In March 2024, SparkToro and Datos published a study revealing insights into “where users spend their time and where traffic referrals come from.” The study has been viewed by over 250,000 people since its publication.
SparkToro founder Rand Fishkin later wrote an article clarifying his conclusion that SEO shouldn’t be the focus, stating:
“The only rational course of action is to invest in the sources of influence your audience pays attention to – the social accounts they follow, the YouTube channels they watch, the podcasts they listen to, the websites they visit, the events they attend, etc. Anything else is a missed opportunity.”
At first glance, the data seemed insightful. But as we dug deeper, we found the insights to be misleading.
Fishkin has great influence over some marketers, and if you are one of the thousands of readers who have read this research and analysis, we encourage you to read this article before you remove SEO from your marketing mix and place too much emphasis on social channels and threads.
research summary
Based on the story in your data, you can draw conclusions such as:
- Search engines generate the most traffic but don't generate business results, so focus your marketing on the sites with the most traffic and audience.
- Social media gets the most visitors, so focus your budget there.
- Keep an eye on Threads as it is our fastest growing site.
The first sentence of the report read:
“'Most of our site’s traffic comes from Google, so most of your digital marketing efforts and spend should also be on Google’ – an absolutely terrible way to invest in marketing.”
This will provide direction on how the reader should interpret the data in the report.
The “Site Categories Sending Referrals vs. Visits Received” graph summarizes the data in an easy-to-understand way. We can see that visitors come to sites to learn and engage on the platform, and search engines generate more traffic than all other sites combined. Social is the site category with the most visits.
The study further shows that Threads' traffic is growing faster than any other top-visited site.
This is where Fishkin's comment above becomes important.
“The only rational course of action is to invest in the sources of influence your audience pays attention to – the social accounts they follow, the YouTube channels they watch, the podcasts they listen to, the websites they visit, the events they attend, etc. Anything else is a missed opportunity.”
This means it’s recommended to invest in threads and social over SEO. But does it work?
SparkToro is following this same strategy but it seems to be failing.
If eliminating SEO and focusing solely on social media worked for them, why is SparkToro losing momentum and growth?
SparkToro is Fishkin's audience research tool. It grew thanks to Fishkin's following and social media push. This following generated some short-lived interest, but began to decline significantly in 2024.
The tool only ranks in the top three for branded keywords like “SparkToro” and “audience research tools.” These keywords have low interest, with an average of 170 searches per month.
According to Google Trends, brand search volume for “SparkToro” in 2024 is 41% lower than in 2023. Looking at SparkToro’s pricing page on archive.org, the cheapest package in April 2022 was priced at $150/month, but as of 2024 it’s $50/month.
The decline in pricing and branded searches indicates a declining user base and the need to attract and retain users. Overall, the tool saw some interest but then began to decline.
With its focus on social enterprise, shouldn’t SparkToro try harder?
SparkToro doesn't seem to be doing very well so far, but the team may be playing the long game and focusing on designing an entirely new category: “audience research tools.”
Search volume for the keyword “audience research tools” began to increase after SparkToro was launched in 2018, and has grown 33% in the past year. These are clear signs of an emerging category.
“Audience research tools” is a keyword to use when looking for tools for “audience research.” This keyword indicates a high buying interest in software that provides insight into where a brand's audience is located online.
SparkToro does indeed do SEO, but they are trying to generate demand for keywords they already rank for. According to Semrush, SparkToro ranks #1 for the keyword “audience research tools.”
Non-branded searchers are looking for a specific way to solve a problem and are trying to understand how your product or service relates to the solution they need – this is purchase intent.
But if you haven’t created a new market category, why not try ranking for high-search volume keywords within existing categories that drive purchase intent?
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Will search work in new market categories?
SEO can drive growth by ranking for keywords in adjacent market segments in new market categories, solving similar problems for that audience.
An adjacent market is one where your product, service, or idea solves a similar problem or opportunity for a different audience.
For example, SparkToro allows you to create a contact list of press sites with overlapping audiences, and then you can create integrated PR and SEO campaigns on their sites to help corporate PR or communications people find relevant audiences for your target publications.
In this scenario, you could create a campaign around a “Seed List Audience of Journalists” and build a landing page with your CBC or Fox contact list.
The purpose of this page is to help communications professionals looking for contacts at a publication convert and create a list of all publications and platforms where the same audience visits.
While these individual keywords have low search volume (e.g., “CBC journalist list” averages 10-100 monthly searches), we create these across hundreds of publications and run PR topic tours to educate communications professionals on how to improve campaign performance in these target publications.
The campaign looks like this:
- funnel: We will drive demand around finding an audience for Fox and CBC, and sign up for new tools and features specifically focused on finding an audience for these major publications and journalists.
- On the page: Create a landing page or something like an “audience profile kit” for each media outlet where you can highlight all the places your audience goes for those publications, contact details, audience demographics, etc.
- Search Engine: Rank audience scorecards for “CBC Journalists List” or other publication names.
- PR Topic Tour: Invite experts on podcasts and webinars to talk about how to find readership for these publications and how to create research that shows readership trends.
Finding your audience by specific journalist groups can improve your targeting as many people only read certain sections, such as business or lifestyle. This data can be useful for your landing pages.
The content on these pages could be new features or widgets for your site, demonstrating how you can use keyword data to understand your users’ needs and test new functionality.
Some may argue that this type of SEO isn't necessary for a product-led growth strategy, but product-led growth is focused on technology users discovering a specific application and sharing how they solved a problem using that tool.
People with similar problems will see how it was solved and do the same. This type of SEO strategy gives technical users in corporate communications roles (such as media list builders) a way to use seed lists to find other relevant audiences.
This type of campaign provides unique value in a product-led growth strategy (i.e., your tech audience uses and loves your product, so they share it with other tech users). This page can provide an easily shareable asset for tech users, PR professionals, or media relations professionals when they need a list of sites or contacts for their audience.
SEO can also be applied to new markets and product-led growth, but the traffic volume in these markets may not be as high as emerging or established markets.
What about search marketing in emerging and mature markets?
As a market matures, buyers will use search engines to learn more about products, services, or ideas in that category.
As adoption of a technology or innovation increases, so does search volume, so I prefer to use the Innovation Adoption Curve to understand and plan my keyword targeting and media communication strategy.
- Innovators: Technology enthusiasts looking to solve new problems.
- Early adopters: A visionary who sees great opportunities when solving problems.
- Early Majority: Practical users who want to solve a problem but need proof that it works.
- Late Majority: Skeptical of technology and change.
- Latecomers: Do things according to market standards.
For example, electric bikes are an emerging market in the United States, with some states and cities having much higher adoption rates than the national average. As more people use and talk about their use of e-bikes, demand and Google searches for the product increase.
A recent case study I wrote for Search Engine Land about the e-bike category illustrates this.
The keyword “ebike” has an average monthly search volume of 100,000-1 million, and has grown 900% year-over-year (Google Keyword Planner).
Keyword Planner aggregates this search volume for multiple keywords beyond just “ebike,” so Google Trends can offer a different perspective on growth, but Google Trends shows growing interest in the category, with searches increasing by over 17% from 2023 to 2024.
For this fast-growing term, the brand has been featured in shopping features, paid ads and standard Google blue listings.
A standard organic ranking alone can achieve a 35% click-through rate (CTR), but if you have three prime positions, your brand’s presence on the page can increase your CTR.
This brand of e-bike has gained high brand awareness through PR activities, which may also improve CTR.
Let’s use some rough numbers to estimate the traffic for this keyword used by people looking to buy an e-bike.
This does not include return visits with potential conversions from users who are shopping during the first click (such as non-last click conversions).
Why wouldn’t an e-bike brand want to have the same dominance as Lectric on this keyword?
Insightful Conclusion
Using an integrated PR and SEO strategy, we target each stage of your audience’s journey with the right message based on the medium they’re using and how they’re using it.
The graph above tells an important story about designing a marketing strategy, and this data point is a key part of that story.
- “70% of online shoppers who use social media weekly report using Google search to research and review purchases they've spotted on social media.”
So, while your audience may begin their action on social media sites, they will also use search engines as they progress through to making a purchasing decision.
This means you need to invest your budget into each stage of your audience’s online journey, including using PR and SEO techniques.
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