How to Find Trending Keywords – A Step-by-Step Guide for SEO Success

Identifying new and upcoming keyword trends before anyone else in your industry gives you a huge advantage. When you spot a trend and act on it by crafting a brilliant piece of content, you increase your chances of getting in ahead of the competitors. Just take a look at how being faster than the rest helps you reap enormous benefits:

You notice an emerging trend in your industry, so you get in before the peak and use the trending keywords as a jumping-off point for your content strategy. You optimize the article for the trending keywords and publish it on your website and the website gets enough time to be indexed and ready for the users to find it.

The article gains in popularity as more and more people are using the trending keywords for their searches and as a result, your website starts ranking higher. The trend is in full swing, so you get even more organic traffic and engagement from those interested in the topic. By that time your competitors realize they should create a piece of content revolving around this trend and some of them even link to your article as it’s now pretty high in the SERPs.

After some time the trend starts fading, so your competitors receive only some marginal amounts of traffic. Congratulations, you’ve managed to capitalize on the trend before anyone else. 

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Sounds promising, doesn’t it?

Sure it does. When you play it right, meaning when you use the best keyword research tools to find new search terms that are gaining in plurality, you may attract tons of free traffic to your website and improve the ranks.

Before you rush to open the SEO tools, there are two things worth knowing.

To steer clear of classic keyword research mistakes, you need to realize that spotting emerging keyword trends differs a bit from the keyword research basics you’re probably familiar with. One of the major differences is that doing standard research based on SEO tools that provide only Search Volume metrics may lead you astray. Those tools simply don’t offer you up-to-date information on just trending phrases.

Secondly, as you have probably noticed, the above “being-faster-than-the-rest” scenario describes a situation where trending keywords spike on some new event. It applies to an event that is hard to forecast, as it has been with ChatGPT and BARD. However, there are also keywords that become trending at specific parts of the year. These are so-called annual events. Their sudden increase in popularity can be forecasted and acted on accordingly.

Take the travel industry, for example. Getting the content ready before the holiday season kicks off for good is one of the most profitable things you can do for your business. Just take a look at a random travel-related phrase – “camping kit” – and its popularity over the year.

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

It’s clear people look for camping kits in spring and summer, making this keyword trending during these two seasons.

Would you agree that passing on such keywords is a wasted opportunity?

If you’re not sure what the “opportunity” in the previous sentence exactly stands for, here’s an explanation.

First and foremost, trending keywords are absolutely essential for your SEO strategy. They work like a magnet, attracting new visitors and prospective customers to your website. Together with the increased weave of organic traffic, your website becomes more authoritative and the brand becomes more recognizable.

Additionally, by incorporating trending keywords into your content strategy, you enhance your content diversity and create more topic clusters. This way your website looks more organized and helps your visitors broaden their knowledge through efficient internal linking.

Finding trending keywords also gives you new ideas for your next social media posts. If you do this right, your followers will be delighted to learn more about the emerging trend – that they are passionately searching for – from your brand. This way you stay relevant, helpful, and reliable, hence improving your EEAT.

Jumping on the trend wagon before everybody else increases your chances of acquiring more backlinks. If you succeed at creating captivating and informative content on the trending keywords, some related websites may choose you above all others, and mention your findings on their pages.

Probably the best thing about finding trending keywords is their low competitiveness. If you have ever wondered what kind of keywords have high volume and low competition, then trending keywords are the answer. Even if the search volume doesn’t seem to be high at the moment you spot a trend, it surely will increase in the coming weeks. The growing popularity is what makes a trend, right?

Finally, trending keywords are a godsend for new websites. They can rank particular pages high in the SERPs even if the domain authority and backlink profile leave much to be desired. Incorporating trending keywords for a newly launched website’s blogging process is a promising method of handling competitors who have been on the market for some time now.

With so many reasons working in favor of using trending keywords in your SEO strategy, let’s see the best go-to research tools.

You need to identify trending keywords in order to adapt your content strategy to emerging trends before your competitors. To do this, you need to know which SEO tools can help you explore trending keyword ideas. Below are some of the tools you may want to have a go at.

How to Find Trending Keywords Using Google Trends

Google Trends is a free tool that shows you information on the queries and topics people search on Google. Here is how it helps you spot new keyword trends.

STEP 1 Go to Google Trends.

STEP 2 Into the search bar, type a general phrase or keyword that is related to your business, brand, or niche.

Let’s imagine you have a mill and you sell various types of flour. You may want to discover what flour-related topics have been gaining in popularity recently.

In this case, your general keyword may be simply “flour,” so that’s what you may want to start with. Be sure to select the right options such as location. For spotting emerging trends, you may want to select either the Last 30 days or the Last 7 days.

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

The report indicates that “flour” is a pretty popular keyword.

NOTE The scale 0-100 you see on the left isn’t an equivalent of Search Volume. It indicates how popular a particular topic is when compared to other topics that are currently searched for on Google. So, keywords scored 0 aren’t popular, whereas the keywords scored 100 are extremely popular.

Since it fluctuates, it can’t be labeled as a trading keyword. That’s why you need to…

STEP 3 Scroll down to see Similar Inquiries.

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Click on Gaining popularity. Later, you may use either the “>” sign to look through the results or download the complete list as a CVG file.

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Now you have a list of trending keywords that people have been using recently.

STEP 4 Explore the trending keywords further. Look at the Rising column to find the topics you may use in your content strategy. Let’s take the “carrot cake recipe” for example, as its popularity has increased by 170%.

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

What does the graph tell us? Basically, it tells us that this ship has sailed. It doesn’t mean though you can’t learn a lesson here.

First, let’s think about what might have caused such a sudden increase in the popularity of carrot cake recipes. Why so many people were searching for the recipe? Probably it’s due to Easter Holiday that was held on April 9th. This means that you may try to check this keyword next year, somewhere around mid-March, to see if the trend reoccurs.

STEP 5 Go to Similar Inguries again and check other trending keyword ideas. This time they are connected with the “carrot cake recipe” since that is the query we’re now examining. Click the “⋮” symbol to explore the given inquiries.

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

STEP 6 Carry on with your research until you come across a query that appears to be a trending keyword.

How to Find Trending Keywords Using Google Keyword Planner

Even though Google Keyword Planner is a free tool, you need a Google Ads account to access it. It’s also worth realizing that the prime goal of Keyword Planner is to help you find the best phrases for your paid Google Ad campaigns, yet it doesn’t mean it can’t be used to find organic traffic opportunities and emerging keyword trends.

STEP 1 To open Google Keyword Planner, first go to your Google Ads account. In case you don’t have an account, here’s how to create one for free. The thing is that without an active Ad campaign, the information you see on the reports may not be as detailed as it could be if you run the actual campaign.

STEP 1.1 Click Start now.

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STEP 1.2  Provide these 3 pieces of information and click Submit.

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STEP 1.3 That’s all. You can use the Keyword Planner.

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STEP 2 From the top menu, click Tools and Settings → Keyword Planner.

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STEP 3 Click Discover new keywords.

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STEP 4 Now it’s time to either provide the tool with keywords related to your business/niche or enter your website URL. If you chose the latter, Keyword Planner will pick the relevant keywords for you by scanning your website.

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Click Get results.

STEP 5 First, make sure you selected the right location (1) and language (2). Also, check the adequate date range (3). When that’s handled, it’s time to analyze the report to find trending keywords.

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

To spot keyword trends, inspect Three month change (4) and YoY change (5).

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

In this case, “printable stationery” or “coffee calligraphy” may seem to be your go-to. However, there is one more thing to consider – the Competition column.

Even though the trend is strong, the competition also seems to be strong, unluckily. That’s why it may be hard for you to take the organic traffic over. In this case, you may want to look for trending keywords that are less competitive, such as “baybayin calligraphy.”

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

If you happen to notice this “+∞” sign, it means that Keyword Planner doesn’t have enough data to assess the Three month change because that’s usually a fairly new phrase. This also may be an indicator of a growing keyword trend.

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

STEP 6 You may want to customize the results a bit. To do this, use the Refine keywords option.

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Here you can check and uncheck the words to make the report even more accurate.

For example, let’s imagine you don’t sell highlighters in your stationery store. In this case, you may want to uncheck the corresponding box. The same is with brand keywords. If you don’t sell Tombow and Pilot products, you may consider unchecking those boxes as well.

How to Find Trending Keywords Using SEMrush

If you have a SEMrush account – this is a paid tool – you may want to use this tool to find trending keywords.

STEP 1 Open SEMrush.

STEP 2 From the left sidebar, click Keyword Magic Tool.

STEP 3 Type a general keyword that is related to your business or niche. Click Search.

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

STEP 4 It’s time to play with the filters to weed out the most promising trending keywords. Filter by Questions to get almost-ready blog post topic ideas.

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

STEP 5 Now, look at the Trend column to notice trending keywords.

STEP 6 As mentioned above, the most promising trending keywords are the ones with low competition but high search volume. Having this in mind, you may want to filter the results by Volume and KD, which stands for Keyword Difficulty.

Source: Delante’s own screenshot

STEP 7 You may also want to filter the results by related keywords and spot the opportunities for finding trending keywords there. To do so, click on Related.

Once you use SEO tools to discover some promising keyword trends, you may also devote a bit of your time to running a competition analysis. This way you may spot some big opportunities that your closest rivals have been lucky enough to discover before you did.

Luckily, this method of finding trending keywords is pretty straightforward. The only thing that may actually turn out to be problematic is recognizing your closest competitors. Sometimes brands you share the same industry with may not necessarily fall into the “competitors” group.

If you’re not sure how to find your market rivals, be sure to check our SEO Competitor Analysis Guide. Knowing your real competitors is crucial unless you want the numbers and percentages to be skewed.

Once you make the closest rivals list, visit their websites and social media. Check their company blog to see if they wrote about some new topic or phenomenon that you haven’t covered on your blog yet. Try to find the keywords this blog post is optimized for. Later, use one of the above tools to check this keyword’s trending potential.

If you hit the jackpot, it’s time for you to…

When you succeed at finding a phrase that is gaining in popularity, jump right in and create a brilliant piece of copy that adds value to your audience. You may find some pretty good content ideas in SEO Copywriting A Complete Guide or in TikTok SEO: 12 Things You Should Know to Increase Your Content Reach. (The latter contains some universal content-related tips that you may find useful.)

It’s worth realizing though that writing a copy with the trending keyword may not necessarily resemble a regular content creation process. Before you type the first letter, you need to identify the search intent of those who are currently typing the trending keyword you’ve just found into the browser.

EXAMPLE #1 You sell winter and trekking clothes. You found a sudden spike in interest in search terms like “warm thin winter gloves” around Christmas time. This may indicate that this query is related more to the gift ideas rather than to the winter season itself. That’s why the piece of content you’re about to write should help you grow brand awareness. It should present you as a leader of winter gloves, worth buying from.

EXAMPLE #2 Let’s take the above “carrot cake recipe” keyword trend again. Even though it emerges around the festive season (i.e. Easter), you’d probably agree that unlike the “warm thin winter gloves”, it has nothing to do with presents. In this case, people use the browser to learn some good recipes for a given baking.

This time, apart from providing the actual recipe, you may consider adding some how-to to your piece of content. To satisfy the informational search intent, you may want to explain to your visitors why using a given type of flour, which you obviously have in your offer, would make their care even more mouth-watering.

So far you’ve learned how to find trending keywords and how to adapt your content to the search intent of your audience. Now it’s time to learn…

You’ve put loads of effort into finding trending keywords and creating the right type of content. Now it’s time to find out whether the effort has paid off.

There are a few tools you can use to check your trending keyword ranking data. First, let’s start with Google Analytics.

Track Trending Keyword Performance Using Google Analytics

STEP 1 Open Google Analytics.

STEP 2 From the left sidebar, select Acquisition → All Traffic → Channels.

STEP 3 Choose Organic Search as your Default Channel Grouping.

STEP 4 From Primary Dimension choose Landing Page and find the link to the content you optimized for the trending keyword. Click on it.

STEP 5 You see a graphic representation of the organic traffic this content has managed to drive to your website.

Track Trending Keyword Performance in Google Search Console

Google Search Console is currently one of the best tools to check the positions of keywords you optimize your pages for. It uses real-time data, which is even more important if we talk about trending keywords.

STEP 1 Copy your blog post URL.

STEP 2 Open Google Search Console.

STEP 3 From the left sidebar choose Performance → Search results. Now we’re going to filter the results by adding the blog post URL.

Paste the URL and click Apply.

STEP 4 You get the report that shows you not only clicks but also impressions, which may be also pretty useful in evaluating the performance of the content you optimized for the trending keyword.

STEP 5 You may also want to inspect the Queries tab.

It shows you the search queries that are linked to this specific blog post.

STEP 6 From the Queries list, click on the main trending keyword and filter it by the Average position.

This way you check the trending keyword performance over time and validate if your effort is paying off.

How to Find Trending Keywords – Summary

Every once in a while there is a trend that emerges almost out of nowhere and becomes extremely popular among your target audience. Spotting it soon enough before it fades away within a few weeks or months gives you a massive opportunity to improve your website’s search engine ranking.

The good news is that there is more to this process. Incorporating trending keywords into your content marketing strategy helps you achieve a number of goals:

•  increase your brand awareness
• help you position your brand as an authority
• improve EEAT for your website
• boost your social media presence
• enhance your content quality due to the timely articles and posts
• demonstrate your expertise in your niche
• help you acquire more backlinks
• attract new visitors, including your potential prospects
• generate easy and free traffic

The thing is, you need to stay alert. You need to be attentive, watching what your closest competitors do and write about. Also, you need to keep researching your audience on a regular basis. Mind the seasonality trends. Demand for some products and services varies throughout the year so keep this in mind and don’t let the numbers lead you astray. By doing so in a diligent way, you be able to spot or forecast emerging trends that can bring tons of organic traffic to your website.

Use the tips listed in this guide to find trending keywords. Later, incorporate the most relevant ones into your content strategy. Create informative and original pieces of content saturated with the trending keywords that you’ve found.

Optimize your fresh blog posts and articles for the trending keywords by working them into titles and body text. Make sure though that your web content isn’t oversaturated with trending keywords. Otherwise, your text may sound robotic – this will significantly discourage your potential prospects from engaging with your brand. Finally, track your performance. Don’t hesitate to adjust your content marketing strategy a bit if necessary.

All in all, you can improve your website’s search engine ranking due to trending keywords, provided that you get in before the peak. Luckily, it shouldn’t be hard for you to spot the trending keywords now when you know which SEO tools to use, how to use them, and how to interpret the reports.

However, if you’d like an SEO to help you ride the wave, you know where to find them. Just reach out to us and we will lead you to greater SEO success.