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Publish date: February 14, 2023
Step #1
To do list for this page:
Come up with a broad website topic and a list of subtopics that will later be developed into articles.
The most important criterion for selecting a website topic is choosing something that you are passionate about. Since you’re going to be spending a lot of time researching and writing about the topic, you want it to be something that you are genuinely interested in. Consider creating a website around a hobby of yours or something in your field of work. Think about what you are an “expert” at. You don’t need to be a 100% expert if it’s a light topic like recipes or a travel blog. You’ll learn more about your topic as you do research for articles. Ideally you want to have a reasonable amount of knowledge of the topic starting out, however.
What are “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) website topics?
“Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) are topics that Google determines “could potentially impact the future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of users.” These are articles that provide financial, medical, legal or government information. Pages that include shopping or other financial transactions and news articles would also be considered YMYL. These sorts of topics are subject to a higher level of “Page Quality” standards from Google or more scrutiny.
Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT)
If you choose to create a website around a YMYL topic, you will need to demonstrate your Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT) in the subject matter. To be sure that you are not providing misinformation, Google wants to know that you are an expert in the field and an authority on the subject.
- Expertise – What demonstrates that you are qualified to write the article? If you’re giving medical advice, are you a medical professional? If you’re giving financial advice, are you an economist or accountant? Have you received awards or recognitions in your field?
- Authoritativeness – Is your site referenced by other sites as an authority on the subject? Do respected websites link to your site? Are you, as an author, mentioned on other well-respected sites?
- Trustworthiness – Do you have a secure website? Is there clear contact information on your website, or is it a mystery who is behind your website? Do you have misleading meta descriptions so that when people read about your website on Google, they think your website is something other than what it is?
How to demonstrate EAT:
- Include an “about us” or author page where you describe your qualifications (degree, experience in field, awards, recognitions, etc.).
- Make sure all other authors on your site also detail their qualifications on an author page and/or at the beginning or end of each article they write.
- Cover the topic of your article thoroughly.
- Cite and link to outside sources to show where your data comes from.
- Update content regularly.
- Include a publication date and dates of any updates on the article.
- Encourage backlinks from reputable websites to your site to show that you are an authority.
- Secure your website with an SSL (URL beginning with https).
- Include contact information on the website (business name, email, physical address, phone number).
- Make sure that meta descriptions for all pages accurately reflect what users will get on the page and are not spammy or click-baity.
How to select subtopics for articles
Now that you’ve selected the website topic (YMYL or otherwise), it’s time to come up with subtopics, the topics of articles for your website. This is a good exercise even though you may not be ready to write the articles yet because you need to determine if your website topic is broad enough to be able to write many articles. If you have trouble coming up with article ideas, you may want to reconsider selecting that website topic. As you explore subtopics, keep track of these ideas to write articles later. I take note of article ideas in a Microsoft Word file so that I can develop them into articles later when I have time.
Start by brainstorming a list of your own ideas for articles that you think you could write about your topic. Then type the topic into Google and see what pops up. Are there a lot of “People also ask” questions related to the topic? For example, if you were considering creating a website with soup recipes, these might be some of the “People also ask” ideas. Each of these could be later developed into an article.
At the bottom of the Google search page, they will also list other related topic ideas that could be developed into articles. Add these subtopics to your list.
Finding trending topics
On Google Trends you can see what topics are currently trending, get an idea of interest in a topic (or lack thereof), or get subtopic ideas that are trending by typing in the name of your topic and seeing what trending subtopics are listed.
You could also check out social media websites to see what is trending. For example, in Instagram Explore, you could type in #soup to see what hashtags pop up. These could be ideas for subtopics to develop into articles.
How to get subtopic ideas from competitors
You can even explore what your competitors have written about to get ideas for subtopics. Type your topic name into Google and click through to see what other people have written about your topic on their websites. How can you write better, more complete articles? What gaps do you see in their website that you could fill?
Google Keyword Planner
Another great tool for getting subtopic ideas and checking on the volume of Google searches for topics is Google Keyword Planner. This is a free tool that is available if you sign up for a Google Ads account. You don’t actually have to use Google Ads, you can just sign up for free to gain access to the tool.
https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/
The “Discover new keywords” section is great for finding subtopics (article ideas) for your website topic. Type in your topic, click on the “Get results” button, and you’ll see a list of keyword ideas (subtopics), the average monthly searches for those keywords, the competition level (high, medium or low) and the CPC (Cost Per Click), which gives you an idea of how much people are paying for advertising on that topic.
In the “Get search volume and forecasts” section, you can type in a list of topic ideas that you are considering for your website and see statistics on average monthly searches, competition level and CPC (Cost Per Click). Obviously, it would be harder to get traffic as a new site on topics that are listed as highly competitive. While writing about something you are passionate about is more fun, seeing the CPC makes you realize that another topic might be more profitable. Note the dramatic difference below in the CPC between the topics of insurance vs. soup. A website about insurance could make as much as $20.81 per click on ads while a website about soup would only make like 18 cents per click as a max. You will make more off a website about insurance, but this is a YMYL topic, so you would need to be qualified to write about it.
Selecting profitable topics
As illustrated in the data above comparing the topics of insurance vs. soup, some topics are going to earn more advertising dollars than others. Companies are not willing to pay as much to advertise on websites with soup recipes as websites with information about insurance. When you think about it, what are people who are looking for soup recipes going to be buying? Maybe they’ll buy some soup ingredients which they probably won’t even buy online. They’ll buy them at the grocery store. People who are researching about insurance, however, are very likely to click on a link on your site and buy their insurance online. This readiness to buy is something that makes a more profitable website. If your website has product reviews or information about products that people would be reading right before they buy, you will have a much more profitable website.
Another factor is the cost of the product that they might buy. How much do soup ingredients cost vs how much does insurance cost? There’s a big difference. Also, insurance is a recurring cost (monthly or annually), so if someone buys insurance, the company will likely make a lot of money off the customer for many years. Insurance companies would pay a lot of money to advertise on your site.
What’s the next step?
Now comes the fun part! Once you’ve decided on a website topic, the next step is to find a catchy domain name. A domain name is a web home address, like “website.com.” Learn more about this process in our article “How to buy a domain name.”
