Chris Burres

Hi and welcome to the SEO podcast.  Unknown secrets of internet marketing. My name is Chris Burres one of the owners here at EWR digital. 

Matt Bertram

And my name is Matt Bertram. I’m the lead strategist here at EWR digital with a little technical difficulties right now. 

Chris Burres

Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast.  This is actually podcast number 533.  We’re doing something a little different today, mostly because we had, we won’t, we’ll call it technical difficulties with our own brains, maybe cause we did part one, two episodes ago and then forgot we needed to do part two and then found and covered.  Well, I think it was your article, one of your articles.  And then now we’re getting back to part two and this is part two of Google.  What is it?  12 ways to use Google trends for SEO.  So that’s just, we’ve never had, 

Chris Burres

It was a good intermission.  Cause it was intermixed by an article by you.  So make sure you go check out that article.  It was what was it?  Enterprise SEO and WordPress like good stuff there. 

Matt Bertram

Yeah.  The next ones I’m doing some technical stuff now for SEJ.  So this other one that’s coming out here is going to be yeah, so anyways.  All right, let’s go.  Cool. 

Chris Burres

Well, first we do have a review and the review is from Maddie’s TIF to Mattie a great podcast.  This podcast is an incredible resource for anyone looking to level up their online business and grow their brand.  Have you had a conversation with her on our level up was something you were talking about.  Chris and Matt are great hosts and provide valuable information and advice in every episode.  This is from Maddie at podcasting.  You that’s why?  Oh, you so Putin to Mattie.  Thank you for that.  We’ve got to do a quick podcast today. 

Chris Burres

So I’m first going to talk about our sponsor ever so briefly, we are sponsored by cohost a co-host is a company really Matt spun out of the company that I had built and then he and I are continuing to build together and he decided to spin off a hosting company.  And I actually had the hosting company built into the company from the beginning because I recognized very early on that hosting was something that we needed to have control of. We, we would continually end up in situations where our customers are, would have their hosting company saying that there was a problem that the problem was the website.  And we actually knew what were doing.  We’re like, no, it’s a problem with the hosting company.  And in order to just make sure we never had that. 

Chris Burres

I don’t know if you want to say anything else about co-host amount, 

Matt Bertram

Co-hosted dot com.  I pulled it up here for the people watching on YouTube and Facebook.  But what I wanted to say about cohost was that webmaster’s credibly important.  Security’s incredibly important.  Speed’s incredibly important.  And if you’re a freelancer or another agency out there, you probably dealt with a lot of headaches with other hosting companies and being able to get people that really know what they’re talking about, working on your account.  And really what we did is as our team has grown, it made a lot of sense to spin it out and keep it separate when requests are coming in for webmaster related stuff versus marketing related stuff. 

Matt Bertram

And as we did that, we decided to build a front end to let other freelancers or smaller agencies or a larger agencies, whatever, have a hosting solution that is at their fingertips, that they can go to, that they know experts are working with because a lot of the solutions out there just are not a good fit. We are building a page that’s specific to like advanced users, right?  So this is really designed for like SMB businesses right now, while we have a lot of capabilities for other freelancers and agencies, again, it’s just an alternative out there and it’s a way for you to access our technical team and have them be able to do some heavy lifting on speed settings with your website as well as it.  And I think it’s really a great solution well-needed in the marketplace. 

Chris Burres

And I can share one feature.  That’s pretty neat.  I’ve been on the receiving end for one of my businesses is a notification that a particular.  So even though for that particular website, AWR, wasn’t doing anything, co-hosts have sent me a noticing, Hey, one of your plugins, your WordPress plugins is not only is it out of date, but it’s dangerous.  You need to go update it immediately.  Dad is great news because you don’t always log into your WordPress interface.  And certainly there’s a message there to kind of confirm that, but to be notified proactively that I needed to take care of a plugin was, is just phenomenal, right?  Yeah. 

Chris Burres

Maybe. All right.  Well, let’s jump into this article.  We’re going to this.  I think we’ve got a short kind of short timeframe for this.  Again, this is 12 ways to use Google trends for SEO.  Go back and listen to podcast.  Number 5 31.  If you want to kind of follow this, I’m going to read the first six here real quickly.  Again, this is inside of Google trends.  Article was written by Chuck price Putin to Chuck and here we go.  Number one was keyword research.  So using Google trends for keyword research, number two, finding related keywords, number three, discover related topics.  Number four, start big and whittled down.  And that would be like a big phrase. 

Chris Burres

And then start cutting down into category and search types to make very specific decisions about the keywords you’re going to go after.  Number five was context, context, certainly as important as location in real estate. And then number six was used specific search options.  Again, go back and listen to podcast 5 31 to catch up to that.  So now number seven is target by location.  The most cursory use of Google trends will focus exclusively on keywords for the best results.  You’ll also need to incorporate location into the mix.  Location.  Filtering allows you to hone in on the geographic areas with the highest demand for your products or services, just as an example.  And this is continuing the example from the previous podcast and the previous points in the article, a Caribbean cruise, right? 

Matt Bertram

Location is incredibly important.  It’s becoming more and more important than Google.  That could be a whole podcast in itself, but yeah, 

Chris Burres

There’s impact on SEO. 

Matt Bertram

There’s like too much to say specifically like how important location is, but. 

Chris Burres

Yes.  All right.  Number eight is trend predictions.  Here’s the reality in order to hop on the latest trends before no one else does you need to keep a finger on the pulse of seasonal and local trends at all times, the practice of news jacking is a sure way to capitalize on current hot stories, news jacking.  You want to define news jacking mountain or, 

Matt Bertram

I mean, there’s a lot of things like related to it, but basically putting tags in w you’re doing to catch like ongoing trends to try to get picked up in the new cycle.  There’s a lot of different ways to do it.  I know people that, like, I know conferences is coming back.  People are Twitter, jacking handles as well, like at conferences to get their stuff to show up.  But it’s, it’s a way to get visibility based upon current news trends.  And you gotta be really tactical and flexible when you’re doing that sort of thing.  But how new cycles work is it works two ways.  One, either a big site publishes something and then smaller sites pick it up, or it could go the other way, smaller sites would pick it up. 

Chris Burres

Yeah.  And there are a few ways to do this with Google trends.  So one is identified trends with filtering by specific categories or countries today’s top health story might not make major headlines in Google trends, but it can help you to identify topics to watch.  And also today’s top headline.  It may not be a top headline globally, but it might be top in, I don’t know, some large metropolitan area or even a smaller one.  And if you’re following some of these trends, you’re able to get on that early also.  Yeah, go ahead. 

Matt Bertram

Well, to, to things that are interesting to me is tick talk has more searches now than Google or Facebook.  Okay.  So it’s just now taking the number one spot.  Also NFTs are more popular than crypto or Bitcoin or ether.  So NFTs.  So looking at Google trends really does help you stay ahead.  And so those were two of the big trends that at least impact me and our business.  So yeah.  So I’m just, you’re reading to the choir, I guess.  So, 

Chris Burres

Yeah.  Follow the, like, be aware of the trend because it can help you make good decisions.  And then the next one is like compared to phrases and a single trend and try and understand what’s causing them because there might be some opportunities in there.  And that brings us to number nine.  And again, this is 12 ways to use Google trends for SEO.  Number nine is use long tail key phrases to inspire content.  Let’s say you’re writing a music blog and you want to leverage an upcoming event, say the Grammy’s award Grammy award.  So you do a search for Grammys, but you want to go deeper and find kin content.  That’s truly insightful. 

Chris Burres

Try using tip number three, you’re going to have to go back to podcast number 5 31, to do this, to figure out what that is, to find the associated queries that are also making Google trends and then cross reference those queries with each other.  That’s a tip number two, to get a proper context and find out what the core, what is at the core of the customer’s curiosity. 

Matt Bertram

So I would just say long tail key phrases.  I think 75% of all searches in Google now are first-time searches that’s why machine learning is so important to deliver the right results.  But knowing that and going after really small volume, long tail key phrases, you have to measure going after the main keywords, right, or the seed keywords versus these long tail key phrases.  Because a lot of times the buying intent is a lot higher for these longer tail key phrases. 

Matt Bertram

So even if there’s less search volume, but you’re ranked higher and you’re generating leads off of people that are in the customer journey where they’re pulling the trigger of contacting you or something like that, or your content gets found in that area can be a lot more effective than not like focusing on maybe those seed or core keywords.  And then if you bundle that with upcoming trends and you know, what’s happening, you can really get in front of it, a lot of stuff and catch the wave.  And so, yeah, combining some of these strategies is quite powerful. 

Chris Burres

It, and that usually is the case, right?  When you take the strategy from heater applied over there, like you it’s, it’s why it’s good to have the skill set, both in SEO and PPC and web design and development and the backend and the hosting.  And like all of that together is really important to deliver business. 

Matt Bertram

So I think I was at a presentation yesterday and I think there’s, they’re using a formula.  And really there was like, I think five components to the formula and I could have this wrong, but essentially if you increased five components, by 10%, you get a 61% increase.  Right?  So like all these little incremental increases when you multiply them together, they’re greater than if you individually had them.  Right.  And so making improvements in different areas or in different strategies where you get a little bit more, a little bit more, it certainly compounds the benefits you would see.  So, 

Chris Burres

Yep, absolutely.  All right.  Number 10, use data for video optimization.  So let’s say you posted a video on how to get discounts on Caribbean cruises.  You enter that search term, you switch from web search to YouTube search and you check out related queries and related topics and you sort by top or rising topics.  And you’ll find that people who search cruises also search shipping classes, right?  So this may not be intuitively obvious to the casual observer, but once you know that people are also searching for shipping classes, then you might actually put together a video and know what to put in that videos, relevant titles and descriptions talking about the shipping classes of a Caribbean cruise. 

Matt Bertram

And I think the one thing to remember and why Google trends is so important is I think a lot of times we base our marketing decisions based on what we want and our understanding of it.  And not like taking the data as a whole, because me personally, I would have never made that connection.  Right.  And if I was building a marketing strategy without looking at the data, I wouldn’t have included that.  And I think people take their own bias a lot of times when they’re applying it to marketing.  And the reality is like, the data always tells you what to do and you should follow the data.  And that’s why, in my opinion, digital marketing, certainly a lot stronger than traditional marketing, because you have access to more data, you can pivot faster. 

Matt Bertram

There’s also, you know, for anything that you do traditional, there’s usually like a digital counterpart.  Right.  And so, yeah, I mean, data is just so incredibly important on the front end on, like, while you’re running the campaign on the backend with analysis to make the right decision and not having that bias, I think is a pro tip. 

Chris Burres

Yeah.  What I, what we often share and kind of throughout the company, as we love to have ideas and we love to defend them passionately until the data says otherwise, right.  I mean, this is a, this example is interesting because it might’ve even been in the case that you would be in a client meeting and the client would say, I think maybe we should do videos on the, you know, the cruise line classes and you were like, no one searches, like no one cares about that.  Like, who would care about that?  And then you’d go look at the data and go like, okay, you’re right.  Like that’s all that matters. 

Matt Bertram

Yeah.  I mean, a lot of times when we’re talking to clients to figure out what keywords to target, you know, sometimes the clients think that certain because to them are more valuable than what the data says.  Or, you know, a lot of times we find who they think are their competitors online are not really their competitors.  Maybe they’re there competitors in person, but not online.  And so again, the data tells a different story.  Certainly we’ve looked at data sometimes and said, you know, it might better to run an SEO campaign on that.  Or it might be redder to run a PPC campaign on that based on the volume, based on the cost per click.  And so again, all these things you got to take into consideration when making a decision.  So, 

Chris Burres

Absolutely.  All right.  Number 11, use cyclical trends for brand positioning.  So let’s say you’re optimizing for wedding boutique, a simple search for wedding over the past five years reveals that interest in weddings slipped from mid in mid 2020, right.  COVID but has rebounded.  So historically the interest in weddings is pretty even your year round from this, you can glean that wedding plans are back on track.  So this would be a great way.  Let’s say, you’re, you’ve got your wedding boutique website and you’ve seen a decrease in traffic.  You’re like, well, I think it’s just cause you know of COVID, nobody’s searching for weddings anymore.  And then you go to Google twins, Google trends, and you look up wedding and you see what all the search trends are back now. 

Chris Burres

So maybe I’ve lost SEO position.  Maybe P my PPC campaign has been paused.  Like you have to start digging into other data and Google trends can put you in the right place to make sure that you’re making good decisions. 

Matt Bertram

Well, look at this, like, look at this shoot right here.  For those of you watching, there’s this huge like uptake of like weddings.  I’m wondering why people wanted to really get married at this point Right here.  That’s in like September of 2018.  That’s kind of interesting.  Yeah.  I mean, right now we’re seeing a lot of interest in Valentine’s day campaign and planning out seasonal campaigns is quite important on a quarterly basis to make sure you have the time to catch the demand when it’s there.  Right.  So yeah.  Seasonal trends are important.  Yep. 

Chris Burres

All right.  Number 10, 12, identify blind spots.  And don’t misread the twin, the trends.  I don’t want to keep saying twins don’t ever trust a single snapshot.  Always get a broader view of a timeline to see what else is happening is an increased trend.  And one key phrase still dwarfed by more important ones, always look for context, researching weddings where number eight.  So this is kind of interesting.  I encountered a drastic increase and YouTube trends for weddings during the summer of 2017, far greater than in previous summers.  In fact, it quadrupled further research, couldn’t identify a specific keyword except to show a drastic increase in wedding interest and south Asia, little disappointed.  He didn’t dig in and kind of figure that out. 

Chris Burres

But you can again understand these trends and understand if it’s something you need to be concerned about or not, because you’re aware of your blind spots like that.  Take that time to understand where your potential blind spots are.  And your competition may not be aware of their blind spots.  You can delve deeper into the search results for more sophisticated data to inform your SEO strategy. 

Matt Bertram

So, yeah, correction, summer 2017, I was looking at a chart.  Maybe it wasn’t a to scale or as hard to see, but yeah, that was that spike that I was showing you.  And it was massive.  It was like, I don’t know.  I don’t know what that is.  500% increase for like one month.  I don’t know.  Probably there’s like a law changing.  I bet or something it’s like, you have to be married are XYZ happens from the government. 

Chris Burres

So it looks more because it doesn’t have zero on that graph.  So you’re looking at like 25 points up to a hundred.  So it’s a Forex, like you mentioned.  Yeah. 

Matt Bertram

Yeah.  Four X, five X.  Yeah.  Yeah.  See, yeah.  Don’t judge what I’m saying.  Exactly. 

Matt Bertram

Yeah.  I mean, that’s the fun thing about data is they kind of tell a story and you can dig into it and figure out what’s going on, especially with your website.  That’s why I love SEO so much is you can really open it up and look at different swaths of data from different angles and understand maybe what’s happening and how Google’s treating your site from a trend standpoint, it’s really important with the trends or momentum or what’s happening to understand what’s going to be happening.  I think we’ve talked about that previously.  You want to see those, what are they call like where it explodes?  What are they called?  They’re exponential rises in Google trends, kind of be looking for those before they really make the news and get in front of some of that stuff. 

Matt Bertram

If you’re agile enough, I think it’s really powerful.  So. 

Chris Burres

Very cool.  And in summary, Google trends, data is more important, valuable than ever.  There are unique insights to be gleaned for those willing to go beyond a basic search.  And that’s the point of like, dig in the key is sticking with your queries until you find the insights, even if they aren’t always obvious.  And also even if they aren’t what you thought they would be.  Those are probably the best ones yet because it puts you in the right direction.  So very stock to Chuck, how to use Google trends for SEO, really enjoyed that article.  And we’ll be looking for more articles from Chuck.  And do you have anything to wrap up the podcast? 

Matt Bertram

Nope.  I just have a hard stop that we’re past and. I’d have to absolutely run, but hopefully people start using Google trends in their data analysis.  I think that’s something that sometimes gets overlooked.  I think he word research is something that a lot more time needs to be spent.  Sometimes I think people are moving too quickly and figuring out what those keywords are for those target pages helps to better understand the data organization or the data architecture of what you’re trying to build.  And also when you’re putting out content understanding what, where those gaps are and where you want to take it and take your business and understanding where the trends are is completely important with the cycles and everything else that we discussed. 

Matt Bertram 

So hopefully people take away from this that they will start using Google trends when they’re doing keyword research.  So. 

Chris Burres

Excellent.  Hey, if you got value out of this podcast or any of our podcasts, we’re just going to ask you to do us two small favors.  One of them is share it with three people that you know, the other one is to leave us a review and you can do that by going to AWR digital.com forward slash review.  That’s a great place to do it.  You can also find us on Facebook, look for AWR digital on Facebook and leave us a review there.  We will very much appreciate it.  And if, if you would like to grow your business with the largest simplest marketing tool on the planet, the. 

Matt Bertram

Internet. 

Chris Burres

Call AWR digital for increased revenue in your business.  Our phone number is (713) 592-6724.  You can get a custom profit plan.  Yes, that’s a plan so that you can get profit.  You can find [email protected] and we really appreciate you doing that for us until the next podcast.  My name is Chris burrows. 

Matt Bertram

My name is Matt Bertram. 

Chris Burres

Bye-bye for now.