Blog Writing Isn’t Outdated. Blogs Without A Strategy Is.
Blog writing isn’t outdated. Blogging without a strategy is.
For years, businesses have been told they need to write blogs for SEO. So, naturally, a lot of businesses started publishing articles simply because they felt like they should. Pick a topic. Write a blog. Add a few keywords. Publish it. Repeat next month. But creating content just for the sake of adding another blog to your website isn’t much of a strategy.
Blogging itself isn’t outdated. What is outdated is guessing what people want to read and creating content without understanding whether anyone is actually searching for it. Today, we have access to far more data about what people are searching for, why they’re searching for it, where competitors are gaining visibility and even the conversations happening within LLM’s (Chat GPT, Gemini & Google AI Overview). That means every piece of content can be created with much more intent.
START WITH THE OPPORTUNITY, NOT THE BLOG
Instead of starting with “What should we write about this month?”, we prefer to start with a different question: “Where is there an opportunity for this business to be found?” That opportunity might be a question potential customers are regularly searching for, a valuable keyword the website isn’t visible for, a topic competitors are gaining traffic from or a conversation happening within AI search where the business is currently missing.
But it could also be something timely happening within the industry. Maybe there’s a new trend, change or topic suddenly generating a lot of conversation that your customers are likely to have questions about. Sometimes creating valuable content means recognising what people are going to want to understand and contributing your expertise while the conversation is happening. Once we understand the opportunity, we can decide what type of content makes sense.
Sometimes that might be a blog. Other times, the better answer could be improving an existing service page, creating a new landing page or expanding content already on the website. The content comes after the strategy.
HOW WE USE SEMRUSH TO FIND CONTENT OPPORTUNITIES
At Sleepi Digital, one of the industry-leading platforms we use to help guide our SEO and content strategies is Semrush. Rather than relying on assumptions about what people might be interested in, Semrush gives us real search and competitor data that can help us understand where the opportunities are. Here are a few of the things we look at.
MISSED TOPIC & AI OPPORTUNITIES
Search is no longer limited to someone typing a few words into Google. People are increasingly asking detailed questions through AI-powered search experiences such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Through Semrush, we can research topics and prompts around a business and identify areas where competitors are appearing within AI search but you are missing.
This can highlight conversations we may want a business to become more visible within. But finding a gap doesn’t automatically mean we create content for it. We still ask whether the topic is relevant to the business, whether its potential customers would genuinely be asking that question and whether the business has something useful to contribute. That’s what turns an opportunity into a strategy.
UNDERSTANDING SEARCH INTENT
Finding a topic people are searching for is one thing. Understanding what they actually want to know is another. Take “Rarotonga travel deals” as an example. Rather than only seeing that people are interested in Rarotonga deals, we can look deeper into the prompts being asked around that topic.
In this example, people aren’t only asking for deals. They’re asking whether booking a Rarotonga package is better value than booking flights and accommodation separately.
That tells us much more about the potential customer. They’re likely comparing their options and trying to work out the best way to book their trip. For a travel business, that creates a clear content opportunity: instead of writing another generic article about Rarotonga, we could create content that directly answers the question people are already asking.
That’s the difference between creating content around a topic and creating content with intent.
FINDING THE GAPS BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR COMPETITORS
Competitor research can also uncover opportunities we may otherwise never know existed. Using Semrush, we can see the keywords and topics competitors are gaining visibility for and compare those against the visibility of your own website.
If several relevant competitors are appearing for a topic and your business isn’t, we can investigate why. Maybe your website doesn’t cover the subject at all. Maybe you have a page, but it doesn’t answer the search particularly well. Or perhaps there is an opportunity to approach the topic with better information, more expertise or a perspective your competitors haven’t provided.
The goal isn’t to copy what competitors are doing. It’s to use that information to understand the wider search landscape and identify opportunities that genuinely make sense for your business.
IT’S NOT ABOUT CREATING MORE CONTENT
A good content strategy doesn’t necessarily mean publishing more. It means being smarter about what you publish. A website could have hundreds of blogs, but if those articles don’t relate to what potential customers are searching for or help build the website’s relevance around the products and services it actually offers, more content isn’t necessarily going to solve the problem.
Every blog should have a reason for existing.
- Who are we trying to reach?
- What are they searching for? What is their intent?
- Where is the opportunity?
- And what can this business genuinely add to the conversation?
When those questions guide your content, blogging becomes much more than filling up a news section. It becomes part of your wider search strategy.
BLOG WITH INTENT
Blogging isn’t outdated. Blogging without a strategy is. The way people search will continue to change, and the platforms they use to find information will change with it. What remains important is understanding your potential customers and creating useful content around what they genuinely want to know.
At Sleepi Digital, we use search data, competitor research, search intent and AI visibility insights to help determine where those opportunities are. Because the goal isn’t to publish as much content as possible. It’s to make sure the content you do publish has a job to do.