Using Google Trends for broad topic research

Google is the largest search engine in the world, with its millions of daily users it is often the first place people search for a topic, their hobby or for a restaurant that is open around the corner. To get a rough idea of how much people search for a particular topic, Google Trends can be used. Read on for how this works!

With starting a website, there can be a lot of questions. What is often one of the most important items to determine from the beginning is how much is searched for your topic.

Why a website topic is important

Starting a website can be done for many reasons. This blog post focuses a little more towards blog websites and web shops. With a business website or portfolio, it doesn't matter as much how much people search for a particular topic. A blog website that you start for sharing a vacation or for a specific trip, the extensive research is also not relevant.

But for a blog website that you want to go beyond just sharing a story, you need to pay a little more attention to the broad topic research. The same goes for web shops. A good example is the fidget spinner that was the subject of a bizarre trend a few years back. If you search for this in Google Trends results, you will see a number of interesting trends. We take the past 5 years as a term, and see the following:

Does it still make sense in 2020 to start a webshop or website about fidget spinners? I don't think so. The niche that is still looking for them is so small that it is no longer relevant for a lot of purposes. A web shop might get a few orders a month, and a blog or website about it might get a few hundred visitors a month.

Take this example now with the broad topic of Book Review, this is an example that will always be popular. The way books are read may change, but books will always be a form of media used to gain new information, relax and entertain. Book review websites and blogs are therefore plentiful. But you can then decide to focus on a sub-niche as it is called. Science fiction books, novels etc. The google trends for Book Reviews looks like this for the past five years:

Now let's cover how to work with this further.

Google Trends gives you an idea of how much is being searched for

What Google Trends mainly shows is how much is still being searched based on the past few years. This is a good way to determine if a topic is seasonal, flattening or just rising over the years.

To look a little further at the term Book Review. At the bottom of the Google Trends page, you'll also see a lot of incredibly interesting information. Here you can see the following information explained:

Here you also see related topics that people search for, for example Harry Potter, the social networking site Goodreads. And much more. Here you can also determine whether your sub-niche is still relevant. And thus gain more information in which direction you want to go.

When do you decide to start a website?

Determine the following using Google Trends to proceed with a website.

• There is no sharp downward trend in the interest of the subject, or declining interest over the years.
• No fast risers and fallers, with no interest in the history of years. This often indicates a topic such as Fidget Spinners. Once you finish the website the interest will already drop off
• Is it a seasonal topic? For example, if your website is about snowboarding, you will attract fewer visitors to your website in the middle of summer. This can be fine if you keep this in mind. And do not assume that you achieve success in the summer, but must rely on the winter.

These three points are the broad outlines we want to give you when starting a website. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, and you are the webmaster of your website and hosting. Make the website you want!

Starting a website with a Content Management System

Once you have established a topic through Google Trends, you can get started with your website. You do this by first purchasing a hosting package. For the purposes described above, an SSD package is recommended in most situations. This gives you the opportunity to have a fast website and a lot of storage space. So you can get started right away with a WordPress website, or one of the other Content Management Systems. Almost all popular Content Management Systems are supported by MijnHostingPartner.nl and can be used without worries. There is also the possibility to create a website within Umbraco.

After completing the hosting package it is a simple matter of installing your desired Content Management System via the Web App gallery in the control panel. This is easy with our manual and within a few clicks.

After the installation you can immediately start working with your website, and that's where the biggest challenge lies. Content needs to be written! With a few articles and pages it is difficult to attract visitors. That's why it's important to pick a topic you're not easily bored with. So take a hobby or at least an item that you have an interest in. That makes the work easier.