Think about how you searched for goods or services on the web prior to the recession. Now think about how you would do the same search today. If you are like most people then in today’s economic climate, you are using terms like “sale”, “cheap”, and “discount” far more than you were a couple of years ago. In search marketing, it is imperative to ensure that your search campaigns incorporate these conditions into the keywords that you target. For example, if you offer a service in your area, you might want rethink the strategy of going after terms like “best” and change it to something that applies to a value related term.

Beyond just changing your paid and organic search terms, it is also very wise to employ the same strategy throughout your website. Let your customers know what your unique value offer is and how you are doing whatever you can to help them through these tough times. A little sympathy goes a long way, especially when you mean it. After making the updates be sure to monitor the results of the new strategy to ensure that the new campaign is outperforming the old one. If you see a decrease in your conversion rate, then rethink the messaging. You can push the low cost angle too far, which can cause the customer to feel that your product is inferior to your competitors. If this happens, make the proper adjustments and try again!

Google maps listings showing up on the first page of search results has been around for some time now, but as with all technologies, it has extended it’s reach to now include non-local search phrases that Google assumes are local in purpose. Example: Now, if Google has placed me in Nashville, TN by my IP address and I search for the generic terms “restaurants”, I see the Google Maps 10-pack near the top of my results. Did I specify that I wanted to see local results? No. Could it be assumed that 90% of the population would find this information to be useful? More than likely.

Who Does It Help?

This update helps out the little man. If you are a one location, brick and mortar store, then (more than likely, there are exceptions) the only way that a visitor would ever see your company on the front page of a highly competitive keyword would be through PPC. Now, as long as you have properly optimized your Google Local listing, you have a shot of getting free traffic from the first page of results.

The people who are going to feel the most pain from this change are the portals and ad revenue dependent sites that have spent years developing enough great content (not to mention the massive amounts of SEO work) necessary to be in the top five SERP’s for these keywords. If these players ranked #4 like Zappo’s is showing on my results for “shoe store”, congratulations to the awesome world of below the fold and significantly less revenue from that phrase.

As bad as I do feel for companies who have spent years developing businesses off of generic keywords, the fact is that most of the time, the searchers were probably looking for a local company when they found your site. Until fairly recently, most search engine users didn’t understand how the engines worked and didn’t have enough experience to know how to get more relevant results on their own. You guys gamed the system and at the end of the day, the local businesses whose business has suffered at the hands of the internet employ more people as a whole, making this pretty good for the economy. I guess it is time to re-optimize a whole lot of Google Local listings!

Well, it looks like all of those small companies that worked their asses off to earn the top SERPS for highly competitive keywords have been devastated by Google’s newest “update” to the algo. Aaron Wall at SEO Book created a great post about the new heavy emphasis on branding from Google. It seems that now you can “buy relevancy”. For once, the SEO community is not overreacting to subtle changes in the SEROS, because Matt Cutts has addressed this newest incarnation in the algorithm (see the video below).

What Does This All Mean

Well, if you have been competing on highly competitive, generic keyword phrases, then you are going to lose a lot of revenue from search engine traffic (unless you are a household name). So it seems that paid links are prohibited by Google Spam Team law, but having a 9 figure marketing budget is the new “SEO trick of the day.” This isn’t good news for small players that have developed a great niche on the web. There is one caveat to the new change: Most long-tail keywords are not going to be effected by this change. Local search you ask? In the clear.

The fact of the matter is that most of the generic phrases that this change applies to tend to have a low conversion rate for most sites. These companies need to understand that their long-tail keyword visitors are much more likely to convert that these visitors that are typically at the top of the sales funnel. Will it affect the bottom line? Yes. There are always people that become aware of your company from very broad keywords and come back later to convert. Anyone that is feeling the pain from this blow needs to take a step back, take a deep breath, and then needs to establish a plan of action to regain their revenue using the same skills that pushed them past the big dogs the first time. If any of you guys need help developing a new strategy, LSM is here to help.