There’s a reason why I write certain articles and not others. Selecting the right article to write for your blog can mean the difference between your blog succeeding or not.
Today, you’ll learn how to use the free Google Keyword Planner to find the best articles to write for bloggers. You’ll also learn how to use Google’s search bar to do simple keyword searches.
If you’re only interested in learning how to use Google Keyword Planner, click here.
Table of Contents
Giving up too soon
Many people give up too soon when blogging because they don’t see results soon enough. You need to give an article at least 8 months to rank on Google first before you know whether the article is doing well or not.
You see, it takes time for Google to trust your content enough to recommend it to people searching it up on Google. That time is typically 6 months — 1+ years.
Numbers game
The more high-quality articles you have, the higher your chance of making a living from your blog. However, not all articles are equal.
Are people searching for your articles?
If you create an article that no one is searching for, no one will find it. Doesn’t matter how long you let it sit there, it won’t bring in much traffic.
Is the competition too fierce?
On the other hand, if you create an article that lots of people are searching for, chances are, there will be a lot of bloggers publishing the same articles thus lots of competition and your article may never get seen by enough eyeballs.
Key criteria to consider when researching the best articles to write about
The best article you should write for your blog is an article that has enough monthly search volume, isn’t too competitive, and has high potential to monetize.
Of course, it needs to be in your niche as well.
If you do this right, you may not even have to write that many articles to make a living blogging.
The amount of money you can make from blogging depends on the number of pageviews you have, how you monetize your blog, the niche you’re in, etc.
If you got a lot of articles that rank well on the first page of Google that a lot of people are searching for, you wouldn’t need as many articles to make enough money for you to blog full-time.
How do you find the best article to write for your blog?
There are several methods you can use to find the best article to write for your blog. We call this, keyword research or content research, or keyword analysis. You can go to any free search engine to do keyword research or you can use a free tool. There are paid software out there as well that costs $100+ per month but you don’t have to use it. The free tools are enough. Many of those paid tools underestimate or overestimate the number of monthly searches and aren’t accurate overall.
Let’s look at several free methods you can use to select the best articles to write for your blog.
1. Use Google autofill to find the best article to write for your blog
First, you’ll open a tab in incognito mode. You need to do this to get a clean search since your previous searches can impact what Google shows you.
Take a look at the example above. Let’s say you have a dog niche blog, when you type in “Why do dogs…” it automatically suggests keywords for you. If you type in a keyword and it’s not one of the auto-fill options, it typically means that not enough people are searching it so it may not be worth your time to write an article on it.
Let’s take a look at an example. Say, you want to write an article titled something like “Best sushi restaurant in Toyko”, you can, later on, edit the title to “10 Best Sushi Restaurant In Tokyo To Try In 2023” for instance. Again, at this stage, you may just have a general idea of what you want to write about.
Now, type “Tokyo sushi restaurant” as your keyword into Google and look what it suggests to you:
See how it auto-fills the words “Michelin” and “menu”? Now you may write an article targeting Michelin sushi restaurants in Tokyo and/or include menus in your article to help your viewers decide which restaurant they should visit.
That’s how you should use Google’s autofill to decide what articles to write.
2. The ABC method
The ABC method works like this: you type in a keyword into Google and then type in “ a”, “ b”, “ c”, “ d”, etc.
Let’s say you own an Asia travel blog and you want to know what articles to write for Tokyo, you’ll type in, “Tokyo a” and let’s look at what Google autofill says in the below screenshot.
We can write articles on how to find an apartment to rent in Tokyo, what anime to watch when you’re in Tokyo, cool places to go at night when in Tokyo, attractions in Tokyo, etc.
You can again go through the list with “b” this time.
For example, with this autofill result, you can write an article on the best bakeries in Tokyo, how to get to Tokyo Bay and what to do there, the history of the Tokyo bombing, etc.
This is how you can use the ABC method to find articles to write about. You’ll have to start with a keyword to find more keywords.
3. Use the underscore method
This method is very straightforward: add an underscore (looks like this: __) before your keyword to find blog content ideas.
For example, you can type in “_Tokyo” into the search bar and this is what you’ll see.
Maybe you can write an article on the 2020 Olympic game in Tokyo that happened in 2021.
You can’t always find good articles to write about with this method but it will give you some ideas.
4. Use Google’s Keyword Planner (Basic)
This is probably the most useful free keyword research tool for bloggers. For those who don’t know, Google has a tool called Keyword Planner that is open for anyone to use. You’ll have to sign up for a free account.
Once you sign in, you’ll see this page. Click on “Discover new keywords”.
You’ll then see this page below. Make sure the country is “United States” as that is where most searches come from and where you can make more money.
Other less developed countries may not bring in as much money for you or may not speak English.
When you click on the country, you can deselect any pre-selected countries and type in “United States”.
Let’s say you’re in the dog niche. Now let’s type in “Dog food” into the search bar. This is what we’ll see.
Not all of these keywords will be worth your time because they may be too competitive or may not have enough search volume.
You can click on the box titled “Avg. monthly searches” to sort the number of monthly searches from high to low.
Next, you’ll want to sort the keywords by how competitive it is. You want keywords with low competition so you’ll go over to “ADD FILTER”.
And select Competition from the tab.
Click on “low”.
Now you’ll see a list of keywords sorted by monthly searches from high to low with low competition.
Anything below 100–1k monthly searches is too low of search volume for you to write an article on. Anything above 1k-10k pageviews is good.
Take a look at the keyword, “Dog not eating food”. Now, your next article could be “10 Things to do when your dog is not eating food”. Make sure you include the keyword “dog not eating food” in your title without breaking it up.
Another article you can write is “Raw dog food your dog can eat” as “raw dog” is a good keyword. It has 10k-100k search volume per month and has low competition.
Once you have written a few low competition articles and won it, (meaning you rank on the first page of Google), you can start to target medium competition keywords to write an article on.
This is how to use Google’s Keyword Planner to find articles to write about.
5. Getting keywords with a web address using Google’s Keyword Planner
Another way to get keywords is to navigate to the following page by typing in Google Keyword Planner into Google and logging in.
Once you’re there, click on “Discover new keywords”.
Then, click on “Start with a website”. This is where you’ll type in your competitor’s website address.
You can choose to use the entire site or a single page. If you choose a single page, it could be a blog post that is doing really well for instance.
Once you click on “Get Results”, you’ll see the following page. Make sure the country is set to “United States”.
You can see that the keyword “remembrance pet gifts” is a potential keyword for you to target in your next post. It has a +900% change year to year meaning a lot more people are searching for this key term in Google this year compared to other years. It also has 1k-10k monthly search results which is really good! Although, if you look at the competition, it is labeled as “high”.
You can type in a web address into Google’s Keyword Planner to find out what keywords can be found on your competitor’s site. However, your time is better spent finding your own keywords that are low competition and has high search volume rather than stealing every keyword that your competitor uses.
Given some time, your competitor will realize that a site is competing for the exact same keyword terms as them and you can bet that they’ll do the same to your site.
The pie is big enough for everyone. Find your own slice. Don’t only pine after someone else’s slice.
That said, this method can be very useful for those who want to understand their competitors better.
6. Find refined keywords using Google’s Keyword Planner
When you make a search on Google’s keyword planner, you’ll show you a section called “refine keywords”.
Notice how I use the “Start with keywords tab” and not the “start with a website tab” for this step.
You should see the following page. Look at the right side of the screen and you’ll see “Refined keywords” section.
Refine keywords will give you some more ideas for you. Instead of an article on “dog food”, you can write an article on “dry dog food for puppies” for instance, or, adult dog food for a large dog.
What monthly search volume is enough to write an article on?
The short answer is 100+ monthly searches. Some niches may allow you to bring in lots of traffic with only 100 monthly search volume while others may require 1000 but typically, anything below 100 is too low to try and write an article on. You won’t drive much traffic to your site.
In the beginning, you should try to write articles that are low competition so you win a few of those low competition keywords. This will help build trust with Google which would lead Google to recommend your website for some of the bigger terms with more competition with maybe a higher search volume.
Something to keep in mind if you want Google to drive traffic to your site
Now that you know how to select the right articles to write, there are other things you need to know if you want to maximize the chance of Google driving traffic to your site when someone searches a term or a question on Google, here are some things to keep in mind.
1. Reserve your domain name for more than 3 years
If you only reserve your domain name for a year, Google may think that you won’t be around for long so why should they point traffic to your site?
It’s best to reserve your domain name for more than 3 years. You can turn on auto-renew so your domain name won’t expire before you realized you had to renew it.
2. Don’t spend too much time on each article at the beginning
Obviously, if you can spend more time writing your article, your article will be more comprehensive and hopefully be of a higher quality as well but you can’t spend 20 hours over 2 days working on an article when you’re just starting out. You don’t even know whether that article will do well yet.
Sure, there are certain things we can do to make sure the article you write would have a higher chance of success (ie. enough search volume, not too competitive, etc) but it’s never guaranteed.
Some people would spend a lot of time writing the best articles that don’t bring in any traffic and they see no results one year into blogging.
Not to mention that what you think is great content may not be viewed as such by Google.
When your blog is new, focus on producing high-quality articles in high-quantity. Your articles don’t have to be the absolute best with the most comprehensive content but they should be high-quality enough to stand out from the crowd.
After a year of blogging, go and analyze which articles are doing well. It’ll tell you which articles are worth spending more time on. Create useful tables, charts, videos, etc to make it even better.
In the beginning, you must use your time and energy wisely. Spend time writing lots of articles instead of perfecting a few that may not do well.
3. Improve your most viewed articles 1 year in
One year into blogging, you should stop and check which articles are doing well. The best articles would bring in 1000 views or more per month. Those articles that aren’t doing as well at 200 ish views per month should not be touched.
We’re going to separate the articles into 3 bins.
Bin 1: Articles getting 1000+ pageviews/month and/or is on the first page of Google
Bin 2: Articles getting 400–1000 pageviews/month
Bin 3: Articles getting less than 200 or 400 pageviews/month
If your best-performing articles are getting 500 pageviews per month, that’s what you should focus on improving.
Make your best-performing articles in bin1 a lot better. Add some graphics, tables, charts, videos, etc to take it up a notch. This will help ensure that you stay on the first page of Google and on the top few search results.
You can also add some affiliate links to monetize your article further if you haven’t already done so.
4. Write evergreen content
If you write an article on a celebrity’s marriage status, you may have to update it every once in a few years (or a few months), it’s not evergreen content. On the other hand, if you write an article on “10 Ways to mow your lawn effectively” you may continue to get traffic for years to come because of its evergreen content.
Evergreen content is content that won’t become irrelevant with time. This is something to keep in mind as well when you select a niche to blog in. Celebrity gossip is one of the worst niches to be in because of how irrelevant the blog posts become with time.
(I also personally think it’s boring as hell. It feels like torture to be constantly bombarded by celebrity news I don’t care about)
All your blog articles should be on evergreen content with the exception of a few. You can use current trending world news to bring your article in front of more eyeballs but just know that you must find a way to make them revisit your blog again and again.
5. You don’t have to use a paid keyword research tool
A lot of bloggers overcomplicate things when blogging. They think they have to get the best of everything. They must get a custom theme, a custom email address, an expensive paid keyword research tool, etc. This is not the case. In fact, many paid keyword research tools out there can be inaccurate and can cause you to lose opportunities. You can find great articles to write about using just Google’s free Keyword Planner.
6. Sometimes you can write about things without using any keyword research tool
You’re more likely to continue blogging if what you’re writing excites you and makes you happy. However, there are times when the best articles to write about in your niche aren’t something you’re interested in writing about.
It can quickly become draining and overwhelming to have to continue working on something that doesn’t excite you.
I would suggest you write what you actually want to write about in your niche once in a while (maybe 1 article out of every 20-50) so you can keep blogging fun for you.
Not all of your articles have to be winning articles. Some of your articles may bring in little or zero traffic but if it makes you happy to write it, you should do that once in a while. Just make sure most of your articles are keyword optimized so you can actually have a chance of making it.
Afterthought
For people who want to make a living blogging, there are certainly a lot of things to learn.
Many people give up on blogging because they didn’t give it enough time and they write the wrong articles.
If you want to succeed in blogging, the best thing you can do is to learn how to find the right articles to write about. This will prevent you from spending a year to find out that those articles you spent 20 hours each working on got you no traffic to your site.
Well done! Bookmarking this.