SEO News

Please note, we’ve linked to all original studies where possible. Unfortunately not all of these studies are published online, they often come to us as press releases.

60% of millennials have used chatbots

A new study by Retale has delved into how UK millennials feel about chatbots.

From a survey of over 500 consumers aged 18 to 34, nearly 60% of respondents were found to have used a chatbot in the past. Out of the percentage of people that had not, 53% said they were still interested in trying them. 

Interestingly, branded chatbots appear to be growing in popularity, with 71% of millennials saying they’d be happy to try a chatbot from a consumer brand. Lastly, 86% of respondents agreed that brands should use chatbots to promote deals, discounts and offers. 

Retailers increasing investment in store technology

The latest report from JDA/PWC has found that 69% of CEOs plan to increase investment in digital technologies to improve the in-store customer experience. 

76% of CEOs have or are planning to invest in personalised mobile ‘push offers’ and beacons, while 79% are also investing or planning to invest in smart mobile devices for staff in stores. Despite this, 52% of respondents have not yet defined or started implementing a digital transformation strategy. 

68% of British retailers have no Brexit plans in place

According to new research from Global-e, 68% of retailers have yet to start planning for Brexit, despite 51% also saying that the vote to leave the EU has already impacted UK sales. The study, which involved a survey of 250 top British retailers, also found that 32% of those selling internationally have seen an increase in online orders from outside the UK. 

Additionally, 46% of UK retailers were found to be in favour of a soft Brexit, while 36% agreed that a hard Brexit – with no access to the single market – would be better for UK retailers.

Ad blocking levels stabilise

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau’s UK Ad Blocking Report, the proportion of British adults online currently using ad blocking software has remained at around 22% for the last year.

Despite a predicted rise in ad blocking, this has failed to materialise, perhaps due to many publishers working hard to promote a value exchange.

24% of people cited not being able to access online content as the biggest reason for switching off their ad blocker – a figure up from 16% a year ago. Meanwhile, 24% said that it is because they have since switched to a new device.

Travel brands expected to benefit from Oscar hype

Data from Lastminute.com suggests that travel brands have seen an increase in search interest on the back of this year’s Oscar nominations. Searches for flights to Los Angeles shot up by 21% on the day of La La Land’s release. Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese’s Silence prompted an even bigger surge, with searches for flights to Japan up 82% from the week before, and increasing a further 46% in the subsequent two days.

Though it hasn’t been nominated for any Academy Awards, Brit flick Eddie the Eagle also prompted greater interest in ski holidays, with on-site searches jumping 10% after its release.

56% of CRM managers lack firm objectives

In a survey of 500 leading CRM managers, Wiraya found that CRM is perceived as a key business driver for over 30% of businesses. Despite this fact, it seems many still lack the data and strategy to support their goals and create profitability.

While 91% of businesses are currently measuring aspects of their CRM work, 56% do not have firm objectives in place. What’s more, just 17% say that their CRM work is clearly contributing to the company’s overall revenue. This proves that major improvements still need to be made, as just 31% currently consider themselves ‘ambitious’ in terms of CRM maturity.

One in six UK shoppers have switched supermarkets in the past year

In light of Aldi becoming the nation’s fifth largest supermarket, TCC Global has undertaken a study on the state of consumer loyalty to grocery stores. It found that 32% of UK discount shoppers and 16% of all shoppers have switched their main grocery store in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, 39% of shoppers said that it wouldn’t matter to them if their usual grocery store closed.

The research also found that growing convenience is making it even easier to switch between retailers, with shoppers having an average of 11 ‘reachable’, 10 ‘easily reachable’ and five ‘very easily reachable’ stores.

UK online retail sales grow 12% year on year in January

The latest figures from IMRG Capgemini has revealed that UK online retail sales were up 12% year-on-year in the first month of 2017, with retailers seeing the highest average January spend since 2010. The average basket value was recorded as £85 in January 2017, up from £79 a year earlier. 

In terms of sectors, growth for gifts reached an eight-year high, with an increase of 62% year-on-year. Meanwhile, electricals were down 9%, falling for the second month in a row.

Consumers struggle to identify British brands

A recent poll by Spread Co has found that the majority of consumers are baffled by the origins of their favourite brands. 50% of consumers believe Tetley Tea to be British, when it is in fact owned by a foreign company. Similarly, 42% think the same about Branston Pickle and 37% about HP Sauce, when they are actually Indian and Japanese.

The survey also found that 61% of UK adults don’t know that The Body Shop is part of L’oreal, while 19% think Tesco is the biggest company in Britain (even though it only represents 0.84% of the market share).

Mulberry and Burberry are the most searched-for brands during LFW

Captify has revealed that the top three searched for designers during London Fashion Week were Mulberry, Burberry and JW Anderson. Other designers saw online searches go through the roof, with Ryan Lo experiencing a jump of 2,000% over the week, followed by surges for Topshop Unique and Sadie Williams.

In terms of the most searched-for items, designer trainers rose by 60%, followed by minimalist clothing and 90’s style, which both rose 20%.

Please note, we’ve linked to all original studies where possible. Unfortunately not all of these studies are published online, they often come to us as press releases.

60% of millennials have used chatbots

A new study by Retale has delved into how UK millennials feel about chatbots.

From a survey of over 500 consumers aged 18 to 34, nearly 60% of respondents were found to have used a chatbot in the past. Out of the percentage of people that had not, 53% said they were still interested in trying them. 

Interestingly, branded chatbots appear to be growing in popularity, with 71% of millennials saying they’d be happy to try a chatbot from a consumer brand. Lastly, 86% of respondents agreed that brands should use chatbots to promote deals, discounts and offers. 

Retailers increasing investment in store technology

The latest report from JDA/PWC has found that 69% of CEOs plan to increase investment in digital technologies to improve the in-store customer experience. 

76% of CEOs have or are planning to invest in personalised mobile ‘push offers’ and beacons, while 79% are also investing or planning to invest in smart mobile devices for staff in stores. Despite this, 52% of respondents have not yet defined or started implementing a digital transformation strategy. 

68% of British retailers have no Brexit plans in place

According to new research from Global-e, 68% of retailers have yet to start planning for Brexit, despite 51% also saying that the vote to leave the EU has already impacted UK sales. The study, which involved a survey of 250 top British retailers, also found that 32% of those selling internationally have seen an increase in online orders from outside the UK. 

Additionally, 46% of UK retailers were found to be in favour of a soft Brexit, while 36% agreed that a hard Brexit – with no access to the single market – would be better for UK retailers.

Ad blocking levels stabilise

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau’s UK Ad Blocking Report, the proportion of British adults online currently using ad blocking software has remained at around 22% for the last year.

Despite a predicted rise in ad blocking, this has failed to materialise, perhaps due to many publishers working hard to promote a value exchange.

24% of people cited not being able to access online content as the biggest reason for switching off their ad blocker – a figure up from 16% a year ago. Meanwhile, 24% said that it is because they have since switched to a new device.

Travel brands expected to benefit from Oscar hype

Data from Lastminute.com suggests that travel brands have seen an increase in search interest on the back of this year’s Oscar nominations. Searches for flights to Los Angeles shot up by 21% on the day of La La Land’s release. Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese’s Silence prompted an even bigger surge, with searches for flights to Japan up 82% from the week before, and increasing a further 46% in the subsequent two days.

Though it hasn’t been nominated for any Academy Awards, Brit flick Eddie the Eagle also prompted greater interest in ski holidays, with on-site searches jumping 10% after its release.

56% of CRM managers lack firm objectives

In a survey of 500 leading CRM managers, Wiraya found that CRM is perceived as a key business driver for over 30% of businesses. Despite this fact, it seems many still lack the data and strategy to support their goals and create profitability.

While 91% of businesses are currently measuring aspects of their CRM work, 56% do not have firm objectives in place. What’s more, just 17% say that their CRM work is clearly contributing to the company’s overall revenue. This proves that major improvements still need to be made, as just 31% currently consider themselves ‘ambitious’ in terms of CRM maturity.

One in six UK shoppers have switched supermarkets in the past year

In light of Aldi becoming the nation’s fifth largest supermarket, TCC Global has undertaken a study on the state of consumer loyalty to grocery stores. It found that 32% of UK discount shoppers and 16% of all shoppers have switched their main grocery store in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, 39% of shoppers said that it wouldn’t matter to them if their usual grocery store closed.

The research also found that growing convenience is making it even easier to switch between retailers, with shoppers having an average of 11 ‘reachable’, 10 ‘easily reachable’ and five ‘very easily reachable’ stores.

UK online retail sales grow 12% year on year in January

The latest figures from IMRG Capgemini has revealed that UK online retail sales were up 12% year-on-year in the first month of 2017, with retailers seeing the highest average January spend since 2010. The average basket value was recorded as £85 in January 2017, up from £79 a year earlier. 

In terms of sectors, growth for gifts reached an eight-year high, with an increase of 62% year-on-year. Meanwhile, electricals were down 9%, falling for the second month in a row.

Consumers struggle to identify British brands

A recent poll by Spread Co has found that the majority of consumers are baffled by the origins of their favourite brands. 50% of consumers believe Tetley Tea to be British, when it is in fact owned by a foreign company. Similarly, 42% think the same about Branston Pickle and 37% about HP Sauce, when they are actually Indian and Japanese.

The survey also found that 61% of UK adults don’t know that The Body Shop is part of L’oreal, while 19% think Tesco is the biggest company in Britain (even though it only represents 0.84% of the market share).

Mulberry and Burberry are the most searched-for brands during LFW

Captify has revealed that the top three searched for designers during London Fashion Week were Mulberry, Burberry and JW Anderson. Other designers saw online searches go through the roof, with Ryan Lo experiencing a jump of 2,000% over the week, followed by surges for Topshop Unique and Sadie Williams.

In terms of the most searched-for items, designer trainers rose by 60%, followed by minimalist clothing and 90’s style, which both rose 20%.

Posted by randfish

Trying to target a small, specific region with your keywords can prove frustrating. While reaching a high-intent local audience is incredibly valuable, without volume data to inform your keyword research, you’ll find yourself hitting a wall. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares how to uncover powerful, laser-focused keywords that will reach exactly the right people.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about hyperlocal keyword research. Now, this is a big challenge, not only for hyperlocal-focused businesses, but also for all kinds of websites that are trying to target very small regions, and many of them, with their keyword research and keyword targeting, on-page optimization.

The problem:

So the problem tends to be that most keyword research tools, and this includes things like the Google AdWords Tool, it includes Moz’s Keyword Explorer, or KeywordTool.io, or Übersuggest, or anybody you want to use, most of them are relying on volume data.

So what happens is when you see a bunch of keyword suggestions, you type in “Sequim,” for example, Sequim is a tiny town on Washington’s peninsula, so across the Puget Sound from where we are here in Seattle. Sequim has a population of like 6,500 people or something like that, so very tiny. So most searches related to Sequim have no volume data in any of these tools. As a result, you don’t see a lot of information about: How can I target these keywords? What are the right ones to go after? You don’t know whether a keyword has zero searches a month, or whether it has four searches a month, and those four searchers are exactly who you want to get in front of, and this is really problematic.

There are three solutions that we’ve seen professional SEOs use and that some of us here at Moz use and the Moz Local team uses, and these can be real handy for you.

Solution 1: Use keyword data for larger, similar regions

So the first one is to basically replicate the data by using keyword information that comes from similar regions nearby. So let’s say, okay, here we are in Sequim, Washington, population 6,669. But Port Angeles is only a few miles away. I think maybe a couple dozen miles away. But its population is more like 20,000. So we’ve got four or five times the keyword volume for most searches probably. This is going to include some outlying areas. So now we can start to get data. Not everything is going to be zero searches per month, and we can probably backtrack that to figure out what Sequim’s data is going to be like.

The same thing goes for Ruidoso versus Santa Fe. Ruidoso, almost 8,000. But Santa Fe’s population is almost 10 times larger at 70,000. Or Stowe, Vermont, 4,300, tiny, little town. Burlington is nearby, 10 times bigger at 42,000. Great. So now I can take these numbers and I can intuit what the relative volumes are, because the people of Burlington are probably similar in their search patterns to the people of Stowe. There are going to be a few differences, but for most types of local searches this will work.

Solution 2: Let Google autosuggest help

The second one, Google autosuggest can be really helpful here. So Google Suggest does not care if there’s one search a month or one search in the last year, versus zero searched in the last year. They’ll still show you something. Well, zero searched in the last year, they won’t show you anything.

But for example, when I search for “Sequim day,” I can intuit here, because of the ordering that Google Suggest shows me, that “Sequim day spa” is more popular than “day care.” Sequim, by the way, sounds like a lovely place to live if you are someone who enjoys few children and lots of spa time, apparently. Then, “day hikes.”

So this technique doesn’t just work with Google itself. It’ll also work with Bing, with Google Maps, and with YouTube. Another suggestion on this one, you will see different results if you use a mobile device versus a desktop device. So you might want to change it up and try your mobile device. That can give you some different results.

Solution 3: Use lexical or related SERP suggestions

All right. Third tactic here, last one, you can use sort of two styles of keyword research. One is called lexical, which is basically the semantic relationships between words and phrases. The other one is related SERP suggestions, which is where a keyword research tool — Moz Keyword Explorer does this, SEMrush is very popular for this, and there are a few others — and they will basically show you search terms the links that came up, the search results that came up for “Sequim day care” also came up in searches for these terms and phrases. So these are like SERPs for which your SERP also ranked.

You can see, when I searched for “Sequim day care,” I did this in Keyword Explorer, because I happen to have a Moz Keyword Explorer subscription. It’s very nice of Moz to give me that. You can see that I used two kinds of suggestions. One are related to keywords with similar results, so that’s the related SERPs. The other one was based on closely related topics, like the semantic, lexical thing. “Sequim day care” has given me great stuff like “Banbury School Nursery,” a nearby town, “secondary schools in Banbury,” “Horton Day Nursery,” which is a nursery that’s actually near there, “Port Angeles childcare,” “children’s nursery.”

So now I’m getting a bunch of keyword suggestions that can potentially be relevant and lead me down a path. When I look at closely related topics, I can see things like closely related topics. By the way, what I did is I actually removed the term “Sequim,” because that was showing me a lot of things that are particular to that region. But if I search for “day care,” I can see lots of closely related topics, like day care center, childcare, school care, special needs children, preschool programs, and afterschool programs. So now I can take all of these and apply the name of the town and get these hyperlocal results.

This is frustrating still. You don’t have nearly the data that you have for much more popular search terms. But this is a good way to start building that keyword list, targeting, experimenting, and testing out the on-page work that you’re going to need to do to rank for these terms. Then, you’ll start to see your traffic grow from these.

Hyperlocal may be small, but it can be powerful, it can be very targeted, and it can bring you exactly the customers you’re looking for.

So good luck with your targeting out there, and we’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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