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Technology Advice for Small Businesses

How to use Google Trends

GoogleApps_Apr28_BHow successfully you rate in online searches is the main factor in determining how much traffic comes to your website. If you feel that you’re getting behind the competition, it’s time to rethink your strategies. This is where Google Trends can be a god-send. It enables people to follow trending topics happening in specific countries at a given time. And if people subscribe, they can receive notifications on certain topics. So learn to maximize the potential of Google Trends with these tips and suggestions.

Choose the best keywords

Keywords and phrases are arguably the most important elements of search. When typed into search engines, these keywords trigger ads and listings to display. The first page (or the first 5 sites) are those that usually get the most clicks, according to studies. And so this is where search engine optimization expertise can ensure whether your site, and ultimately your business, thrives or fails.

Obviously, you want your company’s website to be as high up the listings as possible, so as to attract more traffic and visitors. So choosing the right keywords is a crucial part of any campaign’s success.

Know the hottest trends

Content is the backbone of search engine optimization. With low quality articles, your website will be downright ignored if clicked on at all. This is why you need to add value to your content, so that people discover you, talk about you and subscribe to your website, perhaps becoming loyal followers. The question now is – how do you get people interested in the first place? What will draw them in? Well, two words: Google Trends.

Using Google Trends, you can discover that the hottest online topics are in a given time and place. This could drive your content generation and give you ideas on what articles would most likely attract readers. Just be sure to make the content relevant to your business or industry. For example, if you own a coffee shop and see that Mexican food is trending on Google, writing about it will likely serve no benefit.

A good tactic is to start with wide keywords, using the coffee shop example from above, looking at trends for ‘Coffee’ for example. See what is trending on that and begin to narrow down your search. By doing this, you may find that Vietnamese Iced Coffee is a trending search topic in your area, so writing an article about that may be great for your blog.

Find sites and articles for back linking

Always keep in mind that when doing back linking (inbound links or incoming links), you need to try and connect with trusted sites that have an air of authority. The more places your website is linked from, the greater will be your popularity in top search engines such as Google and Bing.

Again, as we stated above be sure to pick articles and links that are relevant to your business and industry. Having irrelevant content could be seen as near spam and actually harm your overall search results.

Monitor your brand

You many know what it takes to get your site noticed and popular. But any efforts could be in vain if you are not monitoring the performance of your brand online. Google Trends can provide you with a detailed report on how you are faring. Just enter your company’s name and it will show you the information of “interest over time” via a graph and data on how searchable your brand on a per year scale.

The trends and patterns will give you the opportunity to assess strategies that you have implemented, and if there is a need to innovate or reinvent.

Check your competitors

They say, keep your friends close and enemies closer. This applies to any kind of online business. If you regularly conduct competitor checks with Google Trends, you can find out how they do things differently, how they rank in searches and what is the public recall of their brand. Sometimes, a high volume of traffic does not necessarily equate success. It could also be that there are negative issues that attract visitors to visit a certain website.

Identify regions with high interest on your keyword

Because Google Trends can provide you with data about the specific regions in which your keywords garnered significant interest, you can look into findings a little more deeply and study the factors that could have affected such patterns. With this sort of detail available, you can find out what is working and what areas need need improvement.

Building your brand online can be a daunting but rewarding task. Explore the benefits of Google Trends together with other research tools to get you ahead of the competition.

Should you need further assistance and tips on how to utilize Google Trends, contact us and our support team will help you with what you need.