How to Use Google Trends for Search Engine Optimization

Published Time: 28/12/2023

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Reading time : 8 min read

For many SEO experts, utilizing Google Trends for keyword research is a common practice, and for good reason. However, it turns out that it goes far beyond just keyword research—you can use it in various ways to enhance your SEO efforts.

So, let's take a closer look at how Google Trends works. We'll show you how savvy SEO managers use Google Trends to improve their rankings. Shall we begin?

What is Google Trends?

Simply put, Google Trends is a platform that displays the popularity of any keyword searched on Google and YouTube. The popularity scores on Google Trends range from 1 to 100, where 1 is the lowest, and 100 is the highest.

You can delve deeper into trend search data on the Google Trends platform by selecting specific geographical areas or the desired time range. Google Trends allows you to filter data by choosing a range from as far back as 2004 to the past hour.

Is Google Trends Free?

Yes, Google Trends is completely free, and anyone can use it to unleash its full potential. As a free tool, Google Trends provides valuable real-time data that can be repurposed for keyword research and other SEO-related activities.

Understanding the Frequency

Before we delve further, it's essential to understand the exact meaning of the 1-100 popularity range. There's some confusion on the internet about this, but worry not; we're here to help.

Many people think that the trend line directly represents the search volume of a keyword over time. In reality, Google Trends displays the relative popularity of a keyword. This means it's the ratio of the search volume of the keyword to the total search volume of all queries.

To better understand, check out the definition from the Google Trends Help Center:

"Trends adjusts search data to make comparisons between terms easier. Each data point is divided by the total searches of the geography and time range it represents, to compare relative popularity."

Now that we've clarified that, let's explore the evolution of Google Trends to truly understand the power of this tool.

Long ago, Google Trends was a website for analyzing people's interest in various topics. Today, it has evolved into a massive web search data utilization tool, capturing real-time public reactions and assessing short-term news coverage. Through Google Trends, you can measure trends in social attitudes, political affairs, sports, entertainment, or any other field of interest.

7 Ways to Use Google Trends for SEO

As you might have gathered by now, Google Trends provides some valuable data for your SEO strategy. So, let's learn how to make the most of it.

Find Related Keywords

First and foremost, you need to learn how to use Google Trends for keyword research. Suppose you have an online shoe store where you resell products from the most popular brands. Based on the latest fashion news, Ugg boots are making a comeback, so you want to see if Google searches reflect that—bingo! According to Google Trends, the search volume for "ugg boots" is steadily increasing. We really don't know if that's a good sign (just kidding).

Now, a wise move would be to find similar keywords and optimize your blog posts, create cluster topics, or figure out how to name your product categories. Data like this comes in handy when sowing keywords or planning content in advance.

Related queries allow you to discover trend search terms similar to the keyword you input. For "ugg boots," here are the top 5 related queries:

Queries containing "Black Friday" are seasonal (we'll get to that later). However, you can see keywords like "ugg platform boots" are on the rise, so you can definitely include them in your copy or order a pair to make a statement at your next gathering.

To generate fresh keyword ideas, take it a step further by looking at related queries of related searches. Additionally, you can use keywords suggested by Google Trends as seed keywords in the Keyword Explorer.

Dive into Keyword Search Volume

You might be aware that keyword search volume is the number of times a term is searched within the time range you've chosen. For SEO managers, this is a crucial metric as it can bring new traffic to your website. Through Google Trends search, you can easily see the rise or fall of interest rates within the selected period. Moreover, you can even get regional breakdowns, analyze state maps, and discover where the term is most likely (or least likely) to be searched.

A quick reminder—the popularity range is between 1 and 100. Again, don't forget that the platform presents relative keyword popularity!

Localize Your Content

Google Trends shows where search queries are most popular, whether it's by country, city, or subregion. With available local trend data, you can determine where there's the highest demand for your product or service.

Identify Seasonal Trends

Great marketers always plan their content. Often, it involves considering upcoming seasons and the types of content related to them. You may know that seasons have a significant impact on search query volume. By monitoring seasonal trends, you can tailor content based on the time of the year.

If your business depends on seasons, planning your content in advance is crucial. For instance, if you sell air coolers in a region with cold winters, analyzing relevant historical search trends allows you to predict peaks and troughs. Use this information to create content that aligns with the growth in demand.

For preparing for Christmas, you should start preparing 2-3 months in advance. If you have enough time, you can even use different brush packs to create stunning graphics related to your content.

Generate New Topics for Videos or Articles

Even though Google owns YouTube, it doesn't mean trends searches on the two platforms are the same. Thus, creating content topics specifically for YouTube would be a wise idea.

Let's say you want to post video tutorials on using software. You need to figure out what queries people are searching for around that topic. With Google Trends, you can detect popular or rising video topics and optimize your video titles or descriptions to align with what people are searching for.

If you enter a query in Google Trends search, by default, you'll get web results. To switch the search type, click the arrow next to Web Search—now, you can select YouTube Search from the menu.

You can also use Google Trends to generate topics for your blog in advance and populate your content calendar. Navigate to the bottom left corner of the page and find the "Related queries" section. Here, you'll find related topics similar to your search query.

Discover "Breakout" Keywords

As described by Google, a "breakout" means there's not enough search volume data to produce a significant difference between "before" and "after." Thus, any keyword with a growth of over 5,000% is considered a breakout keyword.

Since these keywords aren't competitive yet, you can be the first to establish a stable position before they become mainstream. When it surfaces, you might appear on the first page of Google.

Make Future Trend Predictions

Finally, you can use Google Trends data to speculate on which queries will become trends in the future and use it for keyword research. You can look at past search trends and identify patterns in consumer behavior over several years. If the search volume for keywords relevant to your business shows a consistent increase during similar periods each year (e.g., every March to June for the past four years), leverage that by targeting the keyword.

Challenges in Obtaining Google Trends Data

Google Trends offers a "Compare" feature where you can input multiple keywords and compare their rates. Here, we looked at the popularity of the keywords "free kittens" and "free puppies" over the past 12 months in the UK—looks like the Brits are dog lovers:

If you only want to compare a few keywords on Google Trends, you can easily copy and paste this data into a spreadsheet. However, if you're a sports shoe company and want to analyze a hundred brands—manually collecting this information will be more time-consuming. You need an automated solution to gather a large amount of Google Trends keyword data.

Unfortunately, Google doesn't provide an official data scraping solution. Moreover, if you use a third-party scraping tool, Google won't easily provide its data—you might encounter captchas or IP bans during this process.

But, you can use a leading residential proxy provider to avoid confusion and various restrictions. We have a vast IP pool of over 55 million and rotating sessions to make search engines like Google believe that each request you make comes from a unique visitor. This means your third-party scraping tool can run freely for the highest success rate.

Conclusion

While Google Trends isn't specifically designed for SEO marketers, it has evolved into a powerful tool for those striving to achieve top rankings. The Google Trends platform provides the latest trend search data, giving you the opportunity to stay ahead in the competition.

Lastly, 922 S5 Proxy is an excellent residential proxy provider, serving the field of big data collection to help businesses and individuals efficiently obtain data sources.

How to Use Google Trends for Search Engine Optimization

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