Good morning, and Happy Friday! Let’s jump straight into it:

• How to use Google Trends for SEO and content creation. Leverage this underrated tool.

• The picture-perfect way to use the Framing Effect. A deep dive into this cognitive bias and how to use it to your advantage.

📉 How to use Google Trends for SEO and content creation.

Most marketers use tools to help with their SEO and content research. The big players are Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz, plus dozens of other smaller tools that do similar things.

But there’s another great tool out there to help with your research. Most marketers don’t think to use it. But they should because:

1. It’s free

2. It’s one of the only sources of Google’s first-party search data readily available to the masses.

That tool is Google Trends.

Our friends at Search Engine Journal wrote an in-depth article breaking down some of the ways marketers can leverage Google Trends when researching. In today's issue, we’ll break it down for you, along with some suggestions of our own peppered in.

Google Trends from a high level.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Google Trends, it’s a tool used to analyze search queries and extrapolate trends over time. Then, it condenses that data into an easy-to-understand graph.

You can compare up to five search terms at a time and filter the results across four categories:

• Time

• Search surface (image, news, shopping & YouTube)

• Topic category (25 categories to choose from)

• Geographic location

Why Google Trends is different from other tools.

As we mentioned, many tools help with SEO and content planning. But one central aspect makes Google Trends unique compared to other options.

Google Trends is the only one of these tools that has direct access to Google's first-party search data.

Other tools generally purchase data from providers (usually software companies that collect anonymous search data from their users) and then create statistical estimates based on the data.

On the other hand, Google Trends takes a sampling of Google’s actual search data to derive their results. Making it the most reliable source for accurate keyword search data.

Getting search volumes.

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t directly publish search volumes. Instead, they express keyword data as a percentage. 100% represents the highest search traffic for a given period. And even though it’s not exact, the data is still very helpful in understanding the popularity of a keyword over time.

If you want to use the percentage provided in Google Trends to extrapolate your own search volume estimates, you can do so by comparing them to other keywords with known search volumes.

You can get a list of these words from Google’s trending searches report.

Comparing keywords from this report against those with unknown search volumes will allow you to back into an estimated number of searches.

Or, if you want an easier way, you can use a free Chrome plugin like Glimpse to do this back-of-the-envelope math for you.

Ways to use Google Trends in your marketing.

We recommend using Google Trends in your marketing strategy in three main ways.

1. To help with newsjacking

2. For advanced keyword research

3. To target search intents

Here’s how to do all three.

1) Help with Newsjacking.

Newsjacking is piggybacking on trending news topics to get yourself noticed.

A recent example was State Farm jumping on the hype around Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce dating rumors by having “Jake from State Farm” sit with Travis Kelce’s mom at a recent football game.

Most B2B marketers don’t have the budget to pull off a stunt that big. But you can write posts or shoot short video reactions to relevant industry news or pop culture moments pertinent to your brand.

Google Trends is a great place to find popular topics to react to.

Look at the Trending Now tab and browse for topics you could put your own unique spin on.

If you need to narrow things down further, filter by the relevant categories to you and your company.

2) Advanced keyword research.

By using advanced search operators, you can extract even more actionable search data from Google Trends and then use that data to make content planning decisions.

Here are four search operators to try out:

Quotation marks: ” ”

Example: “keyword1 keyword2”

This shows keyword data for the exact match of the keywords you enter in the same order included within the quotation marks.

The example above will show results exclusively for keyword1 and keyword2.

Plus sign: +

Example: keyword1 + keyword2

This shows keyword data for search phrases with one or the other keyword.

The example above will show results for keyword1 or keyword2

Minus sign: –

Example: keyword1 -keyword2

This shows searches for keyword phrases that include the given keyword but exclude phrases containing the keyword typed after the minus sign.

The example above will show results for all keyword phrases that include the word keyword1 but do not contain keyword2.

No Search Operators

Example: keyword1 keyword2

Using no search operators shows search results for keyword phrases that contain the given keywords in any order.

3) Target search intents.

Google Trends lets you further refine results by segmenting based on the search type.

The search types are:

• Google Shopping

• Image search

• News search

• Web search

• YouTube search

Filtering by these search types allows you to remove the “noise” that might be muddying your keyword research.

As Search Engine Journal outlines in their article, a Google Trends search for how, what, where, when, why, and who shows that search queries beginning with “how” are by far the most popular on YouTube.

Google News, on the other hand, shows a different pattern. When searching there, audiences want to know “what” and “how” types of information.

So, if you were planning out your content, you’d want to use “how” phrases on YouTube instead of “where” or “when.” And you’d want to use “what” and “how” phrases on Google News.

This is just an example of how you can use search types to drill down further when researching. So play around with it yourself. There are many hidden insights you can discover by using this filter.

Check out the full article for even more suggestions on leveraging Google Trends for your SEO and content marketing.

📰 In the news this week.

👀 TikTok bets people will watch videos on bigger screens.

🤝 Top marketing conferences to attend in 2024.

✂️ ByteDance launches CapCut for business.

⬆️ These were voted the world’s simplest brands.

📊 Simplifying the management of your first-party data.

🖼 The picture-perfect way to use the Framing Effect.

Picture this: a salesman is pitching his offering to a room full of CEOs. He presents two scenarios for the future if they use his solution. In one, he mentions a 70% chance of success. In the other, a 30% chance of failure.

In both scenarios, the information is technically the same. But because of human psychology, how the CEOs react to each will be very different. This is due to the Framing Effect.

The Framing Effect is when our decisions are influenced by how information is presented. Equivalent information can be more or less attractive depending on what features are highlighted.

The Framing Effect can be a powerful tool. But you must use it effectively. Here’s how:

1) Use the right kind of frame.

Be sure to highlight gains rather than losses. People, as a whole, tend to be risk-averse. So, they're more likely to respond positively to perceived wins.

2) Use the right context.

Present the frame in a context that matters to the customer's values and beliefs.

For example, if your customers value their time above all else, then frame your service around how much time you’ll save them.

If honesty and transparency matter most to buyers, you might want to use “radical transparency” to frame your pricing model.

3) Consider customer perception.

The Framing Effect depends a lot on customer perception. Meaning the frames that work on one demographic might not work on another.

For example, what resonates with a middle-aged working mother of four probably won’t align with the fresh-out-of-college single male.

So, consider your customer segments and decide if you should create different framing effects for each.

😂 Marketing meme of the week.

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