It's not really an either/or thing — I use the complete "Google Marketing Stack" including Analytics, Trends, Keyword Planner, Search Console, etc. It's also essential to integrate some of their data, like making sure Google Search Console and Google Analytics are connected — …
There really isn't a product I know of that does what Google Trends does. I do use https://soovle.com/ in a similar fashion. I recommend trying Soovle out for content ideation.
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.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is well suited to auditing brand new websites, when you need a quick, holistic view of the websites technical issues. Its great for providing a top line view of a websites architecture, perhaps for a new business approach where you need to assess the scale of work to maintain a website. Its also a useful tool in situations where you might need to see whether a large scale change in the website has taken place, you can see word counts, pages and their https response codes. Screaming Frog may be less useful if you need an idea of the customer experience on a website, it doesn't really provide information that helps assess how fast a website loads, what issues might come up when trying to convert or faults with the payment process. Screaming Frog is largely a technical SEO focused tool, it also can't assess the quality of a websites, layout or the quality of the content used on the website. As mentioned, its niche, but very useful within that niche.
Google Trends shows me geographic locations where a particular topic may be useful for advertising.
Google Trends allows me to drill down into those locations to metro and city levels where I can focus on exactly what local business clients need to know.
Google Trends allows me to identify and qualify search terms that my client's need to optimize their websites and social media content for.
Google Trends shows me what people are talking about in a specific location over a specific period of time. This is a great way to know what I should be posting on social media.
Requires Java. This isn't a huge deal as many computers already have it installed, but it's yet another 3rd party component.
The free version has a crawl limit of 500 pages per site. This is fine for smaller sites, but if you're running a big e-commerce site then you'll need to pay for Pro version.
The user interface isn't very pretty. This is an analytics tool so it doesn't really have to be, but it might be helpful for improving the overall user experience.
The tool has become integrated into our teams daily workings and I have yet to find a tool other than scremaing frog to replicate all of our use cases for it. It's a great tool and we're sticking with 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.
The main problem of Screaming Frog SEO Spider is it being an offline software which limits itself to a single pc and that creates problem when multi user agents want to get involved or even work on it, it’s a difficult task to collaborate on it and do research for keywords at one place
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.
Screaming Frog is a relatively primitive system, and doesn't need to be supported by devs or other software. Screaming Frog does interface directly with some programs that are most needed (Google Analytics, Search Console, Page Speed Insights), so that's convenient. It isn't widely supported by other programs, but it also doesn't need to be.
Overall I think that Ahrefs is a better product when it comes to really drilling down and getting all the data that you need in order to understand a given behavior or problem. Ahrefs is much more powerful in its feature set but does not have the same level of overall data/visual data representation that Google Trends does.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is probably the best non-client facing SEO audit tool in terms of technical SEO. There are other tools on the market that do a more complete job of keyword tracking, competitive analysis, and backlink profiles...however, for analyzing the technical SEO health of any website, Screaming Frog is the best
Increased employee efficiency - We spend many less hours tracking down and reporting simple meta tags.
Better Client Servicing - We are able to ensure we have a total look at a client's site before we recommend anything.
True Pricing Structure - We are able to more accurately predict how much help a client may need based on factors such as size of site, number of redirects, proper use of meta tags, etc.
