No matter what your business is, in order to stay relevant, it is important for you to keep up with industry and business trends. In the old days, and even now for example in Tokyo, office workers must read relevant newspapers to inform themselves of the new trends. This does not mean reading newspaper is the best way to keep your hand on the industry puls. In fact, by the time the news is printed in paper form, it is already a bit old.
Current statistics point out that internet users make 3.5 billion searches every single day, and if you know how to analyze and narrow-down this data to suit your needs, you will be able to use it and significantly improve your SEO.
We will discuss some of the amazing tools at your disposal that you can use to find out what are the popular topics, keywords and trending stories people are searching for.
Table of Contents
Start with the basics: Google Trends
Its best to start with the largest global and most used search engine – Google, simply because of the sheer amount of data this giant offers regarding stats, trends, and insight. Google Trends is able to provide a quick overview of the searches with the highest traffic.
All you need to do is enter a keyword and you will receive information about search volume for that therm over time and in different geo-targeted places. If you change the category, type or other search criteria you will be able to dig deeper with your analysis.
Many of us already use Google Ads Keyword Planner with their marketing campaigns. This tool offers keyword ideas, keyword performance comparison and measuring keyword competition. Again, this is a great source of SEO data, but it will require a separate how-to article.
Have you truly utilize the power of Google Autocomplete?
Internet users use Google Autocomplete for their daily search, without noticing just how insightful it can be. This amazing tool is free, but more importantly, it offers keyword variations and whole phrases that are popular with Google users.
The best way to utilize Google Autocomplete is for long-tailed keywords. Enter a keyword in the search field and you Google will offer a number of popular terms and phrases under as a drop-down list.
Tailored news feed with Google News
News agencies and websites are aware that Google News aggregates data from sources and in turn, they take traffic and profit with them. However, that is not your concern. What you should want is a news feed tailored to your needs, and that is what you will get.
Google News will provide the latest headlines from sources all over the world, tailored by your input. Top stories are displayed on the left sidebar, and additionally, you can use the search bar to focus a topic or a location that is currently of interest. Searching for a location you will receive news relevant to this location, with regard to what are local people searching for and reading.
Social media and Web 2.0 are a good source of trending content
Twitter and Instagram are great sources for a wider analysis of what are people looking for, with hashtags of the day signaling hot topics, which makes them a great source of inspiration for blog content.
You can get in touch with people directly by asking on Quora. Shrew SEO for long-tailed keywords can be extrapolated from Quora “related question” feature. Quora writers include leading thinkers in their respective fields.
Using search data from Bing and Google search engines to predict questions that are asked around a specific keyword, “Answer the Public” offers an amazing visual presentation of the data in question, and you can download it in a popular spreadsheet form.
What keyword tools can Bing offer?
Being available in 40 languages, Microsoft Bing may be smaller than Google but it is still a very relevant source. Bing Webmaster Keyword Research Tool will help you get insight into Bing data for what people are looking for in their organic searches within the last 6 months.
Next, Bing Ads offer trending queries and data matching within a specific industry and sub-industry. When you select the target audience, the left bar will be filled with trending searches. Selecting any single search will present information on its performance.
Conclusion
Each one of these can give crucial insight, though I am sure there are more ways to use the power of the internet in such a way that benefits and improves your SEO. Fact is the Internet is growing and so are search engines and web tools. Use them to increase your traffic!