How to use Google Trends to Find Sizzling Hot Topic Ideas 🔥

Key Takeaways

have you ever bought one of these or one of these even if you don't know what either of these are there's a good reason for that and it's because they gain popularity so fast and lost hit just as quick and in this video I'm gonna show you how to use Google Trends to find hot topics that won't fade over time stay tuned [Music] what's up SEO samo here with HFS the SEO tool that helps you grow your search traffic research of competitors and dominate your niche and there are two goals for this tutorial and that's to help you find sizzling hot topic ideas and to teach you how to analyze any keyword and know that it won't disappear tomorrow let's get into this thing so Google Trends is pretty straightforward you enter a search query hit enter and you'll see a graph that shows you the popularity of the search term or topic over time but you need to understand that the numbers on the graph do not directly represent search volume each data point represents relative popularity it's then plotted on this graph on a scale from 0 to 100 based on a topics proportion compared to all searches on all topics here's a good example if you look at the trend on Christmas tree and Christmas decorations you'll see that they have almost the exact same trend but look at the difference in search volumes in hrs keywords explorer they're completely different so let me give you a 30 second walk through all the features and then we'll get into some techniques tactics and strategies here you can isolate your data by location or view the data from all over the world and then there's a date filter so in general the longer you choose the clear of the pattern will be in the graph next is compare which lets you gauge the popularity of two or more search terms against each other plot it on the same graph here you can isolate data between Google's different search engines like web search images news shopping and YouTube search then below that are two graphs interests over time and interest by region finally there are two tables below which are related topics and related queries which we'll dive into in a bit now that you're a trends master let me show you five actionable ways that you can extract important data from this absolute beast of a tool the first method is to identify seasonal trends and seasonality is so huge that they can put companies out of business for example being a farmer without Sun and rain is like being an SEO without a computer so let's search for golf clubs and trends then I'll set it to the past five years to see if there's a recurring pattern between seasons and that's expected you can see valleys and popularity as we get into the colder months of the year now I'll add golf courses to the graph and you'll see that it follows nearly the exact same pattern and appears to be more popular than our first query finally I'll add one last layer and that will be indoor golf and you'll see quite the opposite effect the last query trends slightly upwards in the winter months which shows you that you can't generalize a topic like golf to only have downturns in the same season so here are a few things that you can do to battle the inevitable seasonal downturns number one focus on promoting your products services and content that are in season or not affected by the season so as a store that sells golf equipment and accessories you might want to focus on selling things like golf simulators or tools like indoor training aids which either peak in the winter months or remain stable number two use the interest by region section to laser in on areas to push your paid ads so if you look at the five-year trend for the search term golf simulators you'll see that it repeatedly gets more popular in the winter months now if you scroll down to the interest by sub region area you'll see a heat map of popularity so rather than targeting the entire United States you'll see specific States you can narrow your audiences down to so for example people in Hawaii probably wouldn't be as interested as people in Minnesota where it's much colder and icier and if you want to get even more targeted you can narrow this down to the metropolitan areas and even cities number three since your workload should be a bit lighter in the offseason you can use that time to prepare content for the busier months so for example looking at the five-year trend for searches on the quarry workout you'll see that there are many spikes every January and it's because people are making new year's resolutions to lose weight or to get fit and then it just continues to decline through the year which is a bit sad so rather than releasing your content at random times you can prepare your content updates and new posts or videos starting one month or so in advance to reach more people when they're actually searching for it the next technique is to avoid keyword unicorn let's look at Google Keyword planner x' monthly search volume for the keyword fidgets spinner if you were to stick with the old way of doing keyword research and look at just the search volume you think that you found yourself a unicorn of a keyword but when you compare that with Google Trends you would quickly discover that the unicorn has officially slid down the mountain and flatlined to nothing and if we look at the keyword metrics in hrs keywords explorer you'll see the same trend as well as the average monthly search volume so bottom line if you see trends that appear to be completely dead or flatlining at the bottom you may want to consider avoiding them and take search volume with a grain of salt since they are rounded annual averages also seeing as we're looking at the last five year trend which includes its most popular time we can exclude the spike to get a decent idea of where it is today so I'll set it to the past twelve months and you can see right away that the decline of the fidgets spinner continues and this is a very important step to take because if you were to just look at the 30 day trend you might think that the topic was still popular the next technique is to find related keywords to find new keyword ideas now if you look at the trend for protein powder and then you scroll to the bottom of the page you'll see related topics and related queries the related topics box represents topics that users also search for so you can see that people who search for protein powder are also interested in topics like ketogenic diet my default is set to rising which shows you related topics with the biggest increase in search frequency since the last time period but you can set it to top which shows you another relative scale scored up to 100 on the other side are related queries that users searching for your target term also search for and you can change this to top or rising to this should give you a broader look into your topic at hand so you'll see a lot of people are looking for the best protein powder others are searching specifically for a way and some are looking for vegan and so on and so forth these keywords should give you a better idea of a searchers intent or next intent so that you can serve them the best you possibly can another effective way to use this is to type in the name of a brand or a company now if we look at the trend for HubSpot then I'll scroll to the bottom of the page next I'll change the filter to top and then I'll scroll through these pages until I find a competitor's name and you'll see here that one of their competitors is Salesforce now I'll take this over to a trust keywords Explorer and type in a couple queries like up spot vs. Salesforce and Salesforce vs. HubSpot and run the search next I'll go to the metrics tab there are a couple things you'll probably notice first there is little to no competition since both of these terms have a keyword difficulty score of zero making it potentially a very low competition keyword that you can go after next you'll see that cumulatively the search volume is around nine hundred and fifty searches per month and the clicks data shows that there are more clicks that happen on the search results page than the corresponding number of searches and the reason is likely because people want to read multiple reviews before they decide on which one to buy so even if you don't rank in the top three of Google you can still attract some decent traffic so whether you're an affiliate marketer or a part of one of these companies you can create versus pages to gain a decent amount of easy and free traffic the next strategy is one of my favorites and applies more to establish brands for global SEO this technique allows you to understand which cities and sub regions need your products and services we already discussed ad targeting using the interest by region but there's more you can do with this so first I'll type in a brand name like active campaign then I'll change the location settings to worldwide and you'll see that they're branded query has been pretty stable over the past twelve months if I scroll down to the interest by region you'll see that some of the top countries searching for them are in the Netherlands and Hungary this can be a good signal for them to translate their pages into these countries native languages and use the href Lang tag but the coolest part of this feature is if we add a competitor to the mix you'll see something completely different so I'll add a weber to compare these stats scrolling down to the regional data you can see the market share of searches broken down by country and as we go deeper through the list you'll see countries like the United States where a weber seems to own more of the search market this information will give you a better idea of where you might need to focus your marketing efforts so that you can slowly pick away at the countries where your brand may not have the strongest presence yet from here you can click on the country name to investigate further and get more accurate regional data so rather than targeting the US as a whole nation you can target specific areas the final technique that I have is to use Google Trends to select your YouTube topics now just because searches on Google are trending upwards or are stable it doesn't mean that YouTube follows the same pattern check out the Google web searches for HTML tutorial a consistent decline right now look at YouTube there's a consistent incline then a sudden drop-off and it looks like it's stabilizing now so let's say that you're a musician and you cover famous artists songs so rather than covering and he old song you can use the trend to find out whether you're creating content at an optimal time or if it might be too late for example if we look up ed Sheeran song thinking out loud you'll see the typical new release kind of trend super popular than fades I'm not saying that you won't get any traffic if you create content after it's faded but by this time it's probably too late to jump on the trending wagon to get real viral action but let's compare his more recent song shape of you you'll see two things first his new song has been quite a bit more popular when comparing piece in second it's on the decline but perhaps it's not too late to get a little bit of traction since we know that the decline tends to slow down from here these are the kinds of trends you can look for us a musician and if you're able to get in before the peaks or during the peaks the higher the chance you'll be able to ride the wave now Google Trends is absolutely monstrous and one of my favorite tools simply because it's only limited by your creativity so when you're making marketing decisions or choosing topics to create content on you need the history of the topic to get an idea of where it's going and this can be the difference between an absolute hit versus a complete flaw so use Google Trends in combination with the keyword research tool like hrs keywords Explorer to make sure that you have a full scope of the topic before you create it this will help you create a more predictable system in your content choices and lead you to greater success if you enjoyed this video like share and subscribe to our channel for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials and hey if I miss the feature combination or hack that you absolutely love leave a comment and share it with the rest of us here in the H community so keep grinding away get results and I'll see you in the next tutorial