We’ve all heard the buzz about Emerging Markets for a few years now, and while it’s started to really crank with SMO and alternate language versions of websites, I have yet to hear anyone yet talk about KW research specifically for EM.
This begs the question, is there anything worth talking about? As an SEO, my intuition tells me to start researching and securing great placement for EM-sensitive phrases in my industry…but then I realize that a Mexican woman is still going to query “pink widget sale,” not “pink widget sale for mexicans.” Is it wishful thinking to believe that EM users are going to wear their demographics on their sleeves so blatantly as they surf, that we can easily market to them by tossing in EM-sensitive keywords?
If anything, I think looking at that example (blatant as it may be) shows you the risk of trying to market keywords with an EM flavor… if you optimize for the term “pink widget sale for mexicans,” you’re more likely to attract non-EM users who were querying similar terms like “pink widgets sold in mexico” or “mexican pink widgets,” which in all likelihood are totally different products that you don’t even sell.
Obviously there’s a gray area here, and my example certainly wasn’t as subtle as what may happen in the real world. But the question is, how big is that gray area… big enough to build an empire on, or just big enough to get your foot tangled in it?
