How can we create excellent content? Find out what your audience is looking for, and provide that to them. For example, when we looked at our textbook rental keywords, we've found some questions users are asking. They are specifically looking for content that answers these questions. Now, some of these questions aren't that great to create content for, by others? Like is it better to rent or buy textbooks, can not only be great content pieces. They are also tightly focused on a query that has actual volume. Another thing to be conscious of is Google's features that provide answers directly in the search results. Also, the occasional people also ask box. This box came up during my examples of looking at TARDIS-related search results. Having a strong brand focus around a topic increases the chance that your site will show up in the answer box, or in these additional areas. The doctor whose site we looked at was in the first position for query. But they also have another opportunity to show in this answer box because of their strong focus on related content. You can also get ideas from what people are searching for by exploring the search box. Notice how you can click on what does the doctor keep in the TARDIS. This might be additional content to include on your page, or develop a page around. I want to point out that you don't always have to create content around a keyword. In fact, you should be looking at great content opportunities outside of keywords as well. Finding out what your target audience's pain points are, what questions they are asking, and how you can help solve their queries will help you provide useful content to your users. Plus, this type of content is likely to naturally attract a variety of long tail keywords. Because of its usefulness, this may get shared more frequently. Let's take a look at some of the ways we can discover what problems our users are experiencing, or questions they are looking for answers for. Question and answer sites are a great resource when it comes to brainstorming potential content opportunities. Quora, for example, is a great resource. For this example, I typed in textbooks and I'm already getting some creative ideas for potential blog posts or articles. What is the future of textbooks would be interesting considering more and more books are moving to digital format. This post would allow us to highlight any digital textbook offerings we have. To go along with this idea, we might also want to create a post about the history of textbooks and find some neat facts people can share. The third question relates to computer science books specifically, but it can work in a broader context as well. A list of great fiction books that offer educational value might be a great post. The question, what are effective ways to read a textbook makes me think that an article like top textbook hacks for faster studying would work really well too. This single search just gave me four content ideas, and I can spend more time browsing through other questions and answers on this site for additional ideas. Another favorite site of mine is Buzzsumo, which provides you with the most shared content by topic or domain. This is great to use because you can see that the content idea is very share worthy. In this example, I typed in textbooks and I get some really neat ideas. We can see that other than news items, list type hosts like 46 rare photographs and eight incredible finds perform really well. Since this site also allows you to check domains, I checked chegg.com, another textbook rental site to see what types of content are most shared on that site specifically. In this case, I can see that contests tend to perform really well with this audience, as well as the list style posts. You could also check out Yahoo answers, forums your audience is likely to hang out in, and social networks. For example, Twitter allows you to see short snippets of what people are talking about. If you search for textbooks, you will see a common theme of people expressing negative opinions about the price of textbooks. Discussing how rentals are more affordable than buying may reach these types of users. Facebook tends to have a lot of training topics related to textbooks in the news that you may be able to take advantage of. Pinterest backs up a lot of what we know are pain points by linking to blog posts about cheap textbooks. But they also have great post ideas like how to create a study guide. Also make sure to check your Google Analytics. While a lot of keyword data is gone, enabling the Site Search feature can give you insights into what users are trying to find on your site that you may not have content around.
