Using the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, why) is a simple yet effective strategy for finding quick content ideas. It can produce dozens of possible topics in just a couple of minutes. You will also be able to find opportunities you may not have thought of. Let’s get started.
Steps to Using the 5 W's to Find Content Ideas
- Decide on a keyword (ex. Knitting)
- Open Google and type in “who (keyword).” This will bring up a list of popular searches.
- Start clicking on results and look for opportunities. Write any opportunities down.
- Look for results without a featured snippet.
- Take note of searches where forums are on page 1.
- See if there are results with articles from outside the industry.
- Check the “people also ask” section.
- Check the “related searches section.”
- Move on to the next “W” (who, what, where, when, why) and repeat the process.
- Analyze your list of opportunities and pick one to write about.
Does The 5 W's method work for Finding Content Ideas?
Yes. Sometimes it will work better than other times, but you should always be able to find some ideas. Even if you don’t find any solid leads, it never hurts to see what people in your niche are searching for.
For this article, I spent about 20 minutes looking for article ideas on knitting. I know nothing about knitting. I don’t know a single person that knits. Despite my lack of knowledge, I was able to find half a dozen opportunities for knitting articles.
Let’s take a look at some of the best and see what the opportunities are.
"What knitting" led to "what needle size for a scarf?"
There is a WikiHow article that goes through 12 steps (with pictures) on how to make a scarf. It is a good article and could be used as a roadmap for your own article.
The dates for articles on this search are what I find most interesting. About half are from 2020/2021 and half are from around 2015/2016. This means that new content is making it to page 1 quickly, but there isn’t enough new content to replace all the old stuff. This point is increasingly evident by the fact that there is a forum from 2016 on page 1.
Search engines use forums in their results as a last resort. They prefer to have actual content from a trusted and reliable source.
Opportunity:
Any time a forum makes it to the front page, there is an opportunity. For this, people want a direct answer. THESE are the needles you need to knit a scarf. If you can answer this question for people, you will get traffic. Add photos or a video of how to make a scarf with some of those needles for extra credit points.
It is also encouraging that newer posts are making it to the top. Pay extra attention to your SEO in this post. Search engines are looking for content to put here but they can’t find it. Making sure search engines can find and understand your content will provide a big boost here.
To help make sure my content is SEO friendly I use the Yoast SEO plugin.
Related: How to download and set up Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.
"Why knitting" led to "why knitting is good for you."
Most of the results are from pages that have no expertise in knitting. There are some educational sites, healthcare clinics and a psychology site on page 1. These would make excellent sources for your own article.
A lot of the articles are also getting old. There is one from 2015 and a couple from 2016. Some fresh content could benefit this search.
One last thing I found interesting with this search is the featured snippet. It only answers a small part of the question and is only targeted to benefits for seniors.
Opportunity:
Anytime there is a featured snippet that doesn’t answer the full question, I get a little excited. It seems like a good list of benefits could replace the featured snippet they have listed. An article structured as a “listicle” could present an excellent opportunity here.
The competition for this search is also favorable to those with knitting websites. You could create an article and link stats/data from the page 1 articles (and other sources) to make a more complete article.
A lot of the articles are also pretty old. New content has a good shot at replacing 6 year old content.
"Why knitting" led to "why knitting is better than crocheting?"
Is knitting better than crocheting? I have no idea… and neither do the people searching for this.
This search has some good articles on the topic, but we do have a forum on page 1. The forum question is “What are the pros and cons of crocheting vs knitting?”
As a side note, crocheting seems to be very popular. There has been a lot of overlap between knitting and crocheting in some of my searches. Could you expand your content to include crocheting?
Opportunity:
An article titled, “Knitting VS Crocheting: Pros and Cons” could deliver some good results. I would focus an article around that Quara question since it made it to the first page.
There is also the opportunity to expand your content into crocheting if you chose to. I don’t know how much crossover there really is, but it is an interesting opportunity to expand your offerings.
"What knitting" led to "What knitted items sell best?"
With knitting, we hit the forum jackpot. The forum answers are everywhere. I really like this one. With sites like Etsy and eBay, it would be easy to find statistics on what items sell the best. Some nice pictures and internal links could turn this into an article that performs very well.
Opportunity:
By now you already know… we love forums. This one is especially interesting though. We have the chance to answer this question and include internal links to our articles on how to make those products. For every best seller, we could guide them to one of our other articles!
Having a good base of “how-to” articles would be very beneficial. If you don’t already have those, you now have a list of future articles to make. Its a win-win situation.
Underneath the main forum question we also find other questions people are asking about this. It looks like people are interested in how to price the items, so maybe you could add average prices or something along those lines in your article.
Search of "what knitting" led to "What knitting machine should I Buy?"
I saved the best (worst) for last. You will have to bear with me on this one. I don’t want to demean anyones writing or abilities. BUT… we are looking for opportunities, so pointing these things out is relevant to our topic. Lets get into it…
For this search, the number 1 article doesn’t actually recommend any sewing machines. The author is very knowledgable, but the article doesn’t match what we searched for. Write a “listicle” article with 10 different knitting machines and be done done with it!
The second article is from the same author. It has recommendations, but it is a lot of text with no product images.
Both articles have excessively long sentences and paragraphs. I found a couple sentences that were 40 words long.
The 3rd article answers our question, but it takes A LOT of scrolling to get there. I am also overwhelmed with ads. It seems like more space is dedicated to the ads than the content. It is ok to make money from your articles, but there is a paid advertising limit. I’m not sure what that limit is… but this exceeds it.
The rest of the search results have their own issues. Both of these results answer our question, but there are problems.
The first one has a huge table of contents. It is intimidating and terrifies me.
The second image is on the right track, but fails to deliver. We need some images. A little more description would also be beneficial.
Opportunity:
With this search, the audience is looking to BUY. This is search intent 101. They need SOMEONE to tell them WHAT to buy. To target this search, I would pick a couple categories and recommend the best machine for that category. Write about the pros and cons of each, then provide AFFILIATE LINKS so people can BUY! That’s what they want to do, so help them do it!
Wrapping it all up
I am willing to admit this little “experiment” gave me results that I wouldn’t consider typical. Normally I can expect to find 1 or 2 decent leads. I do always end up with a list of future content ideas though. They don’t need to be obvious home runs to end up on that list. Long-tail keywords create a whole new set of opportunities. That’s where smaller blogs have the best luck anyway.
In the end, there are a million and one ways to find content ideas, this is just one of them. I don’t use this method for every keyword and I don’t use it for every article. But it is another tool in the toolbox. Trying to find easy wins is a good way to start building a reputation. Regardless of how you find content ideas, always keep an eye out for those easy wins.
As a bonus… I found this story while writing this post… and now I want to knit sweaters for penguins. If only I could find an article on how to get started…. Enjoy!
