Best Blog Post Ideas 2021 (That You Can RANK For!)
Want to get you hands on the best blog post ideas 2021? Here’s the thing… you don’t just need blog post ideas: you need blog post ideas that will actually rank, blog post ideas that will answer your audience’s questions, and blog post ideas that will drive lots of lovely, lovely traffic to your website.
So that’s what we’re covering here: foolproof ways to come up with a never-ending list of really useful blog post ideas that your audience is actively searching for.
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Want to get you hands on the best blog post ideas 2021? Here’s the thing… you don’t just need blog post ideas: you need blog post ideas that will actually rank, blog post ideas that will answer your audience’s questions, and blog post ideas that will drive lots of lovely, lovely traffic to your website.
So that’s what we’re covering here: foolproof ways to come up with a never-ending list of really useful blog post ideas that your audience is actively searching for.
The 4 pillars of great blog writing
When it comes to finding good blog post ideas, the most important thing to do is find the right balance between these four things:
A topic you feel confident you can write about competently.
A topic that’s ‘in demand’.
A topic that you can actually rank for.
And a topic that will bring you the right clients.
So how do you go about generating ideas that hit all four pillars?
Keyword research
If you’re fuzzy on keywords, remember that it’s just a fancy way of describing the search term or phrase that people are actually typing into Google when they want to find relevant websites or blogs. And if you want the right kind of people to find your blog posts, you need to think about the keywords they’ll be using in their search.
You can start your research by gathering some ideas for keywords using keyword tools — there are a tonne of them out there to help you come up with ideas for your blog posts.
So, if you’re fresh out of blog post ideas and you want to find a starting point, you could use tools such as Jaaxy, Soovle, keywordtool.io, or even Answer The Public. They’re all free to use and if you type your industry or industry phrases and terminology into these sites, they’ll hit you with loads of different ideas, all based on what people are searching for via Google, YouTube, and other search engines.
From there, you can create a handy spreadsheet of ideas you can come back to whenever you feel stuck on what to write about.
Think about your FAQs
The second thing to do at this ideas-generating stage is to pay close attention to the questions you’re always being asked. So think about the things people want to know during meetings, the comments you get on social media, and the questions you might get asked on discovery calls.
Another top tip here is to note down the questions that other people ask the speakers at any webinars or industry events you attend — it’s a great way to find out which topics people in your industry or your potential customers want more information on.
Check out what your peers are doing
Another super simple way to generate blog post ideas is to check out what your peers are doing on YouTube. Pick a peer, head to their channel and order the videos by most popular to find out which topics people are really interested in. You can then take these ideas as inspiration and figure out how to put your own spin on them. It’s also worth looking to see which of their popular videos are a little outdated and fill the gap by creating a more up-to-date blog version.
Good old Google
And finally, go to Google and type in a topic that you think you might want to write about and see what auto-suggestions come up and use those as a springboard for blog post ideas.
How to prioritise your blog post topics
Now, if you’ve done all of that, you probably have a gazillion post ideas buzzing around your head and a lengthy spreadsheet to work with! So how do you narrow your list and prioritise your topics?
Our top tip is to use Google’s free Keyword Planner tool.
Using the tool you can import all of the ideas you’ve collected and then prioritise them in order of demand according to how many people are actually searching for these keywords.
This is a fantastic way to find out which post ideas are likely to be most popular, which you should write first, and which you can relegate altogether because no one’s particularly interested in them.
The tool will also suggest other keywords that might be better than the ones currently on your list, so you have even more ideas to work with.
Finding the balance
So, you have a decent list of blog topics that you know people are searching for. However, it’s not time to start writing yet. If you want to actually start ranking on Google and start getting that constant stream of visitors to your site, there’s something else you have to consider:
Competition.
Obviously the keywords with higher search volume are more in demand — and that makes them a tempting choice to focus on for your next blog post. But, because they have a higher search volume, there’s going to be a lot of competition, a lot of posts on the same topic, and you’re going to find it harder to rank.
It really is a balancing act: you don’t want to spend all of your time and effort writing a blog that ranks for a time but just doesn’t get any search volume. Equally, you don’t want to put all of your time and effort into writing a blog that is potentially going to have loads and loads of demand but that you’ll never be able to rank for because so many other people have already written awesome posts about the same topic.
So, how do you find that balance?
There’s a definite science to figuring out which topics you might actually be able to rank for. For example, you want to consider the commercial intent of the keyword searches being carried out: are people searching for these words because they’re potential buyers…or are they just searching for definitions?
You also need to think about your domain authority and compare it to the domain authority of the other sites that are currently ranking for the terms you want to use because this will give you a good idea of your chance of ranking before you go to all of the trouble of actually writing your post.
Want to know more about how to strike that balance and improve your chances of ranking for the subjects you want to write about? We have some additional resources that will help shine a light on which blog topics you should prioritise so you can cut your ideas list to a more manageable size and decide what to write about first. Check them out here: