Simple Ways To Generate New Content Ideas.

Considering that content creation is one of the key aspects of an SEO campaign, it’s important to constantly have fresh ideas for content. This post will take a look at a few ways in which you can generate ideas for your blog, to ensure that you can constantly create fresh, beneficial content for your readers.

Quora Questions

Quora is essentially a massive question and answer site which covers a plethora of different subjects, and can prove to be a massive boon in regards to your content creation. From the threads that you’ll discover within your specified niche, you can find topics for your blogs from both the questions and the answers, and you can even use it to curate the ideas of other people within your niche, much like our online strategist, Matthew, has done here, which went on to play a massive part in the recent post on this blog which listed several link building wins.

As I mentioned, you can find content ideas simply from thread titles/answers. Just by searching for your niche, you’ll find a list of questions posted in relation to it:

As you can see, there are discussions on topics such as must-have SEO tools, changes which have had to be made since the Penguin/Panda updates, best SEO tactics, et al, all of which could certainly be used to create a great, fresh piece of content for your blog. If you plan on directly using content from any threads, you’ll have to give a h/t to it in your post as per Quora’s guidelines.

Topsy

Topsy is a service which allows you to search throughout social media, or as they themselves put it, analyse the social web. This tool can certainly prove to be invaluable when it comes to concocting creative content ideas. You can use a wide set of different parameters in order to search for relevant discussions/mentions regarding your specified niche/subject matter:

In a similar vein to the Quora search, a simple search for SEO has provided a list of current subjects circulating throughout Twitter over the course of the past 24 hours. There are topics here  such as social media integration, excel functions, international SEO and even mobile SEO, all of which, once again, can be used to create content around. Topsy is fantastic for this, considering that the overall service is simple to use, and takes seconds to find reams of possible content topics.

RSS Feeds

One of the most common ways to find the latest content produced within a certain niche is to set up an RSS feed which will accrue the work of the finest sites out there. Whilst their sole purpose is to work as an aggregator for this content which you’ll use as a bit of light reading, it can also be used as spark an idea in your mind for creating content. Due to the layout of most RSS feeds, upon opening your chosen feed you’ll be greeted with a large array of blog titles:

This is just a selection of the content that has appeared in my RSS feed over the course of the past 24 hours, and there are certainly plenty of top quality blogs mentioned here – as well as plenty of subjects which could be written about. Whilst I’m certainly not saying to nick any of the blogs you see in your RSS feeds, it’s just definitely a great way to find topics in which you can write content about on your own blog.

Topical Subjects and Discussions

It’s important to keep on the pulse in the SEO industry, considering that vast amount of change that happens ever so frequently, as we’re all aware. Taking the constant changes, news, discussions et al that are going on in our little pocket of the internet, a great way to create content for your site is to speak about topical subjects. I’m certain that you’ve seen a myriad of blogs regarding recent subjects such as the recent Interflora furore, the Google Penguin 2.0 update, etc. This in mind, simply browsing sites such as Inbound and Search Engine Roundtable, as well as maintaining an aforementioned RSS feed in order to keep up with the latest goings on within your industry.

Past Experiences

If the well has run dry so to speak in regards to the previous methods of coming up with content ideas, there’s the option to go on your own past experiences. This is very commonplace, and mainly comes in the form of either aggregated content with several contributors, or in the form of a case study, such as Charles’ recent blogging case study. Both are fantastic methods of content creation which are actually two of the most prolific in regards to bringing in traffic, social shares and authoritative links to your blog.

So, there are a few very simple ways in which you can come up with content ideas. Which services/ideas do you use in order to think of subjects to write on? It’d be great to hear your thoughts in the comments below!