The SEO Knowledge Gap Explained and How Your Business Can Capitalize

A few weeks back now, we hit Melbourne to try and gauge what the common man or woman on the street knows about SEO. Of the 15 to 20 or so people we interviewed, a clear pattern emerged; a pattern that has exciting implications for any business you might think of. Your business can take advantage of what we might coin “SEO Knowledge Gap Theory”. The common man/woman on the street can explain this better than I could ever imagine and that is the very power of the “SEO Knowledge Gap Theory”.

Approaching people in the street and shoving a camera in front of their faces is generally not a very popular thing to do, but as soon as we mentioned recording a short clip on “Google” their eyes lit up every time and were more than happy to help us out. So what did we learn?

See If You Can Connect These Dots…

• Yellow Pages is close to going the way of the dodo – it’s very rarely used
• People Use the Web to search for products and services – it’s quick, easy, convenient and far less cumbersome
• Google, Google, Google, Google It, Googling… – Google is the number 1 way to search and the common person is a Google addict
• The top of the Google SERPs are clicked on most – the second page of Google is about as popular as visiting the dentist
• Ask people How Search Engines Work or how Google works and they are completely stumped.
• People don’t ask questions about Google, they merely trust the Google results with no questions asked
• Only 1 of all the people interviewed had ever heard of SEO – SEO is practically unheard of
• Having been told it stands for “Search Engine Optimization” (not “search every option” or “search engine operations” or “search engine oh my god”), people are still baffled

The “SEO Knowledge Gap” and What it Means

SEO is practically unheard  of, yet the common person on the street trusts Google to return the ‘best’ and most relevant search results; after all, it’s human nature to click on the first few results without asking any questions.  They do not know or even care how the Google algorithm works. Herein lies the “SEO Knowledge Gap” and with it immense potential for businesses to prosper from it. Here’s the thing. If you’re business finds itself in the first few results on Google ahead of your competitors, the people searching for you (whether they know it or not) instinctively trust your website because of the trust that clearly exists within them for Google.

Special thanks goes to the common people on the street… (watch out for the video, very funny and coming very soon)