Anyone who owns a blog is well aware that content is king. However, developing a lot of original quality content is often easier said than done. That being said, you may have a wealth of free content at your very fingertips of which you aren’t even aware: your search history.
Update:Now getting free content from your Google History is easier than ever. Check out my new free tool to download Google History.
Google has made search history available to users for quite some time. If you have a Google Account since then, a plethora of great content awaits you! If you don’t have one, sign up for a Google Account and make sure you’re signed in when you search. To view your search history, just visit https://www.google.com/history.
If you use Google to search often, you may want to review your history frequently, perhaps once a week or once every few days. If you don’t Google much (something is wrong with you), you may be able to get away with searching once a month or once every couple of weeks.
As you flip through pages of searches and results you clicked on, you’ll recall the pressing questions you were looking to answer and the new and interesting knowledge you were seeking to acquire. Take note of those that will make good topics for blog posts. You may want to keep a running list on Google Docs like recently started.
Not all of your search activity will make for good blog content, but you might be surprised how much of it will. The best content will come from obscure information that you had to search for many different ways, and had to piece together from multiple sources of information. There are several reasons why these kinds of searches will do well as new content for your website or blog:
- You’re probably looking for information on a topic you enjoy and interests you – You should always write about what you enjoy, because you probably know a lot about the topic already or aspire to learn more
- If you’re searching for it, it is quite likely other people are searching for it
- If you had to go through effort finding it, others are going through effort finding it
- If everyone is having trouble finding it, that means there is very little competition for the keywords surrounding the subject matter you’re seeking – that bodes well for you, because it is much more likely your new content will rank high in search engine result pages (SERPs)
If your original content is well-organized and the information is hard to find, people looking for the info will flock to your page. Fundamentally, your new webpage will fulfill Google’s mission: “Organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That just makes good sense.
Even if your searches aren’t necessarily on obscure topics with disparate information on the web, your search history will still provide a superb source of story ideas. When you search for subject matter you blog about, you’re either enhancing your existing knowledge or seeking information that is new (not to mention interesting) to you. That is exactly the stuff good posts are made of.