Performing Audience & Topical Research

Your content calendar is packed. You have topics for next week, next month, next quarter. But let's be honest, how many of those ideas are based on a gut feeling?

Guesswork won't cut it. In today's crowded landscape, it's time to stop hoping your content lands and start creating content you know your audience is looking for.

Let's check in with Cindy. She's a content manager and next month's big topic is hiking. It's a good start, but it's way too broad. So she heads to research to find the specific angles her audience truly cares about.

The overview tab gives her a lay of the land. She checks the search and dress trend for seasonality and glances at people. Also ask to get a feel for some top of mind questions.

Now she's ready to find her specific opportunities in the related keywords tab. The list is automatically sorted by monthly search volume, showing her where the biggest demand is right at the top to narrow things down, she uses the keyword filters. She excludes branded or navigational terms to clean up the list. Then adds an include filter to hone in on an interesting subtopic. Next, the strategic move. She uses the search intent filter and selects informational to find people in the research phase.

Before she commits, she needs to know if she can win the blue arrow next to a keyword reveals the top five ranking pages, giving her a snapshot of the competition and helping her decide if her brand has a realistic chance to rank.

In just a few minutes, Cindy has a focus topic she can confidently build an article around.

But first, a pro tip. Cindy needs to ensure she isn't about to create a new article that would fight her existing pages for search visibility. She runs her topic through content guidance. No cannibalization check appears, meaning no other page on her site is currently ranking for this specific topic. Perfect. She now has the green light to create net new content. If a relevant page had appeared here, she could optimize that existing URL instead of starting from scratch.

With her opportunity validated, she heads to writing assistant, which carries her primary keyword directly into the creation workflow. Cindy selects up to four of the most relevant keyword suggestions to build out her topic cluster because she's creating a brand new article. She'll leave that URL field blank,

And that's how you build a content strategy on a foundation of data and not guesses.

So what are you waiting for? Jump into research and turn one of your calendar topics into a vetted opportunity.