How SEO Can Help Established Companies to Adapt Changing Consumer Behavior and Search Trends
We’ve all realized at some point that change is constant, inevitable, etc. And, these statements are factually accurate, even in the business world. Consumer behavior and search trends are bound to change due to several factors, e.g., economic conditions, demographic changes, technological advancement, etc.
With that in mind, businesses, including large-scale companies, need to adapt to changing consumer behavior and search trends. That’s why we’ve prepared this in-depth step-by-step guide article to help your established company adapt to the ever-changing consumer behavior and search trends.
We’ve also included pro tips across the article to provide you with extra information that could be useful to you.
Let’s get started!
Why Understanding Consumer Behavior and Search Trends is Essential
You might be thinking to yourself:
“I already have an established company with a reputable brand. Why should my company spend a lot of time adapting to changing consumer behavior and trends?”
Most reputable established companies may indeed hold this line of thought because they are already recognized. But holding this line of thought could eventually cause the downfall of your company that you struggled so much to build.
Here’s why:
Focusing on how consumer behavior and search trend change enables established companies to achieve the following:
- Improve customer satisfaction – when your customers get the exact results they are looking for on your company website, they are more than likely to be satisfied. They could even complete a purchase. According to a recent research published on ThinkOwl, 75% of customers are willing to spend money on a company/business that gives them great customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction additionally drives the conversion of prospects to loyal customers.
- Stay ahead of your competition – focusing on the ever-changing consumer behavior and search trends enables you to stay ahead of your competition. Remember, your established business competes with other established businesses as well as small-scale businesses. Most small-scale businesses have the manpower and the financial ability to focus on changing consumer behavior and search trends. In other words, you need to be mindful of small-scale competition.
- Develop an effective marketing strategy – After understanding what your target audience is likely to search for, which key terms they’ll use, and more importantly, how you can help them enables you to develop an effective marketing strategy.
- Maximize ROI – By staying ahead of your competition, developing an effective marketing strategy, and improving customer satisfaction, you’ll get to maximize your ROI.
If your established company fails to adapt to the changing consumer behavior and search trends, it is likely to fail in the next few years.
And thus, the main question arises – how can SEO help established companies adapt to the ever-changing consumer behavior and search trends?
1. Attract Prospects and Retain Existing Customers Through Keyword Research + Content Generation
Proper keyword research enables established companies to understand what their target audience is searching on search engines. Here’s how large-scale businesses can perform keyword research effectively:
At this point, you already know who your target audience is, so you’ll just proceed to identify the seed keywords they are searching for that are related to your line of business. Seed keywords are the main or primary keywords that your prospects and existing customers use to get results online.
For example, if your business sells gym equipment and gear, you may find seed keywords such as “gym shorts”, or “gym gear”. You’ll, of course, need to use popular keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc.
We strongly encourage established businesses to use long-tailed keywords as they are more specific, and have lesser competition and keyword difficulty. They additionally give your target audience the exact results they are searching for.
For example, a long-tailed keyword for our hypothetical gym equipment and gear business could be “gym shorts for men in the US”, or “comfortable gym gear for women”.
Pro tip: When performing keyword research for established businesses it would be best to employ scalability and smartness. Here’s why:
Smartness is essential as it enables you to identify which keywords will have the greatest impact on your target audience. Scalability will enable you to limit the number of keywords you can use to generate content.
In other words, scalability allows you to generate content without sacrificing its quality and how efficiently it can be written. Smartness and scalability go hand-in-hand – you cannot do one without the other and expect a successful keyword research process.
Content Generation
After generating keywords, you’ll need to use them to create high-quality content. As Bill Gates put it in 1996, content is king. And, he was right because content generation is a free source of information that attracts prospects and keeps existing customers informed.
Image Source: Medium
In addition to Bill Gates’s information, one of Google’s most recent SEO updates focused on generating high-quality content using a people’s-first approach. Put simply, this update encourages website content writers to focus on generating content that helps people get the results they want (focusing on their pain points).
And, this is where most established large-scale companies fail – they continue to use obsolete methods of content generation which could harm their SEO efforts.
A common outdated practice, for example, is how most established companies still employ keyword stuffing – a technique that will get your company’s web page(s) suspended at the least.
The most probable reason why these companies employ obsolete SEO techniques is that their in-house SEO teams do not update themselves on newer and safer SEO techniques for content generation.
And, they may not have the manpower required to generate a lot of content within a short duration without compromising quality. That’s why established companies should consider getting outside help from reputable SEO agencies to help them out with keyword and content generation.
In addition to content generation, they’ll also get additional advice and services, e.g., email marketing, social media management, etc.
SEO agencies can also help a great deal when it comes to updating website content. Remember, established companies’ websites could have at least 100,000 web pages. It is logically impossible to edit and update information on all the pages. Knowing which web pages to update is essential as it also directly influences your SEO efforts.
2. SEO Enhances Positive User Experience
After carrying out comprehensive and scalable keyword research, and, generating high-quality & people-centric content, you’ll end up addressing your target audience’s pain points.
And in addition to addressing your target audience’s pain points, you get to enhance customer satisfaction.
Check this out:
By addressing your target audience’s pain points, you enhance positive user experience. Google is particularly keen on seeing how capable your website is at solving your visitor’s problems. You can only get more traffic if you specifically target your audience, not anyone else.
The more visitors you get on your website, the better Google is going to rank you on their search engine results pages (SERPs). And, the better your website’s position on SERPs, the more visitors you’ll continue getting.
The more traffic you get, the better your chances of actually converting prospects into loyal customers and retaining existing customers.
Here’s the deal:
SEO can help established companies adapt to changing consumer behavior and search trends by generating high-quality content. The generation of content that addresses the pain points of your target audience then enhances positive user experience.
3. SEO Enables You to Make Data-driven Decisions Based on Accurate Metrics
Making data-driven decisions is essential to any established company because it allows the company’s director, managing board, etc. to make informed, objective, and rational decisions. Data-driven decisions are way better than subjective opinions and intuition, which can be really inaccurate.
In addition to accuracy, SEO can help established companies adapt to changing consumer behavior and search trends by giving them a strategic advantage. Since these businesses rely on data, they are better equipped to respond to changing consumer behavior and respond to emerging search trends.
And, eventually, data-driven decisions lead to better outcomes.
To get accurate metrics from your website, consider using advanced metrics tools like Google Analytics. Unfortunately, not all digital marketing teams understand how to effectively use such tools to their advantage.
In fact, most established companies are still using Universal Analytics (an older version of Google Analytics 4 which will stop being supported on 1st July 2023).
It would be best if in-house digital marketing teams would work hand-in-hand with external professional SEO teams. One of the reasons why this “partnership” is beneficial is mainly because of expertise and experience.
Most professional SEO agencies have people who have been in the industry for a long, with experience in using advanced tools to help improve search rankings. In addition, they may have other tools which can be used together to improve SEO efforts – tools that may not be available for in-house SEO teams.
And finally, outsourcing SEO services to professional SEO agencies is beneficial as the agency might provide the established company with fresh perspectives which may not have crossed the minds of the in-house team members.
These new ideas and insights are super beneficial as they help established companies employ new and improved tactics.
With the right approach, making decisions based on real data helps established companies adapt to changing consumer behavior and search trends. And, employing the right approach when working with an SEO agency is really a valuable investment that can help propel your digital marketing efforts successfully – to a whole new level.
Making Sense of It All
Established companies need to adapt to changing consumer behavior and search trends. Unfortunately, these companies cannot just “will” themselves to adapting changing consumer behavior – they’ll need to work on their SEO.
Remember, established companies need to employ scalability and smartness in everything that they do with regard to SEO. Doing so will significantly improve the odds of success. It would be best if these companies would outsource their SEO services to a professional SEO agency in addition to having their own in-house digital marketing teams.
How can SEO help established companies adapt to changing consumer behavior and trends?
- Attracting new customers and retaining existing ones through keyword research and content generation.
- SEO enhances positive user experience, which also improves the odds of making more revenue.
- You’ll be able to make data-driven decisions based on accurate metrics – not biased intuition and subjective opinions.
Here’s the deal:
If you wish to prioritize SEO to enable you to know changing consumer behavior and search trends, consider getting in touch with us today.
Baris Coskun
Baris Coskun is 8 years experienced SEO Expert that specializes in content and technical SEO strategy creation/implementation progress for large-scale, multilingual, and international targeting websites.
