Last updated on June 19th, 2009
Search reflects what’s going on in a society. As thinking and behavior change, the activity and keywords used in the search engines is going to change, too.
What does this mean for your business? Consider the keywords you’re targeting. This year is seeing an increase of 17% in the use of the keyword “cheap” and a 13% increase in the use of “discount” in online searches. If you’re competing in an industry where there’s not a lot of differentiation, you can capture more traffic by adding these keywords or ramping up your efforts if you’re already targeting them.
For big ticket items or purchases of items that are not based solely on price, consumers are researching more. This means they may search 9 times before buying when only a year or two ago they would have been ready to buy after only 5 searches. This increases the time to purchase but also represents an opportunity to those marketers who have built up a solid base of information on their web sites and can capture more of those research searches in organic SEO.
Adding an optimized knowledge center is one way our clients tap into this group of buyers through natural search, avoiding costly pay-per-click charges at the initial stages of the sales funnel. See more about our content creation services here.