Predicting Google Keyword Search Trends
Google Trends is a great tool for detecting current search trends and Google Search Insights provides valuable statistical data on every keyword Internet users have searched for since 2004.
However, the benefits of such knowledge are only marginal when half the webmasters online know the same things you do, or more.
Better never than late.
When fighting for website visitors, time is of essence. You can't take several days developing your web content when the traffic increase is just around the corner or has taken place hours ago. The real risk is not that the wave of traffic will pass, but that all of it will be snatched away by more established websites and blogs.
Google picks up what everyone's already reading.
You can be the earliest bird on the Google Trends page and put together your article in 15 minutes, but the sad truth is, you will still be outrun by all the high-profile websites and blogs in the race for organic search traffic.
The only winning move is not to play.
Those trend-hunting websites and blogs have a big following that shares links to all their latest articles, quickly securing them the top spot on Google. Unless you're one of them, you can't beat them. The good news is that you don’t really have to.
Why run the race when you can wait at the finish line?
For every trend that simply pops out of thin air, such as celebrity gossip or viral YouTube videos, there are at least ten that go through some sort of preparations beforehand. The thing is, most Internet users don't know or care about those preparations and only find out about trending events when they actually happen.
Write trending content before it's trending.
New movie releases, latest TV show episodes, sports events and new book publications are announced well before they can generate serious media buzz. Those are just a few examples of the thousands of scheduled events that are out there. Catching these trends early on will earn you a top spot on Google for keyword searches on that topic, just as release of The Hunger Games movie gave websites set up by early fans of the books a big surge in organic traffic.
Predict the trends, not the details.
Election results or Academy Award winners may not become known until a certain date, but we KNOW the date when they do become known, don't we? There's no reason not to use that information to our advantage.
This goes back to print media, when it wasn't uncommon for newspapers to publish the predicted results of political elections as facts in an attempt to beat the competition. In fact, they often had several versions of an article prepared in advance to satisfy every possible outcome.
Online article writers and bloggers are in an even better position to use these techniques.
Competition is still out there.
This is not some game-breaking secret of content publishing. High profile bloggers and news publications already go through some kind of trend prediction process for the high-profile events and upcoming releases in their niche.
Fortunately, niche topics and little-known events are left largely overlooked, which definitely gives us something to work with. Besides, you have to admit that it's better than writing about trends that have been covered by hundreds of other online writers and bloggers already.
