21 Quick (& Easy) Ways to Generate Blog Post Ideas

Do you find yourself staring at a blank screen when it comes to writing your next blog post?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

Coming up with useful blog post ideas is a constant struggle. As soon as you’re done with one, your mind automatically starts thinking about the next one, and the one after that, and so on.

In this article, I am going to share 21 easy ways to generate blog post ideas.

You can use some or all of these methods to generate hundreds of blog post ideas in a few hours.

Blog Post Idea Generation Method Categories

Before we jump on the exact methods that you can use to get blog post ideas, let me quickly explain the broad categories in which these methods are divided.

Start with a Seed Keyword and Find Related Topics

Find keywords based on what people are already searching for.

For this method, you need a starting point (a seed keyword).

For example, if your blog is about ‘dog training’, then you can start with the keywords such as ‘Dog Training Tips’ or ‘Dog Training Techniques’ and find more related keywords.

This would require prior knowledge about the niche and some seed keywords, to begin with.

If you’re brand new to the niche, it’s better you spend some time researching the niche (have a look at the existing blogs, forums, social media channels about the topic).

Analyze Popular Blogs To Come Up With Ideas

Instead of reinventing the wheel, you can simply look at the popular blogs in your niche and reverse engineer what’s working for them.

There are tools (covered later) that you can use to get an idea of what keywords are bringing traffic to those blogs.

You can then analyze their blog posts and write something better and promote the heck out of it. If you do it over and over again, you’re likely to get a lot of traffic for yourself as well.

Get Ideas from User Generated Content

A lot of people ask questions and discuss topics on forums and social media platforms.

If you’re a part of these relevant communities, you’ll easily stumble on topic ideas that can be converted into blog posts.

Ask Your Readers

If you already have a following on social media or email subscribers, simply ask them for ideas.

You can ask them questions such as (in the context of your niche):

• What are your biggest struggles?
• What do you want to learn?
• What is the one thing that can make the most impact in your life?

Many social media platforms have options to conduct polls. You can also use a survey tool to survey your email subscribers.

Identify Gaps in Your Existing Content

This method works only when you already have some content on your site and are getting some traffic.

You can identify the articles that are getting traffic and find related topics. This also helps in building topical relevancy for your blog – which in turn can help rank other articles as well.

Below is a screenshot of traffic in November 2017 Vs. traffic in Nov 2018 for one of my blogs.

Let’s get started and dive into each of the methods to generate blog post ideas.

Using Keyword/Topic Research Tools

As I mentioned, you need to have some knowledge about the niche before using these tools.

You need to give a starting point to these tools so that these can show you related keywords/topics and suggest some additional areas that you can write about.

Google AutoFill

Google helps you find keywords by showing you suggestions as you’re typing the keyword.

For example, if you type the keyword ‘Keto’ in the search bar, it will show you some popular keywords people are searching for.

You can further drill down by typing more characters.

For example, if I am looking for ‘Keto Diet’ related keywords, I can type that and it will show some keywords that contain the phrase ‘Keto Diet’.

Note that these are all the keywords that start with the words ‘Keto Diet’.

You can also get the keywords where the phrase ‘Keto Diet’ is anywhere in the keyword.

For this, type the keyword, then take the cursor to the beginning and enter a space character (as shown below).

Pro Tip: The keywords that Google show are the ones that it considers related to your seed keyword. So if you’re writing an article on ‘Keto Diet’, you can either plan to write a separate article on these additional keywords, or include these as a part of your article on ‘Keto Diet’.

Google ‘Related Searches’ and ‘People Ask For’ Questions

Apart from the keywords that Google search bar shows, you also get some additional keywords at the bottom of the search result page.

Again, these are keywords that Google considers as related to your main keyword.

You can create separate blog posts on these keywords or can write one article and include some of these in it.

Another area where you can get blog topic ideas are the questions that appear in the search results when you search for a keyword.

Pro Tip: Topical relevancy is a huge factor when it comes to ranking. This means that if you write about ‘keto diet’, include the other related keywords/topics in the same article (or as separate blog posts). This will make your article/blog topically relevant and you’re more likely to rank for the keywords for that topic. Having these related keywords in your blog is a signal to search engines that your blog covers that topic comprehensively.

Answer The Public

AnswerThePublic.com is a free website that spits out a lot of useful keyword phrases and questions based on your seed keyword.

All you need to do is enter the keyword in the search bar and hit ‘Get Questions’ button.

It takes a few seconds and shows the keywords in two formats:

1. Visualization
2. Data

Although the visualization looks cool, I always prefer getting the data in a tabular format as it’s easier to go through.

There are different types of blog topic ideas you can get from Answer The Public site:

1. Topics that contain questions
2. Keywords with prepositions in it
3. Comparison topics (such as Carb Vs. Keto Diet)
4. Keywords in alphabetical order

All in all, this is a wonderful tool to generate hundreds of blog topic ideas in minutes. While you may find that a lot of these keywords repeat in different sections, you can still end up with a huge number of related keywords.

Pro Tip: Use this tool to make sure your article is comprehensive and even get ideas to make it better. For example, if you decide to write an article about ‘Keto Diet Calculator’, use this tool again with ‘Keto Diet Calculator’ as the seed keyword to get more ideas.

Keyword Everywhere Chrome Extension

This is an extremely useful Chrome extension for bloggers.

I wonder why is it still free (I would gladly pay for it).

Keyword Everywhere gives you the search volume of the keywords you search on Google/Bing as well as some related keywords.

For example, if I search for the keyword ‘Keto Diet in India’, it shows me the search volume of it just below the keyword.

But that is not all.

It will also show you the related keywords that people are searching for. And for all the related keywords it will also show you the search volume for each keyword.

The keyword search volume tells you how many searches this keyword is getting in a month. This is NOT the exact volume but can still give you an idea about it.

Keyword Everywhere also gives you the search volume for the keywords you get from Google related searches as well as the keywords and topics that you get from answer the public tool.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a free keyword and topic suggestion tool that can help you get a lot of ideas in a few seconds.

It’s a tool by Niel Patel who recently bought UberSuggets and has been working to make this tool better and keep it free for all.

To find the keywords/topic suggestions:

1. Enter the seed keyword
2. Select the Language/Country
3. Click the Search button

This will give you hundreds of related keywords in a few seconds.

It shows a handful of the keywords and you can click on the ‘View All Keyword Ideas’ button to get more.

Along with the keyword ideas, it also gives you other useful information:

1. The trend of search volume
2. The estimated volume
3. Cost per Click for the keywords if you run Google ads for it (CPC)
4. Competition for the keyword in Paid search (PD)
5. Competition in Organic Search (SD)

My recommendation is to not worry a lot about 3, 4, and 5.

If you find keywords or topic that you think would be useful for your audience, consider it. Don’t get bogged down by the competition numbers.

You can get more keyword ideas by clicking on the ‘Related’ tab (top-right in the image above).

Google Trends

Google Trends is a tool where you can find how your topic is trending in search.

But more than that, you can also find some keywords and related topics that you can use for your next blog post.

To use Google Trends, enter your search query in the search bar and hit enter. I am using the query ‘Keto Diet’ as an example.

It shows you a couple of graphs such as the trend over time and interest by sub-region.

If you’re targeting specific regions, this can give you some idea on what regions to focus on.

Below the charts, it also gives you two useful set of data (Related Topics and Related Queries).

• Related Topics are those topics that are not about ‘Keto Diet’ but are related to it. So here you find topics such as Shark Tank, Shirakati Noodles, and Healthy Diet. It also shows a percentage value that gives an indication of the recent rise in search for these topics. For example, ‘Shark Tank’ is categorized as a Break Out topic indicating that a lot of people have recently started searching for Shark Tank and Keto Diet (maybe there was a new episode with a product about it).
• Related Queries are terms that are keywords that are related to the seed keyword. Here, you can get a list of Top or Rising keywords in Google Trends.

AHREFS (Paid Tool)

In this list of keyword tools, AHREFS is the only paid tools I will be covering.

There are many paid tools that you can use for keyword research – such as SEMRush, Long Tail Pro, KWFinder, etc.

These are all good tools, but I only use AHREFS as it’s sufficient for all the work I do.

Also, it is not just a keyword research tool. It’s a complete SEO tool and can do a lot more things – such as competitor analysis, site analysis, rank tracking, backlink profile analysis, and site audit.

To find keywords and topic ideas in AHREFS, open the website and click the ‘Keyword explorer’ option.

In the page that opens, enter your keyword and select the country.

It will give you some high-level information about the keywords such as the difficulty, search volume, and clicks.

It will also show some related keywords and suggestions.

To get a list of more keywords, click the ‘All’ option in the sidebar. There are other options as well such as keywords where there is an exact match, where the keyword has all the same terms in the seed keyword (may or may not be together), questions, newly discovered, etc.

It will show all the keywords that are related to the seed keyword. You can also filter the keywords based on words that must be included or excluded.

For example, below I have filtered the list to only show the keywords that have the word ‘keto’ in it.

One of the best things about paid tools is that it allows you to export your keyword data from the tools into a familiar spreadsheet.

To export the data, click the Export button.

Then select the spreadsheet application you use and click on ‘Start Export’.

Once you have the data in Excel, you can easily go through it and select the ones that you find worth turning into a blog post.

Later in this article, I will also cover how to uncover hundreds and thousands of keywords by using the Site Explorer feature in AHREFS.

All the methods covered so far were based on you having a starting point. If you use any method covered above, you need to first use a seed keyword and then all the topic ideas are generated based on it.

In the next section, I am covering the methods where you analyze what’s already working and see how you can blog about the same/similar topics and get some traffic on your blog.

Taking Cues from Existing Blogs

If something is working for others in your niche, it’s likely that it will work for you too.

Therefore, one of the best strategies to make your blog successful is to see what other successful bloggers in your niche are doing.

I am NOT implying copying other people’s work (rather I highly discourage it).

But it’s alright to see what works for them and create something similar (with your own flair in it).

Sometimes, you’ll get ideas about original blog posts, and other times, you can take what is already out there and create something better from it.

Of course, there are many factors involved when it comes to getting traffic on your blog posts, but getting blog topic ideas from other fellow bloggers in your niche is a great starting point.

So let’s see how you can do that.

Analyze a Blog Using AHREFS (Paid Tool)

Earlier in this article, I showed you how to use AHREFs to find useful keywords and topics using their ‘Keyword explorer’ tool.

In this part, I will show you how to analyze other successful bloggers in your niche and generate tons of blog topic ideas.

In the AHREFS tool, click on Site Explorer link.

Enter the URL of the site/blog that you want to analyze. You can use the domain name and analyze the entire site or you can analyze individual pages as well.

In this example, I will be analyzing healthline.com

In the resulting screen, it will show you the metrics of the site as well as some options in the left pane to analyze the site further.

Click on the ‘Top Pages’ link to get a list of all the pages that are ranking and getting traffic for that blog.

You can go through the entire list of pages/post, and if needed, you can also filter the pages based on a keyword.

In this example, I will filter it using the ‘Keto’. This will give me all the blog posts that have the word Keto in the URL.

This instantly gives you hundreds of blog post ideas. In this example, it gave me 458 posts that have the word Keto in the URL.

And that’s not it!

For each post/page, you can also get the keywords it’s ranking for. This will help you create your content that covers all the relevant keywords and the variations in your blog.

You can also export a list of all the blog posts of a website using AHREFS (the number of rows of export allowed will depend on your AHREFs plan).

Find Best Performing Content Using BuzzSumo (Paid Tool)

BuzzSumo allows you to find content that is already performing well on social media.

Instead of guessing which type of content is more likely to perform well, it’s better to analyze what’s already working and create something similar.

To use BuzzSumo, login and then click on Content Analyzer.

Enter the keyword for which you want the results and click on Search. In this example, I am using the keyword ‘Cryptocurrency’.

This will give you a list of all the articles about Cryptocurrency that have done well. You can also get the articles based on the performance in the past week, month, or year.

There are some useful metrics that allow you to sort the articles. For example. you can sort all the articles that have done really well on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or Pinterest.

Your readers (or potential readers) are more likely to be on one or two social media channels and this allows you to get blog post ideas that are doing well on specific social media platforms.

One really useful feature in BuzzSumo is the evergreen content score.

If you have a blog and want to create content that will continue to get traffic in the months/years to come, you can sort the articles based on the evergreen content score. The higher the score, the better.

Pro Tip: If you find something that has high engagement on social media, you can experiment by creating something similar in a different format. For example, if a blog post is doing really well, you can consider creating a video or infographic about a similar topic.

Manually Check Popular Blogs to Find Engaging Content

The tools covered above (AHREFs and BuzzSumo) are great – but come at a cost.

If you’re not making any money from your blog and don’t want to invest in these tools, you need to do a bit of manual work to get blog post ideas.

Go through the popular blogs in your niche and see which posts/pages are getting high engagement.

There are a few ways you can check the engagement:

1. Go through the Comments: If an article has a lot of comments, it’s an indication that people are reading the blog and finding it worthwhile to leave a comment. Go through the comments and check if these are legit (and not spam or short words such as ‘nice article’ or ‘great read’). You’ll often find people asking questions or pointing out gaps in the content. This can help you understand the topic from a reader’s perspective and create better content. (Example from Backlinko.com)
2. Social Shares: A lot of blogs have social share buttons along with the share count. You can quickly scan and find the articles that have performed well on social media. (Example from Backlinko.com)
3. Check the Popular Posts Section: A lot of blogs have a popular posts section in the sidebar or on the homepage. A quick glance will give you some good blog topic ideas. (Example from AuthorityHacker.com)

Subscribe to Popular Blogs in Your Niche

You can get a lot of blog topic ideas from recent articles on the popular blog posts in your niche.

You can use Feedly (or any other similar service) to subscribe to the RSS feed of the popular blogs. As soon as any of these blogs publish a new blog post, it will appear your Feedly list.

This is more like piggybacking on the work done by others.

There is a high possibility that a new blog post is written after doing proper research on the topic and keywords. So you get ready-to-use blog topic ideas that you can further refine and make better.

You don’t necessarily need Feedly for this. You can also subscribe to the email newsletter of popular blogs. In most cases, whenever a new blog post is published, the blog owner sends it to their email subscribers within a week.

Get Blog Post Ideas from User Generated Content

The best blog posts are those that help readers solve a problem or fill a gap.

There are many platforms where people interested in a specific topic can interact with others and ask questions.

These are great resources for you to come up with useful blog post ideas.

Quora: Get Ideas from Questions

Quora is a platform where people can ask questions as well as respond to questions with their answers.

It’s a fantastic resource as it gives you blog topic ideas as well as some direction on what should be covered in the blog.

To find topics in Quora, login and type the keyword in the search bar. It will instantly give you a list of questions related to that searched keyword.

Select the Question option in the left pane, and it will only show you the questions.

You can also filter these based on time. For example, you can get all the questions that have been posted in past one day, week, or month.

YouTube: Get Ideas from Videos

Do you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine?

This means that millions of people go to YouTube every day and search for videos.

You can leverage the existing videos in your niche and get ideas on the blog posts you can write and the videos you can create.

Also, once you write a blog post, it’s a good idea to repurpose that content by creating different formats of it. For example, you can convert your blog post into a video, an infographic, a slide show, etc. and promote it on different channels.

Once you’ve written a blog post, you can also embed other people’s YouTube video in it. This will help a little in your search rankings and can also increase the dwell time of your readers on your blog.

Pinterest: Get Ideas from Pins

Pinterest is a great place to find blog ideas in some niches – such as fashion, craft, health, lifestyle, DIY, etc.

To find blog post ideas, sign in Pinterest and search for the keyword/topic in the search bar.

A quick glance at the results will give you a lot of ideas for your next blog.

If you want to read further on any topic, you can click on the pin and visit the blog from which the pin is used.

Pro Tip: Sometimes you can find good infographics that you can use on your blog (with proper credits to the source). You also get a lot of ideas that you can use to create a featured image of your blog post or social media images.

Reddit: Get Ideas from Questions & Discussions

Reddit is a more text-based platform that is preferred by a lot of people in the tech niches.

There are subreddits for many topics that you can follow and scan for potential blog post ideas. A lot of people use it to ask questions or share useful ideas/content about the topic.

To use Reddit, enter the keyword in the search bar.

In the search results, click on ‘Communities and Users’ to get a list of subreddits on that topic.

Now you can scan relevant subreddits and get potential blog post ideas.

Since Reddit has a lot of discussion going on, you can find a lot of different perspectives on the same topic.

This can be a great starting point and you can read and research further to get a complete overview of the topic.

Facebook Groups: Ask For Ideas

Facebook groups are great when it comes to engaging with your readers and helping them with your content (and learning from them at the same time).

Look for relevant groups in your niche and join these groups. You’ll find a lot of good discussion happening in the groups.

You can easily convert people’s queries into blog posts.

Apart from the questions, you can also ask your members what they want to learn about. If you see a couple of topics come up again and again, consider creating a blog post about it.

Facebook groups work well in some niches and don’t work at all in others. If you see active groups in your niche, consider creating one yourself. The engagement in these groups is a lot higher and it’s relatively easy to scale (as compared to getting traffic from SEO).

Forums: Solve Problems With Your Blog Posts

There are many niche specific forums that can be a gold mine when it comes to generating blog post ideas.

To find relevant forums, type the search query in the following format:

“Keyword” + “Forum”

This will give you a list of relevant forums in that niche. If you don’t like the ones you get, you can tweak the search query by changing the keyword.

Go through the threads in the forums and you will find hundreds of questions related to your searched keyword. Some of these questions can easily be converted into blog posts.

I often use forums to get ideas for blog posts. Apart from looking for ideas, forums are also a great place to learn more about the topic. You can create a list of 5-7 active forums in your niche and visit these daily/weekly for new ideas.

Ask your Blog Readers

If you already have email subscribers or a following on social media or, you have a great way to find blog topics that will directly help your existing audience.

Turn Comments into Blog Posts

Many times, people ask questions in the comments section. These could be the comments on your blog or any other popular blog in your niche that you follow.

These questions can be related to the existing blog post or could be something related to the niche in general.

Scan these comments and you can end up with a good number of blog topic ideas.

In fact, the idea of this blog post came from a comment I got on one of my blog posts.

You should always ask your readers to leave a comment and share their thoughts. A simple line such as “Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section” can increase the comments your blog post get.

Another area where comments are immensely useful is in improving your existing content. If you see a thought or question coming up multiple times, it a good idea to expand your article and include a section that answers the question.

I often use this technique to make my blog post more comprehensive. Many of my popular blog posts have an FAQ section that I created to answer the common questions I was getting on my blog posts (here is an example).

Survey Your Email Subscribers

If you’re not working on creating an email list, you should drop everything and learn how to do it.

Your email subscribers are your best asset and are likely to be the most engaged ones.

If you’re finding it difficult to come up with blog topics (or are overwhelmed by too many ideas), simply send a short survey to your audience and ask them what they want to read next.

This takes the guesswork out of the equation as you can create content that has been requested already.

Another very effective way to ask your audience is to simply do that in the emails you send.

Here is what I do – as soon as I get someone’s email id, I send them an email (which is automatically done using an email automation tool). In the email, I ask them what their struggles are and what they want to learn about.

As your traffic start growing and you get more email subscribers, you will get a constant flux of emails with people letting you know what their biggest pain points are and what they are looking for. These can then be converted into blog posts.

Below is a snapshot of the part of the first email I send to anyone who joins my email newsletter.

Identify Gaps In Your Content

If you already have content that is getting traffic and engagement, you can use it to identify the gaps and create new blog pots on it (or improve current ones by filling the gaps).

Get Additional Keywords from Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that gives you a lot of performance data about your site.

For example, it will show you how many impressions your blogs posts are getting, how many people are clicking on your blog posts, what’s the average ranking position of a keyword, etc.

Once you have some data in Google Search Console, you can use it to improve your existing articles and find new blog topic ideas.

To use GSC, add your site and wait for it to collect some data.

Below is a video on how to add a site to GSC:

To get data from GSC, login and select the site for which you want the data (you can add multiple sites using a single Google account).

In the left pane, click on the Performance option.

Below the performance chart, click on the Pages option. This will display all the pages that are ranking along with the impression and clicks numbers for each page.

Click on any of the page links that you want to analyze.

Now click on the Queries link. This will show you all the queries that the page is ranking for.

While the top queries are the ones for the page is already ranking and getting clicks in search results.

But as you go down the list, you will find two kinds of queries:

1. Queries where impressions are high but clicks are low – these are the ones that you can use to improve your existing article. You can add an additional section about the query/keyword or can make minor edits to include these keywords in your article (without any keyword stuffing).
2. Queries where the impressions and clicks are low – these can be ideas for new blog posts.

Identify Clusters of Content and Beef It Up

2018 has seen a lot of Google search algorithm updates that focused on rewarding sites with better quality content and topical relevancy.

To improve the overall quality of the content on your site, you need to cover a topic in detail. This can be done using detailed blog posts along with supporting blog posts.

For example, if you’re blogging about ‘dog food’, you need to cover related topics to this niche (such as best dog foods, what to look when buying dog food, where to buy dog food, making dog food at home, dog food recipes, etc.).

Imagine having a book about your topic. What all areas should be covered in the book to make it a good resource for that topic. You should try to cover those same areas in your blog as well. You can do that by creating multiple blog posts where each blog post tackles one topic in detail.

And if you’re not sure, you can actually go and search for a book on Amazon and have a look at the Table of Contents.

Here is one I found on Dog Food. You can click on the ‘Look inside’ option to get the topics covered in the book.

Conclusion

You can choose a couple of these methods to generate blog post ideas in bulk.

If you’re on a tight budget, the best way to start is by using free keyword research tool and by analyzing what working for other popular blogs in your niche.

If you can afford to invest in premium tools such as AHREFs, SEMRush or BuzzSumo, you can easily generate a lot of blog topic ideas in a few hours.

Hope you found some useful stuff in this article.

I would love to know what works for you when it comes to generating blog post ideas. Let me know in the comments section.