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First, try asking yourself these two questions before you even begin to think about anything:
1. Who is the audience?
2. What are their needs?
Ultimately, users are entering keywords into search engines, and keywords remain the core and foundation of SEO. So, when it comes to choosing topics, we'll want to tie them to the keywords we've chosen in our research based on relevance, search volume, and competition. You'll also want to look at tools like Google Trends to monitor industry trends and understand what's popular among your target audience and what's being searched for and discussed. Matching your topics to what's popular and being searched for will maximise the size of the potential audience you are catering to.
Next, you can employ the concept of filling in the gaps. Odds are good that someone else already wrote something about your topic, and the last thing the internet needs is more pages talking about the same old thing. Instead, figure out what's missing out there and fill in these holes. Monitor what your competitors are writing about, but more importantly, monitor what they're not writing about.
From a format perspective, you'll want to think about the style of content you're putting together. Will you be writing a blog post or informative-style articles? Are you taking a comparative style where you contrast product A with product B? What about discussing a before and after scenario or a how-to walkthrough? And remember that content isn't just text. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and you can even use video to capture sights and sounds to convey complex concepts or make something tangible to a user. By understanding who you're writing for, what you're writing about, and what style you're writing in, you'll be cementing the foundations of thoughtful, unique, and relevant content that will wow both human readers and search engines alike.
Defining and understanding your target audience is the first step to writing content for them, and knowing who you're writing for, what you'll be writing about, and how you should be writing will ultimately make the content development process clear and simple. Search engines as well as users value rich, quality, and relevant content, so it's important that you keep this in mind before you start typing away on your ideas. The first step is to define your target audience. Attracting just anyone to your website isn't so hard, it's attracting the right kind of people and offering the right topics in the right tone and style that's a challenge.
A great tool to start off with is the Google Consumer Barometer reports. This series of insights from Google can help provide information into how your end consumer uses different technologies today. There are several useful tools within the reports, namely the Graph Builder, Trended Data, Audience Stories, and Curated Insights. As an example, using Curated Insights for the U.S., you can learn how various demographics access and use the internet, and how the online experience informs buying decisions.
People need to be able to relate to your content and by knowing what keywords to use and understanding what they are passionate about will allow you to create relevant content which helps you to achieve your goals.