Do you know that small businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads?
But that’s only possible if you blog successfully.
Here’s the thing, successful blogging heavily depends on Search Engine Optimization. And, since Google’s Knowledge Graph and Hummingbird update, you can’t get on the top of Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) if your content doesn’t serve the intent of users searching for content.
In simple terms, fulfilling user intent will determine the success of your blog.
And here’s the good news…
We did a review of 1,000+ pages ranked on Google to show you how to use Google Trends to discover user intent and skyrocket your business blog.
Before we get to that, let’s analyze the aspects involved in user intent, because everything depends on this issue.
Factors to Consider When Identifying User Intent
Before you identify what users want, you need to first know who they are.
Hence, you must figure out the user characteristics. For instance, if the people searching for the term “how to start a business” are mostly married women, your content should certainly focus on businesses women excel in and allow free time for family.
The searcher location is also critical.
When you know that United States citizens make up the majority of people searching for such a term as “how to buy a car,” you wouldn’t target that keyword if your business is based in the United Kingdom.
Most importantly, you must know the reason for the person searching on Google.
This is the tricky part. One person searching for “money making ideas” might be interested in long-term business opportunities, while another searching for the same keyword might want short-term money making ideas. Both people might have the exact same user characteristics, from the same location, but vastly different interests.
Ultimately, you must signal the user intent in your title and meta description.
When people are searching on Google, the only way they will know that your content serves their needs is through your article title and meta description. Otherwise, they won’t click through to read your content.
Now that you understand the complexities involved in identifying user intent, you’ll appreciate why this strategy is ridiculously simple.
A Ridiculously Simple Way to Identify User Intent
Since Google is focused on ranking pages based on fulfillment of user intent, you rarely need to look anywhere else.
Firstly, here’s how Google Trends can show you the reason for the person searching on Google.
There’s a tiny little section at the bottom right corner of Google Trends that will give you all you need.
That section gives the top and rising queries related to the keyword people are searching for.
Those related queries are actually what people search for alongside the target keyword. If someone searches for the target keyword, he/ she will also mostly likely search for those related keywords.
Why is that useful?
Those related queries give you further insights on exactly why the person searching for a target keyword is doing so. For instance, from the top related queries under the keyword “personal loans online,” you can tell the searcher is likely interested in loans for bad credit, not just any loans.
Moreover, you can complement the top and rising related queries with the top and rising related topics, on the bottom left of Google Trends.
That’s not all.
Google Trends also shows you the top locations where users come from. But you should note that the number indicated besides those listed regions is a percentage of the specific region’s total searches, not a percentage of all the searches on Google.
To identify the regions that have the most searches as a percentage of all Google searches, you can check the search volume of each specific region using Google Keyword Planner.
Here’s the beauty of it all.
By showing you the top related queries and topics, as well as the searchers’ locations, Google is actually giving you a bit of the information that it uses in its search ranking Knowledge Graph, the Google related searches algorithm.
Here are the exact words from Google on how Knowledge Graph operates:
“How do we know which facts are most likely to be needed for each item? For that, we go back to our users and study in aggregate what they’ve been asking Google about each item. For example, people are interested in knowing what books Charles Dickens wrote, whereas they’re less interested in what books Frank Lloyd Wright wrote, and more in what buildings he designed.”
By using these insights, you’ll produce the exact content that Google wants to place in front of its users.
This isn’t just a theoretical assumption. We reviewed 1,000+ pages ranked on Google to prove this.
Our Review of 1,000+ Pages to Show How to Use Google Trends for Your Business Blog SEO
In our review, we focused on how ranking of content was influenced by titles and meta descriptions that match the top and rising related queries in Google Trends for the target keywords.
The research was based on the assumption that titles and meta descriptions that closely match the top related queries in Google Trends for the target keyword would have higher ranking.
This is because, once content gains ranking on Google, the click-through-rate plays a major role in getting the content to rank higher. And people are likely to click through on titles and meta descriptions that match their search intent. Hence, if the top and rising related queries in Google Trends for the target keyword match user intent, featuring them in the titles and meta descriptions should produce higher ranking.
Here’s what we found.
1. How to Use Google Trends to Serve User Intent
If you had to write an article targeting the keyword, “how to make money,” what would your content focus on?
Would you write about brick and mortar business or online business?
Well, if your goal is to rank high on Google for that keyword, you’ll focus on online business opportunities, based on the insights from Google Trends.
On Google Trends, the two top queries related to the keyword “how to make money” are:
- make money online
- how to make online money
Clearly, the same people searching for “how to make money” are also searching for ways to make money online. That means Google will likely prioritize pages featuring online money making solutions – not brick and mortar opportunities.
As you can see from this review of the top 159 pages on Google’s SERP for the keyword “how to make money”, the first two and most of the top titles and meta descriptions feature content on online money making opportunities. Moreover, you can see that it’s no accident that content related to online business features on the titles and meta descriptions of more than half of the top 159 pages ranked for the term “how to make money.”
In fact, out of the pages that feature content on online money making opportunities, nearly all those in the top 24 have the exact word “online” in the title and meta description.
This clearly shows that the top-most ranking favors titles and meta descriptions with the exact term “online”.
You can view the SERP list we reviewed on a Spread Sheet in Google Docs.
2. How to Use Google Trends for Top Ranking
Not only is Google’s SERP dominated by titles and meta descriptions serving user intent, but also the top ranked pages.
This is evident in the SERP results for the keyword “how to make money fast.”
The term “online” features in Google Trends’ 5 top queries related to the keyword “how to make money fast”:
- how to make money fast online
- how to make money online
- make money online
- make money online fast
- make money fast online
No wonder the top 10 SERP positions are dominated by pages with the term “online” in the titles and meta descriptions.
That’s how to appear on Google search – on top.
You can view the SERP list we reviewed on a Spread Sheet in Google Docs.
And it gets even more interesting.
3. Disregard Google Trends and You Might Never Get Top Ranking on Google
The incredible influence of the top and rising related queries in Google Trends becomes even clearer when assessing the SERP for the keyword, “best savings account.”
First, the term “bank” features consistently among the top related queries. This is seemingly obvious; however, you might be thinking of writing about credit union savings accounts while targeting this keyword, yet the Google SERP is biased towards bank accounts.
And the term “interest rate,” among the top related queries, is particularly important.
However, what seems to influence top ranking beyond those obvious aspects is a simple number: 2019. This number features among the rising queries related to the keyword “best savings account.”
Literally none of the top 13 pages lacks the number 2019. And hardly any title or meta description with the number 2019 is in the lower part of the SERP.
Evidently, missing out on this crucial aspect could cost you ranking.
You can view the SERP list we reviewed on a Spread Sheet in Google Docs.
4. How to Use Google Trends to Avoid Bottom Ranking
Not only can you get top ranking by featuring Google Trends’ top and rising related queries in your title and meta description, you also avoid bottom ranking.
Here you can see the incredible power of the rising and top queries related to the keyword “best personal loans.” None of the pages with the term “2019” is at the bottom of the SERP.
You can view the SERP list we reviewed on a Spread Sheet in Google Docs.
5. It’s Not About the Year
You may be assuming that the titles and meta descriptions with the term “2019” are getting top ranking simply because of the year.
That’s not the case.
Of course, the year has something to do with it, but the main aspect is the number of people searching for the top and rising queries related to the target keyword.
For example, the rising query related to the keyword “best personal loans” is “best personal loans 2018,” which has a monthly volume of approximately 1,300 searches per month. Evidently, when those thousands of people start searching for “best personal loans 2019,” it’s going to make an impact on the pages that get top ranking.
The same applies with the keyword “best savings account.”
The rising query related to that keyword is “best savings account 2019.” That is derived from the keyword “best savings account 2018,” which had 6,600 searches per month. Clearly, that huge number of searches will have an impact on Google SERP rankings.
If the search volume of the rising and top related queries is low, they won’t have such a big impact.
You can see it from the SERP for the keyword “how to save money.”
The keyword “how to save money in 2019” is among the rising related queries. It’s derived from the keyword “how to save money in 2018,” which hardly has any searches per month. Although it does seem to have an impact, it’s not as powerful as the previous cases above.
You can view the SERP list we reviewed on a Spread Sheet in Google Docs.
6. Complement Google Trends Data with Facebook Ads Manager to Identify User Characteristics
You now know how to use Google Trends for keyword research, but you might not know how to use Google Trends for market research. That means getting an insight into the actual people who are searching on Google. Who they are and what they do.
Here’s how to use Google Trends for marketing.
As shown previously, titles and meta descriptions with the term “online” have top placement for the keyword “how to make money.” Perhaps, you’re curious if the reverse happens with the keyword “how to make money online.”
Well, not exactly. And that’s all based on the information readily accessible from Google Trends.
The 3 top queries related to the keyword “how to make money online” are:
- how to make money in online
- how to make money from online
- how to get money online
- make money online fast
The fact that three similar search terms are the top related queries for this keyword likely means that the people searching are looking for as much information as possible on the keyword.
Besides, you can easily tell that those searching for “how to make money online” are likely a group of people who haven’t had too much experience working online. Most probably, they are a young age group just starting out to look for opportunities online.
But you don’t need to guess. You can leverage the incredible user insights that Facebook has of its billions of users.
The Facebook Audience Insights tool, in Facebook Ads Manager, shows the largest age group that’s interested in “how to make money online”: 18 to 24-year-old males.
Based on Facebook audience insights, the target users are likely very young, just over 18 years.
Hence, the ideas likely to entice them could be easy, fast, requiring little or no skills/ experience. That’s because such a young age group is likely made up of college students and inexperienced youth.
No wonder, the fourth top query related to the keyword “how to make money online” is “make money online fast.”
And the Google SERP certainly shows a significant number of titles and meta descriptions that feature content suited to the target age group.
You can view the SERP list we reviewed on a Spread Sheet in Google Docs.
7. How to Use Google Trends’ Related Queries to Identify Buyer Intent/ Commercial Keywords
You can also use the related queries in Google Trends to identify keywords that won’t work well for informational posts. If the keyword is a buyer intent keyword, your post certainly won’t rank at the top.
The challenge is that figuring out commercial/ buyer intent keywords isn’t always straight forward, since Google can display commercial results based on the queries related to the keyword.
That’s where Google Trends come in.
For instance, the rising queries related to the keyword “personal loans online” are:
- online personal loans fast cash loans (has about 30 searches per month)
- lending tree (has about 246,000 searches per month)
- credit karma (has about 7,480,000 searches per month)
Considering that two of the rising related queries are transactional keywords, guess what Google will show on the SERP for the keyword “personal loans online?” Commercial results.
And the last check showed Credit Karma listed twice on top of the SERP for the keyword “personal loans online.”
8. How to Use Google Trends’ Related Queries to Identify the Right Type of Content to Write
You might assume that writing advanced, in-depth content will always give you top ranking.
Well, not always.
At times, people are just searching for the most basic mundane content.
But how can you know when to write basic stuff and when to write technical content? By using the related queries in Google Trends.
For instance, here are 18 of the 25 top queries related to the keyword “how to budget”:
- how to do budget
- how to make budget
- how to budget money
- how to make a budget
- how to do a budget
- what is a budget
- budget plan
- how to create budget
- how to plan a budget
- how to create a budget
- how to calculate budget
- good budget
- how to budget monthly
- budget calculator
- how to set a budget
- how to budget your money
- how to prepare budget
- budget template
One key thing stands out here: all those queries are focused on the most basic aspects of budgeting, including the simplest of all queries, “what is a budget.”
This motivates Google to display content that shows the basic concepts of budgeting.
No wonder the top SERP results feature pages with simple content. The technical fancy stuff comes way down the rank.
Conclusion
Clearly, your SEO title and meta description best practices (2019) should feature such insights to help your business blog grow.
When your blog succeeds, you’re sure to get a continuous stream of leads, which will inevitably produce a steady cash flow for your business.
Take note, although the review showed clear indicators of the effectiveness of using the related queries in Google Trends; understandably, it isn’t comprehensive enough to make general overarching conclusions. You may need to assess other factors as backlinks, page authority, domain authority, article length, social media signals, among others.
Therefore, after checking the related queries in Google Trends, you should assess multiple aspects of each keyword individually.