Finding new topics to write about is always a bit of a struggle for me – but Google have a tool that I just found out about that might help a bit. It’s called the “Wonder Wheel”, and can perhaps be best thought of as a relationship diagram of search terms.
Here’s how I’ve been using it – enter a search term in Google that’s related to your blog. I went with “DSLR Photography” (this is for a different blog). The results page came up as normal, but by clicking on “Show Options” in the nav bar, and then”Wonder Wheel” I got a diagram showing my original search and searches related to it. My other blog is about tips for amateur photographers, so I was interested to see “Digital SLR photography for dummies” as one of the related searches. Clicking on that got me another wheel with more related searches. “Shutter Lag” looked interesting, and brought up a number of useful articles and a wikipedia page, as well as more related searches. By this time, though, I had a new topic… I’ll write about shutter lag… mental block has been avoided for another day :)
There’s not really much more to say about this tool – it’s a great way of exploring related searches and of sparking off ideas for blog posts. Give it a go, and see what direction it takes you in… you might end up with a topic you just never thought of before.
Thanks to Darren at ProBlogger for first highlighting this tool.
Edit: After some feedback on Twitter I’ve discovered that this option is available on Google.com, Google.co.jp, Google.com.au, and Google.co.uk, but may not appear on other localised Google sites. If you discover it’s not available for your locality please let us know in the comments so that we can get an idea of how widespread this is.
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{ 2 comments }
just been playing around with this – it is brilliant – such a time saver when searching for stuff. thanks for sharing
No worries Dan, glad you found it useful!
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