Still trying to figure out which niche you should capitalize on?
Perhaps you are considering getting into content marketing, but want to make sure that you are doing it correctly.
Perhaps you are developing your business still and are at the point to where you are not sure what kind of product you should focus on.
Within these three scenarios, one tool you should be utilized extensively to make an informed decision; this tool is Google Trends. Google Trends is a necessary tool to use in market research–a tool that helps you figure out the needs and desires of your audience. This information will inform your content marketing, niche selection, and product creation.
Perhaps you are already familiar with Google Trends. Keep reading. This post will help you gain a better understanding of it, as well as offer you a few new tips on how to use the search tool.
After reading this post, you will understand why Google Trends is a big deal and why it is so valuable to affiliate marketers. For people who are new to online marketing, this post will describe and show you how to use the main features of Google Trends. If you take these tips seriously and implement them as best as you can, then your online business will only become bigger and better than it would have otherwise.
Mistakes Not To Make
The biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs of any kind, but especially those wanting to go online, is not researching before and during the startup of their business.
With the amount of money, time, and personal sacrifice it takes to start a business, this is not a step you want to skip. The first question you should ask yourself is: Why do you not want to learn how to utilize Google Trends properly?
When customers visit your site, they are coming to you to fix a problem that they have. Why not utilize a free tool? It is a known fact that those who do more research into trends have a higher chance of achievement than their rivals.
Properly utilizing Google Trends will always give you a leg up over your rivals, and it will not hurt to be a few steps ahead of them.
The Wants of Your Audience in the Search Trends
The most important thing to know as an online marketer is that you are not creating the wants or desires of your customers. They already have those wants and desires. Your job as an online marketer is to figure out how to exploit and utilize those wants and desires, through the content you produce.
Which is both a no-risk investment (except to your time) in your audience, as it does not require a lot of money, but knowledge of how to use Google Trends while building up an audience that trusts you and the content that you put out.
Google Trends is the tool to use to make sure that you are offering the right products and content to fit with the wants and desires of your customers.
Remember–their wants and desires are already present. You are just providing them with a means to fulfill that want or desire. Google Trends is the tool to use for this.
Successful Marketing Includes Using Google Trends to Research Keywords
When you are searching for a specific topic, keyword, or term that you are interested in, the best thing to do is to keep the filters pared down. You do not want the system to be limited. However, you could also alter locations and categories if you are searching for a particular niche.
When you search for either a topic, term, or phrase, two options convert your search. You can choose between searching for the subject or the word.
Once you press Enter, Google Trends will give you a list of results.
There will be two types of graphs: to the left, a bar graph and a line graph below the search bar.
This is interest shown over time on the subject, on Google.
A visual aid to show you not only how that Google trend has been doing, but how long has it been trending (or vice versa).
Keyword Query Ideas
Below the graphs, there is a queries box that contains other keywords that are similar to your original search. This shows you keyword trends directly from Google, along with their direct search queries. Not only does this show you the top trends, but also the rising trends–something that can be very valuable to you as a content creator, whether your content is blog posts, podcasts, or videos.
It features a sorting tool that allows you to sort these results either by “top” or “rising” trends. Top trends are the terms and topics that have been searched the most.
Use this information to enhance and grow your audience base, by using the rising Google Trends. It will more than likely extend your audience reach within a relatively short amount of time.
Do this by sorting the queries by rising, and then compare it to the Google trend keywords that rose in the past in a time before. You could also search by most popular query searches.
Make sure to write down the relevant search queries and terms, and use the compare tool to maximize their usefulness to you and your business.
Compare Features on Google Keyword Trends
Another method of using Google Trends to help with your market research is also to compare the search terms you are using.
Using the compare feature will give you different, color-coded graphs that apply to each term you have input. This is a straightforward and visual way to see which search term is the most popular right off the bat.
Search Interest on Google
Using this tool, you will be able to see the search interest on Google in terms of related queries, related topics, and regions that are revealed as you scroll down.
Understanding this search tool will not only help you in general but also help you decide which areas to focus on in your content. Use the tool to narrow down your audience region by region, and then decide which region you should focus the majority of your marketing in, in terms of their shown interest.
Interest Over Time on Google
When you perform analysis over time, this gives you a clear picture of which trends are here to stay and which patterns are fads, as well as which trends are on their way out.
Look at the differences in time ranges in Google interest on time graphs. Watch the popularity of everything, as that will inform you as to which ones are viable for your business and which ones aren’t.
If the trend you are watching has lasted more than five years, then there’s a good chance you can make money from it and is a good bet for your business’s future. You are also able to look at data from years and years ago. There is an option to go back and view data from hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Take advantage of this.
Search results on Google are usually set on the default “past 12 months” and “worldwide,” but you have the option to change your search to a certain time and country.
In the end, you want to look at the data of trending search and see their trend history. Make sure to take on trends that have been popular and are still on the up, not a fleeting fad for your business.
How Do You Find a Profitable Niche?
For example, let’s pretend that you are interested in outdoor sports.
Your search for mountain bikes in Google Trends and observe that there has been a seasonal low (from September to May) on the sales of these bikes in the last five years.
Having done this search and read this information, you will now know that during those months you cannot count on business to occur in any significant amount–whether this is in search traffic or sales. This is relevant to every kind of outdoor sports equipment, and using keyword trends like this can help you face the realities of your business potential.
For example, you can use the knowledge that your sales and traffic will be low from September to May to redirect your traffic to a seasonally appropriate outdoor sport–snowboarding. When you search for snowboarding in Google Trends, you can compare it to outdoor biking and see precisely where the two line up–their highs and lows. If you did it now, you would see that snowboarding is on the rise, above mountain biking.
If I was launching my business, I would use this information to decide precisely which sport my business should focus on first, e.g. depending on the time of year, and exactly when I would need to launch my business.
If the time in January, then it is already too late to take advantage of the snowboarding searching that will peak in February, so I should start preparing my audience for mountain biking content in March. In May and June is when I would begin to creating content for snowboarding to have it ready for October.
What about paddle boarding?
Paddleboarding is third in Google trends behind snowboarding and mountain biking. Put a note to try and promote it next year, perhaps when its patterns are higher.
Make Sure You Are Planning Your Content Marketing Strategy
This is self-evident–make sure that the content that you are creating has been planned, not created on the fly.
Not only does this help you not get stuck creating shoddy content, but Google trends can also help provide a wealth of topics for you to utilize.
If you perform two search queries on Google, that alone would give you six new ideas for content just based on related queries.
Explore the related keywords, queries, or related topics, and enjoy the rabbit hole your content search will take you down.
Product Data Research
Product creation not only takes a great deal of time and effort but is also very expensive.
One thing that Google Trends can help you with is narrow down the focus of your product, by giving you keywords and topics that are on the rise.
If your business is in the health and wellness niche, which diet should you create a new plan or cookbook for–paleo, keto, Atkins, or vegan diet?
If you search all four of these subtopics into the Google Trends search bar, you would see that the vegan diet is head and shoulders above the other three diets in popularity, as their highs keep going higher and their lows are not as low as they were before.
Google Trends Are Important To Your Audience
When you analyze the data from Google Trends, what you are searching for is a story buried within that data.
As you analyze it, you start to become familiar–you see the history of the search terms, how their popularity is, whether it is city, nation, or worldwide. You then think of the related keywords and queries as sequels to your main story (the original search term), as they keep furthering your business and further the interest of your audience into your content.
So the best advice you can take from this post is to research every single topic you will ever think about creating content for, so that you can be sure to create the type of content that not only your audience will be interested in, but utilize the related searches and keywords to keep them interested in what you have to offer. Only then will your business continue to grow in the long term.
Author Bio:
Spencer is a full-time affiliate marketer and founder of Buildapreneur. If you would like to learn more check out his guide on how to get started in affiliate marketing.