Unlimited Content Ideas With A Free Tool

Are you recycling old content ideas from other blogs for your posts?

Do you ever find it difficult to come up with ideas for blog posts?

If so, you’re in the right place because today we will be going over how to produce unlimited content ideas using just one free tool.

The content you provide your audience could make the difference between a potential customer choosing you or one of your competitors.

But how do you come up with new content ideas? How can you make your content unique?

In this post, we’re going to share with you one free tool you can use to find an unlimited amount of content ideas.

With this tool, you’ll be able to not only get new content ideas, but you’ll also be able to find top-ranking keywords for those content ideas.

As well as a list of people you can reach out to for backlinks.

And if you stay to the end of the post, we’ll be sharing a bonus tip to help you come up with even more content ideas.

Get Content Ideas By Conducting Research Using SEMRush

You’ve probably heard of the tool we’re talking about in other posts here on our blog recently and that is because it is extremely powerful.

That tool is SEMrush.

In the past, we’ve talked about using SEMrush to conduct a competitor analysis and to help build backlinks.

But, did you know that SEMrush has a tool called topic research?

With the topic research tool, you’ll be able to discover dozens of topics that you can use for your next article or blog post.

1. Simply head over to SEMrush and select the content marketing tab.
2. Then locate the topic research option and select it.
3. From there, you can enter any broad topic which can be anywhere from 2 to 5 words or more, and search.
4. You will now be brought to an entire list of topic ideas based on the topic you searched.

Not only that, but SEMrush also provides a tiny report on each topic idea that includes the topic’s volume, topic difficulty, and topic efficiency.

It will also provide you with the top 10 headlines for that topic and links to all of those articles.

As well as the top questions that need to be answered for that topic which can be filtered to what, is, which, and how questions.

Then, once you’ve picked a topic to write about, you’ll want to know what the top-ranking keywords are for that topic.

So, what you need to do is write down your topic, then on SEMrush, go to the SEO tab and locate the keyword magic tool.

Once there, enter your new topic and search.

As you can now see, you’ll have a list of keywords as well as their volume, trend, keyword difficulty, and the average cost per click.

To take this one step further, you can click on a specific keyword to get a fully detailed report that includes:

• variations of the keyword you selected,
• related keywords, and
• top questions for that specific keyword

By the way, you can learn more keyword research tips here in this post which you can read next.

Now, the last thing you’ve got to do is…

…find out who is backlinking to articles that share the same main topic as the article you’re about to write.

So, scroll down to the SERP Analysis report and find an article similar to the one you’re about to write.

Then, copy the URL and locate the backlink analytics tool under the SEO tab.

Once there, enter the URL you just copied and search.

Now, click on the backlinks tab and there you will find an entire list of people that have linked to that article.

This report will also show you if the link is lost or if it is a nofollow link.

We’ll get into what to do with that list a little later, but for now, using this strategy is sure to boost you ahead of your competition.

That is because, as you can see, analyzing your competitor’s content is one of the types of content marketing strategy that is slowly growing in popularity.

But, is still widely underused.

Now you might be thinking, “all of that information is great to have but what do I do with it now?”

Create Your Content From The Content Ideas You Generated

Well, now that you have all of that information, it is time to start creating your content.

However, when you’re creating new content…

…we don’t want you to just regurgitate the same exact information as one of your competitors and organize it differently.

This won’t separate your content from the competition.

The first step to setting your blog apart from the competition is by picking a content topic that people actually like and want to read about.

You can see what’s popular and what’s well-received by your audience by using the various metrics provided in the SEMrush reports that we just showed you.

Then, when you find content on a topic you want to write about, come up with some unique ideas for that topic.

And, begin to leverage the skyscraper technique.

Now, we’ve talked about the skyscraper technique in the previous posts, but in case you’re new around here…

…the skyscraper technique basically tells us to do things bigger and better than the competition.

It gets its name from the idea that countries around the world are always competing to see who builds the tallest building.

So how do you do this when creating content?

Well, if your competition’s content is 3,000 words, we want you to double that and make yours 6,000 words.

This may sound like a lot but it’s going to do wonders for your business and your audience.

When you do this though, you need to be careful in order for your article to remain effective.

We don’t want you to add filler just so you can reach a set word count.

In order to make what you’re doing effective, you need to add more detail.

That is compared to what your competitors have in their articles in order to provide your audience with more value.

Don’t just look at your list of keywords and throw them in wherever you can fit them.

Instead, build around those keywords to create amazing and engaging content.

When people read your content, they shouldn’t feel the need to look anywhere else on the internet for answers to their questions.

That is because you will have already covered all of them in your article.

You can get creative with your content too!

Don’t feel the need to just write a ton of text.

Besides, text-only blogs are known to be less effective for your marketing goals and less engaging for your audience.

Instead, include other visual elements that provide value to your audience and support what you’re writing about.

And we’re not just talking about pictures or videos.

Don’t get us wrong, those can be great too and should definitely be included since blogs with images receive 94% more views.

But what we’re talking about is custom graphics that you create!

Why do this?

Because despite the average blog post length being 1,151 words, the average time a reader spends reading a blog post is only 37 seconds!

That is an extremely limited attention span given that blog length.

However, if you provide viewers with more than just text and include:

• custom graphics,
• video, and
• images

…you should be able to capture their attention for longer.

This will not only keep them on your page longer, which is a good thing to improve SEO, but it will also keep your audience more engaged.

Thus, will make them more likely to come back.

And speaking of custom graphics, if you need any help with this, check out our graphic design services here.

Promote Your Content and Get Backlinks

Now that you’ve published your content, you need to promote it.

To do this, we want you to go back to SEMrush and go to that list of people that backlinked to your competitor’s article.

And, we want you to reach out to them via email.

Send them something like this:

Hey, [whatever their NAME is],

I noticed you linked to XYZ site and I have a similar site with a similar article that’s more comprehensive, you can check it out here (be sure to provide them with a link).

Mine also covers 1,2 and 3 that theirs didn’t, which provides a much better user experience for your audience.

If you like it, feel free to link to it.

Best,
[Your NAME]

Now we know you’re probably thinking, “This is tedious work. How many times do I have to do this?”

Although you may not like to hear this, the answer is you have to do this as many times as you possibly can in order to be successful.

This is because the chances that people will link to your article are low.

That doesn’t mean that all of them won’t but it does mean that a large percentage won’t link back to you.

So, in order to increase your chances of getting backlinks and thus promoting your article, you need to repeat this step over and over again.

If you do this, over time, you’ll see that people will start backlinking to your content.

This will help your content rank higher which helps you to get traffic to your website for free.

Which also means you’ll start to get more social shares.

This is what will set you apart from the other 4.5 million blog posts that get published every single day that nobody is reading.

Did you know that blogs are actually the most popular type of content to produce?

This number is only growing each and every year so you need to do everything you can to differentiate yourself from the competition.

By following this process, you are ensuring that you are creating the highest quality and most engaging content.

And, you are setting yourself up for success so that your article is seen and shared all over the internet.

Reach Out to People You’ve Linked Out

The last tip that we have for you is kind of the inverse of this step.

In this step, we reached out to all of the people that linked to your competitor’s article via email and asked them to link to your article.

Odds are that you have most likely linked to people in your article too.

So for our last tip, we want you to get in touch with the people you’ve linked out to in your article via email.

Let them know in your email that you’ve linked out to them in your article and be sure to provide them a link so they can check it out themselves.

Then, ask them if they would share your content on their favorite social media platforms for business.

In most cases, people will be flattered and will be willing to share your content in a tweet, Facebook post, or LinkedIn post.

This accomplishes a couple of things.

For starters, you have now promoted somebody else’s content with your content which will make them happy and more likely to share your content.

When they share your content, they are providing their audience with great content.

And that also has the possibility of driving traffic to their site since they’re linked in the article.

On top of that, you will now receive more traffic from them sharing your article on social networks.

That’s how you can use SEMrush for unlimited content ideas.

We must say though, the strategy that we shared with you in this post can also be used to update your current content.

Go back to blog posts from 1 to 2 years ago if you’ve been blogging for a while now…

…and consider upgrading your keywords in those blogs using the research methods we’ve shared today.

This will also be extremely effective.

It’s because as you can see in the statistics above, updating and repurposing existing content is rated as the second most efficient content marketing tactic.

And it actually grew by 10% from 2019 to 2020.

Bonus Tip For Content Topic Research

If you’ve made it this far in the post, you’re going to get a bonus tip for content topic research!

That tip is to leverage Google Trends.

Google Trends analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google search across various regions and languages.

The website uses graphs to show the search volume of different queries over time.

So how can you use this tool for topic ideas?

Well, for starters, if you already have a list of ideas and want to know when is the best time to post them…

…look at the graphs that Google Trends provides you to see if there is a particular month of the year that that topic is trending.

Simply run your mouse across the graph to see when that data was collected to help you identify times where your topic is trending.

If you can find this trend, you can shape your content schedule around it so that your posts perform as best as possible.

To find new topic ideas, all you have to do is look at the related topics section.

Google Trends will provide you with a list of topics that are related to the one that you searched.

They also have a section for related queries which will show all of the related search queries and which are most popular.

When you put all of this together, Google Trends can be quite the handy tool to have in your digital marketing toolbox.

Well, that’s it for this post!

And if you need more help with your content marketing strategy, we’re happy to help you.

Check out our content marketing services today or you can also drop a call at 404-596-7925.