I have read a lot of articles about implementing bag of words after taking sift features of an image, but I'm still confused what to do next. What do i specifically do?

Thank you so much in advance for the guidance.

This is the code that i have so far.

cv::Mat mat_img = cropped.clone();
Mat grayForML;
cvtColor(mat_img, grayForML, CV_BGR2GRAY);
IplImage grayImageForML = grayForML.operator IplImage();


//create another copy of iplGray
IplImage *input = cvCloneImage(&grayImageForML);
Mat matInput = cvarrToMat(input);
//  Mat matInput = copy_gray.clone();
cv::SiftFeatureDetector detector;
std::vector<cv::KeyPoint> keyPoints;
detector.detect(input, keyPoints);
//add results to image and save.
cv::Mat output;
cv::drawKeypoints(input, keyPoints, output);    //SIFT OUTPUT RESULT


//resize and display
cv::Mat output_reduced;
cv::resize(output, output_reduced, cv::Size2i(output.cols / 2, output.rows / 2));


imshow("SIFT result", output_reduced);