Sunday, February 3, 2013

Using Google Trends to choose your words

Anyone who has online content know that being found by search engines is the key to generating traffic and building an audience. However, having good results for a few key words is not enough. You have to use other words as well that are related and that are commonly used by your potential audience.

The following example is for the fear of flying content on AirSafe.com. The site already scores very highly for the phrase. However, other related aviation terms related words and phrases like "turbulence" and "plane crash" get much more traffic, as the following output from Google Trends suggest.


Comparing the terms "plane crash," "turbulence," and "fear of flying"


One way AirSafe.com takes advantage of this is to put links to the fear of flying content on pages related to turbulence and plane crashes. Another thing that is done is that these highly used search terms are also included in the fear of flying content on the site.

Taking this idea a bit further, fear of flying is related to psychological terms like "anxiety" and "panic." As the following chart shows, the terms "anxiety" and "panic" are used far more frequently than "fear of flying."


Comparing the terms "plane crash," "anxiety," and "panic"


As you can see, "anxiety" and "panic" are much more popular search terms than "fear of flying." Based on this kind of data, it would make sense to review text content on AirSafe.com related to fear of flying to include key words associated with the psychological aspects of fear of flying, words that someone may use when looking for insights into their reaction to the flying experience.