How I Come Up with Good Content and Titles for Clients

Last Updated on August 13, 2022 by Michael Brockbank

Trying to come up with stunning content and titles for clients? Depending on the industry, it can sometimes be quite daunting. Coming up with good content on demand is often stressful. However, you can make it easier on yourself thanks to various tools on the Internet.

Now, I can’t guarantee you’ll walk away from this creating amazing titles and content for which people will pay you. This is only because everyone is different. Your actual writing style is different from my own.

However, these are the steps I take to impress clients. Hopefully they will be helpful in building your own strategy.
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Writing Good Content and Titles

Anyone can write content for blogs, websites and eBooks. In fact, the Internet is full of people who put themselves out there whether it’s to share their experiences or put together something creative.

But it’s good content and titles that will get the attention of clients and casual readers.

So, how do you go about doing this?

Step 1: Have an Idea of What to Write

First, you start off with an idea. But there’s a bit more to it than that. You need to dive in a bit to what exactly you want to promote or what you want to teach visitors.

For the sake of argument, let’s say for the duration of this article you want to write a blog post about the best body weight exercises to flatten a stomach. There are several ways you can approach an article like this.

Do you want to:

Be Generic
This is just a basic outline of the idea. In this case, it would be superficial information regarding body weight workouts and how important they are. It’s faster to write, but has less of an impact for readability.
List Item
Also known as “Listicles,” these are some of the most affluent types of content on the Internet. It’s when you turn the project into a list, something you see a lot of online. Buzzfeed is famous for listicles.
How-To Post
Tutorials are among some of the best content to write as well. People are constantly looking for information regarding how to perform an activity the right way. It’s all about learning something new from the comfort of home…and for free.
Answering a Question
Questions and answers are great for SEO, especially in a world where most people ask their smartphones, which use Internet search to provide answers. If you can answer someone’s question, it could prove to be a valuable method.
Exploratory Research
These are some of my favorite types of content to write. Exploring deep into the inner workings of the topic is often time-consuming, but it helps boost your knowledge as well as inform the reader. There is usually a great deal of research involved in pieces like this, and sometimes take days to write depending on the topic.

For this post, I’m going to demonstrate the “listicle” in my examples.

Step 2: Become Aware of the Competition

With a basic plan of what you’re writing, it’s time to take a look at the competition. Regardless whether you’re a casual blogger or writing for a client, there is always competing content on the Internet.

The first thing you should do is run a search through Google. Throw in a few terms regarding your topic and see what the top sites have in place in terms of content.

For this example, I used, “exercises to flatten your stomach.”

Go through each of the top websites and take a look at how the writers put together the pieces. Pay attention to things like length, outbound links, language style and the amount of quality information in each article.

Your plan is to come up with something better than these sites. Can you offer more information? Is there something missing from the text you would add to make it better? Perhaps you can go into a little bit of detail about a particular fact or point.

It’s all about doing more than competing websites. Even if you don’t appear in the first page of Google, the effort is certainly noticed by search engines and visitors.

Step 3: Using the Keywords Correctly

Keywords still play an important role in content today, although they don’t work like they did back in the early 2000s. Instead of saturating your content, it needs to be in a more natural process. This includes similar terms and synonyms.

Creating good content and catchy titles is more than just using a high quality keyword or phrase. In today’s market, it’s about knowing user intent. This is how Google ranks content, by understanding exactly what people are looking for.

So in a case of “flatten stomach,” you would also use terms like “flatten belly,” “six-pack,” “thinner waist” and “beach body.” I only know this because I’ve already researched terms that are similar for a past post.

One of the reasons many clients love my work is because of how natural the flow is when I write. I don’t put a lot of emphasis into a specific keyword or phrase to write good content. It’s more about trying to convey specifics regarding the topic.

The end result is higher traffic, a more-informed customer base and a better performing article.

Step 4: Feed a Basic Title Idea into LSIGraph

Latent semantic indexing, or LSI, is a process of finding similar content people are looking for in search engines. When you scroll to the bottom of Google after a search, you’ll see a list of “Searches related to…”

This is an example of LSI.

Using LSI as a guide to creating content helps you reach out to people who are searching for those specific terms. Usually, I’ll try to include at least three of these terms at least once throughout an article.

I use LSIGraph for just about every article I write every day. It’s a great tool and is free to use. Input the idea of your title or topic, and LSIGraph will find good matches of which people are searching online.

You might also like:

Use the results to shape your content and title. You may even find yourself writing a few of them down for future articles you’ll want to write. I often take the top five that match my idea and try to fit them into the piece I’m creating.

LSIGraph is a great tool for coming up with website content. All it takes is a topic or an idea and you’ll see what people are looking for in search engines. It’ll probably become one of your most used online tools.

Step 5: Input Your Title Idea into CoSchedule

My current client turned me onto CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer more than a year ago, and I haven’t turned back since. It’s a great tool to help you create catchy titles that are more likely to be shared on social media.

This is something any client would love to have working for them.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer is a free tool. I’ve signed up with a free account so I can use the system more often.

Leaving the LSIGraph results tab open, visit CoSchedule and start putting together possible titles. The tool will analyze your words and provide you with a score based on what works the best according to statistical data.

According to LSIGraph, “flat belly exercises” is a common search term. So because I am creating a listicle, I’ll see what “7 Flat Belly Exercises You’ll Love to Do” scores.

As you can see, the title scored in the upper 60s. Which isn’t bad, really, but you want to aim higher. Anything over 70 is considered good content by the system.

It may take a few minutes to restructure the title to make it stand out, but it’s worth the effort to create something catchy.

Pick the best title to use for the post you’re creating. In my example, I made six different attempts before finding one that scored 71. Sometimes, I’ll strive for upper 70s and lower 80s. All I had to do was add the power word, “Amazing” after the number.

This is the title you’ll use to guide your blog post or article.

Step 6: Plan Content Accordingly

Now comes the hard part…actually writing that good content. This is all based on what style of article you’re creating and personal skill. In my example, I am creating a list of seven “flat belly exercises.” This means I’ll have to research the best exercises that work on core muscle groups.

But remember, you want to surpass the competition. If a competing article doesn’t go into detail regarding the exercise, add a bit of information to your own. Create something unique by expanding what someone else has created.

It’s not “reinventing the wheel;” it’s called improvement. People have been doing this for centuries. Taking an idea and putting their own spin on it is how many have made millions of dollars and secured a great deal of success.

In some articles in the past, I’ve included short YouTube videos from other creators to show how to do something. In my example today, I would research how to do those seven exercises on YouTube and embed the video next to each point.

Of course I would add my own text to clarify, but the videos are quite impactful for helping people and engaging the audience.

If you really want to boost your brand or expertise, you could create the videos yourself and upload them to YouTube to embed in your article. Not only do you engage the website visitors, but you expand your market into YouTube as well.

Step 7: Use Tools like Yoast SEO to Guide the Content

I use WordPress to create content even if it’s for a client who doesn’t have it. This is because it’s an online word processor I have customized that gives me all the tools I’ll need to create good content for people.

I could write an article in Microsoft Word or Libre Office, but then I wouldn’t get tools like Yoast SEO.

This free plugin for WordPress analyzes what you write and provides a color-coded method of telling you if a piece is optimized for search engines.

I usually try to keep everything “in the green” as often as possible.

I’ve found clients are more accepting of articles I write since using Yoast, and I have far fewer revision requests.

Of course this tool doesn’t fix spelling or grammar issues, but it works well to keep clients happy.

Step 8: Cite Authoritative Sources

Citing authoritative sources is vital if you want to boost traffic for yourself or clients.

Not only does it demonstrate knowledge to readers, but it shows Google you’re interested in solid facts. External linking also helps Google fully understand what your content is about, which improves page rank as well.

For my example, I would link to sources such as scientific papers or analysis regarding the effectiveness of exercises or to prove another point within the piece related to the topic.

When citing your facts, think of it more as a way to extend the article. You’re linking to a supplemental piece that provides more information regarding a specific point.

Just make sure your external links are relevant. You wouldn’t link back to a blog post about car repair if you’re writing about personal health and fitness. This would actually hurt your search engine rankings.

Make Clients Happy with Good Content

That’s my process of writing good content and titles for clients. I cannot guarantee you’ll have the same results as myself, but perhaps this can help guide you in some way. Find a good flow for yourself and surpass the competition…even if that’s including me.

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Michael Brockbank

Michael has been a freelance writer since January of 2012 and has contributed to a long list of blogs throughout his career. He is also a published author and continues to help other writers find their own paths. Maintaining both the WriterSanctuary blog and YouTube channel, he covers topics that relate to writing in all forms.