Google trend is a tool that every online entrepreneur should know. The program offers a large number of possibilities for keyword research. Combining a keyword suggestion tool and the search results in Google can lead to valuable insights. We would like to teach you how we use google trends, the possibilities, and what you should pay attention to.
What can google trends do?
In google trends, you can easily compare different keywords. Google has many data about search volumes and gives this data away in Google trends for free. In the tool, you can also easily see in which areas a keyword is popular. A good example is, for example, a comparison between different football clubs. When we put PSV, Feyenoord, Ajax, and FC Groningen in comparison, we see that it is clear to see where the interest comes from.
Google trends for online marketers
The comparison also shows which search terms or related search terms are rising fast and which search terms are popular. Even the related searches are neatly displayed in the overview. If a large increase is expected, this will also be displayed. As shown above, the results are also quite easy to find as HTML shortcode and put it on a website. The great thing about this is that the data will automatically adjust to the current state of affairs.
The search results can be filtered by country, but also by period. The data from google trends go back to 2004. The trends can also be viewed in google images, news, shopping, and youtube.
In addition to comparing keywords, google trends are also used to display trends. At the time of writing, there is a major fire going on in Loosdrecht. This is immediately reflected in google trends. The keyword “Brand Loosdrecht” has gone from 0 to 20k + searches in 1 day, an opportunity for companies that produce news.
How do you use google trends?
You do not need an account to use Google trends. Google trends are freely accessible to anyone who enters trends.google.nl in the URL bar. It is good to know that there are several pages in google trends, some of which have reasonable overlap. At the top left is a menu with which the pages can be viewed. The homepage provides some examples and the option to enter your own search term to view the developments. The video of year in search from google can also be seen here. In the video, Google gives an overview of the most searched words and events. The trending page is also featured on the homepage. Here you can find the current trends and greatest growth in certain keywords.
If you continue to explore, you will see suggestions provided. You also have the option to enter your own keyword here. Although it is possible to enter keywords for inspection or comparison on almost every page, the explore page is specially made for this.
The trending page is a daily overview of the most important daily search trends. This overview can be filtered per country, and there is also the option to subscribe to a feed. When you subscribe to a feed, you’ll get the main keyword trends in your mailbox once in a while (depending on how you set it up).
Further pages in google trends are the year in search page where you get an overview of the past year, and there is an option to adjust the subscription settings. These pages are less relevant for our internet marketing geeks.
How do you determine whether a keyword is good?
Different keywords have synonyms, but often also multiple meanings. Once you have planned your content on a large list and categorized everything, you can start writing your first article. In our case, the first article we wrote was, “More sales with your current site.” We started with this because our site is still quite young, so Google will never put us at the top of the search results on a keyword like “SEO.” To do this, we must first prove that we can produce relevant content on small keywords. Now we are indeed at the top of the keyword “More sales with your current site” and some related keywords such as “more sales with your current site.”
Nice, but not a great performance, given the low volume on the keyword (about 10-50 per month). Once this page has built up a bit more authority, we hope that the page will also rank for “more online sales.” The search volumes here are already a lot higher.
Then, of course, the question remains, when is a keyword good? Difficult to determine because keywords are a bit of the past. Since Google Rankbrain was introduced, we see that the exact keyword matters less and less.
Search queries are much more important and do not focus on the specific words but on the search intent. Good keywords are always words around a theme that has not been declining for years. Examples of such keywords are Hyves, iPhone 4. Still, even the keyword “Internet marketing” is on the decline and is being taken over by “Online marketing.” This is clearly visible in google trends when you put the two keywords next to each other.
Compare different keywords
Have you done your keyword research but are you not quite sure which keyword to focus on? Then Google Trends is definitely the solution to your problem. In the program, various trends can be compared, and you get a nice visual overview of which keyword you can best target based on search volume. You also have to take into account that keywords are becoming less important. A searcher’s query (or search intent) is much more important.
An example is keyword Internet marketing or online marketing. It won’t make much difference to Google, which of the two keywords you use as long as your page is valuable enough. This is because Google now knows which words mean practically the same.
How do we use google trends?
Google trends are used a lot with us. It is mainly to compare the difference between different keywords and see if keywords are very regional and to see if keywords are increasing or decreasing in volume. We personally are not a big fan of keywords where the volume is decreasing. However, we jump on top of rising keywords as quickly as possible, especially when we see many volumes and little competition. We never actually use google’s daily trends. Since we are not a news site, our articles will never rank overnight.