Keyword Research on Google Trends for Content Writers | MindBrews
In this article, I will guide you through the process of conducting keyword research, a crucial step in enhancing your content writing skills.
Google Trends is a free and powerful tool that provides a unique window into the world of search requests made to Google. It’s anonymised, categorised, and aggregated, giving us a rare glimpse into global or local interests. This makes it an invaluable resource for content writers looking to boost their SEO.
Query vs. Topic in Google Trends
Google Trends provides insights into both search terms — specific words or phrases — and topics, which are groups of related search terms sharing a common concept. It measures and ranks these categories differently, making direct comparisons between them challenging.
In Google Trends, there’s a distinction between search terms and topics:
- Search terms: These are specific words or phrases that users search for. For example, “apple pie recipe” or “climate change.”
- Topics: A topic is a group of related search terms that share a common concept. For instance, the topic “environmental issues” might include search terms like “pollution,” “renewable energy,” and “global warming.”
Google Trends evaluates and ranks these categories differently. When comparing, it’s essential to consider search terms against other search terms and topics against other topics.
Types of Google Trends Data
Google Trends offers two types of data.”The first type is real-time data, which covers the last seven days. The second type is non-real-time data, which goes back as far as 2004 and up to 72 hours before your search.
Google Trends filters out some types of searches, such as:
- Searches made by very few people: Trends only shows data for popular terms, so search terms with low volume appear as “0”
- Duplicate searches: Trends eliminate repeated searches from the same person over a short period of time.
- Special characters: Trends filter out queries with apostrophes and other special characters.
Credibility
Google Trends is not a scientific poll and shouldn’t be confused with polling data. It merely reflects the search interest in particular topics. A spike in a particular topic does not reflect that a topic is somehow “popular” or “winning,” only that, for some unspecified reason, there appear to be many users performing a search about a topic. Google Trends data should always be considered as one data point among others before drawing conclusions.
Exclusions from search data
Trends omits certain data from search results due to the following reasons:
Searches made by very few people: Trends focuses on popular terms, resulting in search terms with low volume showing as 0 for a given time period.
Duplicate searches: Trends removes repeated searches from the same user within a short timeframe to enhance overall accuracy.
Special characters: Trends filters out queries containing apostrophes and other special characters.”
Researching on Google Trends
Before we go to the Explore section, I’ll quickly take you through the Trending Now section.
Daily search trends
Daily search trends, updated hourly, highlight searches that jumped significantly in traffic among all searches in the last 24 hours. These search trends show specific queries searched and the absolute number of searches made.
In the GIF below, I have captured what Daily Search Trends has to offer.
If you open each search term, you will see that not all searches have related queries. The ones that did were about IPL matches and the Kotak Mahindra Bank a couple of days before that.
If you’re looking at cracking ranking on top a lot more often without running ads, you must monitor this frequently. In other cases, if you are working for a new agency or a publication and if you need to track the events of a story closely, this daily search data might be helpful in uncovering trends.
Otherwise, you don’t have to spend too much time here; have a glance and leave no stones unturned.
Next, consider elimination.
Another useful strategy is to conduct your search in incognito mode. This can be approached in two ways: First, perform a general search and review up to the second page to identify sponsored content. If time allows, you can also examine blogs — simply use ctrl+f to check for your keywords. Second, adjust your search settings to ‘news’ to monitor what’s being published in real time. Experiment with other settings depending on the focus of your topic.
Note: There is no “worldwide” option here; you have a few countries listed to choose from.
Learn more about daily search trends here.
Realtime search trends
Realtime Search Trends highlight stories that have been trending across Google surfaces within the last 24 hours and are updated in real time. These stories are a collection of Knowledge Graph topics, Search interest, trending YouTube videos, and/or Google News articles detected by the Google Algorithms.
This graph captures the query’s performance per hour through that day. Ranging from 0 to 100, you can get an understanding of the exact time gap a search was made or if you’re looking to see when people search for what the most.
You also get the total number of searches made and how many articles went out. ( confirm this)
Next, you also have related news, updated in real time. For daily search trends, figure out how the related queries can help boost your content quality and SEO performance.
Let’s get our hands dirty
Okay, here is where the hard work starts. This may be a long read, so for ease of understanding and implementation, I suggest either opening split tabs or just testing this as you read it.
Enter the keyword you want to research.
For those who need more context, Chamkila is a Bollywood movie starring Diljit Dosanj as Amar Singh Chamkila, Parineeti Chopra as Amarjot Kaur, Apinderdeep Singh as Swarn Sivia and Anjum Batra as Kesar Tikki.
The movie follows the life of pop star duo Amar Singh Chamkila and Amarjot Kaur, whose songs, which were social commentaries or devotionals, became massive hits in the 1980s.
Now, always remember there are different permutations and combinations you will have to try out. In this case, it is a Bollywood movie, but it also casts a star who is very well-known in the USA. You need to approach SEO from a local and global perspective.
I won’t go into detail about every screenshot. Some should be self-explanatory. Please do feel free to drop any questions you have in the comments.
Topic Suggestions
As you type your query, a drop-down list will appear. At the top, you’ll find the exact search term you entered. Below that, you’ll see a list of topics that Google Trends believes you might be researching.
Ideally, if you’re looking for a specific term, you’d want to see how that term is performing first; also, just look at the drop-downs. You don’t have to click on every term; just keep an eye out for every detail.
Topics are generally more reliable for Google Trends data. They encompass exact phrases, misspellings, and acronyms in all languages, which is especially useful when analysing global data.
Region and Duration
As you hit enter, you’ll be taken to taken to the results dashboard. Based on your location, the region will be set to default, in this case India.
Change the parameters. Now you must decide on the recency of your topic. Is it something that people have been seeing/reading for a very long time? Is it an evergreen piece? It it something that is in the news now and no one would care to search about it after a new days? Is it something that has a controversial nature to it? Is it a help piece? Is it a review? Is it a seasonal trend?
If you’ve written the article, you would know the nature of it but how are you going to use that to optimise your SEO?
Start with understanding your audience. Like I mentioned above, a case member from Chamkila is really big in the US and Canada.
Next step.
Comparing Regions and Durations
Here’s what the GIF covers. I have compared searches in India vs. Worldwide and also checked the time frame to know search surges.
It was a little surprising to see that the searches in the US were not that high. But Canada was for sure. And India, ofc.
You can also filter it city-wise.
If you want to say, write something specifically about Punjab, then it would be good to look at it worldwide + state + city, then you can take a call.
Researching Category Performance
If you’re looking a a full deep dive and want to do a category wise analysis, pick a region from the dropdown. In my experience, it’s good for research, but again, really depends on your article.
This is an interesting gif. Played around with category selection here. Check out how category results differ so drastically. I’ll cover this below, but also notice the changes and the commonalities between the related topics and related queries.
I have not enabled it, but you can also include regions with low search volumes. Just check the box on the bottom left corder of the interest by region box. And on the map, if you just hover or click the areas highlighted in blue, it will redirect your keyword search results to match that region.
Related Topics and Related Queries
When researching your primary keyword, it’s crucial to review the topics and queries that users also searched for in relation to your keyword. This step is essential; by scanning these related searches, you might discover a high-performing keyword that could significantly influence your choice and effectiveness in keyword selection.
Top — The most popular topics. Scoring is on a relative scale where a value of 100 is the most commonly searched topic and a value of 50 is a topic searched half as often as the most popular term, and so on.
Rising — Related topics with the biggest increase in search frequency since the last time period. Results marked “Breakout” had a tremendous increase, probably because these topics are new and had few (if any) prior searches.
Comparing Topics and Search Terms
To understand the difference between topics and search terms, explore both simultaneously. Look at a search term and a topic with the same title. You’ll notice distinct results. I’m not going to go into details, but I’ll show you how this comparison works.
Exploring Multiple Topics or Terms: You can explore up to five topics or terms using the Trends Explore tool. Ensure a fair comparison by matching topics with other topics and search terms with other search terms.
Here are some reference links, incase you want to do a further deep dive:
Wrapping up, Google Trends is more than just a tool — it’s a game changer for content writers serious about SEO. Game changer also, cause it’s free. There are a lot of other tools that give in-depth SEO specific data but it’s paid. And that’s okay — if you have the budget in place!
By tapping into this resource, you can unlock a treasure trove of data on what’s buzzing right now. Use it to track keyword popularity, catch the latest rising queries, or even gauge global interest in topics related to your niche. It’s about making your content not only seen but also relevant and timely. So, keep your finger on the pulse of search trends with Google Trends, and watch your content climb to the top of search results. Dive deep, explore often, and let the insights guide your next big hit.
Note: Remember to conduct your research here with a pinch of salt. Always compare the keywords with an actual search, especially when you’re looking for long-tail keywords.
If you have any questions or feedback, please write to aishwarya@mindbrews.in, or you can find me on Instagram @manymoodsofaishu
