Large-scale brands with millions of pages and an endless marketing budget are starting to take a real chunk out of the Google search results pages these days; it seems that keywords are becoming harder to rank for than ever before, and with AI now capable of churning out content, it will rapidly change the landscape even further.
Ranking for a profitable keyword or even a keyword that can bring a large amount of traffic to your website or your client’s website is a really great way to boost your brand name and traffic levels. Sometimes this means you need to think small, and instead of going for existing keywords, you should try to rank for overlooked keywords that big-name brands are not creating content for.
This will require time and effort and also require you to get your thinking cap on to come up with a creative solution to the problem and be first to market on a unique content angle that may attract your target market and may even earn you some backlinks.
In order to do this, we need to do some research and dig up some brand-new trending keywords. This requires us to look at places other than a keyword research tool and start gathering in-depth research on our target market and find out how they think and what other sites they use.
Google Trends is a neat little tool which allows you to take a look at various topics and break the data down into smaller segments to find out the search volume over the history of the keyword or even the last year, month or week. This is a great free tool to come up with related topics or even find queries that are trending right now.
A great example might be to find people in your industry whose names are trending; this way you can see who is marketing themselves and get ahead of the curve to secure an interview with them for some exclusive content.
You can also use Google Trends to find out topics and news items that are unrelated to your market. Many firms will overlook this strategy and not realise just how much traffic these generic news terms can generate. Finding a way to blend trending news topics with your market-specific content is a great way to capture attention from a broader audience and increase your brand name online.
Targeting trending news items is a great way to get new eyeballs to your business; most of the time this has no direct effect on sales, as the traffic is likely not interested in your offer, but it could have a real lasting impact when it comes to social shares, engagement and even getting backlinks and mentions to your website, which all increases trust in the eyes of Google.
Another great place to look is forums, which are an often overlooked goldmine for finding new and emerging topics and opinions to write about. Many of these forums are updated with new content every few minutes, and they have a vast minefield of older indexed content that you could work backwards on to find older evergreen topics that you could rework and put a new spin on.
Getting creative to figure out a new angle or commenting on an old topic is a great way to get ahead of the curve in any industry; people often love to see retro topics being discussed again and put into the spotlight. Don’t be afraid to discuss things that had some popularity in the past, as nostalgia can provide many new clicks and visitors to your website, provided you do it correctly.
Forums are also a great way to find out what kind of language your target demographic uses, and you can also join the forum and ask them questions. You can find some real information and find out what the hottest new topics are but also find out what the most talked about and engaged with topic threads are; perhaps you can merge these with a new keyword and create a new piece of content from it.
Social media sites are one of the best places to mine trending keywords; these are often different than nationwide headlines or news, and they also tend to be right at the forefront of the latest breaking news. This means you can see a trending topic and very quickly create some content for it before a major news outlet can put up a dedicated page. This comes in very handy if you lack a budget but want to get a lot of eyeballs to your site quickly.
You can also break down trends within your marketplace and quickly discover something that is gaining traction, such as an influential person or keyword. This can allow you to see untapped value in real time, which allows you to create brand new content ideas that really gain traction quickly. You can even reply or use hashtags to generate traffic, and before long you will start to see retweets, link clicks and engagement.
I also highly recommend sites like Reddit, which are content-heavy and tend to produce some real insights into current market conditions. From here, you can get an idea of a popular new product or even look at complaints about an existing product which you could create content around or even edit your product descriptions to address the current frustrations that the market is giving you feedback on.
Content that is created quickly is often positioned very high in Google’s search index, as it has so few options to display. When major news outlets pick up a story, they tend to cram the search results pages. A breaking news website that picks up stories in real time, such as TMZ, can be a great place to start thinking up ideas and then creating stories that might be able to predict the future.
This might require a lot of work upfront, and sometimes stories will be hit and miss, but if you pay close attention, you should be able to spot some recurring patterns, such as a celebrity saying something controversial and then appearing in a new movie or launching a book a month after.
You could also think about new product launches that are going to happen 2 or 3 years down the line and start planning ahead. For example, if you are sure that a current football manager should be sacked, then why not create a detailed content piece beforehand and then launch it the second you get the news? This will allow you to be first to market and create some buzz around your brand name.
You can also do this with the latest industry news, such as a product launch like the latest iPhone or GTA gaming title. You know, based on the success of previous titles, that a sequel is going to be released, so why not plan ahead? You could also do this for things that may happen in the future.
Predicting things 5 years down the line might be difficult to do, but if you have your finger on the pulse of a market, you can probably guess which direction it will go and also be able to guess which companies or influencers may be at the top of the market. Creating content for them now and securing an interview before they go mainstream is an excellent idea.
In order to get trending topics and keywords, you should plan ahead and be creative in thinking about what your market would like to read about, but also don’t be afraid to go super generic and think about news items in the future. Sporting events such as the World Cup and major boxing matches also attract a lot of attention online and shouldn’t be ignored just because they don’t align with what you’re trying to sell.
Figuring out a way to blend the content together and make it relevant to your market while targeting popular keywords is a great way to show your creative side and also get some links and traffic from broader topics and websites that usually have never heard of you. This is a great way to build trust with Google while also aligning your brand with the current wave of newsworthy items.
Mining trending topics and keywords can be a full-time job, but if you have some creativity, you can find a way to cross over into mainstream topics and find a way to make your content relevant to that discussion. Doing this opens your brand and business up to all kinds of new and trending topics that otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to tap into. This will bring new eyeballs and new opportunities to the table.
A great example of small businesses using generic marketing trends to profit is small pizza shops that give away free food if England wins the World Cup. The sheer amount of attention this marketing effort gets is well worth the amount that they would give away for free should England actually win. Sometimes you have to see the long-term value in creating a newsworthy offer that gets mainstream traction.