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On the Google
Trends homepage, in the box in the center of the page
type in a term related to your website and press "Search
Terms."
On the next page you will see a graph that represents the
number of searches made over the last several years that included
the term you typed in. Not too useful, but if you
compare several search terms, you can get some useful
information about how to best focus your website.
Let's say you were thinking of having a website about skin
problems, you might compare several related topics. In the
search box this time, separated by commas, type in: oily skin,
acne, facial hair removal, skin blemish. (You can compare
up to four items at a time.) Press the "Search Trends"
button.
The graph reveals that far more people have conducted searches
that included the word "acne" than searches that
included the other terms you tried. Clearly then, it might
be better to focus your website more specifically on acne
since the number of searches for this term dwarfs the number
of searches which included the other terms. Some would argue
that you're going to face a lot of competition in the "acne"
area, so maybe you should shy away from "acne."
However, don't run from the competition just yet...
Now try to get even more focused. This time in the box at
the top of the page type in: acne medicine, cure acne, acne
treatment, acne cream.
You will see that searches including the term "acne
treatment" have been significantly more popular than
searches for the other three terms. Therefore, in building
your site you may want to focus on the term "acne treatment."
In other words, you would try to feature this term prominently
in your web page title, description, keywords, and text (in
H1 format at the top of your page) in order to tap into the
large demand for information related to "acne treatment."
Another approach would be to find a less-popular term on
which to focus your site. Sure there are less people searching,
for example, for "acne cream" than for "acne
treatment," but this also means there probably is less
competition there--all the big-time acne medicine companies
are focused on appealing to people who are doing searches
for "acne treatment," so why bother even trying
to compete there? You might have a better chance to rise to
page one of Google's search results for "acne cream."
Ultimately what gets you to rise to the top of Google rankings
is the popularity of your website, and gathering clicks by
zeroing in on a less-popular search term or phrase might be
your best bet for building your website's popularity. Once
you've conquered the search results for lesser-know terms,
your site's even modest popularity will be a big asset if
you later decide to position your site to break into Google's
page-one search results for a more popular term like, from
our example, "acne treatment."
There are many more ways to parse the information you can
get from Google Trends. The important thing is that you use
this information and don't blindly build a website with information
that comes off the top of your head!
Websites - Something Else to Check Out on Google
Trends
On the "Searches" results page, just under the
"Google Trends" logo you will see a link that says
"Websites." Click it and in the search box at the
top of the next page you can type in up to four different
websites to get a graph that compares the number of visitors
each website gets.
Type in "booksamillion.com, barnesandnoble.com."
The results are interesting--obviously barnesandnoble.com
has the more impressive web presence!
But how is this page useful to you?
Look at all of the information at the bottom of the page--this
is interesting and useful. You can see what regions of the
world are visiting a website (Regions), see a list of similar
websites (Also visited), and check out the things the people
visiting a website are also hunting for on the web (Also searched
for).
Unfortunately, your website will not show up on the google
trends "websites" graph until it's getting about
200 visitors a day. Until you're getting some traction, the
Google Trend Websites tool is just a way to look at the competition!
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