How To Use Google Trends For SEO

Google Trends is a free tool that allows you to analyze the popularity of search queries in the Google search across various languages and regions. In simple terms, using this tool, you can understand search interest in a particular topic at a specific time, in a specific place, and among a certain type of population. As marketing professionals, it’s our job to stay updated on what’s trending and figure out ways to capitalize on them. Understanding how you can use Google search trends can be highly beneficial for your SEO and marketing game. Let’s show you how.

How to use Google Trends for a Basic Analysis

To perform a basic analysis of a topic, you simply have to go to the Google Trends website and enter the topic you want to analyze, such as “Tariffs.”

Then, click “Explore.”

With this, you can see a lot of information on the screen, most prominently the graph. Understanding how to interpret this graph is where you have to start. Let’s decode it: 

We are going to start with the interest score, which is given on a scale of 0 to 100. A high number represents high search interest for the keyword during the selected time period and location. Similarly, low search data shows low search interest for the keyword during that period. 

Please note this is not the actual number of searches for any keyword. To find the seasonality patterns, you should look at the peaks and valleys.

An important part of analyzing trends is that you need to apply the filters as given in the picture to get more specific results:

Apart from this, there are other types of data that you can spot as you scroll down:

Interest by subregion: This section shows the level of interest in a specific search term across different geographical areas within a country. It helps you understand where within the country people are most interested in your keyword, breaking it down by states, cities, provinces, or other regional classifications.

Related topics: This section displays topics that users who entered your keyword also searched for, offering insights into broader or more niche-related areas of interest.

Related queries: This section shows you search terms that are frequently searched with the term you entered or that have seen significant growth in search volume.

Another great thing about Google Trends is that it also allows you to compare multiple terms. Just click on the “Compare” option (present at the top right side).

For example, we compared tariffs with sanctions and saw the former taking a clear lead in terms of popularity. 

How to Improve Your Marketing Using Google Trends?

Google Trends is a great way to find what interests people the most, so you can know whether it’s worth creating content around a specific topic. Moreover, it empowers your creativity. And if you are an e-commerce business, you know how important it is to leverage the seasonality and then also Google trends in your own way. Let’s look at seven proven ways to amp up your marketing efforts using Google Trends:

1. Keyword Research 

Keyword research forms a crucial part of SEO strategies. With the help of keyword research, you find search queries that are highly related to your business. The concept behind using the keywords in your content is to rank high for them in the search results and attract qualified leads. But did you ever realize Google Trends is quite useful in keyword research? Suppose you sell bags. Make a search for “bag” in Google Trends and check for the “related queries.” 

Now, as you can see in the results, there are so many brand-specific related keywords. That means people are searching for specific brands’ bags rather than simply searching for bags. This way, you can brainstorm topics, analyze your competition, and prepare the keywords that you need to target. Apart from this, as we discussed even above, you can compare it with the other keywords as well. For example, when we compared “bags” with the “tote bags,” the data revealed that “bags” have been searched much more overall than “tote bags” in the United States over the past 7 days.

But there are limitations to it as well. Google Trends does not offer any insights on the search volume and keyword difficulty. Both of these metrics are crucial SEO aspects that determine whether the keyword is good to go ahead with. This is because the search volume tells you the potential of the keyword to bring qualified traffic if you rank for it. Similarly, keyword difficulty tells how hard it is to rank for the keyword. However, you can use Google Keyword Planner to check both. 

2. Build Topic Clusters

You can form topic clusters using Google Trends. Topic clusters are a group of related content pages organized around a central pillar topic. They help you enhance your site’s structure by creating strong internal linking, reflecting your expertise in your niche, and hence improving your search engine ranking.

Let’s understand how you can use one main topic and plug it into Google Trends to find related queries and topics. For example, if your main topic is “hyperthyroidism,” you can find other topics and queries related to it and write blogs on it. 

3. Improve Your YouTube SEO

YouTube SEO revolves around optimizing your videos and channel to rank higher in YouTube’s search results. You need to identify relevant keywords and phrases that your target audience uses when searching for content similar to yours. That’s why it is good to employ Google Trends while making a strategy for YouTube.

To get started, you first need to change the default setting on Google Trends from “Website Search” to “YouTube Search.” Also, change the default category (present just left of the Search Type); for example, we selected “Jobs & Education” as a category. This means we are specifically looking at the search interest for the term “coding” within the context of the Jobs & Education category.

Now that you have set the right metrics, check whether the topic you have searched is still trending and explore related queries and topics. 

4. Optimize Your Local SEO Strategy

Local SEO is where you focus on improving your website and Google business profile visibility for the local search results with the purpose of improving visibility for customers searching for products or services in a specific geographic region.

Local SEO plays an important role for businesses with a physical location or serving a specific geographic area. Let’s say you sell baseball gear and want to learn where in the U.S. the demand for your product is high. To find this out, you will need to enter “baseball types of equipment” in your Google Trends and check the “Interest by subregion.” Then, you can design location-specific landing pages for your site and target areas where your products are popular.

5. Leverage Seasonal Trends

If you’re an e-commerce store, you know there are going to be spikes in traffic during a particular time/season. Using Google Trends, you validate this and plan your marketing strategies for the trendy topics of the season. However, you need to be careful here a little bit. Make sure to differentiate between the trends and fads. The trends are the topics that become popular around a particular period of time every year; on the other hand, the fads are those that become quickly popular out of nowhere and then fade away. A classic example would be the ice bucket challenge. 

Go Beyond the Surface Level Insights

Google Trends is just a starting point; the real struggle begins with the competition out there, understanding the search intents, and targeting the right audience. To truly unlock the depths of your market landscape and gain actionable insights, talk to our SEO consultants today. Leveraging our years of experience and expertise, Kinex Media can help you prepare a cutting-edge SEO strategy that will help you outrank your competition flawlessly and increase your bottom line.