Bing Webmaster Tools is pretty much essential for any SEO analyst. Not all SEO optimizations carry over between Google and Bing and it's good to get up-front validation on crawl errors from the search engine itself. Bing Webmaster Tools is especially relevant now that Yahoo and Bing are under the same roof.
Google Trends is appropriate in so many scenarios, but I definitely suggest it for content ideas and inspiration. Many people utilize it after already writing their content to add in popular phrases or words, but that is not enough. The platform should be used prior and during the content creation process so that you can use the data to see what your audience/customers are interested in at the moment and create the content based on their interests. It can help, but I find it much less appropriate to use it after your article, eBook, etc. is already written. Maximize on this useful tool by ensuring the topic you're writing about is relevant in the first place before simply adding in popular keywords. An article that's written based on what's trending will be far more successful than an article that solely has popular phrases added to it.
Allows you to search keywords and phrases in certain locations to see search volumes, this is huge and helps us be successful with our Google Ad campaigns.
Shows us insights into trending topics which allows us to stay in the know and apply any relevant trends to current clients.
Year in Search and Trending Topics provides us great inspiration for our ads
Being able to search in certain locations gives us a ton of help when setting up campaigns and doing our keyword research for clients.
Being able to compare multiple keywords or search terms side by side is extremely helpful.
Very usable overall, quick to find information and conduct analysis for example of how a price of content is performing on Bing search. User interface is a bit clunky at times but easy enough once you get used to it.
Google Trends is very easy to use. you just search for a certain keyword or phrase, and it tells you how often that keyword or phrase is searched, where in the world it is searched, and over the last decade, how often it is per year.
I haven't needed to use any support for Google Trends. However, I've used Google's support in general and it's a hit or miss. Usually, there's a long wait or they don't understand my problem. They are the only ones that can help, so sometimes I feel stuck. They prioritize paying customers for sure.
Bing, which is free to use, is a good adjunct to our use of all these tools. If I had to stop using all but two, Bing and Google would be the ones that I would keep. Others have their place in our cycle based on what Google and Bing are reporting, but these are our early warning systems. Even if they don't offer the best way to a solution, they are the final word in what appears via their search index.
I've used SEMRush, while more of a SEO Manager than keyword trend analyzer, it does have that option as it does relate to SEO management, but between the two, its nice to have the option in SEMRush, but Google Trends is better at doing the trend analyzing than SEMRush is.
I can't really give a measurement of how Google Trends has directly contributed.
Since Google Trends is free I would have to say that it is all positive ROI.
I can say that Google Trends definitely makes it easier to accomplish my business objectives of delivering the most relevant and insightful advice to my clients regarding their SEO, Social Media Publishing, and Online Advertising.
