How to Identify the Posts Your Competition Isn’t Writing

Are you too focused on keywords and keyword phrases to notice that there are topics no one has covered? There are posts your competition hasn’t bothered to write. If you can identify those blog posts, you may have found a sweet spot.

In the race to reach the top of the first search engine results (SERP) page for specific terms, it’s easy to fixate on a particular topic or key phrase. “If I just rank for that phrase,” you think, “my blog will get consistent traffic every single day.” That means fighting it out with the competition as you try to climb the search engine ladder.

But what about the key phrases and topics your competition isn’t even bothering to cover?

Believe it or not, there is an untapped audience waiting around the corner. But tapping it requires finding which posts your competition hasn’t thought of even as it attempt to satisfy its readers. Here’s how to identify those topics:

Digging Through Google Analytics

If you run Google Analytics—or any analytics, for that matter—on your website, then there’s a good chance that the insights are there waiting for you to discover them. The only question is how.

Try going to Acquisition -> Search Console -> Queries. If you don’t have this bit of statistics set up, now’s the time to start grabbing those insights. It may take some time for you to build up a large enough sample size to understand what your audience is looking for, but that’s time well-spent.

How exactly do you gain insights your competition might not have? Here are a few suggestions:

• Research the questions your audience is asking. Ever notice that some odd questions asked of Google will result in a click sent your way? What’s with that? Sometimes, these questions are random and nonsensical, but it’s worth mining them for the occasional gems of insight that get to the heart of what your audience is looking for the most.
• Identify the key phrases for which you rank well—and ask why that particular post might have resonated with your audience. It might even be a blog post that took less thought and energy than your average post.

The key here is to abandon what you want to happen and to embrace what your readers want to read. That’s the difference between hoping for success and ensuring that your audience keeps coming back for more.

Get in the Mind of a Reader

Pretend, for a moment, that you’re the kind of reader you want to attract to your blog. Ask yourself a few questions:

• What problems in my life do I like solving?
• What kinds of stories do I like to read?
• What element of a post emotionally resonates with me?
• Knowing all that, what kind of phrases might I enter in a search engine?

You’ll notice that only one of those questions deals with finding the precise topics your competition isn’t writing about. But it’s the collective answers from all four questions that will yield the insights necessary to find out where your readers’ hearts are.

Build your next post not out of a content calendar or even your own personal “lists of topics I need to cover.” Instead, base it on the topics your readers are pushing you toward. You’ll be amazed to see the results.

Have you searched for topics your competition hasn’t covered? If so, what were the results of publishing such post?

About the Author

Dan Kenitz is a freelance writer and ghostwriter from Wisconsin who helps individuals and companies build their brands through valuable content. www.empirewriter.com

Image copyright: Nel_NZ / Pixabay.com