Unique Places for Blog Keywords

Smart Blog on Social Media recently shared a few insights from marketing expert and owner of Top Rank Marketing Lee Odden.

From 4 ways keywords can drive your blog’s editorial calendar

Research keywords in places you might not think to look

There are a variety of places to go and find the keywords that will affect your content strategy. Many marketers use free tools such as WordTracker and Keyword Discovery to help find variations of the core keywords they have already identified. Take that a step further and move to social spaces to gather keywords being discussed by your target audience(s). Sites such as 48ers.com and SocialMention are great places to start your hunt across the social Web. After taking a look at competitor’s keywords (with sites like SEMrush.com), Odden suggests marketers look in the mirror at their own sites and blogs. Not only should marketers pay attention to inbound search terms, but the searched terms from your own site can pay huge dividends. Are you creating the content that your customers are asking you for? Deliver and they’ll reward you by sharing and expanding your visibility.

There are even more great tips and insight in the rest of the article so be sure to read the entire post.

For this post I thought it would be worthwhile to expand on the topic of keyword research with a few more unique ways you can find relevant keywords for your blog.

Blog Keywords

I like using Google’s Keyword Tool for most of my keyword research. This tool works great for finding the exact terms people are searching for but when it comes to getting inspiration for a blog post and a general idea for a keyword this is not where you want to start.

Here are a few of the unique places I get keyword inspiration…

The Radio

For the blog Country Music Life I come up with ideas for new blog posts by listening for new songs. I am also able to listen for the unique words and phrases singers are using in their songs. I also listen to the callers and the hosts of the radio shows for how they phrase certain songs and lyrics.

An example of how this process works was the recent big hit from Darius Rucker Come Back Song. I heard the song on the radio a few months back. Darius – you may recognize him as the lead singer of Hootie & The Blowfish – became a big country star just a couple years ago. I figured the song would be a hit so I knew I had to write about it before interest really took off. I made sure to target the keyword phrase ‘Darius Rucker Come Back Song’. I was able to rank on the first page for the term and the post has over 6,000 views mostly from search engine traffic.

I like listening to the way radio hosts and callers phrase words. I’m able to find ideas for secondary keywords when callers request a song by asking, “I want to listen to that Come Back Song“. I’ll hear that, head over to Google, and find that ‘listen to come back song’ is a somewhat popular term.

These trends work for most country songs so the radio is a great place for that niche.

But what about your business niche?

Does your industry get mentioned on radio? Is it mentioned on any talk radio or TV shows?

Don’t forget about podcasts and video blogs.These are all good places to find ideas for keyword phrases.

Blog Comments

Blog comments can be a great way to find ideas for blog post keywords. Visit competitors blogs or blogs your targeted customer frequents and scan the comments for what people are discussing. Look for relevant keyword phrases that could make for good posts. Use keyword tools to check traffic and competition to see if ranking well is possible and if the traffic is enough to warrant a post.

Product Reviews

I like scanning product reviews for phrases and terms used by actual customers in product reviews. This is great for B2C retail-type businesses. It’s best practice for businesses to ask for product reviews. Having reviews on your site not only improves your search rankings as it adds more content to your site, but the reviews are a great way to see inside the mind of your customers.

You know you can use this insight to improve your products or service, but you can also use the reviews for blogging ideas.

I write for The Shoe Diaries covering Celebrity Shoes. I’ll scan the comments on the blog owner’s site ShoeMall for customer comments. When a customers is reviewing a shoe they may say something like, “I love this white strappy sandal. It’s perfect for keeping my feet cool, but won’t come undone.”

I’ll see the term ‘white strappy sandal’ and think that might be a popular keyword phrase. I’ll head over to the Google Keyword Tool and see if there is actually traffic behind that term. There is a little traffic behind ‘white strappy sandals’ but for ‘strappy sandals’ there is an even more amount. Terms for shoes are pretty competitive, but if you search for terms in unique ways you can usually find some gems in the roughage.