Digital marketing agency iProspect creates customised and integrated digital marketing programmes that drive and measure business results. Search director in South Africa, Rob Standbridge, has spent much time researching keyword trends and how that translates into volumes where search is concerned in what is an invaluable tool for brands that engage online. Stanbridge will be discussing the findings on Bizradio at 10am this morning.
In the first of a bi-weekly series on what South Africans are searching for – online at least – Standbridge has explored the area of finance. Credits, loans, banking, retirement, unit trusts, stocks and share trading: what were were looking for in this field? So what was the methodology in unpacking the research.
We used the following tools to get a sense of what keyword phrases South Africans use when looking for information on the following categories relating to finance such as credit/loans, banking and investments.
1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool: Select Country & Language (South Africa & English) then type in a keyword and tool provides following:
– Gives suggestions for additional keywords
– Shows search volumes for these keywords
– Separates search volumes into Desktop and Mobile devices
2. Google Insights for Search: Select region and time frame then compare search trends for up to five keywords
Finance: Credit and Loans
Over the last 10 months searches for keywords relating to credit/loans and money has grown by:
– 12% on desktop
– 32% on mobile devices (all mobile)
When comparing specific keyword sets for these keywords like: give me money; how do i get money? Where can i get money from?
Compared to: personal loan; loan; how to get a loan.
Desktop – 22.28% more searches for ‘money’ related while in
Mobile – 123% more searches for ‘money’ related.
For keywords relating to debt (debt counselling, debt consolidation, debt relief)
– Desktop remained consistent = around 500 000 searches per month
– Mobile = growth over last 10 months = 60%
There were 120 000 searches in April 2012.
A few points on these numbers: Access to search on both desktop & mobile may have increased People with access to mobile search more likely to search for personal finance as researching loan providers may be personal to them. Demographic of people with mobile is more likely to be short of .
Finance: Banking
Search volumes for keywords on banking over the last year have remained consistent when looking at mobile devices. Distinct drop in searches for same keywords on desktop.
Graphs below:
This downward trend (-66%) for banking related keywords is corroborated by other tool (Google Insights for Search):
A few points on these numbers: Have banks reached saturation in terms of getting their customers to bank online?
Finance: Investments
1. Retirement – keywords mostly seeking advice from financial planners and advisors. Keyword relating to what retirement is, what age, planning for retirement, etc.
• what is retirement
• how to plan for retirement
• how to plan retirement
• what is retirement plan
• what is a retirement plan
• what is financial planning
• financial planning
• financial advisor
• financial advisors
Volumes mostly on desktop – 10 times more searches on desktop than on mobile.
Unit Trusts – ‘what are unit trusts’. Volumes mostly on desktop – 10 times more searches on desktop than on mobile.
Keyword trends show downward trend over last year (at peak in 2010).
Perhaps nature of retirement planning required reading of content, so more likely to do so in front of PC than on mobile phone.
Stocks / Share trading: Massive drop off in mid-2010:
