Did you know that publishers who use data are six times more likely to be profitable year-on-year?
There are tons of data sources you can tap into as a publisher.
One overlooked tool is Google Trends––a free-to-use platform that shows you how demand for a topic (or keyword) has changed over the last few years.
So, how can you make the most out of the data Google Trends has to offer? In this guide, we dig deep into:
What is Google Trends?
Google Trends is a powerful tool that provides you with key insights about the volume of Google searches for specific topics or search terms, as well as the geographic locations where these search queries are most popular.
Editor’s note: Note that your Google Trends data can be accessed in real-time for a specified date range.
What else can you use Google trends for?
Comparative keyword research
World issues - Politics, entertainment, nature, science, business, travel and leisure, and so on.
Hot searches - The top daily searches by countries, states, regions and cities
Top charts - To learn about searches for specific people, places, and things in a particular month
Find topic cluster ideas
The topic cluster model is a popular content creation strategy.
Experts have said that it’s a super way to create SEO-focused content, and according to the House Communications team, Google Trends could help you create it. Google Trends is a fantastic tool to see what people are searching for around specific topics.”
“It helps you understand what’s going on in the specific region and in specific language so you know what kind of content topics to tackle to be relevant to the search needs.”
Publish content ideas that are on an upward trend
You can predict what content may arouse the interest of your users in a given period. Therefore, you can prepare, for example, 2-3 months ahead, optimized content and ensure its indexation and visibility of articles in organic results. That way you are able to meet users’ needs and rank higher in search engines.
Let’s say you find keywords that are trending on Google and you are able to use these keywords in your content. People will search for these keywords on the web and will find your content more easily.
This will help you leverage what’s called “newsjacking”, get traffic, reach new audiences and generate leads from it.
The best tip for using Google Trends is to make some research for a certain topic before you use way to much time to write a post that has no search volume.
With Google Trend and a look in the SERP, you can see if there is potential for your blog post and if you are even competitive to rank on the topic and keywords.
Spot location-specific patterns
One of the most useful but underrated features of Google Trends is the option to search topics by region.
Instead of looking at the entire country as a whole, you can drill down into specific regions and states to see what topics are popular and trending. This allows you to find niche content ideas that are lower in competition. After all, the demographics in Tamil Nadu are much different than Uttar Pradesh.
Google Trends will help you identify if there is a demand by using the translated keyword (if needed) of your publication and checking the trend in the target country.
Based on your selected keyword, you’ll be able to see the keyword trend for the specified date range. This way you’ll be able to determine the (potential) popularity of this keyword, and decide whether (or not) to create content around this keyword.
