Image: Moondance from Pixabay
SEO is always evolving.
One minute, you think you've got it all figured out, and the next, there’s a new algorithm update or some trend shaking things up. Keeping up with what’s driving traffic and boosting your brand's visibility can feel like trying to hit a moving target.
With new ranking factors, content trends and stiff competition, staying ahead of the curve is more important than ever. But how do you do that? That’s where Google Trends comes in—and it can be a game-changer.
What is Google Trends?
Google Trends is a free tool that shows you what people are searching for in real time. It's like having a direct line to what’s hot and what’s not in your industry.
It’s a powerful tool that can provide a range of data on the popularity of specific topics on Google in real time and historically. Marketers can use it to gain comprehensive insights into how often a term is searched over time, compare it to other searches, narrow it down to specific locations, and more.
It’s especially handy for businesses that deal with seasonal trends. For example, if you’re running a small company that sells Christmas decorations, Google Trends can show you when people start searching for them - including in past years - so you know the perfect time to ramp up your marketing efforts.
You can also use it to check out what’s trending at the moment, or to spot new, breaking trends, helping to shape your content and marketing efforts.
In this post, I’ll walk you through how Google Trends can be super helpful for your SEO strategy, and some smart ways to use it. Plus, we’ll cover some of the challenges you might face when using it.
Google Trends data
It’s important to know what you’re looking at with Google Trends data. It’s a representative sample of search, normalised to make comparisons between search terms easier.
Here's how Google defines it:
“Google Trends provides access to a largely unfiltered sample of actual search requests made to Google. It’s anonymized (no one is personally identified), categorized (determining the topic for a search query) and aggregated (grouped together). This allows us to display interest in a particular topic from around the globe or down to city-level geography.”
You don’t get exact search numbers. The figures are scaled on a range of 0-100 and different regions that show the same search interest for a term don't always have the same total search volumes.
It’s also worth noting that Google filters out some types of searches:
- Low volumes: Trends only shows data for popular terms, so search terms with low volume appear as "0"
- Duplicates: repeated searches from the same person over a short period of time
- Searches with special characters such as apostrophes etc
Taking all that into account, and while it’s no substitute for a tool like Wordtracker to do full keyword research, Trends can provide incredibly useful insights.
How is Google Trends useful for SEO?
If you're looking to drive more organic traffic to your website then having a solid SEO strategy is key. Did you know that the top organic article on Google’s search pages snags a click-through rate of 39.8%? That’s massive!
Image: FirstPageSage
Here are some ways using Google Trends can help improve your search engine visibility:
1. Identify trending topics
Google Trends is like your personal trend radar. It shows you what topics and keywords are rising so you can jump on them early. Creating content that aligns with what people are actively searching for can catch that first wave of interest and bring more traffic to your site.
2. Gaining seasonal keyword insights
Ever notice how some topics get super popular at certain times of the year?
Google Trends helps you see those seasonal shifts in keyword popularity. This means you can plan your content strategy around peak times, ensuring you publish or promote when people are most interested.
3. Understanding regional interest
One of the coolest things about Google Trends is its geographical data. You can see where certain keywords or topics are most popular, which is super helpful if you’re targeting specific regions or localizing your content. It shows you where to focus your efforts for the best results.
4. Analyzing competitor trends
Want to know what your competitors are up to? Google Trends can help with that, too. You can compare keywords related to your brand and theirs, clearly showing what’s hot in your industry. This way, you can spot opportunities to create content that stands out and fills in gaps your competitors might be missing.
These are just a few reasons why Google Trends is such a useful tool for SEO. Curious about how to actually use it in your strategy? Let’s dive into that in the next section!
Ways to use Google Trends in your SEO strategy
Here are eight ways you can use Google Trends to improve your SEO strategies:
1. Finding your niche
Finding a niche is the first step to targeting the right audience for a business. For this purpose, it is crucial to find the best keywords, search terms, phrases, and topics relevant to your target prospects and the niche you’re in.
Google Trends helps you do this by surfacing keyword popularity and search trends. It can pinpoint emerging topics gaining traction, giving you a golden opportunity to carve out a niche where your brand can shine.
In the longer term many ecommerce companies tap into values that are known to be important for different age groups. So for example, terms reflecting values like sustainability and cruelty-free (if your products guarantee these) are a good way to target GenZ shoppers.
This data-driven approach helps marketers adapt their SEO strategies, drive targeted traffic, and increase conversions.
2. Understanding search over time
Google Trends helps marketers understand search trends over time by analyzing changes in the popularity of specific keywords, revealing shifts in user behavior and interests.
Examining this historical data can help marketers track how search intent evolves, such as identifying when users are looking for information, making comparisons, or are ready to purchase. These insights are crucial for crafting an SEO strategy that targets the right keywords at the right stages of the buyer’s journey.
Google Trends also highlights related queries and trending topics, helping marketers identify new opportunities so they can adjust their content strategy accordingly. Understanding these shifts allows businesses to optimize content for evolving search intents, improve keyword targeting, and anticipate future trends.
For example, in the image below, you can see that related queries about oversized T-shirts often involve questions about how to wear and style them. In light of this, an oversized T-shirt retailer can create a showcase of people styling their oversized tees in different ways to attract potential buyers.
3. Identifying seasonal trends
Google Trends helps marketers spot seasonal trends by showing how search volumes for specific keywords fluctuate throughout the year. Analyzing these patterns can enable marketers to predict when interest in a topic peaks. This means they can create timely content or optimize campaigns to align with high-demand periods, thereby boosting SEO.
For example, a retail website owner can use Google Trends to identify increased searches for winter coats in the fall. This can enable them to optimize product pages, launch targeted content, and run promotions before peak season.
Looking at the data over an extended period like five year also helps identify whether this is a regular, recurring trend.
Integrating this kind of data into your SEO strategy can help ensure your marketing efforts are timed to maximize audience interest.
4. Comparing keywords
Google Trends displays traffic on a scale of 0 to 100, so you can’t determine the exact number of searches. However, you can compare relative popularity between different terms.
5. Finding related topics and queries
Google Trends helps marketers identify related keywords and queries by showing "Related Topics" and "Related Queries" for any search term.
These sections highlight trending and popular searches associated with your main keyword, providing insights into users' interests.
These can be longer or shorter term trends. This search on t shirts in the US shows the upcoming elections having a strong, current influence in related queries.
You can use the dropdown to sort by ‘Rising’ or ‘Top’.
Marketers can discover additional keywords and topics to target by analyzing these related terms, creating more relevant content as part of their SEO strategy.
6. Localizing your SEO strategy
Local SEO is the practice of improving your web presence to increase your visibility among specific regions. This is particularly beneficial for companies that serve a particular area or have a physical site because it expands their customer base locally.
The “Interest by Region/City” map from Google Trends is super useful since it provides location-specific insights for a specific keyword.
For example, here’s a search for sun hats on Google Trends in the US over the past 90 days.
Based on the insights from this map, businesses can identify target regions to concentrate on at this time, rather than having a blanket plan across the whole country.
Using Google Trends can help marketers tailor their promos and offerings to current trends in user behavior. Furthermore, organizations can grow into new markets with an in-depth understanding of customer preferences based on this data-driven research.
7. Tracking competitors
Competition analysis is important for all businesses and the comparison feature in Google Trends can help you determine your position in the market.
For example, let’s compare Walmart and Target in the US.
The graph shows that Walmart is consistently leading over Target, with searches almost double for the brand.
You can also research what your potential customers are looking for from your competitors by monitoring the related queries section. Combined with social media listening you can get a good idea of where you might be able to fill some gaps.
8. Creating keyword clusters
Keyword topic clusters help organize your site content around primary themes, each dividing into smaller subtopics that branch off the central node.
Here's an example for workout routines:
Image: Clariant Creative
These keyword topic clusters are very helpful for creating a strong internal linking structure, which is particularly important for SEO–and this is where Google Trends comes in.
Say you have a store selling bikes and you want to research mountain bikes. Enter the term into Trends and it will give you 25 related topics and 25 related queries to explore.
Analyzing these insights helps marketers identify core topics and relevant subtopics to build out a cluster, enhancing content depth and relevance.
In closing
While Google Trends is an extremely useful tool, it does have some limitations.
It can provide up-to-date or historical insights, but not a full, rounded picture, so is best used in conjunction with other tools to explore topics further and get more precise metrics such as volume, competition and search intent.
However, in terms of the big picture and keeping up with emerging topics of interest in your niche, it can provide a veritable treasure trove of useful information to inform your SEO strategies and keep your content relevant.
