Category: Google

Using Google Correlate to Find Great Cooking Topics

11/20/2015

by Richard Rowell; Co-owner of Brand Shamans & Write W.A.V.E. Media

There's no better time of year to write about cooking than Thanksgiving in the United States. As you'll learn from the Google Correlate normalized search activity chart, even Christmas consistently gets a quarter to half the traffic that Thanksgiving time does for cooking. So this holiday season what searches are foodies looking for? Let's turn to our trusty Google Correlate tool to find out!

Slow roasting is the #1 correlation for cooking, right ahead of convection oven cooking. Almondine dishes, also known as amandine around the world, are a big winner by this measure. For those unfamiliar with Almondine dishes, they are dishes garnished with almonds, and according to Wikipedia, usually cooked with butter and seasonings, then sprinkled with whole or flaked, toasted almonds. Roasting garlic and garlic mashed potato searches are big hits, as well. One of the most surprising searches to me is "how to fold napkins." There are so many ways to, apparently, and people are always looking for new and exciting ways to fold their napkins...

Let's see how these keywords hold up when run through Google Keyword Planner (free Adwords account required) for volume. There are some interesting surprises.

Garlic mashed potatoes blows away the competition with nearly 50,000 monthly average searches. Cheese recipes are right behind with nearly 10,000 monthly searches, and roasting garlic is around 8,000 a month. "How to fold napkins" is indeed a high volume search. "Green beans almondine" and "Southern macaroni and cheese" are the other dishes that are big winners.

Writing this has made me quite hungry. Have any recipes that you'd like to share?

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Using Google Correlate for Researching Expert Topics: Parenting

11/20/2015

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by Richard Rowell; Co-owner of Brand Shamans & Write W.A.V.E. Media

In the past, Google Correlate has been a tool that I've used as more of a fun exercise to show some goofy search trends. Some of the search terms that correlate well with one another seem downright laughable, and I've probably had a bit too much fun with it. However, Correlate has some serious uses as well. One of the primary advantages of a tool like this is that you can actually learn a lot about what searchers for your expert topics may be looking for. Taking advantage of this information can broaden your pool of potential content idea. This time, we're taking a look at one of the most universal topics out there, parenting.

Will what Google Correlate shows us be mostly common-sense? Or are we going to need some deeper analysis to truly understand what we're seeing?

First off, I'll point about a couple of strange terms, namely "production" and "soils." My best guess at the first one is "breast milk production." But with "soils," digging a bit deeper (pun not intended), I found that it could be referring to geological soils - as a parent material. Not digging much deeper into that (again, sorry,) we get into the interesting topics.

First and foremost, "public education" is clearly the hot topic for parenting. There are also many searches about disabilities and disorders in children. Young children, in particular, get a lot of attention, as well as adolescents. The rest are pretty self-explanatory.

Using this information, this would seem to be a pretty good list of parenting-related topics, in order based on the correlations:

Public Education
Children with Disabilities
Governmental Programs for Parents
Birth Defects
Parenting Young Children
Social Workers
Parent Advocacy / Parent Advocates
Trends in Parenting
How Substance Abuse Affects Children
Children with Disorders
Juvenile Justice
Children and Nutrition
Self-Esteem and Children
Adolescent Parenting
Parenting Standards
Information for Parents

This normalized search chart is particularly interesting:

It seems that the very worst times to post parenting content is the last week of the year, when the normalized search traffic is the lowest. It's also a lot lower than you might expect during the summer months. It's highest in February and March and again in late October, November, and early December. Also note the crazy spike in 2012 for parenting. If anyone knows the significance of this early May 2012 spike and the one shortly before it in February, please let me know.

Let's see if the monthly correlations dig up any other interesting terms we should be aware of:

A couple things pop up that appear to be noise. "A business plan" would seem to refer to advice on making a business plan for a parenting center, of which there are a number of sources already. "A press" likely refers to Parenting Press, a firm that publishes skill-building books for children, parents, and teachers. Another interesting one is Kellogg, the very well-known cereal brand. One that doesn't show up on the other list that also definitely could use attention is "cancer prevention."

From this additional info, we could add these topics:

Parenting Pamphlets
Nutrition Education for Children
Preventing Cancer in Children

Just from these correlations, you see how many potential topics emerge. Doing a bit further keyword research will tell you which ones are best for overall search traffic, specific phrases to target, and for display ad relevance purposes.

Any other topics that you'd like me to analyze using the Google Correlate tool? Let me know and I'll be happy to look into it.

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How Much Does Google Encrypting Search Terms Hurt Optimization?

10/6/2014

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by Richard Rowell; Co-owner of Brand Shamans & Write W.A.V.E. Media

Photo credit: Pixabay, Public Domain

Much ado has been made about Google now encrypting all keyword searches except those that come from pay-per-click ads. They were already doing this for signed-in Google users, but now more than ever, you’ll have no idea what keywords Google users are typing to get to your content. Only Yahoo and Bing will continue to provide that data, and they make up only about a quarter of internet search traffic. Also, without the Google Keyword Tool being available for non-Adwords customers, it’s harder to figure out what keywords to use – although the handy Ubersuggest tool has been handy in the aftermath of that change.

But here’s the big thing. Yes, Google wants more people to use AdWords. That’s how they make money, of course. But the big thing that needs to happen is shifting away from keywords. Yes, tags and categories are still important. You’re still going to be able to know what your Google ranking is. Just not what the phrases are. However, this sort of thing simply can longer be your concern anymore. Therefore, the focus needs to be shifted to simply producing the best, most relevant content that you can.

No matter what it is that you write about, content quality has to be the number one priority. It’s still worth tagging photos and checking on popular searches, of course. But now you simply have to ignore what exact phrases are bringing traffic. If you’ve optimized your pages enough in the past, they should keep bringing in the same sort of traffic. It’s just frustrating from an analytical point of view, even though you can still see that they’re coming from Google organic search. It’s just one piece of information you won’t have anymore.

So while there is a big commotion over this change, optimization is still roughly the same. It will just be a bit trickier to know exactly what is working and will take a bit more keyword research. But if you build up enough thought leadership in your given field and are ranking well in Google now, little should change. Going forward you just have to accept that whatever traffic you get will be relatively anonymous. For those that aren’t ranking well, keyword research is still the same – you simply just will be getting traffic without tagged keyword phrases. It’s a bit frustrating, but you can’t let it get you down. Just keep keywords in mind when you’re writing top-notch content and only worry about the eyeballs coming to your page, not the precise keyword phrases.

Of course, you can always use AdWords. That still works.

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Using Google Correlate to Find Great Cooking Topics

Using Google Correlate for Researching Expert Topics: Parenting

How Much Does Google Encrypting Search Terms Hurt Optimization?

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