search engine marketing
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Declining ad rates may signal a reset for startup SEM strategies
With limited prospects for growth, one of the iron laws of economic downturns is that advertising is among the first budgets to be cut.
Advertising revenues have already cratered at many alt-weekly newspapers, which heavily rely on local events and restaurants that have been shuttered in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. BuzzFeed even went so far (as they do) to label it a “media extinction event.”
Clearly it’s bad times, but I wanted to get a lot more granular around the data for ad rates, particularly around top startups. So I compiled a list of a little more than 100 unicorns across a variety of sectors and explored how the prices of their search engine keywords have changed with the global pandemic that is sparking a global recession.
The results aren’t surprising — there has been a collapse in prices for almost all ads (with some very interesting exceptions we will get to in a bit). But the variations across startups in their online ad performance says a lot about industries like food delivery and enterprise software, and also the long-term revenue performance of Google, Facebook and other digital advertising networks.
A quick overview of the data
It’s common for startups to buy their own keywords on search engines like Google and the App Store. Owning that top rank guarantees that their own company’s page is the first result a user sees and prevents competitors from buying their name, potentially intercepting customers.
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What startup names are most effective?
Adam Zelcer founded the advertising company Adboy.com.
Entrepreneurs take a long journey when naming their brainchild, comparable to a parent naming their own flesh and blood.
There are many reasons behind naming – one untalked-of and probably the most important. This is, how to choose a name that gets you more business.
Technology changes how we do business. So, when developing a business name, putting some thought into how people are going to find you and what you want them to do after they find you could go a long way.
Ignoring this could do just the opposite and result in being harder to find, getting less return from your advertising and having your competitors capitalize off your brand.
Businesses have been using things like alphabetical order, call to action, keywords and more to shape business names for optimized discovery, recall and responsiveness since the phone book.
When looking for a business, I’m sure you’ve seen at least one of these two business name optimizations frequently used in the past for discovery:
1. Optimizing for discovery in phone books
Pre-internet, a listing in the phone book was key to getting your business discovered – but how did businesses get to the top of the list in their category? Piece of cake. Free listings in the white pages were categorized by business type and ordered alphabetically. Many companies ended their name with a describing word of their category and started it with something like “AAA” “AA”, “AA1” and “A AAA” to be one of the first listings in their category. You will still find thousands of these business names in different locations by typing “AAA” into yellowpages.com.
2. And a similar strategy was used for search-engine discovery
Prior to 2012, search engine algorithms gave weight in their rankings to sites that included keywords in their domain, otherwise known as exact-match domains. So, Google was more likely to rank “accountantsmelbourne-dot-com” higher than “abc-partners-dot-com” if a user searched for “Accountants Melbourne” because the keywords matched the search with similar words in its domain.
Over time, domain names and business names alike grew longer. Many were purposefully packed with every major keyword applicable to their niche.
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Keyword research in 2019: Modern tactics for growing targeted search traffic
Glen Allsopp
Contributor
Contributor
Glen Allsopp is the founder of Detailed.com, an SEO consultancy and newsletter focused on actionable tactics to grow search traffic. He also tracks successful online startups at Gaps.com.
In 2019, it’s estimated that every minute there are 150 new websites coming online. While many of these won’t be long-term ventures, a large percentage will eventually find themselves looking to organic search engine traffic to grow their reach.
This invariably leads people to the task of keyword research; uncovering the search terms most likely to result in prospective customers.
With increased competition it’s imperative you don’t just focus on the traditional sources of keyword inspiration that every other business uses.
In the past year alone I’ve personally helped hundreds of business owners grow search engine traffic to their websites. This responsibility drives me to succeed in one key area: Finding relevant search terms to target that their competitors have likely missed.
In this article, I will highlight some of the most overlooked ideas and sources of data to reveal words and phrases relevant to your business that are high in intent but lacking in competition.
If you can find the keywords your audience are searching for, but your competitors haven’t found, you can leverage a huge advantage to increase traffic and engagement on your content.
Table of Contents
- Be Open to Talking About Your ‘Best’ Competition
- Use [Brand Alternatives] Search Terms to Gain Visibility
- Find Content Opportunities in the ‘People Also Ask’ Box
- Use Public Wikipedia Stats to See If a Term Is Worth Targeting
- Quora’s Ad Platform Reveals Popular Search Terms Without Spending a Penny
- Wikihow’s Public View Counts Are Great for Tutorial-Based Content Inspiration
- Bonus Tip: ProductHunt Dominate ‘Alternatives’ Keywords: Make Sure You Have a Listing There
- To Recap
1. Be Open to Talking About Your ‘Best’ Competition
Google is constantly improving their ability to understand searcher intent. That is, they know what people are looking for and the results that will satisfy those searches.
When it comes to any industry that offers products or services, one of the most common search queries is often some variation of “best [industry] [services / products]”.
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