What Are They Searching For?

If you use any type of analytics service or application, such as Google Analytics, Clicky or Mint, you can see what's being searched for on your own website. How do you know what people are searching for when they're not hitting your website? What if you could tap into one or more resources to increase your search hits? Google offers two resources, one requiring nothing but your eyes and the other requiring you to have a free account.

Google Hot Trends

This isn't a secret, but a lot of people seem to be ignoring it. Google Hot Trends has been providing the top 100 search queries per day since May 22, 2007 — nearly a year's worth of data. How do you put this data to use?

Since the top 100 search queries change dramatically from day to day, the best way to use it is to look for repetitive terms across a short time period. I use 10 days, starting with yesterday. I leave today's data alone because it's not complete until midnight, in the United States Pacific time zone. Why 10 days? I don't know. I could use 5 or 7, but I like to round things to the nearest 10.

Google Webmaster Tools

You have to have a Google account to use this one. When you first arrive at the Google Webmaster Tools, you're sitting at the dashboard where all of your domain URLs are listed. Click on the URL you want to work with and you should arrive at the overview. Unless you're site is really new, or hasn't been indexed yet, you should see a link to "Top search queries".

When viewing the top search queries, you should be looking for the items in the left column that aren't resulting in clicks, which would show up in the right column. Straight from the horse's mouth:

If a relevant search query appears in the first list, but not in the second, you should work on making your site more compelling to users so that they click it when it appears in search results. Your page title appears in the results, so make sure it's relevant and accurate. Google can take the text in your pages' meta descriptions and display it in search results, so review your meta descriptions to make sure that they contain useful descriptions of your pages' contents.

Putting The Data To Good Use

You can use Google Hot Trends to not only get ideas on what to write about that may potentially draw a lot of search traffic, but you can use the terms as add-on terms for your existing content.

The top search queries from Google Webmaster Tools can identify where your search queries are strong, but where the results don't contain the descriptions to entice a click.

You need to be able to edit your HTML titles, your meta tags and your meta descriptions. For WordPress users, my previous article about HeadSpace hints on how to do it. For non-WordPress users, you'll need to learn how to do it with your current CMS, blogging, or static site platform.

Normally, the title tag will match the post, article or page title. If you do something as simple as adding extra terms to it, without overdoing it, you can increase your search exposure dramatically. Here's an example:

I have a post with a post title of "Economic Stimulus Payments for Social Security Recipients". I noticed in Google Hot Trends that people were searching for different combinations of "IRS", "tax" and "rebate". I added " | IRS Tax Rebates" to the end of the HTML title. The "|" is a separator that the search engines ignore. The HTML title for Economic Stimulus Payments for Social Security Recipients now looks like "Economic Stimulus Payments for Social Security Recipients | IRS Tax Rebate" and that's what appears at the top of the browser.

Google isn't keeping any secrets about how it gets the data it displays. If the first 100 characters of your post or article don't provide sufficient information, Google will look at your meta description and meta tags. All search engines behave differently, but Google has over 50 percent of the search market, so it makes sense to make your site Google-friendly.

I haven't begun to scratch the surface as far as how to use tools like these to your advantage, but I hope I've provided enough information to set you on the right path.

May 6th, 2008 By RT Cunningham | Categories: Internet | Tags: analytics, Google, information, search, search engines, services, tags, tools, traffic |

Full Article Feed |

Summary Article Feed |

Comments Feed |

Full Articles by Email | Respond | Trackback URL

Comedy Plus on May 6th, 2008 at 9:27 am (Reply)

I'm as Google friendly as I care to be, but this is great info. Have a great day.
Comedy Plus’s last blog post… Tags, Tags and More Tags

rjleaman on May 6th, 2008 at 10:17 am (Reply)

That's a great tip, about the two columns of 'top search queries' in Google's Webmaster Tools. I've always skipped past that link without looking at it too closely, because I'd been tracking search terms by other means - and because those Tools plus Analytics can give far too much information to fit the available time for analysis! - but this is such a simple, quick, almost elegant way of pinpointing a quick way to improve the odds of 'getting found': many thanks for this.

rjleaman’s last blog post… Web 2.0 Nonprofit Success Stories - Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants

RT Cunningham on May 6th, 2008 at 11:29 am (Reply)

Hence the reason I wrote it.

hari on May 6th, 2008 at 1:32 pm (Reply)

By the way, my harishankar.org site now has a pagerank of 6/10. Imagine that!

I suppose I should be making money off it in some way.

hari’s last blog post… How to become a communist

RT Cunningham on May 6th, 2008 at 3:56 pm (Reply)

It would be a good candidate for Amazon if you have more mainstream books being reviewed. Other than that… I really don't know.
2. hari on May 6th, 2008 at 6:45 pm (Reply)
  
  You mean, as in Amazon affiliate program? I don't think it's open to anybody but US citizens (?)
3. RT Cunningham on May 6th, 2008 at 6:59 pm (Reply)
  
  Yes, but I don't know if it's restricted to U.S. only. I seem to remember you can't use PayPal either or I'd tell you a way to get around any U.S. only restriction.
  2. Mynamar cyclone on May 9th, 2008 at 4:11 pm (Reply)
    
    Amazon is not restricted to US residents: I am Australia and have been an affiliate for a while. The payout is a pain though -they send checks!

April from Used Elliptical Trainers on May 7th, 2008 at 1:02 am (Reply)

Yeah, I've also noticed that some of my top search queries don't appear on the top clicked queries. I guess I better go and write some proper meta descriptions rather than let wp do it automatically.

lotusflower on May 7th, 2008 at 2:24 pm (Reply)

I have Google Trends on my Igoogle account. And I also use google analytics. At this time, I am still in the learning process. I realized that there is so much to learn and so little time. Sometimes, I feel alone in the wilderness, groping and finding my way through the maze. Unfortunately, I do not have a CSR (customer service rep) I can consult 24×7.

What little I know at this point is the product of long nights and hot days, learning and learning and …

Anyway, thank you for sharing.

Cheers!

Justin from Electric Airsoft Guns on May 8th, 2008 at 6:45 pm (Reply)

I really wish I knew about this Google Hot Trends thing earlier. I see it is a Google Labs application, I always liked those.

I also use Google Analytics. I think it is the best web traffic analysis program out there, and it's free! Some of them are incredibly expensive yet are not half as good as Analytics.

RT Cunningham on May 9th, 2008 at 10:08 am (Reply)

Google Analytics is good, it's just delayed by a day and that doesn't help when you need to know what's going on right now. I use a different one that I won't mention right now. I'm trying to get a real spy feature done.

lissie from Best GPS Receivers on May 9th, 2008 at 4:14 pm (Reply)

Thanks for the tips: I have used trends but had notthought to average them out over 10 days. I have recently rediscovered webmaster tools and its great - or will be when my new .infos finally get indexed!