Generating “SEO Article Topics.” A Tales from the Query Post

This article is part of a series for my blog called “Tales from the Query,” where I look at a random query in GSC or BWT and write a blog post about it.

Today’s query is: “give me seo article topics for [redacted] a tax, business advisory and registrations company.“

Surprisingly, I already have an article that ranks for this query on Bing, “Choosing Content Topics”:

But the nature of this query inspired me to take a unique spin on this article series — instead of just answering the query, I want to discuss why it’s misguided.

So let’s get to it.

First off, you don’t want to write articles solely for “SEO” purposes; you want to write for your audience’s benefit.

I have a lengthy article about creating helpful, reliable, and people-first content vs. commodity content.

The former is what you get when you focus on your audience’s needs for information or action. This type of content has sustainable SEO/GEO value because it offers something unique.

The latter is what you could get when you ask an AI to spin-up articles (or even topics) for you without much context. This content plays to the lowest common denominator and seldom has unique value, like by way of first-hand expertise or experience.

Secondly, you don’t want to ask an AI assistant for content topics without seeding its context with information about your audience and their buyer’s journey.

If you ask for articles about “tax, business advisory and registrations company,” you’re going to get back common information from the LLM’s parametric knowledge (training data) or maybe some generic web resources pulled from imprecise fanout queries.

On the other hand, if you tell the AI assistant about your audience based on information you have from sales calls, your CRM, or other first-party sources, as well as provide information about their buyer’s journey, the topics you get back for content will likely be more personalized to your unique audience. This will help distinguish your content from other sources on the web, giving you a leg up when it comes to organic search or AI visibility.

Here’s an example of how to improve the original query/prompt:

Original: “give me seo article topics for [redacted] a tax, business advisory and registrations company.”

Updated: “We’re developing a content strategy for [business name], which provides tax, business advisory, and registration services. Our primary customers are [audience], located in [market]. Based on customer questions from our sales calls, common objections, and the stages of our buyer’s journey (see attached documents), suggest article topics that would answer specific customer questions. Explain the intended audience, search intent, and business relevance of each topic. Flag any ideas that require further research.”

Takeaways

There’s nothing wrong with asking an AI assistant to generate article topics for you, but first you want to provide the assistant with as much context about your audience and their buyer’s journey as possible. This will help distinguish your content topics, leading you more toward helpful content as opposed to commodity content.

As for generating the content once you have the topics, I’ve personally had success with using LLMs to create outlines for articles — at least the first drafts — but I’d steer clear of using AI to write content fully. This can produce a generic, commodity result and even lead to scaled content abuse if done at scale to manipulate rankings or visibility.

Outro

Thanks for checking out this Tales from the Query post addressing “give me seo article topics for [redacted] a tax, business advisory and registrations company.”

Stay tuned for more Tales from the Query posts, or check out past ones below.

And if you need a hand with your SEO/GEO strategies, feel free to contact me. I’m an independent consultant helping brands and agencies.

Until next time, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing!

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