In the age of content marketing, you not only need to produce top-quality content but also timely and relevant content. One way of doing this is by keeping up with what other people are talking about across the internet.
Check out trending stories on social media or other media platforms like Reddit to find out what topics are trending at the moment. Another tool that is incredibly useful to keep track of popular topics (and free!) is Google Trends.
Coming to grips with Google Trends can give your marketing efforts the boost it needs to drive more traffic to your site and to get more people interested in the tours and activities you offer. Here's how.
What is Google Trends?
It is a free tool that allows you to find out what topics are trending at any moment by tracking the number of searches around given topic. Google Trends gives the data meaning and context by presenting them in visual charts and allowing users to compare similar Search Terms, highlighting Related Queries, and providing information on Interest by Region.
1. Find out what's topics are trending
Why? Because writing about current and relevant topics is a great way to boost traffic to your website.
Head over to your dashboard and find out what stories are trending at the moment. You can toggle the filters on the top right to select a category you find relevant or interesting. Scroll through the trending topics and ask yourself this:
- Is this topic relevant to my business?
- Is this topic relevant to my audience and potential customers?
- Do I have expertise and knowledge about this topic?
- Can I write something about it too?
If the answer is "YES" to all three questions, you should probably publish something about the topic at hand.
Read this: 10 types of content to publish to market your tour or activity
2. Conduct simple keyword research
Google Trends is a great tool for identifying keywords to boost SEO efforts. On the top of your Google Trends dashboard, you'll notice a bar that says "Explore Topics". That's where the fun begins.
You can enter various search terms to find out which term is more sought after on Google.
Take for example the following terms: tour agent, tour company and tour operator. Which term do you think gets the higher number of searches?
The term that gets the higher number of searches is the term you should be used in your marketing content. Why? High number of searches reflect two things:
1. The term is more commonly searched for online and you are more likely to be discovered online if you align your content to what your potential customers are searching for. Make it easier for them to find you by using the same words they're looking up on Google.
2. The term is more commonly used in day-to-day conversations. More and more people are searching for terms they would use in conversations rather than keyword-centric searches. Speak the same language as your audience.
Boost your SEO by using terms that are commonly used and commonly searched for. However, bear in mind that you will be competing with other businesses for the same keywords.
3. Create a content calendar
Take a look at this. Do you notice a pattern?
The peaks an troughs in the graph tend to repeat themselves over and over again throughout the years.
It indicates that people are most likely planning for a holiday when the year begins thanks to all the new year's resolutions, hence the high volume of searches for travel in January. As the year carries on, searches continue to rise and reach a peak over the summer months (June to August) before declining sharply as the school year starts in September. The year ends with low searches from customers, probably due to the holidays. And then the cycle starts again.
If you notice a similar pattern around a topic relevant to your business, plan your content to coincide with the peaks. Publish it a few weeks before the anticipated rise in searches and watch traffic flow to your site.
Download our free writing ebook to learn how to create marketing content
4. Finding inspiration for new content
Another incredible thing about Google Trends is the Related Queries section. It shows you what else users are searching for when they search for your term, giving you an idea of how your search term relates to other similar topics.
This section can be further divided into two, Top queries and Rising queries. Top queries are popular searches while Rising queries are searches that have only recently begun to gain momentum on the web.
If you're feeling stuck and need some inspiration about what topics to write, why not have a look at this section? Experiment with writing about topics from Rising queries and if you're lucky enough, you might be able to "catch the wave" at the right time for a given topic, especially if there isn't a lot of content available for the given topic.
To learn more about Google Trends, head over to this in-depth article published by CoSchedule.
Do you know of any other tools that can help create better marketing content? Let us know in the comments below!
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