How to Find Post Topics That Score Big — Copyblogger

Once you’ve picked a popular niche, the next question is: how do you get noticed?

The problem with young or poorly targeted blogs is they don’t havean audience. You can’t just write a brilliant post and expect people tofind it and subscribe. Instead, you need to proactively target peoplethat might be interested in your topic.

How? Keyword research. Let’s go back to our mixed martial artsexample and come up with some post topics to launch the blog with abang.

Researching Your Main Keywords for Post Ideas

In the last section, my friend decided to target the MMAniche—people that want to train and eventually participate in mixedmartial arts. Now he needs to choose post topics that will attracttheir attention.

The easiest place to start is with the main keyword: MMA. In this section, I’m going to use the Wordze keyword tool, as it performs this kind of work exceptionally well. Here are the results for “MMA” from their keyword research tool:

Note: The numbers in the far right column represent the predicted traffic within a 30-day period.

Looking through the results, we see that a lot of people are looking for:

• Different types of gear, such as gloves and clothes
• Information on different fighters
• Videos about mixed martial arts
• Training tips

Skipping the gear keywords for a moment, it looks like the following post topics might be popular:

• Interviews with different fighters about being successful in mixed martial arts
• A series of posts on the strengths and weaknesses of different fighters
• A detailed analysis of fight clips from YouTube
• A huge resource post linking to all of the training videos on YouTube
• A series of posts about training for the MMA

It’s useful information, but it’s all pretty general, right? Toreally come up with targeted post ideas, we need more specificinformation. For instance, which fighters should you interview? Arethere specific training routines that you can write about in detail?Which fighting styles should you explore?

Also, you could exhaust the above topics within a few weeks ormonths. If you’re going to start a blog on MMA, you need a largerrepertoire of post ideas.

The keyword research tool isn’t really built for in-depth analysis,but fortunately for us, Wordze provides another tool that does thetrick beautifully.

Researching Related Keywords for Post Ideas

The Wordze Dig Tool is magic. It searches the web for your targetterm (in this case, “mixed martial arts), and then somehow figures outwhich words might be related and gives you a long list of relatedkeywords to consider. All the companies we’ve reviewed have similartools, but the one for Wordze seems to work the best for thisparticular task.

Below, I’ve included just a small section of the results from a digon “mixed martial arts.” There are actually 217 pages of results tosort through—enough topics to keep my friend writing for a long, longtime.

Note: The numbers in the far right column represent the predicted traffic within a 30-day period.

Out of this selection, the majority of the related keywords aredifferent fighting styles. Some of them also seem to get a lot oftraffic, like boxing and wrestling. You might think that they’reunrelated topics, but really, these are related markets that you cantap into for readers.

For instance, lots of people who are interested in becomingprofessional fighters aren’t familiar with the intricacies of mixedmartial arts. They’re only familiar with one fighting style. You couldtarget these people with your posts to bring them to your blog and“convert” then into MMA fanatics. For instance, consider the followingpost titles:

• Here’s Why Boxers Are Scared of Mixed Martial Arts
• Kickboxing Champion Retires to Join UFC
• Grappling 101: How to Manhandle Your Opponent
• UFC vs. Pride: A Side-By-Side Comparison
• Shocking! The Secret History of Karate

Each headline is designed for a different audience. If you’re aboxing fan, could you resist clicking to find out why boxers are supposedlyscared of mixed martial arts? Or if you’re a karate newbie, wouldn’tyou like to know the secret history (which is directly tied to mixedmartial arts)?

These kinds of posts would probably do well on Digg.com, bringingyou thousands of visitors that might only be vaguely aware of mixedmartial arts. If you write an interesting enough article though, youmight be able to convert some of them into subscribers.

Wordze’s Dig Tool also answers other questions, such as “Whichfighter should I interview?” Skimming through the results, ChuckLiddell and Royce Gracie are two of the top names. Interestingly, ChuckNorris, Bruce Lee, and Mike Tyson also show up. You could do a postlike this:

Mike Tyson vs. Royce Gracie: Who Would Win?

I don’t know about you, but I think that one has a shot on Digg. Youmight also be able to get some links from popular boxing and UFCwebsites… which leads us into our next topic.

Researching Related Websites to Market Your Post

By now, we have lots of ideas for popular posts… but who is going tolink to them? It’s an obvious question, but lots of bloggers miss it.

Once you’ve settled on a post, you should do some research intowhich websites might be interested in linking to it. Let’s say we arewriting the “UFC vs. Pride: A Side-By-Side Comparison” post. Who shouldwe contact for links?

The websites that rank in the search engines for “UFC” and “Pride”would be a good start. In the front page listings for “UFC,” all of thesites in purple would be perfect:

The search results for “Pride” are mixed with unrelated sites, so Isearched for “pride fighting” instead and came up with better results.Based on the traffic counts, you’d still be better off focusing on theUFC sites, but it’s still worth e-mailing the Pride sites.

I won’t go into the details of it, but I also did searches for “UFCblog” and “Pride blog” for websites to target. Without even working atit, my friend could e-mail two dozen blogs about the post, probablyscoring a handful of links.

Is Traffic Enough?

If you do everything we’ve talked about so far, you should have adecent shot at getting lots of traffic. You’ll get links from authoritysites, you’ll have thousands of daily visitors, and you’ll actually bewriting about stuff that people want to read.

But is that all you want?

Traffic is great for the ego, but it doesn’t do much for paying thebills. At some point, you’ll be in the middle of writing a post whenthe power turns off. Then, sitting in the dark, a new question will hityou: “How can I make money from this?”

Once again, keyword research can help. Read the next section to find out how.

Next: Keyword Research Can Help You Make Money From Your Blog

Back to Keyword Research for Bloggers.