Building a loyal blog subscriber base takes time and effort. The topics you select will be pivotal in the ultimate success of each blog post. You may think focussing on a few niche topics will not deliver a very wide audience, however the readers you do satisfy will likely become hard and fast fans and followers. Here’s How to Choose the Perfect Blog Topics for Your Website.
How to Choose the Perfect Blog Topics for Your Website
- Know your target audience
- Define your blog goals
- Provide information that solves problems
- Create a conversation
- The right topic for you
- Topics that are ideal for creating topic clusters
- A Unique Twist
Finding suitable topics for your blog will ultimately determine their success or failure. Taking the time to consider the options will help you avoid potential pitfalls and choose a niche area in which both you and your target audience are interested.
Selecting topics that are helpful and relevant and topics that will consistently engage your audience can be the key to a successful blog.
There are some important considerations you should keep in mind as you research potential blog topics to help you discover what will work best for your website.
1. Know your target audience
To discover the perfect blog topics for your website, you must first define your target audience.
The perfect blog post will be one that appeals to this target audience, offering them informative useful information that is timely and relevant.
Take some time to identify your target audience by asking yourself:
- What is your audience interested in?
- Why are they visiting your blog?
- What topics will resonate with them?
- What problem do they have that your blog can offer a solution to?
- What are their pain points?
- Is there any unique information your blog can offer them?
- What are their current challenges?
- What are their current goals?
- Put yourself in their shoes – what information would you be looking for?
When you begin blogging, a great way to get to know your audience is to interact with them through the comments section of your blog. These insights can prove invaluable moving forward.
2. Define your blog goals
Your topic choice should be guided by the objectives you hope to achieve with your blogging. What are your blog’s objectives? For instance, what is your goal above and beyond boosting traffic to your website? Are you after conversions, subscriptions or something else?
When you have identified your objective, you will be able to assess each blog topic as to how well it will help you achieve this goal.
3. Provide information that solves problems
When it comes to blogs, nothing beats relevant content. Great blog content answers a query, solves a problem or provides a solution to an issue your readers are currently facing.
Think about the blogs you currently follow, and ask yourself what value they provide. What do you look for in a blog? When you can identify what a blog is doing well, be sure to take note – and aim to offer similar value to your audience.
4. Create a conversation
Great blogs generally end up with a bunch of regular subscribers or followers. As you assemble your band of loyal readers, they should begin to become a small online community of their own.
After all, those who choose to interact with your blog will be active participants in the online discussions created by your blog posts, interacting not only with your blog but with each other. For example, members of this community will hopefully interact with your blog posts by leaving comments and also engage with other users by replying to each others’ comments.
A thriving blog will require you to interact with your audience. You should welcome comments and queries while trying your best to respond promptly to each. Creating a conversation with your audience is a great way to build your subscription list, and to create that sense of community.
Don’t be too put off by critical comments or debates within your comments – a lively discussion amongst your followers can be a positive thing for your blog, often drawing in an even wider audience. It is crucial to monitor and moderate your comments, but remember that a healthy debate allows everyone to see a topic from differing viewpoints, even if they do not agree.
5. The right topic for you
The right topic for you to blog about will be one that you are interested in. You really don’t have to be an expert. Just eager and curious to learn more! (That said, ideally, if you do end up being the online expert in that area, you shouldn’t mind)!
Choosing a topic that you already know a lot about, one that you are interested in or one that you enjoy discussing will make it easier for you to enter into a broader discussion with your readers – and help to make your writing a lot less of a chore!
When you select topics, you are interested in, researching them deeper becomes enjoyable and rewarding. You should also be eager to connect with other people who are knowledgeable in that area and enthused at learning new skills and/or gaining a deeper level of knowledge of the topic.
You will be creating content around this topic regularly, so choosing a topic that meets these criteria will be much smoother sailing for you!
6. Topics that are ideal for creating topic clusters
A topic cluster (also called a content cluster) is what will help your website get higher rankings in the search engines.
As search engines move away from focusing on keywords, SEO is now driven by content organised into topic clusters. (We talk about how to create topic clusters here if it is something you are unfamiliar with).
Put simply, a topic cluster comprises a pillar page and the cluster content pages that sit underneath it. A pillar page is a page on your website that captures the key points on any given topic.
Under this pillar page would sit the cluster content, which are blogs or pages that explore these key points on a deeper, more detailed level.
When selecting topics for your blog, consider how they will sit within a topic cluster. For example, if your pillar page was a recipe for apple pie, some cluster content pages for this topic could be:
- Tips for perfecting your pie pastry
- What apples are the best choice for baking
- Ice cream, cream or both – the perfect accompaniment
These sub-topics would still sit under the broader topic of apple pie, but would offer more detailed information, instructions and/or tips than the broad overview that would be found on the pillar page.
Keywords can be, and are, still important, however topics now overarch your keyword strategy. You should still do keyword research and avoid keyword stuffing; when using keywords, they should appear naturally within your content wherever possible.
7. A Unique Twist
Providing unique, in-demand information is the holy-grail of blogging, but it is not always possible. From life-hacks to how-tos, the internet is full of great blogs that offer a wealth of usable information.
The information you provide should be solution-oriented, have universal appeal and positively impact your audience. Always aim to provide educational content of a consistently high level.
If you have a topic in mind and want to know what has already been written on that topic that is performing well, and what the related trending topics are, we recommend BuzzSumo. BuzzSumo allows you to enter any topic and to find out what content performs.
For example, when we searched “apple pie”, the top two results were:
1. Apple Pie Cupcakes with Cinnamon Buttercream:
This recipe at tasteofhome.com had recorded 214.5K total engagements.
and
2. Best Apple Pie Tacos Recipe:
This recipe was found at delish.com and had 146.2K total engagements.
Both of these posts had high engagement figures, and both had something else – a spin on the basic apple pie recipe.
The first was a recipe for a cupcake, the second was for a taco. Yes, that’s right – an apple pie taco. Both of these recipes have in common that they offer the taste and flavours of a classic dish – with a little something different. It was likely the uniqueness of each recipe that drew the audience in.
Now, continuing with this example, if you were about to write a blog post featuring your amazing apple pie recipe, you may decide to stick to what works after seeing these two results. Noting that something different is driving most of the traffic looking for apple pie, you may decide to avoid creating a whole new dish and just tweak your apple pie’s presentation. Something as simple as deciding to layer your apple pie in a glass jar would certainly tick the unique box and give you an eye-catching photo, drawing your audience in – without leaving you having to reinvent the wheel (or, in this case, the pie).
Looking for perfect blog topics will take a little time and practice. Soon, you will know your audience well enough to predict any trending topic areas or areas of current interest.
When you’re writing on one topic, you will note that other topics naturally appear in your blog articles and become the natural follow-on from the one you are writing. (You can read more about our tips for blog topic generation here).
Topics you enjoy learning about and enjoy discussing will help keep the voice of your writing appealing – you can sense when someone is passionate about a topic because their enthusiasm is contagious!
If you’d like to discuss ways to drive more traffic to your website, feel free to have a chat with us. We can help you with all aspects of your website, from its overall design to set up your blog correctly.
Let Sydney’s leading Web Design Agency take your business to the next level with a Pixel Fish Small Business Website.
Check out some of our latest Website Design projects.
Further Information
10 WordPress Plugins to Speed Up Your Ecommerce Website
Top 3 Ecommerce Customer Service Tactics for your Website
9 Reasons to Use WordPress for Your E-Commerce Website
More Reading
Top 10 reasons to choose WooCommerce for your business
What does CRM stand for and why your business needs one
6 profitable digital products you can make and sell online
Retail therapy: Top 5 reasons your customers prefer to shop online
$16 Billion Opportunity: Why your business must embrace online selling
