Last week I caught up with a few SEO guys to talk about what’s new and changing as 2015 comes to a close. Everyone agreed that it was becoming harder to game the system, and having high quality content was even more important for a site. So what’s considered “high quality content”?
It’s certainly not 300-400 word articles that are keyword stuffed. We’re talking about 1,000+ words as a minimum, partnered with beautiful images, and composed in a strong narrative. These are articles you want to save and read when you’re on the toilet (lol). In my view, that’s a good litmus test on how awesome something is.
A couple of them from my archive:
- Sex Is Sex. But Money Is Money (Medium)
- Edward Snowden: The Untold Story (Wired)
- How (And Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars (Wait But Why)
- A Beginner’s Guide To Crossfit (Nerd Fitness)
I know you’re probably thinking “Hey I’m not Wired, New York Times, or some professional writer – so how am I supposed to do this?” Well, you’re asking the wrong question – they should be:
- What questions are people asking?
- How can I provide the best possible answer?
- How will I deliver it to them?
- How is mine better? (Design, Quality, Length, Depth?)
In those four articles I listed above:
- What happens behind-the-scenes as a high-end escort in New York?
- Who is Edward Snowden?
- Why is SpaceX obsessed with Mars?
- How do I get started with Crossfit?
The next step involves finding the people that are asking questions. Think about it…if they’ve taken the time to register an account online, create a post, and ask a question – chances are it’s a topic that’s pretty important to them. If I had a blog and store dedicated to selling interval training workout equipment such as clothing, supplements, and kettlebells – here are six channels to find topics that my customer cares about:
- Wikipedia
- Quora
- BuzzSumo
- Forums
There are plenty of other methods online, but this is just a small list that gets you started without getting distracted by wormholes in social media. Topics that you find here can be used for email opt-ins, long-form articles to get SEO juice, or post-purchase email sequences.
Since most people aren’t ready to buy from you on their first website visit, use it as a part of your funnel to get their contact information and control the channel of communication.
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a form of workout that varies on time and intensity. Instead of jogging on a treadmill, you’d instead sprint for 30 seconds at maximum effort, then job for 1 minute, then cycle through again. The specifics vary, but that’s the 80/20 of how HIIT works. So let’s take a look at what each channel offers if we’re looking for content ideas.
Wikipedia
This is the go-to solution for anything you want to learn more about. It’s the first place you go, and anyone can edit or add to an existing article without formal training. However, the key lies in the references. Usually these are high-quality articles that have passed the quality test, so take a look at them to get inspiration. If we plug high intensity internal trianing, here are some ideas that show up in references:
- Ten ways to get more from your workout
- “High-intensity Interval Training: A Time-efficient Strategy for Health Promotion?
- “The Scientific Basis for High-Intensity Interval Training”
Also known as the “front page of the internet”, Reddit is an aggregator of the most popular discussion topics online. Users can upvote or downvote submitted content, making this a self-selecting pool of the best topics. The key is sorting it by “Top” to find the all-time most upvoted topics. A quick and easy way to find out what people are asking about. For HIIT, it looks like there isn’t much action on Reddit, but a few ideas:
- HIIT Workout routines you can easily mix in your week
- HIIT workout routines for women
Known mostly as a site that women use to curate wedding dresses or fashion ideas, Pinterest is a goldmine for infographics and DIY “how-to” tutorials. The key is to identify images that are heavily re-pinned, commented, and liked. The social proof doesn’t get better than that. If we do a quick search on HIIT, here are a few topics we can gleam:
- Five rules of effective HIIT
- 15 minute sprint intervals for fat loss and muscle gain
Quora
One of the best Q&A sites on the internet, Quora has high quality filters on both sides to provide users with the most relevant answers. All content is curated by its community of users, and many high profile experts/celebrities are on there. Like Reddit, users can also upvote answers they find useful. If we put HIIT into Quora, here are some ideas we get based off the top stories:
- Is it better to do intervals or steady jogging for fat burning?
- What are the benefits of interval training over traditional cardio?
- Which is more effective for fat loss?
BuzzSumo
This is a tool created by Noah Kagan and the AppSumo team that allows you to see total shares on social media for certain topics or content. By having an idea what’s being shared across Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, you can strategically find topics of high interest to your customers. The free version allows you to search within the past year, and you’ll need a paid version to get the historical data. Nevertheless, a year’s time span is enough to keep up with what’s going on and relevant. Here’s what HIIT gives us in Buzzsumo:
- The Beginner’s Guide To HIIT
- The 30-Day HIIt Training Challenge
- HIIT: 10 Exercises That Will Warm You Up Instantly
Forums
There’s a forum for virtually every topic on Earth. Depending on your niche some may be easy to find, while others hide in the dark corners of the internet. Once you find it, check the quality by seeing how many total users are online, registered, and what caliber of quality the last 20-30 posts have. If it’s a high traffic forum with lots of interaction, that’s a good sign. For topics on HIIT, it looks like bodybuilding.com is a big one although it’s not directly related. HIIT is a topic for fat loss and cutting cycles, so let’s take a look at what’s there.
- HIIT vs Regular Low Impact Cardio
- Questions About HIIT
- When To Do HIIT
Once you have an idea of the most discussed and popular topics, it’s time to combine them together and see where you can add value. Going back to our list of topics, here they are below:
- Ten ways to get more from your workout
- High-intensity Interval Training: A Time-efficient Strategy for Health Promotion?
- The Scientific Basis for High-Intensity Interval Training”
- HIIT Workout routines you can easily mix in your week
- HIIT workout routines for women
- Five rules of effective HIIT
- 15 minute sprint intervals for fat loss and muscle gain
- Is it better to do intervals or steady jogging for fat burning?
- What are the benefits of interval training over traditional cardio?
- Which is more effective for fat loss?
- The Beginner’s Guide To HIIT
- The 30-Day HIIt Training Challenge
- HIIT: 10 Exercises That Will Warm You Up Instantly
- HIIT vs Regular Low Impact Cardio
- Questions About HIIT
- When To Do HIIT
It looks like most people don’t know how to get started, nor do they know the difference between traditional cardio and other workout routines. Whatever topic you end up choosing, you can have a fairly high degree of confidence it’s something people care about.
What Do You Do Next?
Pick one that gives an instant result and is highly useful, instead of a 50+ page e-book that takes time to provide a result. Most people don’t have attention spans that high and will likely just forget about it. The quicker you can deliver a value, the more you have deposited in your customer’s trust bank. For the HIIT topic, here’s a few that might work:
- The Best 15-Minute HIIT Workout Routines
- Top 10 HIIT Exercises To Mix In Your Week
This can also form your content strategy around blogs, infographics, FAQs, or post-purchase email sequences to build a relationship with your customer. If you have multiple product categories that aren’t very related, you’ll have to move up to a more general topic. The other option is to just create separate content for each category. It’s a lot more work, but it helps segment your list much more effectively.
The best example is our previous guest Tom from Goodbye Crutches, where he has an opt-in guide for different archetypes of his customer base. Even the photography he uses it a reflection of that, and it allows him to be very precise with his marketing efforts to grow the business.
Still Need Help?
Hopefully this post has given you the tools needed to fix up your email opt-in to get more subscribers. If you still need help with this, we offer a free service to research, create, and publish one if your store qualifies. To find out more, click here.
Subscribe to Build My Online Store in your favorite podcast player, or check out the episode list of our eCommerce podcast.
