Understand how search demand for your keywords fluctuates

Understanding how and when search demand fluctuates over time for the keywords you care about is critical to planning your content strategy and understanding the ebbs and flows of your organic traffic. Search demand data can help explain:

• What your audience is interested in.
• When they're interested.
• Why your traffic might vary over time for the topic.

You can use Explorer's Topic reports to dig into the any keyword's trended search demand. Then, you'll learn how to use the Search Console Analytics report to see trended impression data from Google Search Console for a group of your keywords.

1. In Conductor, go to Explorer↗️.
2. Enter a topic you are interested in researching.
3. Click Explore. You are taken to the Overview tab for the topic.
4. In the top-left, you can view the Monthly Search Interest for the topic you explored. The graph shows the volatility in search volume over time.
   • A 100 marks the peak of search volume during the indicated time period, and all other data are indexed to that high-point.
   • Look for large spikes or drops in the graph. If the line is relatively straight this means there is little to no volatility in search demand over the year. If there have been large changes in search demand throughout the year, you can use this data in the following ways:
     • Explain changes in traffic. If there is fluctuation in search demand that correlates with the timing of fluctuation in organic traffic, you might be able to identify a shift in the total number of searches that might have caused you changes in organic traffic.
     • Plan your content calendar. If you spot seasonality for a keyword, you can plan the creation of content in advance to take advantage. For example, if “bbq grill” is an important keyword for your business and you see spiking demand in June, you can plan to publish new content or content updates ahead of time to put your site in the best position to compete for that keyword.
5. Go to Search Console Analytics↗️.
6. In the Select Keyword Groups filter, choose a keyword group you want to review and confirm  that impressions are selected to appear on the line graph. The graph below updates to reflect trended impressions and clicks for all keywords in that group over time.
   • Impressions show how often someone saw a link to your site on Google. This means that if you are consistently showing up for that keyword, impressions can be a great indicator of total search volume on Google. Keep in mind impressions only indicate moments when users actually saw your content in a search result. Because of this, you'll want to use impressions as a demand metric related to only keywords  for which you consistently rank on page 1 (these are frequently your branded terms).
   • Look for large spikes or drops in the graph. If the line is relatively straight this means there is little to no volatility in search demand over the year. If there have been large changes in search demand throughout the year, you can use this data in the following ways:
     • Explain changes in traffic. If there is fluctuation in search demand that correlates with the timing of fluctuation in organic traffic, you might be able to identify a shift in the total number of searches that might have caused you changes in organic traffic.
     • Plan your content calendar. If you spot seasonality for a keyword, you can plan the creation of content in advance to take advantage. For example, if “bbq grill” is an important keyword for your business and you see spiking demand in June, you can plan to publish new content or content updates ahead of time to put your site in the best position to compete for that keyword.

What's next?

Once you know the seasonality trends of your keywords, you can use that data to inform a number of marketing functions:

• Make sure you optimize your pages 1-3 months before your keywords’ peak search volume so that Google has time to index your optimizations and hopefully improve your ranking by the time MSV is highest, providing your business with the most value.
• Use seasonality data as a component of every content calendar.
• If your website's performance changes positively or negatively—but your rankings haven’t changed—check to see if seasonality is the driving force of the change.
• Share seasonality data across teams. Product, merchandising, and many other teams can get value from search volume seasonality.

To be successful in SEO it’s essential to understand how demand is shifting for the keyword your hope to rank for so that you can best target your content to the topics your audience cares about. Use what you learn from this workflow to better plan your content efforts and understand shifts organic traffic.

Did you know?

You can also gather insights for keyword groups using a Seasonality Report requested from Conductor’s Marketplace↗️.