Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing often work together to help businesses grow organically.

You probably know how powerful the combo is and what great results you get when using the two together. 

But do you ever find yourself looking for content ideas that will attract your ideal customer?

The key is being strategic about the content you’re creating if it’s going to turn browsers into buyers.

What’s the best way to do that?

Zero in on topics that will appeal to your ideal customer and bring them to your website.

Finding content ideas that attract customers

Start with your sales funnel and your current customers

What questions do you get asked all the time? Our own frequently asked questions can often lead us to content ideas that will help grow our business.

• Start by brainstorming the questions you get asked constantly and write them down. At this stage, there’s no good or bad question. You can go through them later and determine which ones you want to pursue and which ones you want to ignore. What does your ideal customer need to know before buying?
• Think about the questions your ideal customer doesn’t know to ask, but still needs to know before purchasing. Go through your sales notes, and think about the process you take with prospects in your sales funnel. What information do you find they need to consider before deciding to purchase? There may be content ideas here. What do they want to do that your product or service can help them with?
• Now think about how your customers use your product or service. What might they do with your product that you can help teach them? What might they want to accomplish, where your product is the solution or a tool they need to complete the job? 

For example, I worked with a makeup brand and we saw lots of people asking for makeup tutorials. They wanted to learn how to create specific looks, so we set out to create videos and blog posts teaching them how to create those specific looks.

Our products were showcased in the videos, so people who watched the video were more likely to buy products from this client than someone else because they saw it used to achieve the look they wanted.

Snoop on the competition

Look around and see what your competition is doing on their website, blog or social media.

Don’t simply copy your competition. Consider this as a content research audit. Take note of what they’re doing and what followers respond to.

• Are they doing lots of Reels or tutorials on YouTube or Instagram?
• Are they writing blog posts that highlight the features of specific products?
• Are they addressing the benefits?
• How is the audience reacting (if you can tell)?

Use keyword research tools 

Go to Google and start searching with keywords related to your business and the content topic you’re thinking about.

What you see in the search results are terms people are searching for right now. Google will try to autofill your search bar with the information they think is relevant to your query. Pay attention to any relevant suggestions.

Take a look at everything that shows up in Autocomplete. This data can be useful when trying to find content ideas that will attract your customers.

Use online research tools 

You can use a tool like AnswerThePublic to find out what questions people ask about topics related to your business.

Start a search with your primary keyword and see what questions the tool generates.

Use your own website

Does your website have site search?

See what questions or keywords your current customers are searching for on your website. You may find that people are looking for specific information that you don’t have on your website or that isn’t easy to find.

These results can help you write blog poss or FAQs

Social listening

Spend a little bit of time on social media simply listening to the conversation.

Join a few social media groups where your ideal customer spends time and listen to the conversation.

• See what questions people are asking.
• Is there misinformation being shared? If so, maybe you need to create a piece of content on myths or mistakes people make related to your field, product, or service.
• Are they looking for solutions you offer? Take note of what they’re asking and the language they’re using because that’s how you’ll be able to connect with them.

Organizing your ideas and brainstorming notes

Take all of your notes, brainstorm ideas, go back to your keyword research tool, and dig a little deeper into the ideas and keywords you could consider using.

You may even find additional content topics in the keywords you discover. Many queries today are in question form, and a lot of them are great topics for blog posts.

Choose the topics that you think will be the best fit for your ideal customer.

Decide if your product or service is an option for that customer, or if you can truly provide value if they read your blog post.

Next, choose the keyword or keywords you have the best chance of ranking for. You will often want to choose the keywords with the greatest search demand and the lowest competition.

Decide what type of content you will create

When deciding what type of content to create, think about your ideal customer. Are they going to be helped the most with a video or a blog post with lots of images? What will provide the most value to them?

Suppose you’re creating a tutorial such as my client’s makeup tutorials. In that case, you’re probably going to want to use video because that’s going to help your ideal customer more than a blog post with images will.

If you’re creating a checklist or something that will walk your ideal customer through a process that leads to a buying decision, you may want to create a blog post with images and maybe even a checklist they can reference later.

Create helpful content

Your next step is to create that valuable piece of content.

Don’t focus on using your keyword X number of times or writing X number of words. Instead, focus on telling your ideal customer what they need to know about this subject.

Provide value by answering their questions. You will naturally use your chosen keywords because your content piece is about a related topic. But you can always go back and review your piece when you’re done and see if you can add additional keywords or remove them if they’re used too many times.

Make sure your content is optimized to get organic traffic

Make sure you optimize every piece of content you want Google to find and share with more new customers.

Follow SEO best practices and use your keywords in the title, meta description, URL, copy, header tags, image file name, and ALT text on your image.

• Choose topics you know your ideal customer is interested in and searching for.
• Write great content that helps them, and optimize the content for Google. As long as you’re choosing keywords your website can rank for, you’ll start seeing results.

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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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