What Topics Should I Write About? 12 Proven Strategies for 2026

The blank page can be intimidating. You know you need to create content to drive traffic, build authority, and get noticed by AI like ChatGPT and Perplexity, but the question 'what topics should i write about?' keeps you stuck. It's not about finding just any topic; it's about finding the right topics—those that align with user intent, address critical content gaps, and establish your brand as an authority. This guide moves beyond generic brainstorming.

This article provides a direct, actionable blueprint for your content strategy. Forget guesswork and endless idea lists that go nowhere. We will explore 12 specific frameworks for discovering high-impact content ideas, from analyzing competitor weaknesses and AI query trends to building unshakeable topical authority. Each strategy is a systematic approach to content creation, ensuring every article you publish has a clear purpose and a high potential for discoverability.

You will find concrete methods to:

• Pinpoint content gaps your competition has missed.
• Align your writing with the E-E-A-T principles for both search engines and users.
• Develop content clusters that demonstrate deep expertise on a subject.
• Measure the actual performance and ROI of your content efforts.

The goal is to equip you with a reliable system for generating content ideas that deliver results. Instead of wondering what topics you should write about, you'll have a repeatable process for identifying opportunities that build your audience and business. Let's get started.

1. AI-Generated Content SEO Strategy

Deciding what topics to write about is often easier than producing the content at scale. An AI-generated content SEO strategy focuses on using AI tools to increase content output for search engine rankings while preserving quality and brand authenticity. This approach allows you to efficiently create outlines, first drafts, and meta descriptions, freeing up your team for more strategic tasks like original research and expert interviews.

This method isn’t about replacing writers but augmenting their workflow. For instance, SEMrush provides AI-powered content briefs to structure articles, while tools like Jasper help e-commerce clients generate product descriptions in bulk. Success hinges on a human-in-the-loop process, where AI handles the repetitive groundwork and human editors provide the final polish, expertise, and unique brand voice. The goal is to blend automation with authentic human insight. To truly excel with AI-generated content, explore how an AI Humanizer for SEO can help you rank with authentic and engaging content that Google loves.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To properly integrate AI into your content workflow, follow these best practices:

• Human-First Editing: Always have a human expert review, edit, and add original insights to AI drafts. Treat the AI output as a starting point, not the final product.
• Establish Brand Voice Guidelines: Feed the AI custom instructions and style guides to maintain a consistent tone across all published pieces.
• Track Performance Separately: Tag AI-assisted content in your analytics to measure its performance against purely human-written articles and calculate its ROI. For a deeper understanding of this strategy, explore our guide on creating AI-generated SEO content.

2. Content Gaps Analysis and Competitor Research

Instead of guessing what topics to write about, a content gap analysis provides a data-driven roadmap by identifying what your competitors rank for that you don’t. This strategy involves analyzing search engine results to find underserved keywords, questions, and topics that your rivals have missed or covered poorly. By targeting these gaps, you create content with a clear path to earning organic traffic and establishing authority in your niche.

The core idea is to reverse-engineer success by finding opportunities your audience is actively searching for. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush automate this by comparing your domain's keyword profile against competitors, revealing keywords they rank for while you are absent. For example, an e-commerce site selling hiking gear might find its competitors rank for “best waterproof hiking boots for wide feet” but not for “how to properly break in hiking boots.” This presents a perfect opportunity for a targeted, helpful article. Learn more by diving into our guide on SEO content gap analysis to build a winning strategy.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To effectively uncover and fill content gaps, integrate these practices into your research process:

• Prioritize Intent: Focus on gaps with clear commercial or informational intent that aligns with your business goals. Not all gaps are worth filling.
• Combine with Search Volume: Cross-reference identified gaps with keyword search volume data to prioritize topics that have both low competition and high audience interest.
• Create Unique Angles: Don't just replicate competitor content. Fill the gap with a superior resource by adding original research, unique data, or expert insights.
• Monitor Competitors Monthly: Set up alerts or conduct regular monthly checks to stay updated on new content your competitors publish and identify fresh gaps as they emerge.

3. Brand Mention Tracking Across AI Models

As AI chatbots and search engines become primary sources for information, understanding how your brand is mentioned within them is critical. Writing content about brand mention tracking in AI models explores how to monitor brand visibility, sentiment, and citation frequency in AI-generated responses. This topic addresses a new frontier of brand management where prominence in answers from models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude directly influences audience perception and trust.

This approach is not just about counting mentions; it's about analyzing the context and quality of your inclusion. For example, a SaaS company can track how often its software is recommended as a solution, while an e-commerce brand can see which products are cited in AI-powered shopping guides. Success depends on creating highly citable, authoritative content that AI models are likely to reference. For a complete guide on this emerging practice, see our post on AI-powered brand monitoring.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To effectively track and influence your brand's presence in AI models, focus on these strategies:

• Create Citable Assets: Develop original research, data-driven reports, and in-depth case studies that position your brand as an authoritative source AI models will trust and cite.
• Optimize for Priority Models: Identify which AI platforms your target audience uses most. Focus your optimization efforts on becoming a preferred source for those specific models first.
• Monitor Sentiment and Context: Use monitoring tools to track not just the frequency of mentions but also the sentiment (positive, neutral, negative) and the context in which your brand appears.
• Build Authoritative Backlinks: Secure links from reputable domains that AI models already recognize as trustworthy, as this signals to the AI that your content is a credible source.

4. Search Engine Optimization for E-E-A-T

When deciding what topics to write about, focusing on your brand's expertise can be a powerful strategy. Writing content that aligns with Google's Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) signals involves creating deeply informative pieces that establish your credibility. This approach is critical for topics in "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) categories like finance and health, where accuracy is paramount.

This strategy isn't just about keywords; it's about building a reputation that both users and search engines trust. For instance, Healthline builds authority by having medical professionals review its content, while financial blogs often publish original research to showcase their expertise. The goal is to prove you are a legitimate authority on the subjects you cover, which in turn boosts your search visibility and user confidence. An effective E-E-A-T strategy makes your content a reliable resource, encouraging high-quality backlinks and social shares naturally.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To build your site's E-E-A-T signals, concentrate on demonstrating genuine expertise and credibility:

• Build Detailed Author Bios: Create comprehensive author pages that list credentials, experience, education, and links to other authoritative publications or social profiles.
• Publish Original Research: Conduct and publish first-party studies, surveys, or data analysis. This creates a unique asset that others will cite, generating valuable backlinks.
• Create Topic Hubs: Develop pillar pages and content clusters that cover a subject exhaustively. This signals to search engines that you have deep topical authority.
• Use Schema Markup: Implement Author and ReviewedBy schema to programmatically highlight the credentials of your experts to search engines.

5. Long-Form Content Strategy for AI Discoverability

Choosing what topics to write about involves considering not just search engines, but also AI models that source information from the web. A long-form content strategy centers on creating in-depth, comprehensive articles (2,500 words or more) designed to rank highly in traditional search and serve as authoritative sources for AI-powered answer engines. This approach builds topical authority, making your content a go-to resource for both human readers and AI systems seeking detailed explanations.

This method moves beyond basic blog posts to create definitive guides. For example, Backlinko’s exhaustive case studies and HubSpot’s 5,000+ word pillar pages are frequently cited in both SERPs and AI-generated summaries because their depth leaves no question unanswered. The goal is to produce content so thorough that it becomes the final destination for anyone researching that subject. These pieces attract high-quality backlinks, improve user engagement signals, and position your brand as an industry leader.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To successfully execute a long-form content strategy, follow these key steps:

• Structure for Scannability: Break up your article with clear H2 and H3 subheadings, bullet points, and short paragraphs. This helps readers and AI systems easily parse and understand the information.
• Include Original Data: Integrate statistics, charts, and original research to add unique value. This data makes your content more credible and likely to be cited by others.
• Prioritize Internal Linking: Strategically link to related articles on your site to create topic clusters. This shows search engines the breadth of your expertise and keeps users engaged.
• Refresh Content Regularly: Update your long-form pieces annually with new information, statistics, and examples to maintain their relevance and ranking power.

6. Topical Authority and Content Clusters Strategy

Deciding what topics to write about becomes systematic when you aim to build topical authority. This strategy involves creating interconnected content clusters: a central "pillar" page covering a broad topic, supported by multiple "cluster" articles that delve into specific subtopics. This structure signals to search engines that you are a comprehensive resource, boosting your rankings for an entire subject area, not just a single keyword.

This approach moves beyond targeting individual keywords to owning entire conversations. Companies like HubSpot and Moz have famously used this model to dominate their niches, building extensive learning centers that serve as go-to educational hubs. By internally linking between the pillar and its clusters, you create a logical site architecture that improves user experience and helps search crawlers understand your expertise. Alongside developing content clusters, understanding how to promote your personal brand and build authority is crucial for establishing yourself as an expert in your niche.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To build your own content clusters and establish topical authority, follow this framework:

• Map Core Topics: Identify 5-10 broad, foundational topics central to your business that you want to be known for.
• Create Pillar Pages: Develop one comprehensive, long-form guide (a pillar page) for each core topic. This page should be the definitive resource.
• Develop Cluster Content: Write 10-20 detailed articles (cluster pieces) for each pillar, with each one addressing a specific subtopic or question related to the core theme.
• Link Strategically: Ensure every cluster piece links up to its pillar page, and the pillar page links out to all its cluster articles. Use consistent anchor text for internal links.

7. Keyword Research and AI Query Trends

Deciding what topics to write about requires understanding how people search, and this has changed with AI. Content focused on keyword research and AI query trends analyzes how search behavior is shifting from simple keywords to complex, conversational questions asked to AI models. This approach involves identifying question-based searches, tracking new AI discovery prompts, and optimizing for user intent behind these queries.

This method bridges traditional SEO with the new frontier of AI visibility. Instead of just targeting "SEO tools," you might target a long-tail conversational phrase like "what is the best SEO tool for tracking AI query trends?" Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs help uncover these question-based keywords, while Sight AI's prompt tracking provides data on what users are asking AI assistants directly. Success means creating content that directly answers these detailed, conversational questions, positioning your brand as an authority for both search engines and AI models.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To align your content strategy with modern search behavior, use these practices:

• Analyze “People Also Ask”: Regularly review the “People Also Ask” and “Searches Related To” sections in Google for your target terms to find ready-made, question-based topics.
• Focus on Conversational Phrases: Prioritize long-tail keywords structured as natural questions. This aligns your content with how people speak to voice assistants and AI chatbots.
• Monitor AI Chatbot Responses: Input your target queries into popular AI models to see what information and sources they prioritize, then aim to create content that fills any gaps.
• Track Emerging Topics: Use tools to monitor trending keywords and questions in your industry to find new content opportunities with low competition before others do.

8. On-Page SEO Best Practices for AI and Search

Regardless of what topics you should write about, on-page SEO ensures your content is understood by both traditional search engines and emerging AI systems. This topic focuses on optimizing individual pages with technical and strategic elements like meta tags, schema markup, and page structure. These signals help Google and AI models like Perplexity properly categorize, understand, and prioritize your content for relevant queries.

This foundational practice is not about keyword stuffing but about creating clarity and context. For instance, an e-commerce site using product schema markup can get rich snippets in search results, while a blog implementing FAQ schema can directly answer user questions on the SERP. The goal is to make your content machine-readable and user-friendly, a principle championed by authorities like Moz and tools like Yoast SEO. By mastering these best practices, you ensure your carefully chosen topics have the best possible chance to rank and be discovered.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To optimize your content effectively for both crawlers and users, apply these fundamental on-page tactics:

• Structure Your Content Logically: Place your primary keyword in the H1 tag and meta title. Use a clear hierarchy of headings (H2, H3) to organize information and improve readability.
• Implement Schema Markup: Use structured data to explicitly define your content type. Common types include Article, FAQPage, Product, and HowTo, which can help generate rich results.
• Optimize Page Elements: Write compelling meta descriptions between 150-160 characters to improve click-through rates. Add descriptive alt text to all images for accessibility and visual search.
• Focus on Performance and Linking: Ensure your page loads in under 2.5 seconds to meet Core Web Vitals. Link naturally to relevant internal pages to distribute authority and help users find more information.

9. Publishing Cadence and Content Calendar Strategy

Instead of just deciding what topics to write about, your success often depends on how consistently you publish. A publishing cadence and content calendar strategy is the operational plan that dictates how frequently you release new content to build audience expectations and momentum with search engines. This systematic approach ensures a steady flow of value, which signals to Google that your site is an active and reliable authority in its niche.

This method isn’t about sacrificing quality for quantity; it’s about creating a sustainable and predictable workflow. For example, successful SaaS blogs often maintain a rhythm of two to three high-quality posts per week, while industry giants like HubSpot have been known to publish over 16 times weekly to dominate SERPs. The key is finding a rhythm that your team can maintain without burnout while still meeting your growth goals. It turns content creation from a reactive task into a proactive growth engine.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To build a powerful and consistent publishing engine, follow these best practices:

• Start with a Sustainable Cadence: Begin with one to two high-quality articles per week. Consistency is more important than a high-volume start that you cannot maintain.
• Plan Ahead: Use a content calendar to plan your topics, keywords, and publication dates at least one to three months in advance to avoid last-minute scrambling.
• Batch Your Content Creation: Dedicate specific blocks of time to outlining, writing, and editing multiple articles at once. This improves efficiency and maintains a consistent voice.
• Mix Content Types: Blend evergreen cornerstone articles with timely, trending topics to capture both long-term and short-term traffic opportunities.
• Automate and Schedule: Use your CMS or third-party tools to schedule posts in advance. This ensures your content goes live on time, even when your team is focused on other tasks.

10. Technical SEO for Indexing and Crawlability

Choosing what topics to write about is pointless if search engines cannot find and understand your content. Technical SEO for indexing and crawlability focuses on the foundational elements that allow search engines like Google to efficiently discover, crawl, and add your pages to their index. This involves optimizing your site’s architecture, from XML sitemaps that guide crawlers to robots.txt files that set access rules, ensuring your valuable content is visible and accessible.

This strategy is not about content creation itself but about making sure the content you produce gets seen. For instance, a large e-commerce site might use hierarchical XML sitemaps to organize thousands of product pages, while a blog could use the IndexNow protocol to alert search engines of new posts immediately. Success depends on a clean technical setup, allowing search bots to spend their crawl budget on your most important pages, not on dead ends or duplicate content.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To ensure your content is properly indexed and crawled, integrate these technical best practices into your workflow:

• Submit Sitemaps Directly: Upload your XML sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to provide a clear roadmap of all your important URLs.
• Implement Canonical Tags: Use rel="canonical" tags on pages with similar or duplicate content to signal to search engines which version is the primary one to index.
• Monitor Crawl Statistics: Regularly check the Crawl Stats report in Google Search Console to identify crawl errors, accessibility issues, or unexpected crawler behavior. To speed up discovery, learn more about website indexing speed optimization and how to get your content seen faster.
• Maintain a Clean robots.txt: Ensure your robots.txt file isn't accidentally blocking important resources or pages, and only use it to prevent crawling of non-essential sections.

11. Measuring Content Performance and ROI

Deciding what topics to write about is only half the battle; proving their value is equally important. Measuring content performance and ROI involves tracking specific metrics to demonstrate how your content contributes to business goals. This approach moves beyond simple traffic numbers to connect content creation directly to revenue, lead generation, and brand authority, helping you justify marketing spend and refine your strategy.

This method isn’t just about reporting; it’s about making data-driven decisions. For example, a B2B SaaS company can use attribution modeling in Google Analytics to see which blog posts contribute most to demo requests. Similarly, an e-commerce brand can create content performance dashboards to identify which product guides drive the highest sales. Success requires a clear framework for tracking, from initial click to final conversion, turning content from a cost center into a proven revenue driver.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To effectively measure your content's impact, implement these tracking practices:

• Use UTM Parameters: Create unique UTM codes for campaigns to accurately track traffic and conversion sources, especially for content promoted across different channels.
• Track Organic Growth by Content Type: Segment your analytics to compare the performance of blog posts, case studies, and landing pages to see which formats deliver the best results.
• Monitor Keyword Rankings Over Time: Use an SEO tool to track ranking improvements for target keywords associated with new content pieces to measure their direct SEO impact. For a complete guide, discover our step-by-step process on how to measure content performance.

12. Optimizing Content Distribution and Amplification

Deciding what topics to write about is only half the battle; ensuring that content reaches its intended audience is the other. A strategy for optimizing content distribution and amplification focuses on maximizing the reach and impact of every published piece. Instead of relying solely on organic search, this method involves strategically promoting, repurposing, and amplifying content across multiple channels to build awareness, generate backlinks, and drive engagement.

This approach extends the value of your initial content creation efforts far beyond a single blog post. For example, a well-researched article can be repurposed into a visually compelling infographic for Pinterest, a series of quick tips for a Twitter thread, or a detailed discussion for a podcast episode. This not only reaches different audience segments but also reinforces your message across the web, a principle demonstrated by Buffer's social media research and HubSpot's content ROI studies. The goal is to create an ecosystem around a single topic, not just an isolated article.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To build a powerful distribution engine for your content, apply these practices:

• Systematic Social Sharing: Share new content multiple times across your social channels within the first month. Create 3-5 different versions of the post with unique hooks, images, or quotes to keep it fresh.
• Repurpose for Different Platforms: Transform your article's key points into visual summaries for Instagram, a short video for TikTok, or a professional slide deck for LinkedIn. This caters to platform-specific user behavior.
• Active Outreach and Promotion: Email any experts or brands you mentioned in your article and ask for a share or backlink. Also, promote the content directly to your email list to generate an initial surge of traffic and social proof.
• Refresh and Re-Promote: Identify your high-performing evergreen content, update it with new information or statistics, and re-launch it as if it were brand new. This is a low-effort way to get significant results from existing assets.

12-Topic Comparison: What to Write About

From Ideas to Impact: Your Next Steps

You started this article asking a fundamental question: what topics should I write about? After exploring dozens of frameworks, from analyzing competitor gaps to aligning content with the marketing funnel, it should be clear that the answer is never just a single idea. The right answer is a system for generating a continuous stream of valuable, data-backed topics. Moving beyond random brainstorming to a structured, strategic approach is the difference between content that disappears and content that dominates.

This guide provided a deep dive into the modern mechanics of topic discovery and content strategy. We covered everything from building topical authority with content clusters to optimizing for E-E-A-T and adapting to emerging AI query trends. Each of the twelve core strategies discussed offers a distinct path to creating content that doesn't just fill a slot on your calendar, but actively works to attract, engage, and convert your target audience.

Key Takeaways for Your Content Strategy

To translate these concepts into action, focus on these critical principles:

• Strategy Over Tactics: A great topic is useless without a great strategy. Before writing, always define its purpose. Is it to build top-of-funnel awareness, capture high-intent search traffic, or support a product launch? Your objective dictates the format, depth, and distribution.
• Data is Your Compass: Stop guessing what your audience wants. Use tools to analyze competitor content, identify question-based keywords, and monitor search trends. Data-driven topic selection removes subjectivity and dramatically increases your chances of ranking and resonating.
• Authority is Built, Not Claimed: Publishing a single article on a subject isn't enough. True authority comes from building content clusters that cover a topic comprehensively. This signals your expertise to both search engines and users, establishing your site as a go-to resource.
• Execution Determines Impact: The most brilliant topic idea will fail if the execution is poor. This means committing to high-quality writing, sound on-page SEO, a consistent publishing cadence, and a robust content distribution plan.

Putting It All Together: Your Action Plan

Feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities is normal. The key is to start small and build momentum. Don't try to implement all twelve strategies at once. Instead, pick one and master it.

1. Choose Your Starting Point: Select the strategy that best addresses your most immediate need. Is your biggest problem a lack of organic traffic? Start with a Content Gap Analysis. Are you struggling to be seen as an expert? Begin building your first Topical Cluster.
2. Identify Your First Topic Cluster: Pick a core, high-value theme central to your business. Brainstorm 5-10 related subtopics (spokes) that link back to a central pillar page. This single exercise can fuel your content calendar for a month or more.
3. Create, Measure, and Iterate: Publish your content, then meticulously track its performance. Which topics drove the most traffic? Which generated leads? Use these insights to refine your process for the next cycle.

Answering "what topics should I write about" is not a one-time task; it's an ongoing discipline. By adopting a systematic approach grounded in data and focused on building authority, you transform content creation from a chore into a powerful engine for sustainable business growth. The ideas are out there, waiting to be discovered and turned into assets that deliver real impact. Your journey starts now.

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