It happens to so many business owners, no matter how good their SEO strategy: They sit down to write a blog post and end up staring at a blinking cursor. I’m no stranger to this experience. As a professional SEO copywriter, I have to generate blog post ideas daily for my clients as well as my own business. I’m sharing my top five free tools for coming up with blog post ideas when I feel stuck. Because I know you’re curious, I’m including tips on using AI for ideation.

5 Places to Get Free Blog Post Ideas

1. Use Answer the Public.

Answer the Public is an impressive AI tool that looks at the autocomplete data in different search engines. You know how you can type in a word, such as “restaurant” and Google will suggest phrases like “restaurant near me”? That’s what Answer the Public “listens” for. It then organizes those autocomplete search phrases visually. These graphics are extremely detailed. I find it easier to view on a desktop than my phone.

To get blog posts ideas with Answer the Public, type in a base keyword. For example, I entered “copywriting.” Answer the Public immediately generated over 150 phrases. They’re organized by questions, prepositions, and comparisons. 

Looking closely, you’ll see that not all of these search phrases are useful as blog post ideas. For example, I wouldn’t write a blog post titled “when did copywriting start.” That doesn’t seem like helpful content marketing. However, I might write a post around the phrase “when to use copywriting.”

I recommend using Answer the Public when you’re casting a broad net around the keywords your main web pages are optimized for. These blog post ideas may not be the lowest hanging fruit, but it’s fair to assume people are actually searching for them. With the rise of AI-powered search, long tail keywords are playing an increasingly big role in SEO, too.

2. Check Ubersuggest’s Content Ideas.

Ubersuggest is Neil Patel’s keyword research tool. (The same company now owns Answer the Public.) I use it regularly to come up with SEO strategies for my clients. It provides helpful information, including the search volume and difficulty for keywords. (You can find more on what all this means for you here.)

To use Ubersuggest, start by typing in a keyword. Get inspiration for blog posts in the Content Ideas section. This will show you related keywords and highly ranked pages optimized for your keyword. Of course, you should never directly copy someone else’s work. It might get you unstuck if you’re feeling writer’s block around your keyword though. 

Ubersuggest’s Content Ideas are good for generating blog post ideas when you want to target a specific keyword but aren’t sure how to approach it. For example, I want to write a post optimized for “blog SEO.” I see that the most successful pages are how-to guides. I could write a guide to log SEO and put my own spin on it. The more original information you can include, the better.

3. Turn FAQs into blog post ideas.

If you want to speak directly to clients’ concerns, FAQs are a great place to turn. By FAQs, I mean topics that come up frequently during your sales process and client experience. I also encourage entrepreneurs to include things that clients don’t necessarily know they should be thinking about. For example, if you’re a wedding photographer, your client may not know what a second photographer is or whether they should be considering one for their photography package.

Turn FAQs into blog post ideas by taking note of what comes up most often in your discovery calls and client experience. Then write down your thoughts on these topics. Once you’ve got the bulk of your copy, do some keyword research. Maybe your keyword will be “second photographer.” Whatever keyword you choose, add it into your post in a way that sounds natural and conversational.

In my experience, it’s best to use FAQs for blog posts when you want to make your clients’ lives easier by answering questions before they necessarily arise. You can make these blog posts part of your client experience as touch points. If you’d rather hit publish and not think about it again, you’ll still be helping your SEO and attracting clients who view you as a supportive resource.

4. Repurpose popular social media content.

Most content creation models start with a big piece of content and repurpose it as many smaller pieces. In other words, most people will tell you to make a blog post then turn it into short-form video and social media posts. But it can work the other way around, too! You can turn a viral social media post into a blog post.

For example, I created an Instagram Reel about ChatGPT developing the ability to lie to human users. It got a lot of traction compared to my typical posts. I could do some keyword research and create a blog post around this. The catch is that I’d have to find a way to frame it so that Google saw it as relevant to my main categories (SEO, blogging, and copywriting).

5. Use AI for ideation.

Speaking of AI, I’d be remiss if I didn’t show you how to use AI for blog post ideas. Some people choose to avoid AI due to its unprecedented negative environmental impacts. If nothing else is working for you, though, you can use a tool like ChatGPT for ideation.

You can take a few approaches. First, you could ask the AI to generate a list of blog post ideas based on a keyword. I did that in the ChatGPT example below. As you can see, the ideas are relatively generic, but they provide a good starting point.

Another option would be to ask the AI what problems your clients are facing before they hire you. Then ask the AI to generate a list of blog post ideas based on that.

Regardless of the approach you take, you’ll need to do your own keyword research to optimize the content you create. Additionally, you can’t rely solely on AI to create blog content for you. Google currently prioritizes human-created content that includes original data, even if that’s just anecdotes and client stories.

Next Up for Your Blog

One of my favorite things about all of these tools is that they’re largely free. Ubersuggest and Answer the Public, for example, allow three free searches each day. That’s plenty for most small business marketing research.

Curious how you can drive more organic traffic – and leads – by blogging for your business? I share tips and resources to my email list every week. Join and get up to date blogging tips to your inbox!