google trends

Content marketing is recognized as one of the most effective ways to grow a business and attract new customers. To be successful with content marketing, you need to share high-quality content regularly. But it can feel difficult to constantly think of useful and insightful topics that attract the right audience. This is where online tools like Google Trends come in handy. Learning how to use Google Trends for your content marketing gives you a valuable resource for relevant, trending topics that people want to engage with. As you read on, we’ll explore how to use Google Trends for SEO and improve your content marketing strategy. What Is Google Trends? Google Trends is a search feature offered by Google that shows you the most popular search terms for a specific period. Current trends are from the past 7 days, while past trends date back to 2004. The Google Trends site also allows you to check the frequency of specific search terms. On the results page, you can see the interest over time, interest by subregion, and related topics. You can also adjust your search based on the industry, category, time frame, location, and type of search (image, shopping, news, web, or YouTube). Google Trends can be a valuable tool for conducting market research. It gives you insights into the seasonality of search terms or even helps you gauge how much interest your products have in a certain geographic region. Query vs. Topic in Google Trends Google Trends gives you information on both search terms and topics. A search term is a specific word or phrase, while a topic is a group of search terms that fit into the same general concept. Google Trends measures and ranks these categories differently, so accurately comparing search terms and topics is difficult. Instead, you should compare search terms to search terms and topics to topics. How to Use Google Trends: 11 Innovative Ways With the help of Google Trends, you can create better, more relevant content that your audience will want to read. Try these 11 ways to use Google Trends for content marketing. 1. Conduct Market Research Google Trends is a valuable tool for conducting market research. It can give you insights into the seasonality of certain search terms or even help you gauge how much interest there is for your products in a geographic region. For example, let’s say you are a brick-and-mortar business based in Columbus, Ohio. You are considering building a second location in Indianapolis, Indiana. By checking Google Trends, you can find the popularity of terms relevant to your business in specific locations. If the search volume is low, you might need to reconsider your plans. 2. Discover Relevant Trending Topics If your team struggles to find fresh topics for content each month, Google Trends is a great resource. You can explore the most popular searches nationwide or narrow it down to a specific location or timeframe. Use the charts to help visualize and compare terms. When choosing your Google Trends topics, make sure the topic: Is something you can write about with authority. Is relevant to your business. Is something that would interest your target audience. 3. Improve Your Keyword Research While creating high-quality, relevant content is the most important part of content marketing, you should also consider your search engine optimization (SEO). SEO strategies help improve your search rankings for specific keywords. And Google Trends can help you do better keyword research. Use the Explore feature and enter a keyword or phrase you are considering. You will see a breakdown of interest over time, along with the interest by subregion. Then you can try various search terms to see which are the most popular. More popular search terms will give you better results. This is because more common keywords increase the chances of someone discovering your content and are more likely to be used in regular conversation. When creating content, you’ll want to use these keywords naturally. Keep in mind that other businesses are likely to use similar keywords, so you should narrow down some long-tail or focus keywords that are more specific to your business and content. The “Related Topics” section on the Explore page is a good place to brainstorm similar topics and keywords. It can even help you discover a topic or angle you hadn’t thought of before. 4. Create Your Content Calendar A content calendar helps you organize your content strategy around the types of content you create and when you post. Engagement is a huge metric to consider as you plan the release of your content. Knowing how to time your content to trends and what people search for is a great skill to cultivate, and Google Trends can help you plan and schedule your content calendar accordingly. For example, if you want to write content about cooking, the Google Trends results show significant search peaks in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and Christmas. The weeks before these holidays would be the ideal time to share your relevant cooking content so it’s easy to find when someone searches for it. Another example is the term “wedding invitations.” This term shows a surge between early January and the end of February. That’s because there are likely a lot of couples who get engaged between Christmas and Valentine’s Day. While some keywords get used more often at certain times, other keywords will show you when to avoid talking about certain topics. This could be because of a lull during one season, like the summer, for certain keywords that are relatively popular the rest of the year. Utilizing Google Trends data for each topic on your content calendar will help you plan the best times to post your content. 5. Enhance Your Branding You can also use Google Trends to check the popularity of your brand. While this feature might be more effective for larger brands, even small businesses can use this feature by limiting the search to your local area. When you use … Read more