How To Find Trending Keywords You Can Rank For
What’s better than low-hanging fruit keywords?
Two words: trending keywords.
These keywords are gaining popularity quickly, so it’s best to be one of the first to ride the wave before everyone else follows suit. You can improve search engine rankings, organic traffic, and conversion rates by successfully ranking for these keywords!
However, the problem is identifying these keywords.
Traditional keyword research tools aren’t usually that good at finding trending keywords.
Not to worry. In this article, you will learn how and where to discover trending keywords so you can ride the traffic wave right to the bank.
Check social media
One of the best things about social media is that finding trending keywords is much easier for SEOs.
Social media networks aggregate posts about the subject and deliver them straight to your feed. If you’re not subscribed to users sharing these topics, you can search for the topic or hashtag to see the latest content.
There are lots of social media platforms to help you identify trending keywords. But it’s best to limit your search to the following places online:
X (previously Twitter)
Regardless of your feelings about Elon Musk and whatever you want to call this platform (Twitter? Xwitter?), X remains one of the most reliable sources for discovering trending hashtags and keywords.
Your feed has a Trending section at the right sidebar customized to users you follow and topics you’re interested in. Under each topic is the number of posts associated with it. The more posts about the topic, the more popular and trending it is.
(I like wrestling. Sorry, not sorry.)
This helps you determine keyword trends relevant to you, but it doesn’t show you emerging trends outside your scope of interest.
Clicking on any of these trends shows you tweets talking about the topic and containing hashtags.
You can then filter the results to show you the top posts about the topic, i.e., those with the most engagement and interaction, the latest tweets about it, media files tweeted in relation to the topic, and more.
Reddit and Subreddits
A lot has been said about Reddit, especially after Google’s March 2024 Update, but one thing you can’t deny is that it has arguably the most vibrant online communities and discussions about any topic imaginable – even those that you don’t know existed yet!
It all starts with the homepage, where you can access the Popular tab and identify the specific location to see posts with the most upvotes and comments.
Click on any posts to see the most upvoted comments and threads at the top. This gives you a general sentiment about the trending topic and helps give you ideas on what to write about it if you wish to create content optimized for it on your website.
The criticism about Reddit’s front page is that it may contain lots of memes irrelevant to your research (although they make for a good time). But the platform is a goldmine for keyword and content opportunities, especially if you know where to look.
In addition to the homepage, you can check subreddits of your website’s niche to stay informed about the latest happenings and discussions about the subject.
Filter the posts by date to see the most recent points.
Facebook Groups
Facebook remains a juggernaut in the social media space, and Groups are one reason for this. Many people create Facebook Groups to build an engaged and active community because it’s free.
But the catch is that the Group must be active, meaning it must have people willing to jumpstart discussions and participate in conversions, for it to be effective and help you find emerging trends.
Most group discussions will involve questions about troubleshooting a product or advice related to the group’s niche. So, the group’s ability to use trending keywords depends on its goals and objectives.
Use tools
While social media should help you find more than enough trending keywords and topics to incorporate into your SEO strategy, that shouldn’t stop you from using tools and software to help you find even more emerging keywords to use.
Below are some of the best applications you can use and for which purpose.
Exploding topics
Content sites have taken a severe hit with recent algorithm updates, but that shouldn’t mean you should stop creating one about something you’re passionate about. The update scared off a lot of niche site owners from authority website creation, which leaves the lane open for you to create and rank a site from scratch.
At the same time, topical authority is no longer the latest buzzword in SEO—it’s now a proven tactic that can help improve your site’s rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
So, you’ll need to leverage a topic that remains underserved on Google. The rising popularity of these topics will help you attract more website traffic once they explode in popularity.
Exploding Topics makes this easy.
Created and developed by Brain Dean of Backlinko fame, it shows you topics with the highest chance of becoming trending keywords. It’s now owned by Semrush which means we’ll likely see more resources dedicated to the project. That’s good news for us!
With a paid subscription, you can filter the topics according to time (from 3 months to 15 years ago), categories, and search trends results.
Clicking on each topic shows you the search volume and growth through the years, which helps you decide which topic to use for your SEO campaign.
A related topics section shows you other relevant keywords and topics similar to the one you’re currently looking at.
You can choose which topics to build a brand new site using the information here. Use the related keywords to build different silos in your site that cover the topics in depth. Just buy an aged domain, create content from search queries relevant to the topic, interlink them to their respective silos, and make sure also to create products (digital or otherwise) for sale to turn your website into a brand.
Note: Google treats large sites differently to small sites. So, it’s important to ensure that any trending topics you do go for are directly related to your niche. If you go too broad and cover completely random topics that have nothing to do with your site’s niche, you’ll likely be in for a bad time.
Google Trends
Among the tools for discovering trending keywords, Google Trends takes the cake for being one of the best. Aside from being a free tool, it’s also a great place to find trending topics at any given moment in time and in any location.
Like Exploding Topics, it shows you a graph of the keyword’s popularity (on a scale of 0 to 100 – 100 being the highest) within the day. You can even list four more topics and compare how much interest each topic or search query has over time.
You can filter the results of specific sublocations in your chosen country and time range. This makes identifying keywords that are trending in real-time and your location much easier, especially for publications covering local news.
If you chose the country, you should see a section that shows the interest of each subregion for the topic you enter, with the most interested subregion on top (on a scale of 0-100, 100 being the highest).
Under the graph, you can see topics and queries related to the one you entered. By default, they show “breakout” topics and queries or those that have enjoyed a surge in popularity over a short period. If they aren’t considered as “breakout” keywords, Google Trends shows much interest they have gained from people on organic search by percentage.
There’s also a Trending Now tab that shows the list of the most comprehensive data about trending keywords over your chosen timeframe. You can change the default settings (your geolocation and 24 hours) to any location and any time between the past 4, 24, 48 hours, and 7 days.
This is also the only time Google Trends shows the search volume of the keyword, as well as the time the trend started and some trend breakdown information.
Click on each keyword to see additional information and the most relevant content and pages circulating online about it.
Buzzsumo
Social media is also a good gauge to understand exactly how popular a trending keyword or topic is. Buzzsumo is one of the few tools that can effectively determine topics that should create content on your website for using social media metrics.
Unlike the previous tools above, Buzzsumo’s Content Discovery feature lets you type the keyword on the search bar and shows you articles and content online with the highest social media engagement.
From Facebook shares to Reddit engagement, the tool gives you a full 360 view of how the content fared on these platforms. Using this information, you can check the content and create a much better version of it on your website in the hopes of ranking above it on SERPs.
The Trending Now feature is a cross between Google Trends and Google Alert. Enter the topics you want to monitor as part of your feed and it will show the latest articles with the highest social media metrics about them.
You can also grab the RSS feed and place it in your favorite feed reader to help you keep track of newly added and trending articles in the list.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking is an all-in-one SEO software that lets you research and develop your SEO strategy for your website from start to finish. In this case of researching for trending keywords, you can start with its Keyword Research tool. Enter your seed keyword from the list to begin the process.
As with most keyword tools, the next page shows you the usual information about the searched query like keyword difficulty, monthly searches, keyword intent, and others. From here, however, click on the View Detailed Report button on any of the keyword ideas below.
The report shows you a list of related or similar keywords complete with their keyword metrics. Most importantly, there is a column that shows the trend graph of each term’s search volume over time.
Looking at the keyword popularity, along with the usual metrics, helps you determine which keywords are gaining steam and optimize in your website now before it’s too late.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs needs no introduction. It’s one of the most popular SEO software in the market due to its massive keyword and link database and filtering options to help you find easy-to-rank-for keywords and link opportunities for your niche.
The company has made strides to provide valuable insights to users and help them stay ahead of competitors with its keyword research feature.
The thing about trending keywords is that they don’t have any search volume yet. Information about the keyword is currently developing on the spot, while keyword tools generate information from third-party data sources, which don’t deliver fresh data about trending keywords on the spot. That means you won’t be able to find SEO metrics about them.
This makes Ahrefs even more valuable than ever because it now provides you with traffic forecast data. It predicts how many keyword searches may receive in the next few months.
The data accounts for the current popularity of a trending keyword and whether it will increase its search volume over time. Use this information to help you decide if you still want to include the keyword in your content strategy or not.
After you discover trending keywords, now what?
The next step is incorporating trending keywords into your SEO campaign, particularly in content creation.
You can cover relevant trending keywords in the news section of your site, regardless of whether it’s local or not. Use data from the platforms and tools above to craft engaging content that ranks for the target query. And don’t forget to leverage your knowledge & expertise. Any unique insights you or your team can provide will be instrumental in helping your content become successful.
Alternatively, you could compile the best posts about the topic and create a comprehensive article that people will refer to online.
Most of these trending topics have user-generated content (UGC) in the form of comments, especially in forums and communities like Reddit. You can leverage the UGC to help guide your content creation process.
For example, if the sentiment about the trending topic is overwhelmingly negative, you can create a post focusing on its positive. This lets you put your content in a unique position, allowing it to stand out from the pack.
Finally, some of the broader trending topics may be viable for building an entire website around. This approach will help to leverage Google’s new focus on niche sites with a tight topical focus.
Given that the topic includes a lot of new keywords, you might find that you can dominate SERPs easily by covering subtopics within tight content silos.
Putting the researched trending keywords into action protects you against the competition and helps your website trends on SERPs. Good luck!
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