“.

Shoot newsletters

Email Outreach

If you are in blogging, chances are there that you are building an email list. Many of your loyal readers will be subscribed to your list.

Why not ask them for topic ideas? Seems cool right?

If they are really loyal they will reply with ideas.

Some popular bloggers, occasionally shoot newsletters titled, like – ask me anything. You can also try the same with your email subscribers. You get hundreds of ideas your subscribers have or problems they are facing depending upon the size of your list.

Have a discussion

Have Discussion

Reach out your blogging colleague or a friend, have an argument or a debate regarding a certain topic in your niche. It gives rise to more content ideas. You can also do the same by arranging blog meets, with famous bloggers in your area.

You can also make use of niche forums and communities to post a question or topic related to your niche, and ask them for valuable feedback and make a way for discussion or debate.

While in discussion various topics and ideas come to play.

Look for variations

When you take a blog post topic, look for all the different aspects of writing a post about it.

For example, if the topic you found is “guest blogging”, brainstorm various topic around the same keyword.

  • how guest blogging
  • why guest blogging
  • is guest blogging dead
  • guest blogging FAQ
  • the complete guide to guest blogging
  • 101 tips for guest blogging
  • guest blogging the right way
  • like, so on…

Practice brainstorming topics tightly related to the topic. When you develop this narrow vision, you likely come up with more blog post ideas.

Use words like what, how, why, quick tips, complete, ultimate, with  your seed keywords to form titles.

When you have a decent list of like 10 blog post ideas, try to expand it to 20 by making tweaks in the titles as mentioned above.

If you already have an existing list now, try making it.

Places to find ideas

Here in this section, I will mention the places where you can get the blog post ideas.

You can make use of Quora, Niche forums, SlideShare, Google books, Promotional channels, searching documents and many more.

Searching Undraw

Search Quora

Quora

Quora has been evolving as a blogging platform. It has a huge potential. It is a goldmine of blog topics. Properly leveraging Quora helps you get great blog topic ideas and helps you gain a plethora of traffic.

Sign up for an account in Quora (Use Facebook sign up to get a head – start).

Follow all the topics that you are passionate about.

The questions may sometimes be a blog topic generator for you. Browse through the massive questions archives in Quora. Create content that answers the question. Post the blog post link along with the insightful answer for the question.

Quora

Look at questions that have high followers. It means that more people are looking for the answer. It’s a great signal that if you create content on the same, you’ll get great traffic.

Search in Google Scholar

Google Scholar engine searches for the white papers and research articles on the web. White papers are thoroughly researched articles that are in-depth about a particular topic. Using those white papers you get the content that is nowhere written in mainstream web articles.

Google scholar

You could use the information on those whitepapers as a reference to your articles.

By doing this, you are making your article unique and at the same time, you are providing value to your readers by providing white paper links. You also look somewhat credible in the eyes of Google, as you have outbound links to credible sources.

You may also use the fact or figures in the research papers as a proof for some statement you presented in your post.

Like, “According to the <research> …”. It adds some authoritative flavour to your article.

Search Google Books

Google Books lets you read books without buying or downloading them. It’s the best resource if you want to get the information about a particular topic on a subject.

Books often contain in-depth information about a particular subject.

You can use the below search modifier for finding the information related to the topic you are writing about.

site:books.google.com keyword

Google books backlinks

With the above modifier, Google returns all the Google Books pages that are associated with the keyword you are searching about. In short, the query returns all the pages in Google Books database that mentions the keyword you provided.

Don’t copy and paste the content. Instead read the page of the book. Understand it. And then write it in your own words, and provide credits to the author of the book.

Like,
“As <author> mentioned in <book name>, …”

Search Slideshare

Slideshare Logo

Slideshare is one of the best document sharing site, which most of the bloggers miss. Slides help people view information in visual form making it easy to comprehend. Some slides are merely the content of the article on the web represented in slide form. Whereas others are content only meant for slides.

Your job is to search for slides related to your topic. Go through the slide. Make a note of all the important information you got from the slides.


Later on, while writing the actual blog post, combine yours and the obtained information in your article. You may also consider embedding the slide in your blog post, so as to provide more value.

There are various slide sharing sites. The major one of those is SlideShare from LinkedIn.

Below is the search modifier you can use to return the results of SlideShare regarding your topic.

site:www.slideshare.net keyword

Site slideshare

It returns all the slides regarding the keyword you have entered.

Some other slide sharing sites are SlideSnackAuthorStream, SlideBoom, SlideRocket, and Prezi and so on…

Search in other documents

Documents

Other documents include all the other documents such as PDF, DOC, etc.
You can use the search modifier.

filetype:pdf keyword

The modifier filetype: searches all the mentioned format of files on the internet related to the keyword.

The main interest here is the content type PDF. It is the format in which most of the alternative content is shared.
The second most-used content format type is the doc.

Filetype pdf

For finding the unique content in these forms, the best place is Scribd. It is the largest document sharing site on the internet.

You can either search within the Scribd or search Google for Scribd results using the site: modifier.
You can also search for in article directory sites like BuzzleEzineArticles, etc.

Finding unique content that is not yet exposed to the main niche audience stream is not a great deal. You should learn the method of harnessing the power of the Google search.

Whether it is using specialized search modifiers or the Google’s unconventional search engines.

Another thing I want to tell you is that don’t ever copy the content you come across using the above methods. If you copy the content, it’s no more unique! Just mention the fact or explain it in your own terms and include a link back to the original source.

The uniqueness of the content depends largely on the presentation of content. The usage of words, forming meaning, organizing blog post sections, introductionconclusion, all these matters to the uniqueness of the content.

Explore forums and communities

There will be forums and communities for blogs in each and every niche.

Boardreader search forums

In order to search for forums in your niche, you can make use of BoardReader. It’s a forum search engine.

Once you find the relevant forums to your niche, you need to explore the forum threads for new ideas for content creation. Some popular internet marketing and blogging forums are Warriorforum, DigitalPoint, SitePointand Webmaster Talk.

If your niche is health, search for health forums in Boardreader.

Communities are the places in which niche people together interact and share posts. Search for communities related to your niche.

Communities search

Likewise, you can easily search for communities related to your niche. In those communities, you come across content ideas, posts, others share. Those can be an inspiration for you to create blog posts.

Make use of Pinterest

Logo Pinterest

Pinterest is basically an image sharing platform, where pinners share images of blog posts to their boards.

You can find various niche related boards in Pinterest. One of such an example is my board Blogterest. It is the board in which I pin the greatest articles and posts in my blogging and online marketing niche. Presently we are 3 collaborators.

Like this, there are boards maintained and regularly updated by the Pinterest users.

Just head over to Pinterest.

Just search for your keywords in the search bar, and click on the tab ‘Boards’.

Pinterest niche boards

Just browse through the results. You get ideas of some of the most shared and loved blog post ideas.

Follow some boards that you find relevant or bookmark them.

If you need, you can also set IFTT triggers, to send an email to you whenever new stuff has been added to your interested board.

This is one of the best places to find the resources collected by users.

Flipboard

Logo Flipboard

It’s a social platform, where users maintain magazines to aggregate the content they come across.

This platform mainly focuses on mobile and tablet readers, to read from their Flipboard app.

I have a magazine in Flipboard named BloggersMag. I regularly add awesome resources across the web to this magazine.

There are many other magazines that you can browse to find content inspiration for you to write about.

Pocket

Pocket Logo

The Pocket is the best read it later or offline articles reader for Android and iOS. It also has Chrome extension and Mac app.

It allows you to save the awesome article that you come across the web while browsing.

When your list is populated with some of the articles in your niche, the app starts recommending you other articles around the web to save to your list. It determines the popularity of an article by analyzing the most-saved articles the servers in your area of interest.

That recommendations section is the golden trove of some of the ideas for your next blog post.

You can also access the Pocket via the web.

Head over to Pocket – Recommendations. Here sign in to your account. If your present list has more articles, the recommendations made by the Pocket will be more accurate and relevant to your niche.

Scoop.it

Scoopit Logo

It is also basically a content aggregator site similar to Flipboard. But it’s mostly web-based. Users can curate their scoops into topics.

Just search for a topic in the search bar. You can select the section Scoop or the topics whichever suits you. I often follow interesting topics, so that I’ll get notifications whenever a new post is scooped into the topic. 

Just browse through the results. You get ideas of some of the most shared and loved blog post ideas.

Scoop it

Follow some boards that you find relevant or bookmark them.

If you need, you can also set IFTT triggers, to send an email to you whenever new stuff has been added to your interested board.

Stumbleupon and other sites

Stumbleupon Logo

Social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious are a treasure trove of great blog post ideas. Just surf these sites, within your niche. You get to know the best topics, that are loved by the readers.

You can also examine the likes and ads the post has received in StumbleUpon to quantify the popularity and value of the post.

You can come up with some of the seriously awesome, sure-fire post ideas by this.

Another bonus is that if you use these bookmarking sites often with interaction, they have the potential to drive tons of traffic to your site also.

Make use of blog aggregators

There are many news aggregator sites that list the best articles and web pages on the web.

Alltop

An example of such a site is AllTop. This site aggregates news ranging from health to blogging.

Suppose you are blogging in tech niche, you can regularly look at Tech – AllTop. It presents you the most popular tech articles at the time. It also displays the 5 most recent posts of the tons of top tech sites.

By just looking at what other blogs in your niche are publishing, you get ideas to blog about.

There are plenty of other news aggregator sites like Popurls, Feedly, Fark, LinkedIn – Pulse, etc.You can make use of these sites to know what’s trending in your niche, and what other bloggers are publishing.

Yahoo answers and other question and answer forums

Yahoo Answers

In Yahoo and other Q&A forums, users ask questions. Those questions are generic some of the times.
Many times, people ask questions in such forums when they could not find the answer anywhere else on the web. So why not try to become, the first person to answer the question.

If that question is very unique, then try to write a blog post on it.

After writing a blog post related to that question, drop an insightful answer in those forums. Cite back to your blog post.

From this you get two advantages, one is you get a topic to blog upon and a backlink from the forum.

Twitter is one of the most used social media websites, where you can find Tweets on almost any trending topics. The purpose of this is to find top trending topics on Twitter on your niche and blog upon them.

How to find trending blog topics? Browse Twitter with trending hashtags. For blogging niche, the popular hashtags are #Blogging, #SEO, #SEM, #Google, #WordPress, so on…

Make use of this tool, to search for hashtag posts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram all at once.

Browse Tweets with these hashtags, find out the tweet in your niche that has more retweets. More retweets mean the tweet is trending and is a perfect topic for you to blog upon. Find a topic that is unique, trending and helpful for your readers.

Further exploring the tweet topic will get you more ideas.

Explore Google News

Although News is not evergreen, they can be evergreen sometimes.

Let me explain now.

Google News can be a great resource for finding topics to blog about. Just head over to Google News and plug in the niche keyword.

Google news

As you can look at the results, there are more timeless results than that of news. You get most trending content in your niche.

All you just did is just searched for the main broad keyword “SEO”. And that’s all. Google News did not return the definition of SEO like that of Google search. It instead returned all the trending articles related to SEO.

SECTION 3

Tools to find ideas

Undraw Pen

In this section let us see how you can get the topic ideas with the help of various tools

Use topic suggesters online

There are a number of topic generator tools online. They help you to find effective topics to blog about.

One of the fairly new ones is the HubSpot blog topic generator.  It suggests you the Magnetic Blog Post titles.

Topic suggesters.

Use SEMRush

SEMRush-search-engine-position-checker

SEMRush is one of the best competitor research tools online. It lets you easily spy upon the keywords that competitors are targeting. It also lets you find the blog posts that are driving most of the search traffic for your competitors.

By knowing the keywords that your competitors are ranking for, you can generate a blog topic around that keyword, and easily rank. Like this, the strategy helps in ranking well as well as finding blog topics with ease.

Check here: SEMRush Coupon Code 15 Days Trial Plus Surefire Guide

Akshay recommends:
SEMrush vs Ahrefs: 17 Crucial Differences
SEMrush vs Spyfu vs Moz vs Serpstat – An Ultimate Showdown
SEMrush vs SimilarWeb – In Depth Analysis
Top 10 SEMrush Alternatives that Don’t Suck!

Use BuzzSumo

Image

BuzzSumo is one of the new kids on the block. It has gained more focus in a short span. It finds you content across your niche that has been shared most of the times.
Content that is clearly loved and shared by the readers.

Enter your niche keyword in the search box. Hit search.

Now it will return the content that is shared most of the times in various social networks over the selected time. Select the time as like “Last month” or “Last week”.

Filter out the results from authoritative sites. Hunt for the blog topics of ordinary sites (like that of yours) that have received great appreciation and social shares.

Create awesome content on the same blog topic; promote it properly. Expect the spike in traffic.

In the same way, you could also search for popular content of a site in BuzzSumo.

Blog buzzsumo

Above BuzzSumo returned me the most popular posts on my blog.

SECTION 4

Habits to cultivate to combat writers’ block

Organize Undraw

Read what others write

Read

To be a successful writer, you should be an avid reader. Without it, you are broke.

While reading some of the great articles in your industry, you involve. You link the things you know together. It gives rise to new ideas.

You’ll get to know what other bloggers are following to get their content read. You’ll observe their writing skills, their way of thinking and writing.

Later on, you link all the stuff you read and it gives rise to a new idea. You blog about it.

Just cultivate a regular reading habit. It works. You will never complain having writer’s block.

Read books

For this Google Books is your best bet.

Google books

Just search for some of the books in your niche. Go through the content page of any of the book that’s relevant to what you are searching for.

Book content page

By looking at the content pages, you can easily get dozens of content ideas to write about.

I recommend you also to go through the topic once so that you get some more insightful ideas to write about.

Write everyday

Writing

Writing helps you increase the effectiveness in which you put words together. If you don’t have time, spend at least 15 minutes daily to pen down your ideas.

What to write about? That’s the question that pops in your mind.

Write about anything. The thing that’s flowing in your mind at that instance of time. Are you watching a bird? Write about it. Are you listening to a music? Write down what you hear and your interpretation.

It gives rise to more ideas and creative thinking.

Free yourself

Free Yourself

Go out for a walk, far away from your digital world. Think freely. You get ideas. For me, most of the ideas pop up when I’m free, like when I’m talking with friends.

Research shows that new creative and even innovative ideas pop up in the brain when you free cool. Anxious people often won’t get a flow of ideas in their mind.

Many of the bloggers, even me have witnessed that great ideas come when I am about to sleep or start meditating, or while working out.

Being in front of the computer, and scratching your head in the hope to throw out some ideas, simply won’t work. You may end out thrashing your PC.

Watch YouTube videos

Watch Videos

Watch videos related to your niche. Watching videos let you go through into the topic. You will start to get some unique blog topic ideas.

When you hear audio, some words or concepts pop out of the speakers mouth, that in turn gives you more ideas to blog about.

On the other hand, you can also hear podcasts on iTunes, OverCast or PocketCasts for Android. It also works fine.

Do mind mapping

Computer science mindmap

Make use of a mind mapping software or do it manually on a sheet of paper.

You can make use of mind map softwares like XMind.

Just keep your niche at the center of the map, and draw the branches out of it. As the branch grows out, the topic will be narrow. It makes your process of brainstorming topics easy and you could save the map for future reference. Or even print it out for effective reference.

MUST READ tips

  1. Use Google Suggest and Google auto-complete. Make use of wildcard character Google search and Google Auto Suggest – Free Long Tail Keyword Research Tool
  2. Analyze the link between topics on your blog. If a particular post is receiving a great deal of engaged traffic, then why not create content around the same topic and interlink them?
  3. Produce content related to the already popular post on your site. Interlink them. It reduces the bounce rate of your blog drastically.
  4. If you want the topic ideas to be directly delivered to your inbox, set up Google Alerts for some of the keywords related to your niche. As soon as a new content is created on the web related to the keyword, you’ll get a beep.
  5. Link roundup. Publish a post like: “Top 10 posts of the month”, “Best articles around the web this month”, “Best traffic case studies on the web”
  6. Publish a review about a product you’ve used.
  7. Ask other blogging friends to guest post on your blog.
  8. Interview an influential person in your niche. Reach out them with a simple friendly email. Ask questions, that no one ever has asked them.
  9. Publish an infographic. They are link magnets and they also increase user experience on your blog.
  10. Download a good podcast manager app for your mobile. Subscribe and listen to the podcasts.
  11. Create a tutorial on something you accomplished recently in your niche. Did you customize your theme in a certain way? Or did you add a functionality to a plugin by editing it? Publish it.
  12. Write about the collections you have. Like the WordPress plugins you use, the themes you’ve used so far, the gadgets you had so far, so on…

What techniques you use?

At last, I would once again like to tell that hunting for topics to blog about kills your time. Spend half an hour daily, with these above tools; choose the best topics to blog about, by keeping catchy headlines, keyword research in mind.

List ‘EM all in a text file. Refer to this brainstormed list whenever there is a need to publish a new blog post.

Like this, using the above methods for finding the best ideas for blog posts, lets you use your time productively. These are some of the methods I use to find effective ideas to blog about.

I hope you found the giant guide very helpful, please do share.