No matter how creative your headline is, when you type a search term into Google, a user expects to find specific information in a specific format.
If you don't provide it, you risk losing both your audience and your rankings.
Your topic list should also give you an indication of what people expect to see on a given topic.
Informational topics start with “how to,” so a how-to guide is expected.
Commercial topics contain the modifiers “best”, “reviews” or “cheapest”, so users expect to see a product review or comparison.
If you're having trouble identifying what type of content you should be generating, Google your topic to see what's out there.
Your competitors will surely conduct research on your published material.
You can also go back to your Backlog tab and look for related questions that can serve as headlines.
Focus on headlines that clearly and completely state what the reader will find, i.e. the problem they will be able to solve or the benefit they will gain from reading the article.
My recommended tools:
Topic Research to find the most interesting headlines for a topic and to better understand user intent;
SEO Content Template to analyze the top 10 articles ranking for a given keyword in a specific location, highlighting average word count, additional keywords, readability, and other metrics. All of this data helps you get a complete picture of what type of content is most relevant for a keyword.
Step 6: Prioritize topics based on your goals
Here are a few ideas on how you can prioritize publishing your articles in line with your business goals:
According to your topic clusters
Take a cluster that covers a specific user problem and create articles around it.
You can choose a cluster that gives you the most visibility (high volume), create a pillar page, and then start writing articles in a cluster based on your keyword research.
Alternatively, you can start by creating a content cluster focused on low-competition keywords and gain some visibility on one topic, then create a pillar page that offers a broader view of a high-volume topic.
With low-competition topics ranking well, your pillar page can have a better chance of ranking higher and increasing the visibility of the entire cluster.