What Content Should I Create?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to what content you should create. It’s an ongoing process of learning and adapting to your audience. You’ll need to identify your goals, understand your customer’s pain points, and leverage your strengths and resources. One way to do this is by using playbooks — predefined strategies and workflows that you can always call on to get the job done.

Here are a few you should consider trying. And if you use MarketMuse, we’ll show you how to implement them using the platform.

This post only scratches the surface of what you can do using MarketMuse Saved Views. We’ve compiled dozens of different ways you can use these views in What Should I Write About?

Relevant Topics That Haven’t Been Covered

How do you know what topic to cover, if you’ve never written about them? It’s pretty easy, if you’re using MarketMuse, that is. When analyzing your site, we include all its ranking topics, relevant non-ranking topics associated with published pages, and topics that your top three competitors rank for, where you don’t.

We have a Saved View that makes it easy to quickly create a short list of candidates. Of course, not every topic will be of interest. But that’s okay. You can apply filters to the other columns of data to create a more reasonable list:

• Topic Volume — Monthly search volume. This is more of an aspirational metric as you won’t be able to capture all the searches. You have to share the traffic with others who appear in the SERP.
• Potential Traffic — How much traffic you could expect to receive by creating a page on this topic.
• Difficulty — How difficult it is for anyone to rank for a topic.
• Personalized Difficulty — How hard it is for you to rank for a topic.
• Topic Authority — For topics where you don’t rank, you’ll find Topic Authority to be quite low and oftentimes negative. Consider applying a filter to this metric and sorting so that those with the highest Topic Authority (however small) appear at the top.

When searching for topics that you haven’t properly covered, Topic Volume and Potential Traffic allow you to filter and sort for those situations where traffic is a priority. Personalized Difficulty reveals topics that’ll be comparatively easy to rank. Topic Authority indicates the likelihood of success.

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Topics That Are Ranking but Don’t Match Intent

A comprehensive page can rank for numerous topics but that doesn’t mean it will rank well for all those topics. Sometimes the page ranks for a topic which isn’t really the focus of the page. Quite often, it’s because the page doesn’t properly match the intent for that search term.

In this case, your best bet is to create a new page focusing on that topic and link to it from the existing one. Whatever you do, don’t try to optimize one page for hundreds of different terms, each with their own nuanced intent.

Here’s an example from the MarketMuse home page. While these topics may be covered to some degree, they’re not the focus of the page.

This view is similar to the previous one, “Relevant Topics That Aren’t Ranking,” with the addition of the URL column. The key difference lies in how the filter is applied. In this case, we want to filter on “Best Rank is greater than 40”. You want a high enough number to catch poorly-ranking topics, as these are the ones likely to suffer from intent mismatch.

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Pages That Are Ranking but Don’t Match Intent

Once again, we’re on the hunt for intent mismatches. But in this case, we’re starting with pages instead of topics. To do this, we will:

1. Create a Saved View using the Pages Inventory with a different set of metrics.
2. Apply a filter to create a shortlist of possibile pages that need further investigation.
3. Look at the details of each page to determine how (and to what extent) the intent mismatch is occurring.

Here’s an explanation of the data that can be found in each column.

Related Topics shows the number of topics associated with the page. Powerful pages typically have a large number of related topics, so applying a filter to this metric can weed those out of the list.

Page Authority is another metric for which you can apply a filter. Pages with low authority tend to be the ones in need of remediation.

That same reasoning also applies to Avg. Topic Authority. Just keep in mind that the average is shown because a page can rank for many topics. It is possible to have good Page Authority for one topic but the average can get dragged down by the other poorly performing topics.

Competitive Advantage is how much easier it is to rank for you to rank than your competitors for a topic. Once again, it’s averaged because one page can rank for many topics. Consider sorting the list using this metric so that you prioritize the situations where you’re most likely to be successful.

Organic Traffic Est. is a judgment about how much traffic the page receives. This value metric can also be helpful in deciding what to prioritize.

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Topics With the Biggest ROI

One way to think of ROI is regarding advertising cost — what you would pay to get traffic through pay-per-click advertising, if you couldn’t do it organically. When looking at Topic Inventory, Potential Value ($) is based on cost-per-click (CPC) * Topic Volume. Just like Volume gives us some notion of traffic, Potential Value ($) provides an awareness of value or cost.

We include Top Rank in this view so you can immediately determine whether you have an existing piece of content covering the topic. Consider updating it if you’re ranking well for the topic. Otherwise a new piece of content is probably in order. You’ll just need to verify whether there’s an intent mismatch.

Topic Volume is included in this view, but it’s more of an aspirational metric. You’ll never capture all the search volume because unfortunately, you have to share that traffic with everyone else that appears in the SERP.

Although Potential Value ($) is the primary filter for this view, consider also applying filters for Personalized Difficulty and Topic Authority. In the ideal situation you’ll have topics with great Potential Value ($) that are easy for you to rank (low Personalized Difficulty) where you have a distinct advantage (high Topic Authority).

If you’d like to find quick wins that take into account ROI, filter for topics where you currently rank between 6 and 30 (fine tune those values to match your definition of quick wins).

The next, we look at a view set up specifically to find quick wins. It’s similar to this one, but we swap out Potential Volume ($) for Potential Traffic.

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Topics With the Quickest Wins

This Saved View in MarketMuse helps content marketers find quick wins by identifying topics that rank between 5 and 30 on the SERP. It provides metrics like Personalized Difficulty, Topic Authority, and Potential Traffic to assess the likelihood of success and potential traffic growth. By filtering based on these metrics, content marketers can prioritize topics that offer the best chances of success and meaningful traffic growth.

Most content marketers consider quick wins as content ranking somewhere between 5 and 30, which puts you between the bottom of the first page of the SERP and page 3. However, you can fine-tune the filter as you see fit.

The advantage of creating this view using MarketMuse is that we provide you with proprietary metrics – Personalized Difficulty, Topic Authority, and Potential Traffic.

• Personalized Difficulty tells you how hard it is for you to rank for a topic and is unique to your site.
• Topic Authority is your competitive advantage based on the authority you’ve built up around a topic.
• Potential Traffic is the amount of traffic you could expect if you update your content, taking into account your existing rank, Personalized Difficulty, and Topic Authority.

Instead of just applying a filter on rank, you could include Personalized Difficulty, Topic Authority, and Potential Traffic. This way you have a shortlist of quick wins for which you’re most likely to succeed (Personalized Difficulty and Topic Authority) and see some decent results (Potential Traffic).

Topic Volume is also included in this Saved View as an alternative to Potential Traffic. Just remember that you won’t be able to capture all that traffic, so Topic Volume functions more as an aspirational metric.

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Topics With the Most Traffic

Readers with an eagle eye will notice that this view uses the same metrics as the previous Saved View, Topics With the Quickest Wins. The only difference is the order of the columns, which is for display purposes only.

The key difference is that you’ll probably want to filter or sort based on Potential Traffic or possibly Topic Volume. Just keep in mind that Topic Volume isn’t a good predictor of traffic.

Personalized Difficulty and Topic Authority are also helpful in that you can narrow your choices to those where you have a realistic chance of success. That means finding topics with low Personalized Difficulty (they’re easy) and high Topic Authority (you have a strong competitive advantage).

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Takeaway

Determining what content to create can be a daunting task, but with the help of MarketMuse Saved Views, you can streamline the process and make more informed decisions. Whether you’re looking for topics that haven’t been covered, identifying intent mismatches, seeking the biggest ROI, targeting quick wins, or aiming for the most traffic, these Saved Views provide valuable insights and metrics to guide your content creation strategy.

Remember to adjust the filters and parameters to suit your specific needs and goals. As you explore the suggested topics and pages, consider the metrics such as Topic Volume, Potential Traffic, Difficulty, Personalized Difficulty, Topic Authority, and Competitive Advantage to prioritize your content creation efforts.

By leveraging the power of MarketMuse and these Saved Views, you can uncover untapped opportunities, optimize existing content, and create new pieces that align with user intent and drive meaningful results. So, take advantage of these tools, add the identified topics to your content plan, and start creating high-quality, targeted content that resonates with your audience.

If you’re ready to take your content strategy to the next level, schedule a live demo with MarketMuse or explore their blog for more resources and insights on scaling your content production. Remember, with the right tools and strategies, you can publish better content, faster, and achieve your content goals.