How to use data analysis to generate new topics and optimize your content.

Are your competitors outranking you? You can use data analysis to discover the reasons why and get ideas that will help you catch up and surpass your competition.

When you’ve been running a site for a while, it can be challenging to come up with new content ideas. As an affiliate marketer, you probably already use keyword tools to discover what types of content your visitors are looking for, but you can take a step further to unlock even more topics of interest. With data analysis, you can improve existing content, learn why competitors are outperforming you and more.

Here are different types of data analysis you can perform to improve your content and how to use them.

Content gap analysis

The first type of data analysis we’ll cover is a content gap analysis. To conduct a content gap analysis, you will need to research your competitors. There are multiple ways to do this. One way is to use SEMrush or Ahrefs’ keyword gap tool. You will input three to five different competitors into the content gap tool, and it will show you what your competitors are ranking for, displaying content opportunities you can take on. This is content your site could be missing. You can also do this manually by inputting your target keywords into the search engine and seeing which sites rank and what types of content Google is prioritizing.

You will need to filter out data you don’t need, like their branded keyword data. You are looking for keywords that your competitors are ranking for within the top positions on the SERP.

Topic research analysis

Once you’ve come up with content ideas, you need to use the data to make sure you’re covering a topic fully. A topic research tool can help you identify new angles for your blog post. It can uncover questions that people are asking around a particular topic. Topic research tools include Contentful, SEMrush and TopicSeed. If you don’t have a topic research tool, you can use the “People also ask” section of the Google search results page. Example:

Competitor content analysis

Gather data on your competitors’ top 10 to 15 posts and add them to a spreadsheet. You will want to look for information like:

• URL
• Page title
• Focus keyword
• Keyword volume
• Word count
• Backlinks

Add this information into columns. Next, create a recommendations column and add action items to it, so you know what to do next with each piece. Finding topics that you haven’t covered yet and topics you can improve upon will help you fill your content calendar with pieces that have a good chance of helping you increase market share.

Summary

Relevant content can help increase traffic to your affiliate site and bring the right types of visitors to your offers. Data analysis can help you discover new content topics, what to cover in your content pieces, and how to win the SERP (search engine results pages).

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