Top 10 Most Trending Keywords in 2020: What They Mean For an SEO Expert

Updated December 11th, 2020

Google Search Trending & Popular Keywords: 2020

Keywords play a vital role in the world of SEO. People type in a few words in a search bar, and search engines like Google display the most relevant links related to those words within a split second. In other words, these keywords are essential as they help searchers “connect” to your site.

Every content marketer needs to understand the importance of these keywords and use them for their blogs and posts to enhance their reach and bring the maximum traffic to their websites.

To further understand these keywords’ importance, we will look into a list of the top searched keywords of 2020 and analyze each separately. We will then look in-depth at how these keywords work and what role they play in SEO and digital marketing.

Importance Of Keywords

In the world of SEO, the magic lies in the correct choice of keywords you use in your content. These keywords are crucial as they determine the volume and type of traffic you will get on your website. Ultimately, these keywords are what will drive your sales as well. You can also use a keyword checker to find and use all the right keywords for your content.

Here’s a quick checklist highlighting the importance of keywords for every online business owner, SEO, and marketing expert:

• They help to identify and express in the target market’s language
• They allow content creators to create useful content for the target audience and search engine
• They Bring the right content to the right people at the right time
• They help communicate a search query to a search engine
• They are responsible for Improving your website’s ranking
• They help to drive the appropriate and qualified traffic towards relevant webpages
• They increase the activity time on your site by redirecting traffic via backlinks
• Targeting the right keywords gives you a substantial competitive edge over your competitors

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The Top Most Searched Keywords Of 2020

2020 has been a rollercoaster ride. Many economies, industries, and businesses have been directly or indirectly affected by the pandemic. Due to lockdowns, the internet also saw a surge in online traffic, with more users typing searching queries in Google and other engines. Here is a list of the top globally trending keywords of 2020.

This chart provided by SEMrush shows the top words or searches that people did throughout the year. But what does this data mean? Why were these keywords searched for so much? Let’s have a look at each individually.

1. “Dalgona Coffee”

The coffee prepared with instant coffee, milk, water, and sugar became a hit on Instagram as it was reminiscent of coffee served at Starbucks and Tim Hortons. Since people couldn’t get their coffee from outlets, they decided t search its recipe online and make it at home. As of September 2020, it is the most trending keyword globally, with around 5.4 million searches.

2. “Valorant”

Released on June 2nd, 2020, Riot Games’ long-anticipated and teased game was first teased as Project A in October 2019. Since then has been a popular search amongst gamers worldwide. Its beta testing release in April 2020, followed by the official release two months later. According to SEMrush, “Valorant” was looked up around 3.5 million times.

3. “Stimulus Check,” “Stimulus Bill,” “Stimulus Payment,” and “Stimulus Check 2020”

Taxpayers in the US and several other countries receive stimulus checks as a stipend of spending money. This serves to stimulate further spending and spur the economy, thus boosting consumption and driving revenue at retailers and manufacturers.

On the other hand, a stimulus bill is the same provided by the government to assist the public in a financial crisis. With the coronavirus pandemic underway, citizens of the US and several other nations looked up searches related to the above to check on such stipends and allowances provided by the government.

Amongst all these keywords, “stimulus check” was looked up the most – around 2.8 million times.

4. “The Eyes Of Darkness” and “Dean Koontz The Eyes Of Darkness”

In the United States, writer Dean Koontz published a fiction novel titled “The Eyes Of Darkness” in 1981. The horror thriller suspense novel told the story of a mother who set out to discover the truth about her son’s death.

Though this is not the reason for this novel’s popularity after nearly 40 years, a particular text in this novel goes forth to predict the pandemic of 2020. This prediction boggled several individuals’ minds and pushed them to look up the book to read it themselves. Both keywords collectively formed up to 2.4 million searches.

5. “Delegate Count”

Despite everything that unfolded since the beginning of 2020, the US Presidential elections were still among the year’s most anticipated happenings. Such is the nature of global politics and power dynamics.

Hence it comes as no surprise that it was a popular search query as people looked up to see the delegate count for each candidate. It accounts for approximately 0.9 million searches over a relatively small amount of time.

6. “Mikaela Spielberg”

Director and filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s daughter, Mikaela Spielberg, was recently arrested on charges of assault in Nashville, Tennessee. This arrest led to huge news as both celebrities are very well-known in their respective fields, making many headlines across the internet and media. Though it didn’t break the internet outside the US, it generated around 0.9 million searches.

7. “Toilet paper online”

With the coronavirus pandemic at its peak, the US, particularly amongst the rest of the world, faced a severe toilet paper shortage. Stores and markets went out of stock, and with the lockdown underway, restocks were pretty uncertain.

People went online to look for alternative sources and thus created a boom in use and searches of the particular keyword. The toilet paper hunt and outrage generated around 0.7 million searches, though honestly, we thought it would be much higher!

8. “Tara Reade”

Tara Reade’s allegations of sexual assault on the presidential candidate Joe Biden created a frenzy on the internet. Approximately 0.7 million search queries were made, making her one of the most trending individuals in 2020.

9. “UK lockdown” and “London lockdown.”

The UK was one of the first countries to be badly affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Most cities and areas, particularly London, had to be put down under a lockdown to ensure public safety and control the virus’s spread.

However, the execution of the lockdown did not go smoothly, owing mainly to political ignorance. As a result, both terms collectively formed around 2.2 million searches.

10. “Morrison Delivery Slots”

With the pandemic underway, several individuals and businesses shifted towards establishing an online presence. Authorities implemented similar strategies in Morrison, where they provided delivery slots for deliveries ahead of time.

This led to people looking up the delivery slots available in Morrison to deliver their products on time. However, the keyword was one not much looked into outside the US hence formed around 0.6 million searches altogether.

How Do These Keywords Work?

Now that we know what the top trending keywords were throughout 2020, we should understand how these keywords work.

Let’s say people search for a particular keyword in a search engine. With the help of its algorithms, the search engine will fetch a list of web pages with that keyword in their content to provide a solution to the user’s query.

What Do These Results Mean To An SEO Expert?

Global events happen – be those an outbreak of a fatal disease or elections in the center of the world’s political power structure. These events profoundly impact what people search for over the internet and thus the kind of content most likely to get viewership over time.

SEO experts and content creators/marketers need to stay delved into the research of keywords and trends to help them achieve their desired results, be those traffic or sales. With proper keyword research and usage, they can connect with the exact audience they create content for using search engine optimization techniques.

Let us consider the most popular keyword of this year, “dalgona coffee.” Though one may not specifically write about it, a reference can be made through humor to attract a greater audience to your desired website.

Since the term would be trending on search engines, your website will show up at some point in search results resulting in more online traffic.

Strategies like these are what SEO experts make use of to expand their brand awareness and create unique content.

Conclusion

The popularity of keywords tends to vary with global events and news. Conclusively, after a thorough study, one can say that these keywords are crucial for any individual who intends to increase traffic to a website and enhance search engine rankings.