I’ve developed a little worksheet that’s helped me not only identify good content opportunities but help build links. I thought I’d share it with you in case you might find it helpful as well.
You can use the worksheet as a Google Doc here (be sure to save a copy on your own Google Drive or you will not only give away your best opportunities but lose anything you might be working on in the spreadsheet).
How to use this spreadsheet:
- Enter a broad topic in the first orange box (on the left) to find out questions people are asking about this topic on Q & A websites.
- Enter a more specific topic in the second orange box (on the right) to find out-dated articles that might need to be updated.
To the best of my ability I’ve tried to scrape the results of each query into the spreadsheet, but you can click on the link to the particular source to see more or delve deeper into the SERPs for more opportunities.
Here are a couple ways you might find this useful:
- Find outdated topics about which you can write, providing updated insights or statistics (this is why I call it the “content updating worksheet”).
- Find topics to write about by answering questions people are already asking.
- Find people to whom you can pitch your newly updated articles (since they previously published something on the same topic).
- Use your favorite back linking software and pitch people who previously linked to outdated content with your newly updated content.
- Invite people who have previously written on a topic to contribute to your blog. Ego bait is the new link bait.
Of course there are probably a bunch of things you can do with this spreadsheet. Let’s croudsource this. If you can think of any other uses or would like to make a suggestion on how to improve this spreadsheet, please leave them in the comments below.