SEO and content marketers take note: Bing has announced the top queries of 2011, and the annual overview might give insights on big end-of-the-year search traffic (as well as popular queries to come).

Just in time for the end of the year search rush, Bing has announced its top queries of 2011. Marketers across industries may find these terms help them catch traffic during the holiday shopping frenzy and capture the interest of those consumers feeling nostalgic about the year’s biggest (searchable) phenomenons.

Bing has broken down the search terms into categories, including celebrities, movies, consumer electronics, news stories, destinations and more. The company also lists the biggest changes year-over-year, which should be of interest to culture junkies and SEO marketers looking to monitor annual search trends in their industries.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Justin Bieber is a top search term across several categories, pulling rank as a most-searched person, celebrity and musician according to Bing. The teen hearthrob has no doubt helped countless music sites, beauty sites (thanks to his nail polish line!) and other ecommerce sites targeting tweens gain traffic throughout the year.

The company also gives some insights on harder to categorize search trends. For instance, marketers in the real estate sector may be interested to know that “selling a home” was one of the top searched finance terms for 2011. Those in the health and fitness sectors may have found that “Calorie Counting” and “the Cholesterol Diet” drove traffic to their sites, as these were among the top-searched diets of the year for Bing.

The list is worth checking out. The Consumer Electronics category in particular – topped by Xbox, Kindle, Playstation, iPhone 5 and iPad – may give insights on what consumers will (still) search for this holiday season. Of course, better insights on big search trends are still in store: Marketers will want to stay tuned as Google will soon release its annual top searches.

As Brafton has reported, the search giant accounts for two-thirds of the market. 

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.