How To Find New Content Ideas For Your Website
If you are embarking on scientific marketing strategy and/or a way to improve the SEO for your life science business, content creation is one of the best ways to succeed.
One of the biggest hurdles to creating content is finding new ideas that you haven’t already covered.
Therefore, in this article, I am going to cover alternative ideas to finding new, undiscovered content ideas that your content team can investigate.
Extended Keyword Research
For any serious content marketers, understanding your target audience and the content you need to write for has probably been well understood by significant keyword research.
Whilst this is a well known and valid strategy, there is the potential for keywords with low monthly search volume obtained from keyword research tools to be ignored.
And just because a keyword tool shows low or ‘zero’ searches a month does not always match the reality.
This is because external tools – as well as Google’s own Keyword Planner tool – are based on historical and aggregated data.
Therefore, if you have access to a keyword tool, looking for keywords with low volume, as well as variations in the form of questions or related keywords are probably going to be worthwhile to you here.
Using an example, I search for questions related to “medical device classification”. Here you can see questions that users are searching for, which make great blog post ideas in their own right.
And if you don’t believe me, try comparing some of the keyword volumes with impression data for the same keywords from your Google Search Console data!
Search Engine Autocomplete
Not everybody has access to – or knows how to use – external keyword tools, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do your own initial research.
Simply go to you Google – or your search engine of choice – and start typing in your broad keywords related to your business.
Your search engine will start to auto populate search queries based on what previous users have searched for.
For broad keywords these autocomplete suggestions may not be anything new, but adding in niche keywords may bring up some welcome surprises.
For this example, I will continue with the theme of looking for “medical device classification” related keywords. Typing that into Google and see the autocomplete queries gives me a few more ideas to investigate further.
Keep trying different variations until you reveal some long tail keywords that you may have previously been oblivious to.
People Also Ask
Both Google and Bing also have another search engine feature called “People Also Ask”.
Once you have submitted a search and generated the search engines result page, scroll down to find the “People Also Ask” box.
This gives an accordion of questions and answer snippets, which once clicked, opens up additional questions and answers.
When I submit the search for “medical device classification” and scroll down to the bottom of the first page of Google, I then get access to the “People also ask” queries. Although similar to the autocomplete queries, there are some slight variations that I can consider as additional themes to investigate.
Much like the autocomplete feature, playing around with different search queries and investigating questions and answers can introduce you to a range of new keyword ideas.
Google Search Console
It is likely that you are using different analytics tools to measure the performance of your website, and if you don’t it’s probably time to fix that!
However, tools such as Google Search Console, or Bing’s Webmaster tools offer a wealth of information of keywords that are generating impressions and clicks for your website.
Without the use of an API, you can view up to 1,000 search queries with Google Search Console.
It is probably a good idea to look for search queries that generate a lot of impressions compared to the number of clicks, and also keywords that generate few impressions.
Looking through Search Console data, it is easy to find keywords with high search impressions with low (or zero) clicks to consider for future content updates.
It does not necessarily mean that these keywords will always be worthwhile to target, but additional manual investigation may determine whether there is potential for future content!
If you have a large website or have established search presence, then it is likely that you generate impressions and clicks for more than 1,000 keywords.
If so, investigate ways to find these additional keywords, and use the same approach mentioned above to investigate further!
Forums
Forums can be a goldmine for new keyword ideas as they often indicate instances where a user cannot find an answer to a question or query they have.
If you find related keywords in forums, the chances are that there is little competition from competitors and you can rank for ultra-niche keywords with ease!
Internal Knowledge
All of the methods I have mentioned so far have been in relation to using external tools and strategies to finding keywords.
However, using internal data from sales reps, or customer support can be useful to identify additional opportunities.
Try and find instances where users are looking for answers or support to specific issues. Whilst it may not help generate new customers or sales, it helps existing customers feel supported and builds trust with your brand.
Even if you don’t have this data, simply reaching out and contacting past or existing customers may give you valuable information that you are otherwise ignoring!
Conclusion
Like most digital marketing activities, there is an ongoing evolution to different strategies. Just because one piece of content or keyword group is successful now, doesn’t mean it will be in the future.
Keeping on top of keywords that you can generate traffic from is difficult, but staying on top of different trends will help you be successful and beat your main competitors!
If you are struggling to find relevant keywords for your life science business, or you need help strategising and creating scientific content, then get in touch with me to see how I can help you with different life science marketing needs.
