Google Trends: The Ultimate SEO Goldmine

The latest revelation by the search giant, Google, has just left SEOs and digital marketers flabbergasted. Hosted in a video by Search Advocate Daniel Waisberg, the company shared five important insights about Google Trends which might revolutionize optimization strategies and significantly help in troubleshooting awful traffic woes.

Primarily, Google Trends works as an indicator for the popularity of search queries over a given period of time. It will not reveal the exact search volume, but it will enable comparative analysis of changes in interest for certain topics and keywords. In a really basic way, the implications for SEO of this information are quite profound.

General Keyword Research

Until now, SEO has been all about the keywords. But Google’s algorithm has changed, and thus must your SEO strategy. But Google Trends provides a window into the bigger picture so you can research topics and related searches that might have not made it on your list.

How to Use Google Trends

As Waisberg pointed out, Google Trends did not encapsulate the entirety of the search landscape, instead the latter simply obtained a statistically valid sample of searched data.  It followed then, that the trends provided had representation of search behavior in general; not depiction of the complete singularity of behaviors of searching.

It cleans the data; filter the noise, and respects the privacy of the users. And it includes anything to filter the repetitive questions or remove the personally identifiable information.

One interesting point that Waisberg brings up is the normalization of data. Google will not report raw search volumes; instead, it will assign a value of 100 to the peak popularity of a search term, and then all other data points will be represented as a percentage relative to that peak. This actually is a good thing as it allows you to compare search trends between different search phrases.

How to Use Google Trends for SEO

In summary, understanding how Google Trends actually works is important if you are to derive value from it for SEO. Here is how you can apply it to your advantage.

• Identify trending topics: Monitor the search trends that are showing a positive growth curve. Develop content on this to match user interest and benefit from the opportunity which is emerging. Do not let your competitors beat you here.
• Analyze seasonal patterns: Consider analyzing search trends over time to grasp when they tend to rise or fall during periods of a year. This will be of great essence in preparing your content better during peak times and not falling victim to drops during off-peak periods.
• Do competitive analysis: Google Trends will assist in showing comparative popularity of key topics relevant to the keyword in your industry. These comparisons can help differentiate areas for competitive analysis.
• Geo Target Your Audience: Google Trends will be giving you data on regional interests of searches. This will help you tune content or web pages according to the region based on search interests, and do this while optimizing the page for SEO.
• Debugging Traffic Anomalies: If you’re noticing surprise falls in your organic traffic, Google Trends can help you point out the reasons. If search volumes for your target keywords are going down, that can possibly be attributed to a change of algorithms, seasonality, or anything else.

The Future of SEO with Google Trends

With Google iterating and optimizing its search algorithm over time, the understanding of the nuances of search behavior is correspondingly more important. Google Trends forms one place where understanding into user intent can be arrived at under the prior context.

You will have to combine the use of Google Trends with all the other SEO metrics and analytics so that you can come up with a more enriched SEO strategy. The crux is that this strategy will continue forever, and to make it work for the future, one has to be updated with all the current trends and tools.

Advanced SEO Strategies: Going Deeper Within the Roots of Google Trends

Though its pivotal utility in the SEO space cannot be denied, the value of Google Trends goes way beyond basic keyword research. With successful activation, it presents itself as an intelligent tool for user behavior understanding and, in turn, foretelling the future, allowing for ultimate content optimization.

Treasure-Hunting for Latent Demand Using Google Trends

One of the areas where Google Trends holds the highest potential is the identification of latent demand: low current competition but high potential search queries. This is where the power of the tool to indicate the relative volume of searches on a topic comes in. An SEO can use the terms for his analysis whenever he chips search terms that have a gradual upward trend, ultimately positioning his content in a way to harness the interest before it gets fierce at the competition frontier.

A good example would be getting a sharp spike in the searches for terms like “plant-based protein alternatives”; that could signal you to a new market. Building content around this topic in its budding stage pegs your website as an authority site in that space and could go on to receive enormous organic traffic over time.

Geo-Targeting with Precision

Google Trends has granular geographic-level data, all combined to help SEOs indicate regional differences in search behavior. Such information is important for all businesses that would wish to either gain or expand their market share in targeting particular locations. More and more, tailoring content to regional interests enhances relevance and search engine ranks.

For instance, in case you are operating a chain of restaurants, you will be able to pick on what is common and popular in certain regions through Google Trends. Such information can be used to come up with menu items for use in marketing, and it can even affect inventory.

Content Optimization and Planning

Google Trends comes handy to businesses during content planning and optimization. Learn about trends in topics and keywords to pin down the content strategy in one direction to be ready for user needs. The tool will also be immensely beneficial in picking content gaps from your current strategy.

For instance, if you are observant of a surge of searches in “keto-friendly desserts,” you can create that post or recipe within that opportune moment to drive new traffic to your website and build your site’s authority.

Crisis Management and Opportunity Identification

Another application of Google Trends is as a crisis management tool. This tool works just as well in monitoring search insights for your industry or brand, confirming that nothing goes wrong, or even disclosing some unforeseen opportunities. For example, if a competitor falls into a crisis of negative PR, you can develop similar content from a positive perspective about that topic and gain market share.

Google Trends Integration and Inclusion with Other SEO Tools

The best practice would be to integrate Google Trends with other SEO tools to elicit maximum benefit. Integration with trend data from keyword research tools would help in further refining and filtering the keyword list by pointing out some lucrative long-tail keywords. Similarly, using it in conjunction with social media analytics would provide one with insights into the interests and preferences of the audiences.

Overcoming the Challenges and Limitations

Google Trends is a powerful information tool, and it is very important to understand these constraints. It operates relative to others, not in absolute terms, and doesn’t display exact search volumes. What is more, trends are subject to influences from news events, seasonal variations, and changes in algorithms.

Overcoming such challenges should thus involve using information from Google Trends in combination with other sources of information, such as search engine or competitor analysis. In this way, the holistic application will have helped in giving a solid prescription for undertaking the SEO strategy.

Tools such as Google Trends will carry even more critical importance as search engines continue to evolve. This is when user intent is going to become of prime importance, trying to understand the search trends to which the audiences can be related while building the content.

Further, as AI and machine learning get more assimilated into search, then tools that are able to provide insights into human behavior will become invaluable. Google Trends poses a huge potential to help SEOs face the intricacy of a future search landscape.

Conclusion

Google Trends is among the most versatile tools, laden with lots of information in a very fluid way for SEOs. Knowing how to use it in what context, and what it is not, itself, to apply in content strategy, power, and apply in increased rankings with organic growth in the flow of users. With the digital landscape constantly changing, keeping abreast with Google Trends will be the secret real game-changer for practicing SEO professionals.

Sources:

• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-gives-5-seo-insights-on-google-trends/523669/
• https://trends.google.com/trends/
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/use-data-from-google-trends-supercharge-your-seo-strategy-chris-raulf-02tjc
• https://www.techmagnate.com/blog/google-trends-for-seo/

Subscribe to our newsletter