How to use Google Trends for Google and YouTube SEO

In this post, I summarise how to use Google Trends for Google and YouTube SEO.  This post summarises the Google Trends for SEO video posted by Google Search Central.

Introduction

Goal: Produce content inspired by search interest.

SEO focusses on:

• Helping search engines understand your content (in-page optimization)

• Helping users find your site by improving your presence in search results (off-page optimization)

No special secrets that will rank your site first on Google!  But there are best practices that can make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand your content.  The most important SEO techniques are in the SEO starter guide.

SEO techniques involve:

• Technical or policy requirements (see Search Console Training)

• Content optimization

Google Trends helps SEOs:

• Stay up-to-date with rising topics and terms

• Perform keyword research

• Create a content calendar

• Plan video strategy on YouTube

Staying up-to-date with rising trends

One of the important aspects of SEO is to be continuously on top of rising trends and know when a new topic is becoming popular in your industry.  If you know a search term is rising or likely to rise in the future, you can get ready with high-quality content for search users.

Google Trends offers multiple ways to monitor trends:

• Trending Now page

• Explore page 

 

Performing SEO keyword research

You can use Google Trends to identify terms and topics that are relevant to your target audience and identify which of them has a high or fast-growing search volume.

For example, every year, Cheese has spikes of interest around Thanksgiving and the end of year holidays:

Select Top in the Related topics or the Related queries drop down to show what is already getting a lot of interest:

Select Rising to see what is getting more interest recently:

Use Related queries to find close variants to your main keywords.

Compare

Add more keywords to compare interest over time:

Creating a content calendar

Try to find seasonal trends in the data e.g. cheese at Christmas:

Try to put content related to this on your site a little before that time.

 

Check your audience e.g.

United States

Create content related to Gruyere and Brie for Thanksgiving and at the end of the year.

United Kingdom

Don't do content related to Gruyere.

Create content related to Brie and Stilton just at the end of the year.

YouTube SEO

Google Trends can be a great source for planning your video strategy on YouTube.

Lots of things you can do for video SEO.  Start by focussing on video titles and descriptions. 

Web search and video search are different.

Web Search

Cheese recipes higher than Cheese sandwich.

YouTube Search

Trends are opposite, Cheese sandwich higher than Cheese recipes.

So, prioritise creating content related to cheese sandwiches over cheese recipes on YouTube.