How To Write A Blog Post Step 1: Planning a Blog Post How To Find Topics With Competitive Research

Lesson 2, Topic 1

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How To Find Topics With Competitive Research

Brett

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Now that you’ve identified a great blog post idea and are ready to learn more about how to write a blog post, the first thing you need to do is conduct some competitor research.

There are several great tools available that can streamline this process for you, but you can get started with a Google search for your topic.

Your competitors are the websites that are ranking on page one of a Google search for your topic.

Look at their posts, and carefully examine what they’re doing that has landed them at the top.

How is their headline/title structured?
What are the keywords in their headers (H2s and H3s)?
Is there anything they didn’t cover that you can add to your own perfect blog post to be more comprehensive?
What did they do extremely well in their post, and how can you improve upon it?
How is their target audience engaging with the content? Here are some examples: social media and blog post comments.
Is their site responsive for mobile?
How much traffic are they getting for their post?

To determine the amount of traffic a blog article is receiving, there are some excellent tools that can help you.

Pro Tip: Use a Tool like Frase.io

Frase.io is one of the best affordable tools for researching and creating competitive content.

Using machine learning techniques and Natural Language Processing (NLP), Frase.io sorts through top search results for your query and identifies the content most relevant to what you’re researching.

Once you enter your query into Frase.io, the tool produces rich summaries that include:

Key statistics that the competitor articles mention
Contextual topics found in competitor articles
Relevant summary points your competitors use

Keyword Research

You’ve identified your topic and conducted your blog post planning. Now it’s time to find the keywords that will help you land on page one of Google.

Search Intent

Your content should focus on search intent. Search intent is the reason people are looking for information, and it is also what they expect to find.

Before you begin your keyword research, spend some time analyzing a potential reader’s search intent.

Here is what happens when you pay attention to search intent:

Helps assess the competition
Improves chances of ranking for primary keywords
Satisfied your audience
Builds credibility

There are four primary types of search intent.

Informational intent: The reader is looking for information and knowledge. They may be seeking a quick answer to a question or more in-depth knowledge about their search query.
Transactional intent: The searcher is looking for a place to buy an item.
Navigational intent: The user knows where they want to go and is looking for how to get there.
Commercial intent: The customer knows they want to buy a product or service, but they’re researching brands, product types, or searching for special offers. A whopping 71% of buyers read blog content along the path of their buyer journey.

Keyword Research Tools

Let’s summarize four of the most popular keyword research tools:

Google Keyword Planner
Google Trends
Surfer SEO
Ahrefs

1. Google Keyword Planner

When it comes to classic keyword tools, the Google Keyword Planner is the O.G. (original gangster).

While Google’s tool is a bit clunky, the information it gives you comes directly from Google so you know it’s completely legit.

Google Keyword Planner is also free to use, so that’s a huge bonus.

Here is a comprehensive Google Keyword Planner tutorial.

2. Google Trends

Another great tool from Google, Google Trends finds search trends and new keyword ideas.

The first thing to do is search for specific keywords.
Look at the section titled “related queries.”
Use the chart to see if the keyword has shown growth in popularity.

Also, you can use Google Trends to conduct a YouTube keyword search.

3. Surfer SEO

Priced at just $49 per month, Surfer SEO is an affordable user-friendly tool for bloggers with a smaller budget.

How does Surfer SEO work?

The tool analyzes and compares 500 different factors of your blog post’s content with your top 10 ranking competitors.

Here are some of the factors Surfer SEO examines:

Number of headers
Page speed
Length of the text
Keyword density
Domains and URLs referring to the content
Number of images
Structure of meta tags

4. Ahrefs

The Ahrefs Keywords Explorer gives in-depth info on each keyword.

You get the standard data such as search volume, but you also get a comprehensive breakdown of your top competition.

Additionally, the Ahrefs Keywords Explorer shows you the keyword difficulty and the number of backlinks you need for ranking on page one of Google.

Here is a video that explains how to use Ahrefs for competitor research and SEO.

Other SEO Tools

In addition to these four tools, your keyword research can be done using some of the same tools we mentioned earlier.

Long-Tail Keywords

Because the key to how to write a blog post that ranks lies in keywords, I want to mention one last thing about keywords.

Whenever possible, include long-tail keywords in your blog post.

A long-tail keyword is a keyword phrase that typically contains four or more words.

A Brafton study found that half of all search queries are at least four words or longer.

What does this tell us? When people search, they tend to be searching for something specific.

When you identify long-tail keywords for your content, you can increase sales and search traffic.

Long-tail keywords are usually easier to rank for in Google.
When you use long-tail keywords, you can create awareness about your services, content, or products

Choose long-tail keywords with competition between 100 and 2000.

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