TL;DR
Before building my new travel website, I spent time researching ideas across Pinterest, Google Trends, and keyword tools. This brainstorming process helped turn a broad idea into a clear plan for the site’s structure and content.
From Idea to Plan: My Brainstorming Process Before Starting a Website
Every website begins with an idea.
But turning that idea into a clear plan is often less straightforward than it sounds.
Before starting The Layered Traveller, there was a period of research, brainstorming, and refining the direction of the project. From the outside, this stage doesn’t always look very productive, but it plays an important role in shaping how a website eventually develops.
Rather than rushing straight into writing articles, I spent some time exploring ideas and gradually narrowing the focus of the site.
Starting With a Broad Idea
The initial concept for the site was simple: a travel website that explored destinations in a more layered and reflective way.
Instead of focusing purely on “top attractions” or quick itineraries, the goal was to create content that explored the cultural, historical, and practical layers of places.
At this stage, the idea was still quite broad.
Travel is a huge topic, and without some structure it would be very easy for the site to become scattered.
So the next step was to begin researching possible directions for the site.
The Research Process I Used
The research stage didn’t follow a perfectly organised system at first. Instead, it became a layered process where each step helped refine the ideas a little further.
Over time, this research helped shape both the structure of the site and the types of articles it would eventually include.
Step 1: Exploring Pinterest for Topic Ideas
Because the new site is designed to grow partly through Pinterest traffic, I started my research directly on Pinterest.
I explored travel-related searches to see what kinds of topics were already popular on the platform.
This included looking at:
• Pinterest search suggestions
• related pins and boards
• the Pinterest Trends tool
These searches helped reveal the kinds of topics people were already interested in exploring visually.
Whenever I came across an interesting idea, I added it to a growing list of potential article topics.
Step 2: Checking Pinterest Search Volumes
Once I had a list of ideas, the next step was to check whether those topics had meaningful search activity on Pinterest.
Pinterest keyword tools helped provide rough estimates of search volume and interest levels.
Not every idea needed huge search numbers, but this step helped filter out topics that appeared to have very little activity on the platform.
This helped narrow the list down to ideas that had a better chance of gaining traction.
Step 3: Checking Google Trends
After gathering ideas from Pinterest, I wanted to see how those topics performed from Google’s perspective.
Using Google Trends allowed me to check whether people were also searching for these topics more broadly on the web.
Sometimes a topic works very well visually on Pinterest but has little search interest elsewhere.
Other topics show steady interest across both platforms.
Seeing how these topics appeared in Google Trends helped provide an extra layer of perspective.
Step 4: Keyword Research With Jaaxy
Once I had refined the list of potential topics, I ran many of them through Jaaxy, a keyword research tool.
This helped reveal additional details such as:
• estimated search traffic
• competition levels
• related keyword ideas
Even though Pinterest is expected to play a significant role in the site’s traffic strategy, understanding the Google search landscape still helps strengthen the long-term SEO potential of the content.
Step 5: Organising the Ideas
By this point, I had a fairly messy collection of notes, keywords, and topic ideas gathered from different places.
This is where I started organising everything into clearer themes.
One approach I often use during this stage is discussing ideas with AI tools to help structure the research and identify patterns between topics.
These conversations can help turn a scattered list of ideas into more organised content categories.
Gradually, this process helped shape the foundation of the website and clarify what the structure of the site might look like.
What Comes Next
Once the research phase was complete, the next step was to turn those ideas into something more structured.
That meant deciding how the site should be organised, what categories it should include, and how different types of content would connect together.
In the next article, I’ll walk through how I planned the structure of the new website and how those early decisions helped guide the rest of the project.
Next article:
→ How I Planned the Structure of a New Website