We took the top 100 search terms for the family interest behavioral segment and categorized them by brand or topic (if no brand was available or was just listed once).  We then scored them by their rank (so the top keyword was worth 100, second 99 and so on).  The result is a ranking if the most popular brands and topics.    It’s quickly seen that children’s media and online entertainment brands dominate.

For those will small children, perhaps it’s no surprise that Webkinz was number one followed by other kids content activities.  While we don’t know if it’s the parents searching for more information or children using search engines instead of URLs, we do know that these brands are quite popular with families. 

This type of data can be used in several ways if you are targeting this demographic (families):

1. If you are a brand marketer targeting the same demographic it lets you know what the competition is when it comes to online and search mind share.

2. If you are a blogger, journalist or other type of content producer this let’s you know what type of topics to address when it comes to children’s brands.   If you are looking to build editorial traffic and are are writing on topics related to family interests and children’s entertainment, this lets you know that writing about certain brands may bring more traffic due to search volume.

3. If you are a strategist looking to track trends, this can provide an early indicator.  For example, Bearville appears whereas I hadn’t watched that brand previously.  Google Trends shows their search volume popped since last year, perhaps it’s a brand to start tracking.

There are two key lessons here:

1. Marketers need to pay a lot more attention to SEO research tools as a way of identifying trends based on what people are looking for online.  Instead, or in addition, to conducting a survey, SEO can tell you a lot about different interest based segments of consumers.

2. Make sure you understand the data when using these tools.  There are two many missing variables and lacking methodologies.  For example, I strong suspect the data above does not represent all family interest topics searched for by the US consumer.  On the other hand, it does seem to be a strong indicator as to what small children topics and brands are popular and this can be valuable for determining what steps to take in terms of additional research and strategy planning.

• http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/my-personal-opinion-90-of-the-rankings-equation-lies-in-these-4-factors
• http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Here are some tools to try to get an idea for using SEO tools in day to day work:

• Keyword data from Wordtracker and Overture (Yahoo! Search Marketing)
• Term targeting from SEO Moz http://www.seomoz.org/term-target shows how well a page uses a keyword (such as the keyword people use to find information).
• How well a page is optimized for search – http://www.seomoz.org/page-strength
• Google’s keyword suggestion tool – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Compete’s keyword suggestion tool based on a web site or user interest area – www.compete.com (sign up for the pro version)