1. Choose a Blog Topic Idea

First, decide what you’re going to write about.

The topic should be relevant to your brand. And interesting to your target audience.

If you haven’t already, create buyer personas like the one below. To gain a better understanding of your target readers. And what type of content they’re interested in.A buyer persona created with Semrush Persona tool

There are many ways you can come up with topics:

Check out our list of blog post ideas
Conduct a brainstorming session with your team
Look at competing blogs for inspiration
Ask your audience what they want to read about (on social media or via email surveys)
Perform keyword research (step two explains how)

For a data-led approach to blog post ideation, try Semrush’s Topic Research tool.

Click “+ Enter domain to find content on.”Topic Research tool

Enter a broad topic idea. And your country and domain.

Then, click “Get content ideas.”"mountain bikes" and example domain entered into Topic Research search bar

The tool will provide a variety of content ideas.

Those marked green are already covered on your site. While those with a flame icon are trending.Topic Research "Content Ideas" dashboard for "mountain bikes"

Click “Show more” on any subtopic to see:

Subtopic volume: The search volume (average number of monthly searches) for the subtopic keyword
Difficulty: The subtopic’s keyword difficulty score, which measures how hard it is to rank highly for that keyword
Topic Efficiency: A measure of subtopic’s search volume relative to its difficulty (higher = better)
Headlines: Headlines related to the subtopic (with links to the articles)
Questions: FAQs related to the subtopic
Related searches: Queries from the “Related searches” section in Google

"Topic Efficiency" "Headlines" and "Questions" sections highlighted in Topic Research dashboard

To proceed with an idea, click “...” and choose one of the options.“...” menu opened with "Get ideas on this topic" " Send task to Trello" "Create SEO template" and "Dismiss this card" options

Tip: For a more strategic approach to content production, create a content plan. This details all the content you’ll create over the coming weeks or months. Including blog posts.