Tangential SEO: How to Discover Tangential Content Ideas

Are you struggling to draw organic traffic to your website? It can be very frustrating to spend hours on content creation, but because of other factors, such as your ranking, people don’t see it. Perhaps tangential SEO can help you out. 

Tangential SEO is when you focus on covering a topic in its entirety. So, instead of just targeting specific keywords, you also cover any related information or tangential topics.

By utilizing tangential SEO strategies, you might be seen as knowledgeable in a field and increase your ranking for certain topics. You might also attract a wider audience. 

Let’s take a deeper look at tangential SEO and how you might benefit from implementing it.  

What is Tangential SEO?

Tangential SEO is an innovative approach to creating content that differs slightly from conventional keyword research. Instead of aiming to find a specific keyword that you need to target in an article, you target a topic.

Because you are not as limited as you would be otherwise, you might find that you address a variety of tangential topics related to your content that you might not have covered at all otherwise.

How Tangential SEO Differs from Traditional SEO Approaches

When you are approaching SEO writing from a more traditional perspective, you might try to find a keyword that you can easily rank for. When creating your blog or web page for your business, you will try to incorporate that keyword a certain amount of times. 

Tangential SEO approaches the piece of content that is being created in a more natural and holistic way. Instead of including specific keywords, you will just make sure that you cover any information as comprehensively as possible. The wording used doesn’t really matter as long as you are providing as much valuable information as you can. 

Sometimes, this means that tangential SEO results in a wider discussion of the topic and innovative content. You might address the initial keyword that you wanted to and a range of keywords that might have been entirely different pieces of content otherwise or that you might not have covered because they are too difficult to rank for. 

Interested in starting your SEO career? Here is everything you need to know.

What are the benefits of tangential SEO?

There are a couple of different benefits and advantages of using tangential SEO to create innovative content. 

• Expanded Reach: because you are able to cover a wider range of topics, you might reach a wider audience that you would not have otherwise. 
• Enhanced Authority: By covering a topic comprehensively and addressing a variety of related content, you will cement your position as an authority in a certain field. You will be seen as an expert in your industry.
• Improved User Experience: By providing as much information as possible on a topic, you will improve the overall user experience. This means that you may get better engagement, retention, and even conversions. 

Why Create Tangential Content?

So, now that you understand what tangential SEO is, should you consider creating tangential content? 

In short, anybody may benefit from experimenting with tangential SEO. It can be an incredible tool for boosting your organic traffic and overall visibility. More content also means that you will get more natural backlinks. 

This increase in link-building opportunities, as well as your improved perceived credibility, means you also improve your ranking for certain topics because, in the eye of the algorithm, you will be seen as an industry leader. 

How To Discover Tangential Content Ideas

Whether you are a business or an individual, there are some strategies you can employ to discover tangential keywords or topics. These include:

1. Analyzing Competitors for Unique Keyword Insights
2. Thematic Brainstorming Techniques
3. Leveraging User-Generated Content Mining
4. Harnessing Social Media Listening
5. Semantic SEO Analysis

Let’s look at each of these methods in more detail.

Analyzing Competitors for Unique Keyword Insights

Analyzing your competitors is a great place to start when trying to find relevant keywords, no matter what SEO techniques you are trying to implement. 

What works for other high-authority websites will likely work for you as well. By analyzing their strategies and any relevant content, you might be able to identify some keywords or broader topics that you have missed.

You can find gaps in your current content or find ideas for topics that are related to your core offerings that you might not have considered covering before. 

For more information on how to see a website’s keywords, check out this article. 

Thematic Brainstorming Techniques

Thematic brainstorming is exactly what it sounds like. You start with a theme or a topic and generate your ideas around that. 

I love thematic brainstorming because it allows you to cover a topic from beginning to end. It may not be perfect, but you will be able to get quite a lot of ideas in a very short period of time. 

I have also found that I tend to cover topics more completely when engaging in thematic brainstorming by thinking through a topic from the very basics to the most complex information. 

Start with your core offerings and consider the type of content that you already have. You can then use mind maps to brainstorm tangential ideas and find a broader range of topics or any content gaps. 

Leveraging User-Generated Content Mining

User-generated content is content that has been created by your users or target audience. 

Although it sounds incredibly complex, it is very simple to implement practically. Think about your comments and reviews. Look at some social media posts that you have been tagged in. All of this is considered user-generated content. 

This is a great way to find gaps in your content and to guarantee that you are creating content around topics that people are actually looking for. 

If you are struggling to find any user-generated content, don’t panic. Instead, put some mechanisms in place to increase your engagement rates. You might find that you can increase social media engagement through something as simple as asking a question. 

Harnessing Social Media Listening

Social media listening is very similar to user-generated content mining. But, instead of looking at your users you look at the topic as a whole.

I like to use Google Trends to keep an eye on popular topics. However, you can also keep an eye on topics by utilizing certain hashtags. 

In my opinion, some of the best places you can look for customer insights are forums like Reddit and Quora. 

Semantic SEO Analysis

Semantic SEO refers to understanding user intent. By understanding what your users are looking for in the search engine results page (SERPs) when they type in a certain question, you will be able to provide the information they want. 

Semantic SEO is designed to help search engine algorithms understand what your content is and when to show it to people, but it can also greatly improve your overall engagement. It is a big part of a positive user experience. 

Semantic SEO analysis can be done without any help, but I highly recommend using keyword research tools to give you a competitive edge. 

The Tangential Content Creation Process

Navigating the complexities of Tangential SEO requires a structured approach to content creation. This involves:

1. Navigating Customer Acquisition Challenges
2. Generating Compelling Tangential Content Ideas
3. Tangential Content Creation Framework
4. Utilizing AI Tools

For more information on what to do after keyword research, check out this article. 

Navigating Customer Acquisition Challenges

You need to understand what obstacles you face when trying to acquire potential customers. What are your traffic sources? What is your target audience looking for? What does your conversion funnel look like? 

I highly recommend that you consider your ideal customer and create a buyer persona. Even if you aren’t selling something, there are numerous benefits to knowing exactly who you are trying to attract.

If you write a whole lot of content that no one is looking for, even if it is high-quality content, it won’t help you. You need to consider how tangential SEO can influence your overall business. 

Generating Compelling Tangential Content Ideas

When you understand your customers or the people you are trying to target, you can start generating content ideas. Use some of the methods we discussed above for tangential keyword discovery. 

Also, think of how you want to present these topics. How can you stand out from your competitors but at the same time provide what your potential clients are looking for? 

Tangential Content Creation Framework

You need to create a framework that will allow you to create content as part of a strategic approach to growth. First, you need to identify your goals. What do you want to get out of creating this content?

How can your tangential content get you closer to those goals?

Utilizing AI Tools

Although you do not need any tools to create a tangential content strategy, they can certainly be helpful. 

Many AI (artificial intelligence) tools can streamline the process or provide valuable insights that you may not have noticed otherwise. 

Some might be able to show you your highest-ranking content or the ranking of your competitors. 

Others might be able to give you information on content optimization or provide you with reporting that you can use to analyze your own content and improve it. 

Many of these SEO tools are also free or have some sort of free trial that you can benefit from. There are plenty of tools available for you to try, so remember to check out some of my reviews.

Here are eight of the best content optimization tools!

Frase.io is my daily driver when it comes to SEO. I would highly recommend it. You can use Frase to optimize your content for search engines, going through the top-ranking articles to find tangential information. 

You can even access questions that have been asked on certain platforms. If you think this sounds like something you might want to use, check out my full review to help you make your decision. 

For more information on using AI tools for SEO, check out this guide. 

Wrap-Up

Tangential SEO is very different from traditional, keyword-based SEO techniques that you might be familiar with. By utilizing this fresh approach to create a variety of content, you can establish yourself as an industry leader. 

The increase in organic traffic, attracting a broader audience, and improving your ranking can benefit you greatly, so try an experiment to see if tangential SEO works for you. 

It does not have to be utilized in isolation but instead in combination with traditional SEO. 

For more information on implementing SEO successfully, check out this ultimate checklist.

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