Has anybody else noticed the correlation between the top-paying SEO keywords and the state of the Western English-speaking economy? No, don’t skim over this, it’s very easy to understand and very startling. According to wordstream.com, the six top-paying Google adwords keywords are…

1. Insurance
2. Loans
3. Mortgage
4. Attorney
5. Credit
6. Lawyer
7. Donate
8. Degree
9. Hosting
10. Claim

Now, pause and consider: all of these words have a common theme. They are debt-related. No, really! They’re all financial terms covering some aspect of business related to monetary liability. In insurance, you need that to pay for damages when things go wrong, loans are what you take out when you’re going into debt, mortgages are a kind of debt with a house attached, attorneys are who you need to settle matters pertaining to all of the above…

It isn’t until we get to #13, “software,” that we have a real consumable product with an enduring value. Everything else is the economics equivalent of handing paper around. Economists differentiate between a STEM economy (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), and a FIRE economy (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate). The latter is typical of big Capitalist first-world nations. An SEO marketer would do wise to have a background in one of these fields, or learn all about them they can, because that’s where the keyword money is.