5 Ways to Use Google Trends for Better SEO

Google Trends is a resource that provides information on how people search on Google. It was launched in 2006.

Then, it was not updated frequently whereas today it is updated every second and in fact utilizes real-time data.

The service has been used by online marketers to improve on their strategies and come up with more effective ones.

Google Trends has been shown to be a reliable source of data on people’s attitudes, preferences, beliefs and needs which are shown when they communicate with the search engine.

It is able to segment trends in terms of geographic location, category of product, date and the topic or title.

This allows a broader analysis of the data availed by the service. The service also works in News, Images, YouTube and Shopping thus allowing a critical analysis of the market from different angles.

How Google Trends Works

While studying the data on Google Trends, there are a few things that you should know in advance. This is especially if you are new to it.

• The data on Google Trends is put in such a way that the user or viewer can understand and compare more easily.

• The results of a search depend on the time and location of a query.

• To compare relative popularity, each data point is divided by total searches of that geographic location and its time range.

This takes care of issues that would arise from differences in searches in different locations and times as well.

• The results for relative popularity are put on a scale that ranges from 0 to 100 based on the proportion of a topic to all searches of all topics.

• Total search volume may differ even for different places with the same number of searches of a term.

As a SEO professional, the Google Trends service may be used in several different ways:

Keyword Data

The data on Google Trends concerning keywords is the first thing that would come to mind for the online marketer.

The SEO uses this together with the keyword planner tool and others as it shows patterns that these tools may have missed.

Google Trends usually suggests new keywords by highlighting recent popular search queries that are related.

This gives you ideas on what to add to your keywords list based on popularity for that period. Of course you should check the keywords to see which works well for you, as opposed to just having the all in your list.

The main categories are quite broad and categorized into subtopics. Google puts all related subtopics together under a main category. This means that you will find keywords that you cannot use as they are from a different subtopic.

It allows you to change keywords with the changing times. Google Trends has its data refreshed and updated very frequently.

You can keep up with the change in trends, and tweak your keywords list as needed to ensure that you are at the top of the game when it comes to search engine marketing. It is no longer just about simple keyword matching today.

The keywords list you come up with today requires semantic relevance. You can also use Trends to target trending queries before they peak on the search engines.

At this point, the competition is not as high. To target these queries, just follow the information updates on Trends to see how the queries are performing and keep tabs on any changes.

One may examine the data found on Trends on a different platform, by acquiring R and Python packages to do so. Examining them allows you to use the queries to manipulate and visualize the data.

Search Trends Comparison

Google Trends enables search trends to be compared. This is especially due to the addition of YouTube, News, Shopping and Images.

These offer a larger range of opportunities to research. They appear at the top of the search results page either listed across the page or as a drop-down menu.

You can access data on image search which may be helpful by giving you different ideas on which way to take your marketing campaign. A lot of queries usually lead to the image search, making it a vital part of marketing.

Data on YouTube may also have insightful revelations. For instance, when it comes to pets search, the dog and the cat usually have a highly competitive margin in terms of queries. The trending queries are also highlighted in this data.

Seasonal Peak Assessment and Prediction

Google Trends comes in handy in the analysis of peaks in demand. You can predict upcoming peaks by studying the trends and analyzing them.

For instance if a specific search query increases after every two years over a long period, you can estimate its next peak time to be two years from the last peak time.

While making these predictions, keep in mind that the opportunity presented is not absolute. Also the value of the opportunity may vary from year to year.

There is no set size of what to expect, only that an increase may be expected. To get a better sense of what to expect in terms of size or number of queries, we may cross-reference the data on Trends with that of Keyword Planner.

This would allow us get a better value of the chart on Google Trends. We may also have data from Ad words to be able to tell the volume of queries for a specific subject.

URL Rankings

One may also use this data by taking the URLs listed as featured articles to find the keywords that the page is ranking for using SEO tools.

This shows how fast a page is ranked and indexed. It also shows the number of queries which are related to each other that a page can rank for a short time.

You can then find out how Google processes fresh content. This information is useful for you as you can use it to make future decisions concerning keywords so as to get higher rankings from Google.

Google Trends is indeed an important service. The real time data updates make it a very effective tool for search engine marketing.

The information is readily available for all to access, the difference being in how you utilize that data to maximize amount of traffic coming your way.

You can use the information discussed to your advantage by following the steps mentioned to improve your marketing campaigns.