Do you want to stay up to date with the latest trends and use them to grow your business? If so, then Google Trends can help you out.
Whether you have an eCommerce store or a blog, Google Trends helps you better understand your audiences’ interests and uncover topics, products, keywords, and lots more.
In this article, we’ll explain how to use Google Trends to boost your traffic and sales.
Let’s begin with…
What are Google Trends?
Google Trends is a service by Google that lets you see the popularity of a search term in Google Searches.
And the best part, it’s free to use.
You can filter the results based on region, time, category, and different Google search options, like web search, images, news, Google Shopping, and YouTube.
For each result, Google Trends assigns a score between 0 and 100 for each data point. The number shows the search interest at a given time.
So, a score of 100 means that it’s highly popular while a score of 0 would mean there is not enough data for the search term or it’s not trending.
These scores are estimates and provide you a rough idea about what people are searching at the moment.
With that, are you ready to see cool ways of using Google Trends?
How to Use Google Trends
Now, if you’re looking to boost your website traffic, want to create content that your visitors will like and want to increase your sales, then here’s how to use Google trends.
1. Write About Trending Topics to Drive Traffic
Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve created content but didn’t get many visitors? If yes, then perhaps the topic had a declining trend or people aren’t interested in it now.
Using Google Trends, you can find topics that are popular in your industry. By creating content around topics people are looking for, you can drive tons of traffic to your website.
To start, head over to Google Trends and then on the top left corner, click on the menu option (three bars). From the menu options, click Trending Searches.
Now, go to the Real-Time Search Trends tab and select a category. You can select from business, entertainment, health, sci/tech, top stories, or all categories.
These are the topics that are trending right now. You can use them to create a blog post, a small video, a social media post, or any other type of content to attract people and generate traffic.
And to further drill down topics, you can filter the country. Select a region where your audience is from and look up topics that are trending.
2. Update Existing Posts to Keep Them Fresh
Another way of using Google Trends is to keep your content fresh and updated. Over time, many blog posts become outdated and need something new to help boost their rankings and traffic.
This is where you can enter search terms related to the blog post in Google Trends and see which one is trending.
For example, let’s say you have a food blog and want to update an old baking guide. What topics could you add to give it a new look?
If you search for how to make banana bread, its trend is increasing. By adding this in your guide, you can update your post and give it a makeover.
And if you scroll down, you’ll see Related Topics. These are topics that people are also searching.
You can go through all of them and sort them based on rising or top popularity. Then add these topics as new headings in your post and keep your content fresh.
3. Plan Your Content Calendar
While we’re talking about content, you can plan your calendar around different seasonal trends and promote them to attract visitors.
There are many topics that are popular during a certain time in a year, such as upcoming events, holidays, or festivals.
If you know when these topics will be on their peak popularity, you can plan your content creation and promotion accordingly. And to do that, simply enter a search term in Google Trends and set the date range to the past 5 years.
Take the case of Christmas trees. It’s past 5-year trend shows that its high in the first week of December, which shouldn’t be a surprise.
So, if you have a blog about Christmas trees or sell tree decorations, you can plan your content calendar and publish content just as the topic is going to trend.
Similarly, if you look up Grammy Awards, you’ll notice that it’s trend starts to increase in late January till mid-Feburary.
So, if you have an entertainment blog, you can plan your posts for Grammy Awards before it starts to trend.
4. Create Region-Specific Content and Marketing Campaigns
You can further dig deep into finding and planning your content by filtering them based on location.
You may wonder, how is that helpful?
Well, there are some queries that might be trending in one country but not in another.
By figuring out which search terms are popular in one part of the world, you can create content for visitors from that specific region and use geomarketing to boost conversions.
You can even compare the same search term for different regions in Google Trends by going to change filters.
For instance, if you look up ice hockey equipment in the US and Australia, you’ll see that its trend is on the rise in Australia.
The data shows that if you’re planning on selling ice hockey equipment, you should target visitors from Australia. That way you’ll have a higher chance of getting more conversions.
You can go even further by looking at subregions and cities to attract visitors. If you scroll down, Google Trends will show interest by subregion or city, so you can create more targeted campaigns.
5. Fine-Tune Your Keyword Research
If you’re doing SEO (search engine optimization), you can use Google Trends to fine-tune your keyword research. You can use it to find search terms that are trending right now, so you can easily generate organic traffic.
There are many keywords that are high in search volume, but they aren’t trending right now. As a result, you won’t be able to attract many visitors.
So, when a keyword research tool shows you a high-volume search term, enter it in Google Trends and set the date range to 2004 – present.
You’ll see how the trend of the keyword performs over the years and whether it’s worth targeting on your website.
6. Discover New Keywords with Related Queries
Another way you can use Google Trends to find new keywords is by looking at related queries. These are keywords that people are also looking for.
You can use them as additional keywords to target on your website or create separate posts around them to boost your rankings and drive traffic.
In our earlier example about how to make banana bread, you can look at related queries and see that there are more keywords you can use, like how to make buttermilk or how to make chocolate chip banana bread.
7. Promote Trending Products to Increase Sales
Do you have an online store? You can further expand your use of Google Trends and use it to boost your eCommerce store’s sales.
How can you do that? It’s simple…
Look for trending products to promote in your online store. Just enter products from your niche into the tool and then pick the items that have a rising trend.
It’s like finding trending topics, but instead, you’d want to see which products people are interested in right now.
For instance, yoga mats would be a great product to have on your fitness store, as its trends are increasing.
You can find more products to promote on your eCommerce store by looking at related topics and queries in Google Trends.
If you scroll down when looking up yoga mats, you can find more product ideas. To boost sales, you can display them as related products and then use them as an upsell.
However, as you start to look for products, you’ll also come across fads. These are items that were hugely popular for a short time but are no longer trending.
A great example of this is fidget spinners. They suddenly became a booming product to have on your store, but as you can see, the trend has gone down and are no longer a good item to sell and make money.
8. Get Insights About Your Competitors
Now, are you wondering how your competitors are performing against your brands? Using Google Trends, you can keep an eye on their popularity.
Enter your competitor’s brand and then compare it with yours. You can then set the time frame to at least the past 12 months to see how your company has progressed against others.
Using the information, you can then spy on your competitor and copy their strategies to boost your site’s traffic.
9. Improve Your YouTube Channels Performance
Do you want to improve your YouTube channel’s performance? Using Google Trends, you can filter its results for YouTube and create videos on trending topics.
The tool is great if you’re just about to start a new channel and still figuring out what topics to cover.
For example, if you search movies in Google Trends and set it to YouTube search, you’ll see that its trends been on the rise. This shows that you can create videos about the movies.
And that’s it!
Google Trends is a powerful tool and using these tips, you can easily create attractive content, target trending keywords, and increase your conversions.
We hope you liked our article on how to use Google Trends to boost traffic and sales. If you enjoyed reading this post, you can also check out our guide on how to properly add Google Analytics in WordPress.
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