Assume you work for a national shop in the beauty and cosmetics business. You've recently introduced a new line of organic skincare items and are revising your ecommerce marketing approach. When you think of organic skincare, you might imagine that the majority of your target audience lives in the Northeast or on the West Coast. And, for the most part, that assumption is correct.
But, in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), we don't make marketing decisions based on assumptions, do we? We rely on data.
So, you go to Google Trends to find out who is looking for organic skincare and where they live.
And you realise that if you had designed a digital marketing strategy based solely on assumptions, you might have missed a huge portion of your target audience. No less in Idaho.
Important Points
- Google Trends shows you where your target audience is and how they search.
- Use Google Trends data to estimate traffic and revenue goals, and manage cash effectively between paid and organic channels.
- Use Google Trends to identify upcoming content ideas and gain a footing before your competitors do.
- Using Google Trends, you can monitor mentions of your brand as well as your competitors.
- Google Trends can help you add colour and depth to your keyword research.
Google Trends is a sophisticated tool that offers both long-term and short-term insights on how people use the world's most popular search engine. Because what people search for provides a window into what they are thinking about, the technology can be used in sectors ranging from sociology to finance. And, while we appreciate all of the innovative ways individuals are putting the technology to use, we believe it's ideal for ecommerce SEO.
Here are 14 ways that ecommerce businesses may boost sales by using Google Trends to make keyword and content decisions.
1. Establish more precise income and traffic targets
Use Google Trends to analyse the seasonal fluctuation of the top products you sell before setting revenue and traffic targets. This method is better suited to ecommerce companies with a narrower emphasis, such as DSW, which can explore bootstrapping its top revenue-generating product without having to add a slew of search phrases. (However, the more search phrases you include, the more you will be able to validate what the data is telling you.)
It's difficult to obtain a seasonal read on revenue at a high level using Google Trends for businesses like Macy's, which offers a great variety of rotating fashion, or Target, which sells an even wider range of merchandise. However, you may still hack the programme by utilising inquiries that only a regular customer at your store would make. Take a look at what happens when we use the keyword Target deals:
Now, we can witness a significant increase in Black Friday buying and a minor increase on July 14. We can also change our chronology to ensure that the information we observed in the previous year was not a fluke. Here are some highlights from the last five years:
We can adapt our revenue and SEO traffic targets to meet the peaks and dips because we're looking at a constant heartbeat pattern year after year.
2 Locate popular products
You may also use the tool at a high level to assist your firm in identifying new trends to capitalise on with your SEO efforts. Whole Foods, for example, may wish to follow the evolution of kombucha searches over time and observe that the trend hasn't yet crested.
Scroll down to Related Queries beneath the chart to see the appearance of one specific question.
Scoby is the living organism that converts tea into kombucha (also known as the starter). People may either manufacture their own scoby or buy it online, according to a fast Google search. However, it is not available at Whole Foods. Given the growing popularity of DIY kombucha, Whole Foods may wish to include scoby or a DIY kombucha kit in their product range. Then, to increase website traffic even further, they may publish material about kombucha-making.
Google Trends and your calendar
3. Inspiration for your content calendar
The seasonality of product searches emphasises a rather apparent point: people's demands vary throughout the year. They must research various pain areas, investigate various solutions, test various how-tos, and organise their approach to various occasions and holidays. And they have different emotions and motivations.
Search Google Trends for the topics you frequently cover to see when you should add them to your content plan for the best SEO benefit. One technique you may use is to create evergreen pages, but update the material before each new seasonal spike this guarantees that your page's SEO equity is maintained while also ensuring that site visitors receive up-to-date, timely content.
You can also look for patterns relating to events and holidays to get ideas for new material. To find topic ideas, use various inquiries and keywords in connection with the vacation. As an example:
Research and monitoring
4. Keep track of brand mentions
By exploring branded queries over time, you can assess brand awareness and analyse the general health of your firm using Google Trends. You can also keep an eye on your CEO, certain goods, and any brand reputation issues you wish to be aware of (Apple product recall). Because effective SEO is so important for reputation management, being aware of any bad mentions will allow you to address or reduce reputation management difficulties.
In addition, if your company is called Apple, you'll want to use the Categories toggle while searching for your brand:
Have you noticed how we changed the query to Computers & Electronics? This allows us to avoid mixing up our data with fruit-related searches. When your keyword has many semantic applications, use the Categories feature. Even if there aren't, it's a good idea to compare the two points of view.
Another reason to track your brand mentions is to identify the towns and regions where your brand is well-known.
If you discover an important city where your brand awareness is low, you may wish to supplement that location with Google Ads until your brand develops adequate branded organic search traction.
5 Keep track of your competitor's mentions.
Monitor competitor mentions to remain ahead of the curve or to catch trending entrants as they emerge. This will allow you to be proactive in updating your SEO strategy to stay up with your industry's ever-changing landscape. When conducting competitor research, it is also a good idea to use the Compare feature.
6. Conduct local market research
If your store has physical locations, utilise the location toggle on the far left to analyse the performance of goods, subjects, or content ideas in each location and change your SEO approach accordingly. Sweaters, for example, would have distinct levels of appeal and seasonality peaks in Maine and Florida.
As you target each local audience with SEO, you can also see cultural distinctions emerge across locales, leading to stronger content. If you're a fashion retailer and you're creating a piece titled Fashion Inspiration from Your Favorite Celebrities, you might want to customise your celebrities to the audience.
This knowledge is also useful for local merchandise, particularly when it comes to sports teams, preferred hangouts, and other local in culture.
Keyword investigation
7. Look for similar topics and questions.
Use Google Trends to uncover more seed inquiries as you construct or grow your collection of seed phrases. Assume you work for Nordstrom and are conducting keyword research for your Cardigans page. A look at the relevant topics and questions reveals that keywords such as soft cardigans or colourful cardigans could be useful. Also, if you offer Merino cardigans, that might be something to emphasise.
It appears that we are bringing up some unrelated queries here, which indicates that we should change our Category toggle to Shopping to see if we get different results. In this instance, we do:
It's always a good idea to experiment with alternative displays and timings for your top keywords.
8. Look for long-tail keywords
Related searches for our cardigans question return long-tail keywords such as black and white cardigans. This is not a good keyword for a broad ecommerce category page. However, it is ideal for a product page. You might also use the term to spark a blog post, such as 10 Black and White Looks We Love. The same is true for lightweight summer cardigans. The Marie Kondo search should also inspire you to create new material (Fashion Inspiration from Marie Kondo).
9 Verify the data from your keyword study.
Different keyword research tools generate and show data in a variety of ways. Some tools, for example, determine their 30-day search volume by averaging the annual volume over a 12-month period. Others rely on data from the last 30 days.
If your tool employs real-time data, the timing of your keyword research can have an impact on your final keyword decisions. Check your data against Google Trends to ensure that a seasonal increase did not inflate or deflate the importance of specific terms.
10 Contrast keywords
Are you torn between two keywords? Your keyword research data and the SERP should be your initial point of reference, but Google Trends can help you break the tie. Check to see if any of your keywords are trending upward. As you choose your principal (long-term) keywords, an upward tendency can trump search volume.
11 Optimize for vertical search engines.
By default, the toggle on the far right is set to Web Search. You can, however, change it to Image Search, News Search, Google Shopping, or YouTube. If you're optimising for one of those vertical search engines (most likely YouTube), you may use many of the same tactics to find content and keywords.
Content promotion
Content marketing is a vast subject. It covers everything your company does to boost your content strategy. And, because there are numerous advantages to content marketing, it is worthwhile to execute properly.
12 Discuss current events in your writing.
Pay attention to the lately popular queries on Google Trends' home page.
As vital as it is to plan ahead of time for content marketing examples, you should also leave place in your strategy for relevant, trend-oriented content. By putting your brand's twist on relevant hot items, you may Newsjack them. Respond to breaking news, offer advice, or have some fun with a viral meme to capitalise on traffic surges for an SEO boost.
In the screenshot above, we can see searches for an upcoming Raiders game, the Europa League soccer event, and the Cricket World Cup (we swear we're in the US). Sports make offer entertaining and impartial newsjacking material for the majority of marketers. Just remember to direct your Raiders shout-out to Oakland rather than New York.
Checking up on popular news on a daily basis can also help you plan the content calendar for next year as you acquire granular information into seasonal search. For example, if you own a huge fashion retailer, the Cricket World Cup might be a fun and funny way to frame a blog article about men's fashion and capitalise on the SEO traffic generated by the event.
In other words, ecommerce content marketing isn't only about product pages and advertising.
13. Extend the scope of your customer personas
Let's return to our organic skincare example. If all of your buyer personas represent the tastes and needs of the Northeast and West Coast, but organic skincare is most commonly used in Idaho – and the South isn't far behind – you might want to learn more about the other people looking for organic skincare so you can fine-tune your SEO strategy.
Related searches can also provide additional information.
People who search for organic skincare also search for chemicals, presumably to determine which common chemical compounds are acceptable to consume or apply to their skin. In addition, an interest in CBD oil may indicate an interest in or openness to alternative therapeutic options.
You can now tailor your SEO and content tactics to target who your audience actually is, rather than who you believe it is.
14. Have a good time
The easiest approach to fully utilise Google Trends is to simply experiment. Experiment with various keywords, themes, and comparisons. Make use of various timelines, classifications, and geographic settings. Keep an eye out for popular searches. Become inquisitive. The more you look, the more vital keyword information you'll find. Use that knowledge to ensure that no matter what your audience believes, your website has a reaction.