Don’t know how I missed this one, but last week – and without much fanfare – Google announced that it would now reveal approximate search volumes from within its Keyword Tool.
The excellent Jason Baer at the Convince and Convert blog makes some very good observations as to why this is going to have a big impact on digital marketing. In particular when he says:
“If Google makes the marketing and advertising business as transparent as travel planning and stock purchases, the only agencies that will be able to survive are those that can add real value in messaging, creative, and integrating data into actionable tactics.”
I would of course include PR in the above too. So why should the availability of search volumes bother the PR community? (Or at least the tech/B-to-B world?).
If you accept that 95pc of B-to-B purchase decisions involve search, then you can now put a real figure on just how many people are actually searching on terms that you believe they find important – and are relevant to your business.
Let’s take an imaginary example. The Borked Corporation makes dilithium consoles. Av. profit on a console is $20. The company is aiming to make an additional $1m in profit over the next 12 months. That means selling an extra 50,000 consoles – or just over 4000 consoles a month. All marketing to date has been based around the key term “dilithium consoles”. The company has invested a lot in PR-ing the term dilithium console. Their digital agency has persuaded them to invest heavily in PPC. As of last week, Borked Corporation can see actual search volumes on “dilithium console” – a mere 1000 for the month and an average of 1500 for the last 6 months. It doesn’t take much to work out that Borked needs to answer some major questions – what terms ARE our potential purchasers searching on? How we can understand and influence the non-line buying process and incorporate the most relevant and impactful content at the appropriate juncture? Or more fundamental, is there a big enough market for our products at the current price/profit point?
Let’s not forget that Google’s Keyword Tool can be segmented by geography. For example, here’s the results for the UK last month on the terms digital PR and online PR.
It makes for interesting reading. For example, the keyword term digital PR was searched for in the UK 480 times last month. Online PR got 2400. Exactly 5 times the volume. Or thought of another way, a total of 2880 searches for combined digital/online PR. Or around 100 times a day. And how many of those searches are from people looking to buy digital/online PR services? This is the kind of thinking that helps to bring a forceful clarity to all PR and marketing activity.
Why not see how many times your company/product name was searched on last month? The results may surprise you.
3 replies on “Google reveals keyword search volumes – and why you should care”
Thanks very much for the kind words. I concur that keyword volume is incredibly important for PR. The agency I work with as my “day job” – Off Madison AVe – does a ton of keyword research for our PR clients. In fact, we’re even using search data to help with product naming, etc. We posted a really interesting Webinar about verbal cue analysis (deep dive search term research) recently. webinar.offmadisonave.com Cheers,
jason
Jason – thanks for stopping by – and appreciate the webinar link.
Keep up the good work on the blog too – great insight and understanding into what is really going on in the world of online PR and marketing.
[…] and writers can use Google’s Keyword Tool to get work I’ve already blogged about Google’s Keyword Tool now displaying absolute search volumes. I thought it would be worth looking at a practical example. I keep hearing from various freelance […]