The following stats from Keyword Discovery got me thinking:
Over 50pc of all English language search terms consist of either two or three words.
19pc consist of a single word term.
Search terms with 10 words or more represent only 2pc of all searches.
Search terms with 9 words constitute 0.79pc of all searches.
83pc of all search terms consist of 4 words or less.
What does this mean for PR?
First – remember 2 years ago Lord Saatchi’s pronouncement on One Word Equity?
Well, he was nearly right – if you are Finnish. The Finns – true to cultural stereotype – appear to be the only people who perform more than 50pc of searches for a single word term.
However, in English, Two Word and Three Word Equity rules.
So. Are you able to distill down your PR and marketing messages to two or three words? Given that search now seems to act as a universal gatekeeper to the B-to-B selling process, ensuring that your target audiences are going to associate such brief phrases with you (and not be disappointed by the PR and marketing content that may await them if you get them that far down the conversion funnel) becomes a key goal.
PS: Try typing “outcome based PR” into Google and see what comes up first….
Filed under: Uncategorized , one word equity, outcome based PR, two word equity
[...] PRs also need to adopt a similar methodology and mindset. [...]
Mr. Smith: Where did you get that stat on Finnish search terms?
From Keyword Discovery – the link in the post should take you to the table which includes the Finnish results
[...] Clearly potential purchasers of tech PR services don’t use these terms to find the information they want. But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. As I’ve discussed previously, the majority of search terms consist of only 2 or 3 words. [...]
[...] lack of interest in customer retention? No. It simply bears out what we’ve said before – the majority of search terms consist of only 2 or 3 words. And that people tend not to use Google in great numbers to ask specific [...]