How to find the supporting topics to talk about ?

[seoanalytics]

Hello,

How do I figure out which supporting topics to talk about in my content ?

Are the supporting topics the questions people have ?

Do I find those in the keyword tool ?

Thank you,

[DonnaDuncan]

I saw a great tip by Justin Briggs on Twitter the other day. You know how Google always displays "Searches related to..." at the bottom of search results? Justin explains how you can scrape those. I'd consider those "supporting topics" and you could also use them as seeds for keyword research.

https://twitter.com/justinrbriggs/status/980149937869434881

The attachment also shows you his tip.

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[seoanalytics]

Thank you Donna for the tip. So from my understanding it is better to go after user intent in terms of topics that I decide to cover instead of the topics that I might find the content suggestion of moz that are not necessary what people type but just what pages that rank "well" cover. Correct ?

[DonnaDuncan]

Ah. I misunderstood your question. I thought you were trying to get at site topical authority whereas you seem to be asking about how to find topics to cover in a specific (single) piece of content.

Jeff Baker wrote a post on the Moz Blog back in February called "The Google Ranking Factor You Can Influence in an Afternoon [Case Study]". He talks about a process for identifying which topics you should cover in a content piece. Check it out. I think he's on target.

Basically he's suggesting you look at the top search results for your query focusing on the content that is trying to satisfy the same intent as yourself. Then inventory the top ranking content's breadth and depth and try to one-up them. He suggests you can do this manually or using tools like Marketmuse and SEMRush. Read the comments as well for useful insights and suggestions.

[seoanalytics]

No problems. I have seen that article before. My only issue with using Marketmuse or Semrush is that they look at who ranks but what about if those that rank all have the wrong topics... For example let's imagine I want to rank on "Bordeaux bike tours".

The tools recommend to cover Gironde and Garonne because that is what they find in the site that rank in the TOP 20... but isn't it wiser to cover Cycling holiday and Bordeaux which seem to be closer that what my target keyword is ?

Thanks,

[DonnaDuncan]

Absolutely.