Keep Pace or Fall Behind: How Real-Time SEO Data Is Powering Enterprise Brands

16th July 2019Botify News

Imagine you’re a clothing retailer. You’ve done your keyword research and optimized your product and category pages, but can’t seem to keep up with the consumer’s changing interests. One day the trend is “denim jackets” while the next day consumers are searching for “trucker jackets” — but your data doesn’t show these trends until far after they’ve passed.

Sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone.

Many brands are struggling to keep up with the constant changes in search demand — 60%, to be exact. This can happen with publishers and the changing news cycle, pop culture trends that influence travel, and even changes in the weather have the ability to change search demand on a dime.

How can brands be there every time their audience is searching? And how can they capitalize on search trends as they’re happening?

Real-time SEO data may provide a solution.

What is real-time SEO data?

Real-time SEO data is information about the way your audience is searching, as it happens. Was there an uptick in searches for “red boots” yesterday? A recent surge in people searching for “Copenhagen hotels” from Canada? Real-time SEO data holds the answer.

If you’re relying on traditional methods of keyword research, you might miss these opportunities. There are two main reasons for this:

• Traditional keyword research typically doesn’t happen on a recurring basis. Keyword research tends to happen once at the time of writing and then is rarely, if ever, updated after that.
• Traditional keyword research methods rely on SERP scraping or third-party data, such as clickstream data, that may not surface keywords until their demand is already on the decline.

Why is real-time data important?

Real-time searcher data might sound nice, but what are the implications? Is this really something you need to worry about?

Let’s let the data speak for itself.

• 87% of consumers expect to find exactly what they’re searching for, tailored to them [BRP]
• 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphones visit a business within 24 hours, and 28% make a purchase [Google]
• One retailer reported a 600% spike in sales of a product following a demand spike they were prepared for [ESPN]
• 77% of your fellow marketers say that real-time personalization is crucial and something they’re focusing on [Adobe]

The people have spoken and marketers have begun to take notice. Are you prepared?

Where can I get real-time SEO data?

Google provides real-time searcher data via its API, allowing us to see the real words (not scraped) people are using, where they’re searching from, and what devices they’re using to search.

Botify uses this API to pull in this SEO data daily. This enables us to report on things like trending keywords — which of your keywords are on the uptrend, and which are trending down.

This data is critical for marketers who want to customize and adapt their content to match consumer demand in real time.

How can your organization use real-time SEO data?

Having real-time SEO data that you can use to customize your brand’s message to keep pace with changing demand sounds great, but what does this look like in practice?

Let’s take a look at a few examples of what this could look like:

• A travel website notices an uptick in searches for “NYC hotels,” from Denmark. They could use that information to make sure their NYC hotels page has proper internationalization, translating into Danish and displaying prices using the Danish Kroner.
• A fashion retailer notices their women’s jackets page is getting a spike in impressions for “sherpa jacket” but not a lot of clicks. They could create a unique page just for sherpa jackets in hopes of capturing more clicks, and even opt for paid advertising to get instant exposure in the meantime.
• A tech publisher notices an uptick in mobile searches for “machine learning.” They could use this information to inform their editorial strategy, writing more content on machine learning and making sure their AMP URLs are working properly.

As you can see, real-time SEO data has benefits that extend far beyond SEO. This data gives us a window into real customer behavior, which has an unlimited number of use cases. Use it to inform your paid search team, your user experience team, your product teams, and more.

For brands that want to be always on and always relevant no matter what their audience is searching, this is a necessity. If you’re looking for a technology partner that can supply you with this data, Botify is here to help. Book a demo with us and learn how our real-time SEO data is helping enterprise brands across the globe connect with their ideal customers.