This week we’re focusing on “healthy lifestyle” topics, and how the search market looks around them. Yesterday we did a MarketScout analysis for the “gym membership” SERPs, but today we’re going to look at keyword intent around diets.

This is all about finding out which diets are the most popular, and how websites offering diet plans can enhance their site by optimising for the terms where the most opportunity lies.

In order to get the best look at the market, I’ve taken a phrase match report from SEMrush.

With over 7000 phrases on the report, it could potentially take a long time to sort the wheat from the chaff and find exactly what you are looking for. However, there a couple of things which stand out.

Firstly, there are a number of what some may consider “fad diets”, for example the alkaline or cabbage soup diets as highlighted in pink. It’s difficult to tell from this initial analysis whether their search popularity is down to people actually trying them, or whether it’s purely curiosity as to how they could possibly work!

Secondly, it’s interesting to see that the “5:2 diet”, or “fast diet” as it’s alternatively known, appears to be the most popular, certainly from a search perspective. The diet companies which deliver food to your house, who are often advertised on TV, may want to take note of this, as it could open up a whole new opportunity.

Thirdly and finally, I want to touch on the rise of the gluten free diet. Looking at Google trends, it’s clear to see that the term ‘gluten free’ has soared in search volume over the past few years.

There was a point in mid-2014 to a similar time in 2015 where millions of people around the world decided to remove gluten from their diet, as some sort of diet fad. However there are many people who can’t eat gluten for medical reasons, with figures suggesting that at least 1 in 100 people in the UK & Europe are affected by coeliac disease, and it’s thought that more have some form of non-coeliac gluten sensitivity.

There does seem to be more of an awareness of gluten intolerance, as supermarkets begin to stock more ‘free from’ products, and well-known pizza restaurants offering gluten free bases. This may have been caused by the rise in popularity of ‘gluten free’ as a fad diet, but long term it can only be beneficial to those who genuinely can’t have wheat, barley or rye in their diet.