You want to be on the leading edge, right? How do you determine which trends will be hot?
We have to keep asking ourselves, are the keyword terms we rank for going to be worthwhile over time? Will search volumes in our niche increase or decrease? Can we target even more lucrative niches? What will our target demographic be interested in this time next year?
Search engine ranking has a long lead time,so you have to think about keyword trends ahead of time. Spotting trends is can give you an insight into how your niche is likely to develop, since most trends follow a gradual, predictable pattern.
Google Trends is a great tool for predicting keyword high interest areas. Search on your keyword terms, and look to see if interest in your niche is rising or falling. You really want to find keyword areas that show continual rise in interest. Google Insights For Search lets you track down data vertically, by date, by region, by category or by source. The related terms section can help you generate new keyword ideas and analyze trends.
Twitter Search is another good tool for trend spotting. You can search for your keyword term and see what words people are using in conjunction with your keyword terms and what context they appear in.Twist is another fact that shows keyword trends in Twitter over the last 30 days.
Microsoft Ad Intelligence and Google Adwords provide seasonal trends,which is handy if your nich has a seasonal spike and slump pattern.
WikiRank is derived from actual usage data from the Wikipedia servers, and provides trending data that shows what people are looking at in Wikipedia.
Microsoft Bing features XRank, a service that gathers related trend information – this tool still needs work, but Bing is new, so give it time.
If you can spot a rising trend, then make a list of keywords suggested by that trend, you can get ahead of the game and have a lead on the competition.