Look, there are two things that hold people back when it comes to producing lots of quality content on their blog:

1. Using keyword research methods to have enough topics for a good publishing schedule.
2. Getting that quality content written.

With Content at Scale’s AI writing machine, you can have 20, 50, or even 100 articles ready to review in minutes. So, that’s problem two.

Problem one is something we’ve dealt with when creating content plans for both our in-house portfolio of websites and for our agency clients.

The ultimate question: How do you get a long list of quality, relevant topics for your blog?

The best answer: Keyword research.

It’s a topic we’ve written about at length (you can find a couple of those posts here, here, and here). In this article, I’m laying out our three favorite keyword research methods, including in-depth video tutorials I’ve made along the way.

Let’s get into it.

Our 3 Recommended Keyword Research Methods

Method One: The “People also ask” Method

I love this one because it hits all the “easy” bells.

• Super fast: You can find dozens of full article titles in a few minutes.
• Really simple: Just choose a broad topic and Google does the rest.
• Free: Only requires Google.com and a private/incognito browser

Who this method is for: New Sites or Fresh Broad Topics

New sites

Sites with between 0-30 blogs are new, regardless of how old the domain may be. This also counts if you have a business website but not a blog and wish to start one. Anything under 30 isn’t authoritative to search engines.

This method works great because it gives you an opportunity to show up on competitive search terms (like in the video) simply for answering a question!

It’s also great because you don’t have to worry about the content you already rank for. You can start fresh.

NOTE for existing sites: This method can still work if you have a lot of content. For example, if you don’t have FAQ-style posts, it’s safe to say these won’t cannibalize your current rankings.

Also, you can break into new categories and broad topics that fit your current content.

For instance, if you have a blog that covers “cars” but you’ve never written about a particular manufacturer (say, Hyundai), use “people also ask” to find Hyundai-related questions.

Additional “People also ask” resources:

• Great article from Ahrefs about how to rank for the People also ask section: https://ahrefs.com/blog/people-also-ask/

Method Two: The “Avalance” Method

Ok, this keyword research method is gaining steam…or maybe it’s beginning to roll downhill?

This is a great option if you have a way to produce a large volume of content in a short period of time.

For Content at Scale users, this method is one of the best to find hundreds of low-competition, low-volume keywords — and get them written, edited, and published each month.

Who this method is for: New sites or fresh broad topics

Very similar to the people also ask method. You’ll want a site with little content or be breaking into new topical ground with an established site.

Additional “Avalance” resources:

Here’s a link to the post that inspired us to make the video about the avalanche method: https://medium.com/swlh/how-i-use-the-seo-avalanche-strategy-to-grow-new-sites-5f096b2b1189

Method Three: The “Content Gap” Method

A “content gap” was coined by SEO tools (like Ahrefs and SEMrush). It’s a report that takes one URL and compares it to a number of competitor URLs to find keywords those competitors rank for, and the original URL doesn’t

This shows you the “gap” between the topics you don’t cover on your site and those your competitors have covered.

Who this method is for: Established and large sites

Don’t get me wrong. New sites can use a content gap, too.

But I’d use it more to find topic clusters. And honestly, it’s easier just to search each competitor’s site for the keywords they rank for and find those you can compete with.

On the other hand, established sites may not have a great idea of what they’ve covered, let alone what competitors rank. The content gap is a two-edged sword in that is disregards your current rankings while finding keywords your competitors have in the top 10 of Google.