How to figure out what to blog about next for your SEO
"She didn't need a content strategy document. She needed to read her inbox."
Hi, I'm Nikki Pilkington. My site is https://nikki-pilkington.com/ and in this episode of "SEO F**king What", I'm tackling one of the most common content problems I see — businesses that are constantly stuck on what to write next, when the answers have been sitting in their inbox, their reviews, and their sales call notes for years.
Here's what I'm covering:
- Why most businesses get their content strategy wrong from the very start
- Why your customers' questions are real search queries being typed into Google right now
- The content gold hiding in your reviews — yours AND your competitors'
- How to mine testimonials, sales call notes, and support emails for blog ideas that actually convert
- The case study of Claire: a financial planner who wrote 5 posts straight from her inbox, got three ranking on page one within two weeks, and now has one as her second-most visited page
- Why the language your clients use (not your industry jargon) is closer to what gets typed into Google than anything from a keyword tool
- How to brief a copywriter or SEO with something actually useful
I also give you a proper piece of homework. Not the "might do that one day" kind. The actual do-it-this-week kind.
If you know someone staring at a blank screen trying to think of blog topics, send them this. The answers are already in their business.
Get found. Make money. Stop stressing. Start listening to the people already talking to you.
LINKS
Non-Wanky SEO Courses: https://nonwankyseo.com
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Transcript
Most businesses approach content the same way.
Speaker:Someone says they need a blog.
Speaker:They sit down, and they try to think of things to write about.
Speaker:They come up with a vague list of topics that seem sensible.
Speaker:They write a few posts.
Speaker:The posts sit there, occasionally getting a handful of visits from people who
Speaker:don't buy anything, and eventually the whole thing quietly dies because nobody
Speaker:could figure out what to write next.
Speaker:It doesn't have to work like that.
Speaker:This is SEO Fucking What?
Speaker:I'm Nikki, and I've spent 30 years doing SEO, back before it was even called SEO.
Speaker:And somewhere in your business right now, there's a pile
Speaker:of gold you haven't touched.
Speaker:Your customers have been telling you exactly what they want to read,
Speaker:exactly what questions they need answered, and exactly what problems
Speaker:are keeping them awake at night.
Speaker:They've been doing it for years, in their reviews, in their emails, in the notes
Speaker:from your sales calls, in the questions they ask before they sign a contract.
Speaker:You just haven't been collecting it.
Speaker:It's the content strategy hiding in plain sight.
Speaker:Think about the last time a prospect got on a call with you.
Speaker:What did they ask?
Speaker:What did they say that they were worried about?
Speaker:What did they tell you had gone wrong before they found you?
Speaker:Those questions are search queries, real ones, typed into Google by real
Speaker:people who don't know you exist yet.
Speaker:When a prospect asks, "How do I know if my current HR setup is actually
Speaker:compliant?" That's a blog post.
Speaker:When a new client says, "I had no idea you could do that. I thought I'd have
Speaker:to sort that out separately," that's a page missing from your website.
Speaker:When three different people in the same month ask the same question
Speaker:about your pricing, that's an FAQ that should already be written.
Speaker:It's easy to miss this when you're in the middle of running a business.
Speaker:The questions just feel like part of the conversation, but patterns emerge
Speaker:and quickly once you start paying attention. Where should you look?
Speaker:Reviews are probably one of the most underused content
Speaker:resources in most businesses.
Speaker:Not just your own reviews, your competitor's reviews too.
Speaker:Read them carefully, not the star ratings, the actual words people use.
Speaker:When someone writes, "I finally feel like someone actually explained this
Speaker:to me in plain English," that tells you exactly what was missing before
Speaker:they found you and exactly what you should be saying on your website.
Speaker:Testimonials are a slightly more polished version of the same thing.
Speaker:Strip out the flattery, look for the specific problem they mention
Speaker:having before they worked with you.
Speaker:That problem is your content.
Speaker:Look at sales call notes and email threads.
Speaker:The questions people ask before they commit are almost always the questions
Speaker:other prospects are googling at 2:00 in the morning trying to decide
Speaker:whether to even pick up the phone.
Speaker:If you keep answering the same three questions, those questions need to be
Speaker:on your website before someone calls.
Speaker:And support queries and client emails work the same way.
Speaker:Every time someone asks you to explain something you assumed was
Speaker:obvious, that's a piece of content that doesn't exist on your site.
Speaker:Claire runs a small financial planning firm.
Speaker:She'd been trying to maintain a blog for two years with middling success, mostly
Speaker:writing about industry news that her clients didn't particularly care about.
Speaker:When she went back through six months of client inquiry emails, she found the same
Speaker:questions appearing over and over again.
Speaker:People wanted to know what the process looked like before they committed.
Speaker:They worried about whether their situation was too complicated.
Speaker:They asked about fees in a way that suggested they'd been burned before
Speaker:and needed reassurance. Several mentioned they found her after googling
Speaker:something specific about pension consolidation and finding a LinkedIn
Speaker:article she'd commented on, but that none of her content addressed.
Speaker:She wrote five posts based entirely on those questions.
Speaker:Plain English, direct answers, no jargon.
Speaker:Within two weeks, three of them were ranking on page one.
Speaker:One of them is now consistently the second-most visited page on her site
Speaker:and regularly brings in inquiries from people who've never heard of her before.
Speaker:She didn't need a content strategy document.
Speaker:She needed to read her inbox.
Speaker:If you're doing your own content, set aside an hour this week.
Speaker:Go through your last three months of inquiry emails, your reviews, and
Speaker:your sales notes if you have them.
Speaker:Write down every question, every concern, every phrase that appears more than once.
Speaker:You'll almost certainly end up with more content ideas
Speaker:than you can write in a year.
Speaker:If you're briefing a copywriter or an SEO, this is exactly the kind of
Speaker:material they need and rarely get.
Speaker:Instead of handing over a list of keywords, hand over the questions
Speaker:your customers are asking.
Speaker:The language people use when they don't know the jargon is almost always closer to
Speaker:what they type into Google than anything an industry insider would come up with.
Speaker:The best content doesn't come from keyword tools or editorial calendars or
Speaker:what your competitors are writing about.
Speaker:It comes from paying close attention to the people who already trust
Speaker:you enough to ask questions.
Speaker:They've been telling you what to write.
Speaker:You just need to start listening. Until next time, get found, make
Speaker:money. Write about what they're telling you to write about.
