Google trends and how to get more traffic on your site

Google Trends and how to get more traffic

Very often we are asked to provide expected visitor volumes from the core target keywords of an SEO campaign. Of course, we explain the ‘long tail’ and the fact that many hundreds if not thousands of keywords will potentially be referring visitors, but it enables the client to quantify their investment by getting some gauge on expected sales and ROI. From the point of view of an SEO however, it can be quite tricky to explain the ‘pinch of salt’ aspect of any such estimates, and that there are no guarantees. It is a fine balancing act for SEO agencies – avoiding the ‘you said we would get 1000 visitors being #1 and we’re getting 100’ scenario is a must. Ensuring as high a level of accuracy as possible when estimating volumes is therefore also a must.

We have historically used a combination of the following tools and methods to gauge potential traffic volumes from natural search:

1. Google Adwords / MSN AdCenter / Yahoo traffic estimators
2. Online tools such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, Wordze etc
3. Existing PPC / Organic search analytics data
4. Creating temporary PPC campaigns to test volumes

Google Trends

Google Trends has always been useful to look at comparative volumes – for example, we often use it to see whether the singular or plural of a keyword is more popular. Beyond this, it has always been quite limited. A recent Google Trends update however, could revolutionise the forecasting of organic search traffic.

Now that’s all well and good but it still doesn’t help in estimating traffic for those terms, so how do you do that? Well, any worthwhile SEO agency should have a decent portfolio of #1 rankings for relatively high volume search terms. I would also expect them to have a decent analytics package in place on their clients’ sites, from which you can monitor the traffic those #1 rankings generate. This is key.

You may have already achieved a #1 position for ‘blue widgets’, and so are thinking about expanding your keyword list to include ‘yellow widgets’. You already know how many visitors your ‘blue widgets’ success is worth, so now use Google Trends to compare volumes with ‘yellow widgets’. If ‘blue widgets’ generates 100 visits per day, and Trends tells you that ‘yellow widgets’ is 0.6 of the volume, you know to expect 60 visits per day from a #1 position for ‘yellow widgets’. Useful eh!

You may have already achieved a #1 position for ‘blue widgets’, and so are thinking about expanding your keyword list to include ‘yellow widgets’. You already know how many visitors your ‘blue widgets’ success is worth, so now use Google Trends to compare volumes with ‘yellow widgets’. If ‘blue widgets’ generates 100 visits per day, and Trends tells you that ‘yellow widgets’ is 0.6 of the volume, you know to expect 60 visits per day from a #1 position for ‘yellow widgets’. Useful eh!

You may have already achieved a #1 position for ‘blue widgets’, and so are thinking about expanding your keyword list to include ‘yellow widgets’. You already know how many visitors your ‘blue widgets’ success is worth, so now use Google Trends to compare volumes with ‘yellow widgets’. If ‘blue widgets’ generates 100 visits per day, and Trends tells you that ‘yellow widgets’ is 0.6 of the volume, you know to expect 60 visits per day from a #1 position for ‘yellow widgets’. Useful eh!