Ryan McFarland

In my work on trying to bump Tonka Seafoods up in search results for key terms i decided to look at search engine trend logs.  Google Trends can show some fascinating information.

Currently, Tonka Seafoods ranks number 4 in the non-sponsored search results for “alaska smoked salmon” which is fantastic - but Google Trends doesn’t have enough volume for that search term to track it.  A search for “alaska salmon” has Tonka at the top of the third page - the 21st spot.  Quite unlikely to have any customers go that deep into search results.  That search term should logically yield information on the species of salmon in Alaska but all of the results on the 10 top pages are for seafood products or fishing lodges.  Seems like a detailed page about the salmon species of Alaska might be a good way to bump Tonka’s rank on this page.  Looking at the trend graph shows an interesting shape to the data over the past two years.  There is a gradual rise in searches for “alaska salmon” until mid summer when it drops off precipitously.  It seems to me that these are searches being done by people on trips or planning an upcoming visit that are looking for salmon fishing.  There does seem to be a slight drop from 2006 to 2007 which makes me wonder if searches for travel related Alaska items are down.  Below is a chart showing search trends for “alaska” over the past four years.  A steady decline.

Well, that may be bad news for the visitor industry but we’re looking at salmon products now.  A search for “smoked salmon” puts Tonka at the top of the second page in the #11 spot.  Not bad - but definitely needs to be better.  Check out the search chart for “smoked salmon” for the past four years.

Look at those spikes!  And they happen just before the end of the calendar year - Christmas.  So this is an important time to be at the very top of searches for “smoked salmon.”  A comparison of the two terms shows that it probably isn’t even worth working on increasing the rank on searches for “alaska salmon”  - the volume of searches for “smoked salmon” is far greater.  Plus, people searching for  “alaska salmon” might be looking for fishing guides and not food to buy.  A search for “smoked salmon” is definitely looking for either a product to buy or a recipe or technique.

Now - if you want to go for the big search term check out how the search for “salmon” turns those huge spikes in the “smoked salmon” searches to  insignificant blips.  Tonka Seafoods isn’t in the first 35 pages of search results for “salmon”.