Google Trends is a tool that has been around for a while, and has great potential for improving exposure and sales for businesses. It is entirely free to use, and its simplicity makes it accessible to virtually anyone with basic computer knowledge.
Here are some specific ways in which you can use Google Trends to enhance your small business practices:
Brainstorming Topics
For instance, if your business website contains a blog, it’s common to quickly run out of content ideas that will not only interest your readers but also tie into the products or services your business offers.
Choose a phrase that describes a broad idea for a blog post, and Google Trends will show you how popular that phrase is and also suggest related topics. With one simple search, you could potentially come up with ideas for dozens of different blog posts, and relevant content is the best way to build your business website.
Keyword Research
Although you may want to continue using other keyword research tools to develop your SEO practices, Google Trends can give you a general idea about what keywords people are currently searching for on the web.
As when you use this tool for brainstorming, you can get ideas for other keywords that perform as well or possibly better than the original word or phrase you searched for.
Industry/Brand Research
You can’t stay on top of the competition unless you know what the competition is up to and how consumers respond. Search Google Trends for your industry field, and see what brands show up the most to gauge your performance against others. Also, you can compare various brands within your industry to see what their related concepts suggest about their current practices.
What’s Trending
With the name Google Trends, you’d certainly hope this tool would show trending searches and topics, and it doesn’t disappoint on that front.
If something has gone viral (or at least enjoyed higher than average popularity) within your business industry, this tool can give you a heads up so you can use it to your advantage.
Sentiment Analysis
Not all exposure is positive exposure, so you don’t necessarily want to hop on a particular keyword bandwagon just because it’s popular.
The Google Trends graphs show the number of searches for a specific keyword, and correlate to news stories associated with the searched word or phrase. That way, you can avoid implementing keywords that have negative connotations.