Mar 10 2010

What You’re Missing on your Website or Blog: A Secret for Content Creation

Some days, it’s nearly impossible to come up with fresh content for your blog. Other days, you’re brimming with ideas.

Or maybe you think your website is as perfect as can be – all of your visitors find exactly what they came for.

Regardless of which camp you’re in, your website and blog probably have some form of site search.

Ever take advantage of it using Google Analytics?

If you have site search, but don’t have it set up in your Analytics. It’s relatively easy and you can learn how to do that here.

Once you’ve gathered some data, log in to your Analytics account. Under the Content section, go to Site Search, then Search terms.

Google Analytics site search terms

If you’re the blogger who needs some inspiration, you’ll hopefully find some here. Maybe you covered the topic in a previous post, but it wasn’t quite what the searcher was looking for. Now you can remedy that.

If you’re in the “my web site is perfect” camp, these keywords might give you a good sense of what people are having trouble finding on your website. Perhaps it’s because the content doesn’t exist (so create it). Maybe the content does exist, but it’s difficult to find (so create a better way to get to it).

Site search terms are a great way to inspire content; but as you can imagine, are also a good way to fix usability issues too.

Nicki Hicks is a Search Engine Marketer at flyte new media, a Web design and Internet Marketing firm in Portland, Maine. Nicki blogs at the Maine SEO Blog, and you can find her on Twitter at @nickihicks

5 Responses to “What You’re Missing on your Website or Blog: A Secret for Content Creation”

  1. Ian Garlic says:
    March 10, 2010 at 1:39 pm

    This is a fantastic strategy that we use with all of our clients. We (people in general) get so caught up in terms like “Dentist Minneapolis” when in fact we found more potential patients were looking for terms like “I hate my teeth” Why do my teeth not look right? WE then not only add those terms but :ahem: optimize for them. We have found many hidden gold mines this way.
    Don’t forget to help others once in a while too. Adding charitable information exposes worthwhile causes to your readers AND adds some content.

  2. Lena Brown says:
    March 10, 2010 at 2:14 pm

    Now why didn’t I think of this?? The light bulb just went off. What a wonderful strategy. I am heading over to my Analytics account right now… Great article! Mr. Ian Garlic you are dead on with your strategy as well… Just did a post for my blog Talk Life highlighting this @ http://tinyurl.com/yhf86lv.

    Very valuable information here… Muchos Gracias!!

  3. Create iPhone Applications says:
    March 12, 2010 at 6:31 am

    In google analytics, search terms option is very good to know that from which search terms people are coming to your website or blog.

  4. Susan says:
    March 30, 2010 at 9:26 pm

    This is a great tip, but when I went into Analytics for one of my sites, I noticed you have to set up your site for a Google site search engine. I’ll have to look into that before I get any data. :(

  5. John Jefferson says:
    September 27, 2011 at 8:06 am

    Fantastically useful bless you, I do think your readers would certainly want a lot more information similar to this continue the good effort.