Google Trends Shows You the Interest in Any Topic
Google Trends is a simple way of tracking interest in a topic over time. You can use the pre-selected times that Google suggests or you can put in a custom time range. What you learn can help you understand what topics and terms your audience is most interested in.
This has been highlighted lately with the move from 2019 to 2020. Google released some decade-based search information to show how things have changed over time. For instance, the most searched meme in the past decade was the happy birthday meme. The most searched dance was the Harlem Shake.
For the sake of nostalgia, you can also compare current searches to past ones. The top trending song in 2010 was by artist Larry Platt. The top trending song in 2019 was by Lil Nas X. In an interactive display, Google showed that the top trending artist of 2010 was Justin Bieber. He lost ground to artists like Eminem and Nicki Minaj. His popularity waned over time, and the top artist at the end of 2019 was Billie Eilish. However, Bieber was still in the top four.
The popularity of a pop artist doesn’t likely matter to your business, and that’s fine. You can still use these same tools to look at any terms you would like. Graphs show you the rise and fall in popularity as the years go by within your selected date range.
For instance, perhaps you run a car dealership. It’s easy to see that “cars” is a very popular search term at all times, often with a popularity rating on Google of about 75/80 out of 100. It did jump up and hit 100 in the summer of 2019.
Thinking that is too generic of a search term? Maybe you run a used car lot. The term “used Chevrolet” often dips under a 75 in popularity. On the other hand, “used Chevy” almost never goes under 75, doing so only once in all of 2019.
This is also a useful way of comparing keyword strings to determine what you should use. For example, “used car in Texas” has a popularity score of just 37, averaged out over the last year. Meanwhile, “Texas used car” has a popularity score of 78. It’s more than twice as popular. If you’re considering wording your content both ways, now you know which way is more popular and could bring in more traffic due to a vastly higher natural search volume.
Or, perhaps you run a company selling machinery like hydraulic presses. It’s helpful to know that the term “hydraulic press” has an average score of 83, near the peak for that specific term, while “used hydraulic press” comes in at just 3.
Search popularity isn’t everything, of course. Maybe you only sell used hydraulic presses, so it’s important to convey that to your readers and to target people who are not looking to buy new machines. But it’s still worth thinking about these types of metrics with any business. If you’re going to put time and money into content creation, you need to create the type of content people are looking for.
The other side of that, naturally, is that more popular search terms are usually going to bring in higher competition levels. You want to look at the competition scores, as well, so that you can see how often other companies try to rank for the same words. In some cases, a niche keyword can be more productive for you, even though it’s less popular overall. There’s a lot to consider.
Here at Content Customs, we can help. We can create content, generate an SEO plan, research your search terms and build an overall strategy that helps you attract the attention and search rankings you need. Contact us today to get started.