You’re an SEO with the best intentions of driving traffic and awareness for your brand (or client). After work, you take a spin to the grocery store and pay a few bucks more than you expected.
On the way home, you stop to fill your gas tank and notice that the price per gallon is higher than the last time you filled it.
You shrug and start mentally planning the next day – digging into your favorite keyword research tool, checking out site speed metrics after some asset optimizations, and prioritizing some pages to review after doing month-over-month traffic analysis.
I’m here to tell you you’re missing something.
If the last 12 months or so have taught me anything, it’s that macroeconomic trends significantly impact how users engage with online content.
Maybe SEO is not the first initiative anyone thinks of when strategizing how to incorporate macroeconomic angles inxto their marketing campaigns, but you’re missing the boat if you don’t.
This article examines:
The macroeconomic signals to watch and why.
Sources to reference to gauge user reaction.
How to assess users’ developing needs and emotions.
How to address those needs and emotions in your SEO campaigns.
The macroeconomic signals to watch and why
I’m not saying you should use daily gas prices as a barometer. I am saying they could be a good reminder to keep your finger on the pulse of the bigger picture.
Signals to watch include:
Consumer confidence ratings.
Venture capital and private equity funding trends.
The stock market.
Inflation.
The monthly jobs report.
If you’re in B2C, consumer confidence, inflation and jobs are key.
If you’re in B2B (especially working with high-growth companies, as I do), it’s essential to gauge how easy (and/or expensive) it is to raise funds.
And for marketing agencies, know that the macroeconomy heavily influences the economics of how businesses spend on marketing and situs slot penipu spend to acquire users.
If you’re working in an industry closely related to finance, like lending or real estate or insurance, you likely have a second layer of important metrics to watch (e.g., mortgage rates).
Either way, knowing the economic picture can alert you to prime times to dig in for more information to help you effectively engage users.
Sources to reference to gauge user reaction
The SEO space isn’t about staying in a bubble of reporting; it’s about keying into audience behavior, which means you must know your audiences. That goes way beyond monthly search volume and search volume over time.
Many of the major keyword tools aggregate monthly over time and won’t give you the agility you need to gauge real-time impact.
Google Trends, on the other hand, has become an incredible real-time source for changing behavior.
Check out the geo (and hourly) breakdown of the query “do air conditioners filter wildfire smoke” during the eerie period in June when Canadian wildfires were turning the metro New York skies orange:
Twitter and Reddit are other good sources for up-to-the-minute info.
Depending on who you follow, Twitter can give you the view of people like journalists and politicians, who help shape the broad discourse.