Spotting your market’s trends: how to use weak signals and SEO

Do you feel like you’re always chasing your market’s trends?

When it comes to SEO, anticipation is key. What better time than the start of the year to set up your editorial calendar, look for topics to cover, and above all uncover the new queries that will help you grow your traffic and conversions?

Here we share an ultra-effective approach for detecting trends before your competitors.

How? By using weak signals. These queries of tomorrow open up new SEO opportunities and let you get into position ahead of everyone else. Here are 3 tips to follow, developed by Semji and Digimind, along with the tools at your disposal to spot new trends in your market.

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3 reasons why you absolutely must detect market trends in SEO

To save time

We don’t need to tell you: producing content takes time. According to a study conducted in 2021 by Orbit Media, it takes on average 3 hours and 57 minutes to write a blog post, compared to 2 hours and 24 minutes in 2014.

And how frustrating it is to see that your competitor beat you by a few days, publishing optimized content on the very topic you’ve been working on for several days!

So it’s essential to save time on content production.

To do that, you can, of course, work on writing faster. But above all, you should try to get into position on trending keywords — that is, the ones that aren’t competitive yet but can generate plenty of visits a few months down the line.

To gain seniority on Google

Seniority is a beneficial factor in SEO. Being among the first pages to offer content on a little-known theme lets your URLs build up authority earlier than those of your competitors.

Why? First, because your content will attract the first visitors looking for information on this query. Second, because people who want to share a link to content on the topic will probably link to yours.

To aim for the blue ocean

We talk about a blue ocean for sectors where competition isn’t present yet, or barely. Conversely, in sectors where competition is extremely fierce, we tend to talk about a red ocean.

These low-competition sectors therefore offer the chance to get into position in a market ahead of everyone else. What’s more, you save time and energy, since it’s your competitors who will have to put in the effort to overtake you. On your side, all you’ll have to do is keep an eye on things and keep your content up to date!

Bonus: you’ll need few backlinks to get into position and be visible, given the low competition.

Weak signals: what are they, and why use them?

What is a weak signal?

This is a concept theorized in the 1970s by Igor Ansoff. A weak signal is defined as “an early-warning piece of information, of low intensity, that may herald a trend or a major event.”

In marketing, weak signals make it possible to grasp your environment and its changes — sometimes subtle ones — in order to anticipate a market’s trends.

In SEO, weak signals are the keywords that:

• Don’t yet generate high search volumes,
• Haven’t yet been detected or exploited by SEO tools,
• Offer strong traffic opportunities in the months to come.

Why use weak signals?

• Create and optimize your editorial line,
• Identify new SEO queries,
• Offer content that will meet your audience’s needs,
• Boost engagement,
• Get ahead of the competition,
• Grow acquisition,
• Associate your brand image with novelty, even innovation.

Identify your market’s trends in three steps

Analyze social media… but not only that

To uncover the latest trends, you may be tempted to explore social media. It can indeed be an excellent source of information. But it’s not the only one.

To explore your topics in depth, don’t hesitate to dig around everywhere in discussion and publication spaces: user reviews, comments, news sites, forums, and so on.

It’s essential to explore your topics in depth and to cover each theme exhaustively. In doing so, you’ll give yourself the chance to find new angles of attack: a new law about to come into force, a recently published study, a media story, etc.

Use the right tools for your monitoring and trend analysis

To save time and carry out your monitoring more easily, you can rely on several tools. Here we present the main ones, most of them free.

We recommend, if possible, running your research on data from the last 24 months.

Google Trends: the tool doesn’t show search volumes but an index out of 100 that corresponds to the number of queries (100 equals the maximum traffic peak). It’s useful because it lets you analyze trends over the period of your choice and across various categories.

To detect truly emerging trends, we recommend switching the tool to English and running an analysis on the U.S. market.

Pinterest Trends: Launched in 2019, Pinterest’s trends tool is available only in English. That can be useful given that certain American and English-speaking trends emerge a few months before reaching the French market.

Exploding Topics: this tool curates trends across about thirty themes. Geared toward investors, it’s also very useful for content marketers because it lets you research trends within many industries (beauty, luxury, health, finance, technology, etc.) and sectors such as marketing, media, law, education, and so on.

Tips for e-commerce businesses:

One of the best practices for trend research in e-commerce is to check out your competitors’ best sellers. For that, you have several tools at your disposal.

Shopify: You can view the best sellers of your competitors on Shopify by adding to their URL: /collections/all?sort_by=best-selling to see their best sellers.

But be careful — this doesn’t work every time. It is indeed possible for an e-commerce business to block this view.

Amazon and Alibaba: The two e-commerce giants also offer pages of the best-selling products by category: https://www.amazon.fr/gp/bestsellers and https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/top-selling-products-in-alibaba.html

Take ghost keywords into account

Ghost keywords are trending keywords that haven’t yet been detected or indexed by SEO tools. Their search volumes are often shown as lower than 10 per month, whereas in reality the actual traffic, as it appears in the Search Console, can be far higher.

This is because SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush draw their data from Google Ads and have a latency of several months in detecting new keywords and their search volumes. When these tools show search volumes of 0 or 10, it may simply mean the data isn’t up to date yet.

Takeaway: Don’t focus on the search volumes provided by SEO tools when you’re carrying out a trend analysis.

Would you like support in setting up your SEO content strategy? Discover Semji’s Custom offer, which lets you benefit from the advice of an SEO expert.

How to leverage the detected trends for your content production?

Now’s the time to kick off your content production!

Launch your search for the right keywords

Want to build a set of relevant articles on an innovative theme? The recommended and most effective practice would then be to create a semantic cocoon. This is a set of pages linked to one another that cover a theme in depth.

This technique offers several advantages:

• Boost the pillar pages. Example: transactional content with the goal of increasing conversions.
• Strengthen your site’s semantic authority on the subject so that it’s seen as the most relevant site by Google and by users.
• Meet Google’s Expertise criterion ( EAT).
• Example of a semantic cocoon on the theme “spirulina”: the cocoon could be made up of articles on its benefits, its production, usage tips, nutritional recommendations, etc.

If it’s a new trend, start by looking at what’s being done on the subject or who your competitors are. You shouldn’t find much content.

Then study the angles taken in the content you’ve found.

Is it definitions, contextualizations, debates and shared opinions, or simply visuals?

This will let you see what the main user intent might be and how you can address it while standing out from your competitors.

Semji’s Content Ideas module lets you do exactly that: from a generic keyword, detect the content ranking first on a theme. To discover the Content Ideas module in detail, read our dedicated article!

Example: You spotted in Google Trends that the term “camper van” was regularly searched. It is, in fact, a fast-growing trend.

First, look at the results page for the query to find out whether there’s a lot of content on the subject. Good news: if you don’t find much, or if most of the results are in English (for terms usable in both languages), it could be an opportunity for a topic to develop.

Then check Semji’s Content Ideas module to identify the competitors ranking first on this term or a related term (from the long tail, synonyms, or the lexical field).

Example: the terms related to “camper van” could be “volkswagen combi 2020” or “camper van rental.”

If the module doesn’t detect much relevant content in French on the theme, this theme could be an opportunity for you to get into position ahead of your competitors, including the biggest ones. Otherwise, you’ll need to keep exploring.

The tool also shows you the search volume and the keyword’s difficulty level. If these two criteria are high, there’s a strong chance it’s not a new trend.

Don’t hesitate to analyze queries in English on the U.S. market. They are often several months ahead of the French market. To do so, use Google Trends, Pinterest Trends, or Exploding Topics in the U.S. version.

Eager to explore new trends and find topic ideas? Request a personalized demo of Semji right away and discover our Content Ideas module!

Use seasonal hooks and draw inspiration from the previous year

To uncover trends, you can also play on seasonality and anticipate your content production.

Example: Halloween 2022, the Ligue 1 restart, Mother’s Day 2023, and so on. Also draw inspiration from what worked in previous years.

For example, for an online shop specializing in decor/lifestyle products, it would be worthwhile to get into position on the query “Mother’s Day 2022.” But be careful to publish them well in advance, because this hot content becomes obsolete quickly.

Semji’s Content Ideas module provides you with content ideas by surfacing the top content ranking on the targeted keyword and related terms, including synonyms and the most frequently asked questions.

Here, you can see that the Content Ideas module highlights several pieces of content on the “Mother’s Day” theme that could be worth adding to your editorial calendar. It also lets you filter to view only transactional or editorial content.

You can already notice here that the queries “Mother’s Day gift France,” “personalized Mother’s Day gift,” or “Mother’s Day gift set” don’t present much difficulty. So it would be very much in your interest to create content on these keywords.

Need a hand writing your seasonal articles? Download our SEO calendar to plan your campaigns and turn to Semji to maximize their performance!

Analyze similar topics

A new product is about to launch and you want to be the first to talk about it? For that, you can draw inspiration from equivalent products already released.

Example: you detect a search trend for the iPhone 13. Rely on the content already produced about the iPhone 12 to study what your audience expects.

To fuel your research, look at the “Search Intents” offered by Semji. There you’ll find ideas for topics and questions to cover.

Here, we notice that it could be worthwhile to write content around price: on the difference between the iPhone 12 and 13, for example.

The heatmap shows you the topics most covered by your competitors and their number of occurrences. Here again, we see that it’s wise to approach the subject in relation to the different existing models: pro, pro max, mini, classic, etc.

Finally, there are simple frameworks to help you create semantic cocoons quickly around your trending queries. For a product or a service, you could, for example, rely on Coggle:

Protect your lead over the competition

Congratulations, you’ve published your content! But it’s not over — now you need to make it last. To avoid losing traffic and having your content downgraded, it’s imperative to update it regularly, as new competitors appear.

You can tell whether updates are needed when:

• Your page’s traffic drops: Semji includes a Report tab to track your content’s performance.
• You refresh the “Content Score”: this is a Semji indicator of overall SEO performance based on a detailed analysis of the TOP content on the query at a given moment.

If the theme starts to be well developed by your competitors, you’ll also need to plan on adding new content to the semantic cocoon to establish your authority on the theme.

The 7 key takeaways on SEO trends and using weak signals

1. Remember that content planning is the key to an effective SEO strategy.
2. Learn to detect market trends in SEO — it will let you save time and quickly get into position on strategic queries.
3. Don’t limit yourself to social media to spot new trends.
4. Aim broad and step outside your sector.
5. Rely on the right tools (Semji, Google Trends, Pinterest Trends, Exploding Topics, etc.).
6. Draw inspiration from what has already worked for your competitors.
7. Anticipate thanks to international trends, especially those of the U.S. market.

Do you have a profitability goal for your SEO & Content projects? Request a demo of Semji right now and enjoy a personalized conversation with one of our experts!