How to Track Popular Keywords: What Every Startup Should Know
When building
a web-based startup, it's essential to master the art of luring
users to your site, and the first step is making it easy for them
to find you.
Typically, users find your website using two methods: they either
go directly to your website from their browser, or indirectly
through search engines on the internet, ads, social networks,
friends and other sites. While some may think that the first method
is more important than the second, in fact, they are both as
important.
Despite their popularity, it also helps to remind yourself that
search engines are still machines that are unable to actually
understand the content of a site, a fact that forces website owners
to keep researching the best ways to rise to the top of search
results.
That is why SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has become a
specialized field unto itself, full of analysts that study search
engine algorithms to teach us how the whole system works and how to
optimize your own website to essentially be read properly by the
engine.
Even if you're not interested in this field, every entrepreneur
should study the most popular keywords related to their new
project.
Why should you track the most popular search keywords online?
- To start. If you're looking for a new project
idea, checking popular keywords used throughout the year can be
useful in order to come up with an idea that’s worth the
investment.
- To choose a proper name for your project. If
you were hesitant about the project name, knowing how which words
users are searching for may come in handy.
- To pick the right words. If your website
contains the word ‘mobile phone’ or ‘cellphone’ many times, which
one should you adopt? A bit of quick research will reveal the
expression that is used more often in your target countries; this
is the one that you should use.
- To stay updated. Search keywords often change according to people’s interests and the best way to know what are the most interesting subjects for users is to track the increase of search rate about updated subjects. Important subjects vary from country to country, so make sure to track them in order to stay updated with your users’ most important subjects.
Google Trends Service:
Google is the most famous search engine on the
internet, and Google Trends is the most important service when it
comes to tracking users’ tendency to use specific keywords when
searching online.
In the past, Google offered two
different services to track users’ interests while using the
internet. Those two services are Google Insights and Google Trends.
Last September, Google integrated those two services into one
comprehensive service called Google Trends, which offers everything
you need in one place.
You may use this
service to get detailed information about the search rate of any
word from 2004 until now. You can also compare the search rate
between two words or more, the search rate in different countries,
and explore similar words while assessing results by content type,
such as text, image, or video.
FInally, you can also
use Google to search for the most important events and subjects for
users in specific countries, and explore the most searched news
topics in these domains.
For an overview of 2012
as we head into 2013, watch the Zeitgeist 2012:
Year In Review from Google; it
may give you new inspiration.