Content is king!

Write engaging copy that people want to read!

Content should be fresh, frequent, and relevant!

There is a good chance that you have heard at least one of the statements above pertaining to your brand’s content. You probably also know that you will reap the benefits from Google in terms of organic rankings for solid content. Great content is a best practice that is an option for almost any brand.

Knowing all this, the question then becomes: How to keep coming up with relevant, fresh content topics?

A great place to mine for ideas is Google Trends! Many people are not familiar with Google Trends or, if they are, they do not see how it can be leveraged to inspire the type of content that can rank and that people want to read.

What is Google Trends?

In short, Google Trends lets a user, “explore what the world is searching.” It provides a tremendous amount of valuable, free data pertaining to exactly what the world is searching for and for how they are searching. This allows you to write content specifically aimed at these searches. You can see the most popular searches and topics of the week, month, or year. Think items relating to recent headlines such as, “Coronavirus,” “Disinfectant Spray,” and “TikTok.” This is powerful information as it shows you what people are searching for, as well as if those searches are trending upward or downward. This should spark some content ideas for your brand.

A Deeper Dive

Google Trends allows you to explore by search term or by topic. You can set the graph to show the interest over time going back five years. This lets you see if a search term is trending upward and if it makes sense to write content around the topic. It also shows you the related search terms you can include in your post, helping to earn you more traffic.

Let’s look at an example. Say you sell home entertaining goods such as trays, cheeseboards and glassware and want to write a relevant article. Start with some creative thinking, how would people be using these products? Maybe for a backyard party? We tried a number of different search queries on Google Trends and settled on “best burger recipe.” We made sure we were only using searches for the United States and our range was over the past five years. As you can see in the graph below, every summer there is a spike in the search term “best burger recipe.” This, of course, makes sense as more people use their grill in the summer compared to the winter.

We then changed the timeline to the past 12 months to see if the results are ticking up or falling out of favor.

Based on the graph above we can see the search volume is continuing to stay high. We can also see that there is more search volume around the summer holidays: Memorial Day and 4th of July. We can assume there will another uptick as we approach Labor Day, which we know has has happened in previous years, making this an ideal time to write an article around “best burger recipe.”

Before sitting down to rough out an outline, tough, let’s see if we can find anymore valuable information around this search term. The more relevant the data we include, the better our results will be. We can look at two more segments provided on the same page: Related Topics and Related Queries.

In the Related Topics segment we love seeing “Breakout” next to topics. This means there has been a huge increase partially because of a lack of prior searches. These searches have not been used much before, which is an easy way to get a piece of the traffic pie.

We can then cross reference the topics with the Related Queries and see if there is any overlap. Lucky for us there is, #6 under Related Queries is “best black bean burger recipe.” Combining this with #5 on the Related Topics Segment, “Plant-based diet,” should capture the attention of some of these burger searches.

The Final Product

Based on Google Trends, we know we should write an article around “best burger recipe.” We also know we should include breakout topics including Worcestershire Sauce, Plant-based Diet and Best Black Bean Burger Recipe. Lastly, we want to make sure we get this posted with plenty of time before Labor Day, as we expect to see an increase in searches. A synopsis of the article might sound something like:

“Get ready for a fun Labor Day backyard cookout with the best burger recipe you can make at home! Pair it with our best black bean burger recipe for any friends following a plant-based diet. Both recipes are sure to please and smack of rich, umami flavor thanks to our secret ingredient, Worcestershire sauce!”

In Conclusion

Google Trends is a powerful tool any content writer should have in his or her arsenal. If you are new to Google Trends take some time to explore and determine the best way to leverage the data for your brand. Writing directly to search queries can greatly increase results and traffic to your site.

If you have more questions about content writing, Google Trends, or SEO feel free to contact Lett Direct today!