Google Trends is a useful tool for any online marketer to get an edge over the competition by analyzing the popularity of top search queries related to your business in Google Search. 

Follow us, as we go on a journey through Google Trends and share our top tips on how you can use Google Trends to boost your SEO and become the online business you want to be.

What is Google Trends?

Simply put, Google Trends analyses search queries or keywords and displays where these terms are ‘trending’. An invaluable tool for any marketer; it uses a simple and intuitive set of graphs that allows you to explore the best trends across languages and locations. 

You can also reverse the search and let Google tell you what is recently trending, identify trends and subtopics within an industry and understand the search trends of your local area or your operational area. 

The information gathered from Google Trends is invaluable and can be used to hone your SEO and improve your rankings, conversions and much more.

1. Keyword Research for Your SEO

Finding the right keywords for your website can be a challenge. With many applications out there, it can be a minefield knowing exactly what’s working and what’s not. Google Ads has a useful keywords search feature, but so does Google Trends. 

In fact, you can run free keyword research on Google Trends by adding a specific search term you think works into the search box and observing the results. What makes Google Trends unique is its ability to recommend related keywords that are currently growing in popularity.

Google Trends will use this keyword to run a search for their most popular keywords, then return a list of keywords it considers as closely related to your search.

It also displays a graph that shows your search term’s trending popularity over the last year. All you then need to do is compare this to Google Trend’s suggestions and identify the best keywords for your business.

A WORD FROM MBM: 

Google Trends shows you these keywords in order of popularity, and will even provide you with the exact % search volume increase for each one. But if the % is replaced with the word “Breakout”, this means the keyword has increased by over 5000%!

2. Discover Related Topics

In addition to using Google Trends to discover and hone your main SEO keywords, you can also use it to discover related search terms so you can find out what people are looking for and perhaps adjust your products or services to match. 

In the Google Trends system, there is a function called “Related Topics” which, instead of showing you specific search terms, provides you with insights into the broader topics people are searching for within your criteria. 

This also helps with blog creation, giving inspiration for the latest “hot topics” which you can then write about so your website can appear in any related searches. These topic lists give a rough idea on a field of discussion, but a more in-depth keyword search will still be needed to get the best words for your SEO strategy. 

3. Trickle Down SEOnomics

Just as our play on words suggests, Google Trends also allows you to trickle down from big search terms and then filter down to precisely the right keyword set for your business. 

Enter a big keyword, such as ‘marketing’, into the search bar and press Enter. From there, Google Trends will help you whittle down your search to find more specific terminology related to the criteria you set. 

For example, searching worldwide helps get an idea of the global trends, but often businesses have a smaller, more focused target audience. 

Take Myk Baxter Marketing, for example. Experts in digital marketing and professional website developers, they are based in Darlington, North East UK but work with clients across the world. When designing an SEO strategy, however, they target specific geo-locations to produce better results. 

Google Trends then allows you to filter by category. This is essential. People searching for “web designers in Darlington” do not want to find articles about garden spiders. 

You can get more advanced with specific search options, such as filtering the search type by choosing specific Google web searches, Google Shopping, news, images and even YouTube search habits. After all, over 6.3 billion searches happen every day, so by starting big and trickling down, you can get a clear and accurate picture of where your best keywords come from and why they’re essential.

4. Predict the Future

The problem with Google Ads results, and even Google Trends results, that look into the past is – every other marketeer is also using the same information.

Your direct competition will be using the same techniques to find their best keywords, and you’ll be forever in conflict. 

Google Trends allows you to predict the future…in a round-about way. Using the available data, you can search for relevant topics that are trending now, and make future predictions based on this information and create content about these trends before anyone else does. 

However, unless you’re following Google Trends like a hawk every day, you run the risk of falling behind your competition. This process is time-consuming but worthwhile. Understandably, many businesses do not have the time nor the resources to stay on top of Google Trends, which is why they employ the services of digital marketing specialists such as Myk Baxter Marketing. 

From website copy keyword updates to inspired blog writing and full website redesign, they use this information (and a whole lot more) to boost SEO which, in turn, sees better visit numbers, lower bounce rates and higher conversions overall.