Google Trends is one of the most amazing yet underutilized free tools for SEO that allows you to easily find out how your target keywords are being searched for over time, across the world.
Google Trends, first launched in 2006, provides marketers with invaluable insights into how people search on the world’s most popular search engine.
Google on average receives over 40,000 search queries per second.
This equates to 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide
~ Internet Live Stats
So it’s fair to say that a lot of data is sent through Google. This data can be incredibly informative, providing an insight into the most common questions that the population wants answers to.
This data becomes even more useful when you apply it to your business decisions.
The Precious Data
Google trends collects its data from the Google search engine and shows how frequently a particular search term, phrase, company, person or topic is searched for across the world.
Using this data can help you :
Gain an overview of trends within your industry.
Help you to check out the competition
Research the viability of introducing a new product to your business
Give you an indication of the potential demand for launching an entirely new business venture.
Provide insight into how a particular region uses Google; where in the world has the most or least interest in a particular product or service.
Google Trends allows you to enter search terms and see its relative popularity over a period of time.
The data for most terms stretches all the way back to 2004, so you can get a complete picture for a term’s entire lifespan.
Google Trends has evolved to become sophisticated and allowed for more detailed visualizations for each term entered. Users can also find related search terms, showing interest across countries and more.
Google Trends is a helpful and fun tool that can lend a big hand to your SEO keyword planning efforts.
Below I have collated some interesting and illuminating tips, you can use to get users to make a beeline to your content.
Trending Searches Reflect The Desires Of Your Audience
It’s important to understand that marketers don’t create desires in your audience. Your audience already has those needs and desires.
You’re job as an internet marketer is to tap into those existing desires through your content.
Know your audience and get them to know, like and trust you (a no-cost successful marketing strategy).
Google trends will empower you to learn what needs, wants and desires your target audience has through your market research.
You don’t create the desire, you solve their problems and help them achieve their goals.
Compare One Term With Another
Consider the terms : “grocery store” and “supermarket“. This graph shows the search demand over a period of 12 months worldwide.
It shows that supermarket is more identified as a term than grocery.
Click on worldwide to search country specific. Drop down on period to get a range of time periods.
Trends Is Case Sensitive
I looked up “mobile app development” and “Mobile App Development” and they showed different trends.
Be watchful of this when you conduct keyword searches. (View Data here)
Track Downward Trends
This graph shows the rapid decline for the phrase ‘cheap flights‘.
(View Data here)
This could mean:
There is fall in demand for cheaper flights or
The users have found new ways to find cheaper flights other than organic searches.
The second option sounds more realistic because there is a surge of apps from airlines and travel companies that provide every conceivable information about travel. It includes planning the entire trip or holidays with full options for economy airlines, connecting flights and the best deals for budget hotels.
Hence the need to search for cheaper stay options automatically comes down.
Also, ever since Google launched its Flights service, and with people using more long-tail questions, we no longer need to search for cheap flights on Google.
Race Ahead Of Your Competitor
If you and your competitor are in the business of promoting health, you will need something to elevate your brand over them. So do a search accordingly.
The graph shows a clear upward demand for brand searches for “Slimming World“, compared with a general decline for “Weight Watchers” – suggesting contrasting fortunes for each of the brands.
(View Data here)
You can do the same thing, comparing your brand name with the brand name of one or more competitor. See whose name has the highest demand.
Bear in mind that any brand name that is also a generic phrase is likely to have a false graph.
Find New, Relevant Long-Tail Keywords
Google Trends is not only a keyword research tool but also a tool for developing your entire content strategy. Its related queries feature the top 25 most popular related queries. This section tells you what else your search audience is looking for, besides the main query.
Trending Related Queries for “medical cannabis”
Most Popular Related Queries for “medical cannabis”
You can then plug these related keywords into an SEO software, like Ahrefs or SEMrush, to check their keyword difficulty, search volume, and find even more related keywords.
Ultimately, this process will help you cover trending and popular topics that can attract a ton of organic traffic.
Find Out Which Questions Are Most Popular
By querying Google Trends for single question words, you can get an idea for which words appear more frequently in searches.
(View Data here)
As the graph here shows, ‘how’ questions out-rank all others, with ‘what’ coming a clear second.
This kind of information can help you with your content planning.
Users are more likely to search ‘how to change a lightbulb’ than ‘why to change a lightbulb’.
Seasonal Trends – Create And Promote Content At The RIGHT Time
Search volumes for some keywords are affected by seasonality.
For example, take a look at the Google Trends data for the keyword “umbrella” in the US.
(View Data Here)
And here’s the same trend in Australia:
You can see that the query “umbrella” is the most popular in the US in June while in Australia the peak falls in December.
If your business is season‐dependent, you can quickly estimate its peaks and bottoms by analyzing the relevant search queries.
You can then use this data in two ways:
Create relevant content to coincide with the peak – If you live in Australia and sell umbrellas, it may make sense to put together a “wet season preparation guide” and publish it in December. This is when your potential customers are most likely to be searching for such information.
Start optimizing existing relevant pages before the peak – Consider an example where you already have a “wet season preparation guide” or perhaps even an eCommerce page selling umbrellas. It would make sense to start prioritizing the optimization of such pages a couple of months before the peak occurs (2–3 months before December, if you’re in Australia).
For example, you could start a link building campaign in October—this will likely result in a small rankings boost in time for the peak search period.
Compare Demand In Different Countries
English language search behavior is not universal. The example below shows how US and UK searchers behave in contrasting ways.
(View Data Here)
The graph on the right shows that in the UK, hotels should be targeting people looking for ‘dog friendly’ hotels, rather than using the phrase ‘pet friendly’(US graph on the left).
# Get Advanced Insights With Specific Search Options
Google Trends gives you five options to derive advanced insights about your target keywords and search phrases:
- Web Search
- YouTube Search
- Image Search
- Google Shopping
- News Search
Each option allows you to see search trends for a different segment of your potential market.
If a keyword’s popularity on web search dips, don’t scrap it from your content mix. It may actually have a gain in popularity on YouTube search.
For instance : “content marketing”, you’ll see its popularity on Google search has waned over the past year.
For YouTube search, you’ll see that its popularity has climbed over the past year.
(View Data here)
Its popularity just moved from Google to YouTube. In other words, “Content marketing” is still a valuable topic to cover.
You should just make a video series about it, instead of writing articles about the topic.
Use search type to figure out where to find your target audience. Understand your customers’ language using related queries
Track Behavioral Change
Retailers take note – customers no longer want fast delivery, they want same day delivery. Where will it go from here?
(View Data Here)
Google Trends Tells An Important Story About Your Audience
When you are analyzing data from Google trends, look for a story. If you do the research before every post, the results that you’ll get will be far superior than those of your competitors.
Google Trends is an incredibly useful tool. A little creativity yields important marketing insights. Use it and I’m certain you’ll discover insights that will improve how content is created and promoted online.
