The best blog post ideas are questions real people have already typed into Google. You don’t have to guess them: Google prints many of them on the results page. This page is about turning those questions into a list of posts worth writing, as one part of an SEO content strategy. If you want the deeper tour of each source and its limits, see how to find what people are searching for.
Where do the real questions come from?
Search your topic in Google and read the page from top to bottom. Each of these shows a different side of what people want.
- People Also Ask. Google’s documentation describes it as “a cluster of questions that are related to what the user initially searched for” (Google Search Central). Open a question and more appear under it. These are full questions, already in searchers’ words, which makes them the closest thing to ready-made post titles. Our guide on where to find People Also Ask questions covers collecting them.
- Autocomplete. Google says its “autocomplete predictions reflect real searches that have been done on Google” (Google Search Help). Type your topic followed by “how”, “why” or “can” and watch what it offers. The method is on our page about Google Autocomplete.
- Related searches. At the bottom of many results pages, Google shows what its documentation calls “a cluster of related searches that other people have done.” They are short phrases, not questions, but they often point to a whole side topic. More on our page about related searches.
- People Also Search For. Another box of linked searches, which we cover on its own page: People Also Search For.
- Forums. Reddit threads, Quora and niche forums show the wording, the worry and the backstory behind a question. Google added a “Discussions and forums” feature to results in 2022; its announcement said it would appear “when you search for something that might benefit from the diverse personal experiences” found in online discussions (Search Engine Journal). When forum threads show for your topic, read them. The questions people ask each other are often sharper than the ones they type into Google.
We built PAA Box, a free Chrome extension, for the first of these. It opens the People Also Ask box up to four levels deep in your own Chrome and exports a CSV with each question’s depth and parent question. It does not read Autocomplete, related searches or forums; those you still collect by hand. For the full picture of how question research fits together, see our guide to question keywords, and for every feature on the results page, what Google SERP features are.
How do you turn a question into a post?
A list of 80 questions is not a list of 80 posts. Most of them are sections, some are duplicates, and a few are worth a whole post. Work through them like this:
- Group by meaning. “How long does X take” and “how quickly can you X” are one question. Our page on keyword clustering covers how to group them.
- Read the intent. Search each group’s main question and look at what ranks. If it is all product pages, a blog post is the wrong answer. Our page on search intent explains what to look for.
- Check your own site. If you already answer it, the idea is an update, not a new post. A content gap analysis does this check across a whole topic.
- Post or section? If a good answer needs more than a few paragraphs, or has its own follow-up questions, it is a post. If it can be answered well in one paragraph, it is a section on a bigger post.
- Write the title from the question. Keep the searcher’s words. Then write a content brief that lists the follow-up questions the post must answer.
Here is how that sorting looks for a few made-up questions on baking sourdough:
| Question found | Post or section? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Why is my sourdough so dense? | Post | Several causes, each with its own fix and follow-up questions. |
| How do you know when sourdough starter is ready? | Post | Needs steps and signs, and pulls in its own questions. |
| Can you use sourdough starter straight from the fridge? | Section | A short answer fits inside the starter post. |
| Best sourdough bread near me | Skip | Local intent. The results are maps and shops, not blog posts. |
The posts that survive this sort usually belong together. Linking them into topic clusters is what turns a list of posts into coverage of a topic.
Which ideas should you skip?
Google’s guide to creating helpful, reliable, people-first content has a list of warning signs that doubles as a filter for ideas. Three of its questions apply directly:
- “Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise”?
- “Are you producing lots of content on many different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?”
- “Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer”?
The third one is common in question research. People ask about release dates nobody has announced, or results nobody can promise. Those questions get searched, but a post can’t answer them honestly, so leave them out or answer them in one plain line.
The other filter is you. Pick questions you or your team can answer from real experience. Google’s same guide asks whether content provides “original information, reporting, research, or analysis.” A post that only repeats the top three results is not a new idea, even if the question is.
How many ideas can one topic give you?
More than you will write. One search usually opens a People Also Ask box with a handful of questions, and each one you open adds more. Run three or four starting searches on the same topic, add Autocomplete and a few forum threads, and you will have more ideas than a small blog can publish in a year. That is the point: you get to choose the best ones.
Repeat the exercise every few months. Questions change as products, rules and seasons change, and new ones show up in the box. If a question keeps appearing across different starting searches, put it near the top of the list.