Use Question-Based Keyword Research for Blog Content Ideas

If one of my clients is a blogger, I always make sure to use two “keyword question” tools to help generate ideas for new blog content. While we tend to think that almost everyone uses Google or Bing to search for short phrases (like “bike store Columbus” or “repair a bike”), the truth is that a lot of people type complete questions into search engines. So, using those questions to come up with content ideas is a no-brainer. There are two primary places you can do question-based keyword research.

Where to Find Question-Based Keywords?

Most keyword research tools work the same way: type a word or phrase, get words or phrases out. There are two that I know of (and use) that let you type in a word and, instead, give back questions that people have searched for using your keyword.

Keyword Discovery — offers paid accounts, but even the free/limited trial version (which I’m linking to) includes question-based results. Scroll to the bottom of the drop-down menu on that page and look for “Question Phrases.”
WordTracker Keyword Questions — also free and limited, but also very helpful for generating blogging ideas.

The idea — at least for me — isn’t to do traditional keyword research and analysis, where you compare phrases and how competitive they are and spend hours upon hours with your head buried in an Excel spreadsheet. (Boring!)

The idea is just to learn what questions people have so you can decide if you’re able to answer them via blog posts.

So, thinking back to the first post in this series and using the same local bike shop owner as our example, she might go to these tools and type “bikes” into the search box and get these results.

There are a lot of ideas right there in the free results. A few I highlighted:

Again, that’s several ideas just from typing in one keyword into these keyword question tools. Imagine if our bike store owner repeated the process with 10 keywords, or 20 keywords … she’d have months of blog post ideas, guaranteed.

Look for more articles soon about developing ideas for blog posts.