Being able to identify high-performing content is critical if you want to succeed in your niche (or any niche, frankly). Identifying content that your audience will enjoy is, arguably, just as important as knowing how to interpret Search Engine Optimization (SEO) metrics.
Spotting the best content takes a lot of work. You have to analyze competitors, look at trends, monitor your site’s analytics, and more. Then you have to either create new content based on your research or curate it.
That’s a lot of work, which is why high-performing content is so rare – if you want the content you create or import using WP RSS Aggregator to perform well, you need to be able to spot a winner. Here’s how we do it.
Use Data-Driven Tools to Analyze Competitor Content
Understanding what resonates with your competitors’ audiences can provide invaluable insights for your own strategy. A big part of this process involves keeping an eye on competitor sites, but also knowing what tools you can use to analyze their strategies.
Platforms like Ahrefs, Semrush, and BuzzSumo enable granular analysis of competitor content strategies. Here’s how we recommend using each of them:
- Ahrefs’ Content Gap Analysis. This tool identifies keywords competitors rank for but your site does not, revealing untapped opportunities. This feature helps you discover content topics your audience is searching for that you haven’t yet addressed.
- Semrush’s On-Page SEO Checker. This evaluates meta tags, headings, and keyword integration, providing recommendations to improve rankings. It also helps you understand which structural elements contribute to content success.
- BuzzSumo’s Trending Content. You can use this feature to track viral articles and social shares to see what content is resonating with audiences. Try filtering content by share velocity to identify what’s gaining traction quickly. While BuzzSumo help identify trending content, WP RSS Aggregator takes this a step further by allowing you to automatically import and organize high-performing articles from various sources.
When using SEO or content analysis tools, keep an eye on the following metrics. They will help you actually determine what content is worth pursuing:
- Keyword Difficulty (KD) and Search Volume. Prioritize keywords with high traffic potential and manageable competition. Look for moderate difficulty scores (30-50) with significant monthly search volumes. These are opportunities you can rank for well if you follow SEO best practices.
- Backlink profiles. See which competitor articles attract authoritative links. Study this content to understand what makes it link-worthy and how you can emulate that for your website.
- Content Structure: Take a look at top-performing posts and their word count, readability, and use of media files. Note that ideal length varies by niche, so you’ll want to focus on direct competitors.
Note that Ahref’s and Semrush are both relatively expensive options for analyzing competitor content. If you want to test more budget-friendly alternatives first, take a look at Ubersuggest ($29/m) and Mangools ($49/m).
Monitor Social Media and Forums for Content Insights
Social platforms provide direct access to audience conversations, revealing what topics genuinely interest your target market. To be more specific, platforms like Reddit and Quora, as well as Twitter and Facebook can be
- Reddit’s Pro Trends. Tracks keyword discussion volume across subreddits, enabling brands to monitor brand sentiment and emerging topics. This helps identify questions and pain points that frequently appear in niche communities.
- Quora. You can use Quora to figure out what kinds of questions your audience is asking and currently trending topics.
- Twitter’s trending hashtags and Facebook Group discussions reveal recurring pain points, which can inspire FAQ-driven content. Tracking these conversations helps you stay ahead of trending topics before they reach peak search volume.
Earlier, we mentioned how you can use BuzzSumo to analyze competitor content. You can also use it to filter content by share velocity and create RSS feeds for niche topics (which you can then import using WP RSS Aggregator). BuzzSumo enables you to set up share alerts for specific keywords, so you get a quick notification is a subject is blowing up in your industry.
A lot of websites fall into the trap of only looking at website analytics. Knowing what content performs well on your site is important, but so is social media. Social media platforms can catapult content to virality if you play their game and understand what your followers want to see.
Note: We write a lot about social media, particularly Instagram, over at the Spotlight blog. Check it out if you want to know how to grow your brand’s social media presence.
Track Performance Metrics on Your Own Blog
Before creating new content, analyze what’s already working on your own platform. Your existing performance data contains valuable insights about your specific audience if you know how to spot them.
If you use Google Analytics, you can typically identify high-performing content by looking at the following metrics:
- Engagement Time: This shows you how much users spend on your site on average and how that trends over time.
- Top Landing Pages: Identifies which content attracts the most initial visitors, revealing topics with strong search performance or social appeal.
- Page Value: Attributes economic value to pages that contribute to conversions, helping identify which content types drive actual business results.
- Return Visitor Rate: Reveals which content brings users back repeatedly, an essential indicator of content stickiness and ongoing relevance.
Those metrics will enable you to see which pages on your site are getting the most attention. Armed with that information, you can:
- Repurpose high-performing content. Repurpose successful articles into video tutorials or case studies. This is typically faster than creating content from zero and the content itself is already proven to work with your audience.
- Refresh Outdated Posts: Update statistics, keywords, and internal links to maintain relevance. Content refreshes can keep your website looking authoritative, even if users are looking at content from years past.
After looking at your competitor’s sites and social media, you probably have a lot of new content ideas. Before you start working on them, though, let’s talk about trends.
Study Trends and Emerging Topics
If you can identify topic for content before they reach peak interest, it allows you to establish authority early and capture growing search traffic. To put it another way, if you can spot good topics early, you can be among the first to publish content on them, and get a lot of traffic before competitors catch up.
One smart way to do this is by using Google Trends. This tool visualizes search interest over time and regions, helping you spot seasonal trends (like “holiday gift guides” peaking in November). The comparative analysis feature allows you to evaluate multiple topics simultaneously to determine which shows the most promising growth trajectory:
You can also use Google Trends to check what topics are gaining traction quickly across the world or in specific regions. For example, at the time of this writing, here’s what Google Trends says people are looking up en masse in the US:
Knowing what is trending can be a content superpower if you know how to use it. Here’s what we recommend:
- Focus mostly on consistently trending topics. For instance, “sustainable fashion” shows steady growth (15-20% year over year since 2020), making it a safer long-term focus than fleeting viral trends.
- Jump on trends that align with your audience. If you can spot a trend that will let you create content your audience is interested in, jump on it. This won’t necessarily happen often, so you can to capitalize on it as much as possible.
If you miss the boat on a content trend, don’t worry – there’s always a new one a day away, tops.
Focus on Content Types that Perform Well
Different content types perform differently across industries. Understanding which formats drive the highest engagement in your specific niche is crucial.
- Blogs. How-to guides and listicles dominate niches like tech and marketing, with 83% of users regularly consuming blog content (and we’re very grateful to you!). The ideal structure often incorporates clear H2/H3 hierarchies, bulleted takeaways, and step-by-step instructions. Take a look at how this article is formatted, that’s what you want.
- Videos. Short videos (under 10 minutes, but typically under 2) tend to perform better for marketing campaigns. Video content demonstrating practical applications consistently outperforms theoretical explanations across most niches.
- Case Studies. B2B niches and businesses can benefit from detailed ROI analyses, which build trust and convert high-intent users. According to industry research, 75% of B2B marketers regularly use case studies or customer stories in their content strategy. That includes us, you can check out our case studies here).
It’s also important to keep an eye on out new content types, which emerge more often than you think. TikTok videos and Reels, for example, have spawned a whole new format of marketing videos, which didn’t exist until a handful of years ago. Marketers who jumped on that new type of content are doing pretty well, to put it mildly.
Test and Refine Your Content Curation Strategy
Spotting high-performing content isn’t a one-and-done process. It requires continuous testing and refinement based on what you learn from your analytics, social listening, and competitor analysis.
The most successful content creators we know are constantly experimenting with different formats, topics, and distribution methods. They track what works, double down on their winners, and aren’t afraid to pivot when something isn’t connecting with their audience. Remember, what performs well today might not work tomorrow – algorithms change, audience’s likes shift, and new platforms are always on the way.
WP RSS Aggregator can help you curate the best content from the web, you identify it, and the plugin helps you share it with your audience. Take the guesswork out of content curation. Try Aggregator today!
