Submitted by Katie Hellmuth on | 0 Comments
Late at night, or in the middle of projects as a way to unwind, I dive into Google Analytics for some keyword research for websites and blogs that I run. I take a quick dip in what kind of keyword traffic they are getting, which helps me decide what kind of blog posts to write. When I can see what keywords are popular, it reaffirms that I should continue writing about a certain topic, and helps me think of new angles of how to cover that topic, and bring in new searches (ie searches from more specific keyword phrases I had not been targeting earlier).
Keyword searches for "how to make a facebook page" have been consistently strong, but recently have doubled. I knew my article on how to make a facebook page was ranking well, so I suspected that the traffic did not double because I moved up in the rankings. Are searches for the keyword going up, possibly because Facebook is clamping down on personal uses of Facebook profiles for business purposes? Let's check!
Google Trends, a fun free tool still in development in Google Labs, lets you search the popularity of keyword phrases that you type into its generator. You go to Google Trends, type in your term, possible refine your search based on year or location, and voila. You have the history of when people were searching for it, and when those searches dropped off.
How can this work for you? If you have a pet health website, like member Hope Schultz does, and if you have a blog on that website, you might want to know if people are suddenly searching for "obama dog" as the Obama family researches a family dog. And once they've decided on what dog they will bring home, you can guess that searches for that type of dog may increase for a period of time. As a blog owner, put your thinking cap on and start thinking of ways to create quality posts to catch some of these curious searchers.
Here you see the history of of the search phrase for "how make facebook page". This idea did not exist until late 2008 when Facebook invented it, and now that it does, you can see how searches for it are increasing. That tells me that more and more people want to know how to make a facebook page, as well as other questions. Marci of www.heymarci.com saw our earlier post on how a facebook page works, and asked a further question regarding branding as a journalist, or a person who is a brand. The answer will be published on her blog in the next week or so, so stay tuned to both spaces for a great strategy discussion!
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