When planning to write content, ideally you identify the most promising topics to write about before spending any resources on content production.
This requires some careful research about the topic you want to write about, including asking some fundamental questions:
- Does my audience care about this topic?
- Is anyone searching for this topic?
- Which specific problems are people looking to solve within this topic?
- Can we create unique content with a unique point of view on this topic?
SEO topic research is a great way to answer those questions with data. We recommend using an SEO topic brief to capture this data in a structured way and facilitate the right conversations across marketing and content teams. (In fact, you can build entire marketing campaigns off of these topics, and that’s actually the best way to make magic happen.)
In this post, we’ll share how to do SEO topic research using a simple SEO topic brief and set you up to get started doing SEO topic research with your own team.
SEO topic research requires alignment
We start SEO topic research with an SEO topic brief because it’s a tool for alignment, first and foremost. SEO topic briefs capture the competitive landscape for any given topic and combines search data and qualitative research to help you identify your best opportunities for organic content campaigns.
These briefs are the easiest way we’ve found to shop around recommendations based data. From that data, you can suggest titles for new organic search content, or revisions of existing content. You might even suggest entire marketing campaigns based on the opportunity and alignment with your broader marketing strategy. (In the past, we’ve discovered SEO topics with so much relevance and volume for companies that they became the dominant campaign strategy for the quarter, influencing demand gen and growth teams’ priorities. It can happen!)
What goes into an SEO topic brief?
A solid SEO topic brief will contain the following elements:
- SEO keyword data. SEO topic briefs contain longtail keywords, their volume, and competition data for each topic.
- Content library inventory. A list of all existing content in a library that relates to the topic.
- SERP analysis. A qualitative assessment of search intent and related search queries.
- Social platform analysis. A survey of post and discussion threads that are actively generating engagement around the topic.
In addition to the collected data, SEO topic briefs can include suggestions for new content and strategic revisions to existing content. These suggestions are based on the data collected and a company’s unique SEO topic strategy.
Why use SEO topic briefs for SEO topic research
SEO topic briefs help a content marketing team weed through potential opportunities and identify their best chance at choosing the right topics to write about, with the best potential to perform in organic search. They help marketing teams tune in to the topics that have the most interest, through data. They even help product marketers understand the best phrasing for the terms your audience cares about, too.
Importantly, to succeed in organic search, two things need to be (increasingly) true:
- Your target audience is looking for information within this topic.
- Your marketing team can create unique content for the topic.
Topic briefs allow us to verify those circumstances before we invest in content production. It cuts down on the (unpleasant) surprises. And, in the modern world of marketing where anyone can generate something with AI, if you don’t have something unique to say, you probably shouldn’t say it at all… But that’s a post for another day.
Why topics vs keywords?
Importantly, SEO topic briefs center around a topic versus a keyword. This gives you more information on the related keywords and queries that your audience might be searching for within a topic, and also helps you understand how to build a full-funnel approach to establishing authority on that topic. For example, you might choose to write an upper funnel piece like “Understanding [Topic]”, and then move to something more specific about that topic that you found in the long tail keyword data. Finally, you might choose to write about “Evaluating [Topic]” or “Pricing for [Topic]” to ensure you’ve hit top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel articles for each topic. To take it a step further, many companies have success when they can build solutions pages or other primary pages in their navigation that map to priority topics. If focusing purely on keywords, it’s easy to lose sight of how you can build authority and a cohesive journey around topics, which is much easier for your audience (and search engines!) to follow.
Not all briefs lead to content production
Some topics, though dear to your brand, are unlikely to generate much engagement in terms of organic search.
Even if you bring recommendations based on data, your team might decide that the content is not a great fit for their audience. The topic gets vetoed and you go back to the drawing board.
This is extremely valuable for a content strategy. You’ve identified a niche that won’t work for the content program, and you’ve done it in the most efficient way possible.
The SEO topic research process
Your marketing team has a long list of topics they’re interested in pursuing in organic search. These topics might be inspired by new product releases, or a re-positioning, or the desire to rise above a competing brand.
Now you compile data to answer some questions about the topic:
- How viable is this topic in organic search? We’ll answer this question with keyword data and search data.
- What content have you already created on the topic? We’ll inventory the content library to generate a list of relevant pieces.
- How is your audience talking about the topic online? We’ll answer this by reviewing search content and social platforms.
These initial steps involve straightforward data collection and analysis. We collect it all in the brief in order to facilitate the discussion:
- What should we publish? This is a question that can only be answered by reviewing all of the research with the marketing team.
SEO data collection
The brief we use is simple. It involves 4 main research components:
- Search data. Broad sense for popularity and competition.
- Content library inventory. Detailed list of what already exists.
- SERP research. Scan the top-ranking content to understand search intent.
- Social platform research. Detailed look at how people are engaging the topic.
Organic search data
Compile volume and competition data to give a sense for a search query's popularity and attainability. (You can use keyword tools or the ércule app for this.)
If any pages on your site are currently ranking for a given query, you should also surface that information.
Content library inventory
Ideally, there are already a few pieces of content on your site that can be updated to align with specific search queries in a given topic.
So surface everything that seems relevant to the topic. (We have a little bespoke tool that quantifies relevance by topic.)
You can do a quick inventory of your library by filtering it for specific phrases in the ércule app.
SERP review
A topic with a high search volume is great, but you want to make sure that the volume is actually coming from your target audience.
To get a sense for that, and related queries, we’ll survey the results for a handful of longtail keywords within your topic.
The “People Also Ask” data on a SERP provide a detailed, iterative glimpse at search intent. (You can do it manually but the AlsoAsked tool is pretty neat, too.)
Social platform research
Similarly, we want to see how people are actually discussing the topic online – and if they’re talking about it at all. By scanning social platforms, we’re able to answer some important questions for content creation:
- Is anyone actually talking about it?
- What specific subjects are they focusing on?
- What kind of language are they using?
There are great monitoring tools for this (Sprout and Common Room come to mind) but you can also do a quick manual search on platforms like Reddit to get a sense for the dialogue.
Turning topic briefs into content assignments
The data in a topic brief will lead you to some pretty clear recommendations.
The data speaks for itself. But also: data is not everything. Once the brief is completed we have a few more steps:
- Make recommendations based on the brief
- Review and finalize with the marketing team
This is the fun part of the process because your team is likely made up of brilliant marketing minds. Through discussion you can vet the ideas, iterate on proposed titles, and end up with a list of content to create.
Recommendations based on the data
There’s one primary question: does this topic have any real potential to generate leads through organic search?
We might find that the topic doesn’t really have any traction in organic search or social platforms. In which case, we recommend that the client look for other topics.
If the topic does show some potential, we’ll generally focus on two courses of action:
- Which existing pages can we update or revise for targeted search queries?
- What new content should we create to compete for a given query?
This is where the expertise of your team is essential.
Review SEO strategy with your team
Your team is the true experts here. Together you can review the briefs. Discuss the overall landscape, the long tail keywords, and the content that can be created to answer such queries.
Usually, your team will respond to suggestions through a few different lenses:
- Does our target audience actually need this information?
- How does it fit with our brand position, product, and strategy?
- What unique angle can we bring to this particular blog post?
- Do we have the resources to write it?
At the end of the discussion, you’ve got a list of titles that will be created and a list of pages that will be revised – all for specific search queries.
Start doing SEO topic research today
You can use our topic brief template (Google doc) to start building your own briefs. It’s really simple and easy to customize.
If you don’t already have a chosen tool for keyword research, you can set up a free SEMrush account and start generating data or jump into the ércule app and start doing topic research free. If your content team doesn’t yet have a topic strategy, you might create a keyword strategy in a few hours.
And if you have any nitty-gritty questions about the process and strategy, you can always drop us a line.
