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.
SurferSEO is a powerful and technical SEO tool for any writer to rank on Google. It would be too much information, even overwhelming at times, for someone who has never had experience with this kind of work before, but there's tons of detailed knowledge available when it comes to understanding the features that are most relevant while still meeting your goals in mind.
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.
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.
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.
Semrush's content and page optimisation tool is quite poor; it's not in the same bracket as Surfer. Frase is a good alternative from a cost perspective (if not paying the AI writing functions), it's cheaper, and Frase's keyword/topic heatmaps are quite unique. Sufer has a better UI and a shorter learning curve. It has an advantage in that it offers internal linking recommendations, which Frase lacks. Surfer also has limited competitor analysis (backlinks and page speed), which Frase does not. Both tools allow you to choose the number of competitors on the SERPS
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.
