Google Trends is a very interesting tool from the American giant and is particularly useful for SEO (natural referencing). This free tool allows you to follow the evolution of searches, trends of certain keywords and queries on the Google search engine. Of course, this tool is linked to the Google search engine and therefore gives relevant information to be well positioned on the SERPs.

In our article, we will take a tour of the tool and see how it can help a website to rank well to generate more traffic.

1. The basics of Google Trends

Even though Google Trends is free, the tool offers many useful features. We will make a non-exhaustive review of these.

1.1 Evolution of the interest of a request

The basic functionality of Google Trends is to provide you with data about the evolution of search results for a query over a period of time and in a region. In fact, Google Trends will provide the proportion of searches for a keyword. The higher the value, the more the query has been used in a specific region and period.

Before continuing, it should be noted that some queries (especially queries with more than 3 keywords), may not have sufficient data to be displayed.

This first functionality is available directly from the basic interface of the tool by inserting a keyword.

We then have a graph, with the different proportions by date, linked to our query. We see that there are filters allowing us to have a more global or more precise view. In particular, we can change the region, as well as the period. In addition to this, we can also refine our search by targeting particular categories or by changing the type of search (by images, videos, google news, etc.).

1.2 Comparing different requests

You may have noticed this feature, but Google Trends offers the possibility to compare two or more queries with each other. To do this, you simply click on "+ Compare" and add a keyword. You can repeat the operation several times. You can then see trends emerging.

For each keyword, you can add specific filters by clicking on the three small dots next to them, then on "edit filters".

1.3 Interest by region

This feature of Google Trends makes it possible to find out in which region the keyword used was the most used in the previously selected period. This way we can see where our search has the highest proportion of searches.

Note that if you use a country filter (e.g. France), the regions displayed will be those in the country in question (e.g. Île-de-France, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, etc.). If you use a filter for all countries, the regions will be the different countries in the world. Finally, if you use a specific region of a country (e.g. Île-de-France), the regions displayed will be the cities (e.g. Paris).

1.4 Related topics

Below the region of interest functionality, there are two blocks. The first is the topics associated with your query. In this area, Google Trends will provide you with a list of topics that have been searched for by other users with the same query as mine.

We can see that we can filter our related topics by progression or by the most frequent. The most frequent ones are the most popular, while the ones in progression are the ones with the highest search frequency over the period indicated.

1.5 Associated queries

Finally, next to the associated topics, we see the associated queries. They simply represent the other queries searched by users who made the same query as mine. We can also filter them by progression or by the most frequent ones.

2. Google Trends for SEO

The different features of Google Trends will help us to improve our SEO strategy. Indeed, all the data provided by the tool can give us an overview of which queries to focus on or which seasons or regions to target, etc.

2.1 Analyse your SEO over time

First of all, Google Trends will be useful to know if your queries are benefiting from a market trend or not yet. You can see if a keyword is becoming "obsolete" (if it generates fewer searches year after year). You can also for seasonal activities know the period of the year where your queries are most likely to be searched and therefore generate traffic.

On the other hand, Google Trends will also be useful to understand theevolution of your SEO performance (e.g. in Search Console: impressions + clicks) if there are peaks (increase or decrease). Google Trends will allow you to know if there has been an increase or decrease in searches at a specific time.

2.2 Analyse your SEO geographically

On the other hand, Google Trends will also allow you to know which market to target thanks to its numerous filters and the interest by region feature. You will be able to determine where your keyword is most likely to be searched for and thus be able to adapt your content to a precise target.

2.3 Adapting keywords, queries and content

In addition to the evolution over time and geographical scope, Google Trends will give you relevant information on what topics to include in your content and what keywords to use. You can also use the related topics and queries to find new content ideas.

In addition, the tool will also allow you to know which keywords and queries are preferred over another thanks to the comparison tool. You can follow the market trends easily and visually.

2.4 Adapting the communication medium

As we saw earlier, one of the filters in Google Trends allows you to filter the results by search type. So by cross-referencing the data, you can determine where you are most likely to generate traffic. It may be that a keyword has a higher popularity (or buzz effect) on a search type.

For example, a query on YouTube can be much more searched than on the web. So making a YouTube video on this query will allow you to take advantage of the current trend.

So we see that Google Trends is a very useful tool for SEO. You can also use it on a personal basis to track and compare trends, but the data provided is a real bonus for SEO. With proper use of the tool, you may be able to uncover future trending topics and explode your website's traffic . Of course the tool alone is not very useful, you can combine it with Google Search Console for example to monitor your performance.