Brainstorm topics for your blog with Google Trends

It's easier said than done when you decided to start blogging. To us, there are a lot of ideas in mind for writing a blog but which ones work best for generating interest? People search for answers, advice, products, inspirations from Google search, and this is exactly why they might get to your page for what they are looking for. Before you start, ask yourself two questions - what are you skilled at and how does it overlap with the general trend. Being skillful at one thing guarantees a quality content, however, it doesn't imply that the topic is worth to note. Similarly, the most trendy search result is not necessarily your topic of interest. We, therefore, look for a territory or a topic that is both your expertise and of interest to others. This is where Google Trends come into place. Google Trends provides you with insightful data on what topics are searched most often. Let's start with the brainstorming together based on the online search trends in 2022.

Basics of Google Trends

The search filters are multi-dimensional: locations, time, and search terms.  At a general glance, from the drop down menu on the left, select "Explore" for a summary on the search terms based on location, time period, categories and search channels. Data below shows the trending general search topics and queries from worldwide for the past 12 months in 2021 from web search.

Next, trending search from the drop down menu shows you the daily search trends based on your location.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the navigation functions, we can now limit our search to identify your blog post ideas. I started the search on "blogging" for an insight on how the trend has changed and what are the particular related topics. Interestingly and predictably, there is an increase of interest for blogging from Dec 2019 to second quarter of 2020 during which Covid hit and intensified.

Next, we look at what are the related keywords and terms. Money and blogging are mostly associated and that can narrows our focuses of our blog for ideas on how blogging brings income. Wordpress also comes next as the top relevant searches.

With money-making topic identified, we can also further narrow the topic by applying the search filter of categories, and it highlights more specific topics like affiliate marketing, microblogging, quora, flckr, camera these are all tools that are associated with blogging.

As blogging has evolved to vlogging nowadays, and we would like to see how they differ and evolve. Google Trends also enables comparison between two terms within a same period. As shown below, blogging still weighs more than vlogging (indicated as red line) with camera as keyword on vlogging.

Tips for coming up blog posts with Google Trends

1. Explore keywords from related topics for a more specific trend. Affiliate marketing is an example from blogging and is one of the topics we explored further and identified as a blog post
2. Take an advantage from the Year in Search and see what was trending in each category in a year. There is also a monthly summary on the trending search which also gives you a basis on what interests people most in a year.

3. Make use of the subscription function for a timely update on trending search based on regions or a particular topic. As time goes by, trends change and it will be more efficient to get auto alerts to help with brainstorming

Does it seem easier to come up with your blog post idea now? Experiment the steps above and I am sure it will help you to define the topics for your own blog. Share with us some of your ideas on blog posts and if there are any functions on Google Trends that we overlooked. I am sure there are! Good luck with your journey on blogging.