Knowing What is Relevant

Trend – Spotting Tools (for SEO and fun)

Trends are powerful things and knowing how to spot a trend can certainly come in handy.

Knowing what’s hot and happening now in the world can be fun. It can also be a great source of ideas for relevant content, linkbait, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

As Wikipedia says, “SEO Trending is a technique used by webmasters to write content based on recent events on the web to get more visibility for their websites in search engine results pages.”

What are Trends?

Think about this. Trends show the general direction in which something tends to move. They show a possible future, the “buzz” of tomorrow, the next hype, an evolving topic. Or…An opportunity for the SEO-inclined to push their websites up in the search engines, get more backlinks and new traffic.

Now think about this. When there’s the hype around something, people will:

Speak about it
Get curious about it
Search for it
Share it

How Trend - Spotting affects SEO

What does this mean for the SEO Consultant and/or Webmaster? The trends and hype provide a framework for a certain amount of success. Here are some things to do during the hype:

People will speak about it
- Listen to their words (keywords)
- Join the conversation via Twitter, Social Media, etc. (real-time search)
- Create trust by allowing discussions on your site, forum, blog, etc. (user-generated content)
- Become an authority by getting them to speak about the relevant pages on your website (backlinks)
People get curious about it
- Understand the intent behind the unclear questions and give answers (intent)
- Give away more – value-added free relevant content (incentives)
- Use all available channels to give answers (universal search)
People search for it
- Don’t underestimate the rapid increase in search volume (search volume)
- Google’s “Query deserves freshness” factor will push keywords to the top of the SERPs (SERP Promotion)
- Create fresh content for these queries (fresh content)
People share it
- Find creative ways of using the hype for Linkbait to get new links (link bait)
- Actively use Social Media to spread content and generate new traffic (SMO – Social Media Optimization)

Tools to Identify Trends

But how do we identify them? We know they’re happening but we usually hear about them in the now or in the past.

Aside from simply listening in the proper places, there are many paid and free tools to do just that. We spoke about Hot Content Ideas from Google and The SEO of Search Trends, but what about a bigger list of Tools?

Well, here you go. I’ve compiled a fairly huge list of tools for you to go out play and learn from (in no particular order):

I’ll understand if you need to take a break after that; God knows I do!

SEO Trend It and Spin It!

I am specifically and especially NOT advocating the Black Hat “Spin” methodology here, but more of the original intention of the word. 🙂

Now that you have a markedly huge toolbox to find out what people are searching for and talking about, be a little bit creative and original in your content creation. Make it interesting so that people who come to you as new traffic, come back and ultimately want more.

SEO Consultant