A study shows U.S. homes now own more  internet-enabled devices, and they are using them to search for brands' web content.

Marketers holding out hope that consumers’ short attention spans will compel them to look beyond the internet for entertainment will soon learn that people actually engage more on the ‘net today than ever before. There are more than half a billion residences in the United States that have internet access, and each of those homes contains approximately 5.7 connected devices, according to an NPD Group report.

This means that marketers who create custom content for SEO will reach audiences on their many web-enabled devices, while messages from skeptical brands may never make it in front of prospects.

During the past three months, another 9 million Americans became smartphone owners and 18 million more got their hands on tablets. Nielsen’s latest edition of the Mobile Path-to-Purchase report affirms that tablets are primarily used to conduct internet searches at home (81 percent of all queries), while smartphones are the web-browsers-of-choice on the road (58 percent of searches are completed out of homes).

However, it’s still a safe bet to design web content to display on laptops and personal computers, according to NPD Group.

“Even with this extraordinary growth in the smartphone and tablet market, PCs are still the most prevalent connected device in U.S. Internet households, and this is a fact that won’t be changing anytime soon,” said John Buffone, director of devices at NPD Connected Intelligence.

Of course, marketers will need to make sure their branded content reaches their target audiences based on their preferred devices. To be highly visible in search results, companies need to develop content strategies around the key terms customers would use to find them in search, and then regularly update their websites with engaging news content or interesting blog posts that speak to those topics.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.