In 1996, two men began a research project called Google and the idea of SEO or what top SEO fails are, wasn’t even a thought. Seventeen years later, the world of Google has been fully integrated into our personal and professional lives to make things easy. Consumers search for information and businesses attempt to be that information – it’s simple. What’s not so simple is how these businesses show up as the information consumers seek.

For many, attempting to show up in search results or gain the visibility they need, can be a struggle. Many companies do not properly equip themselves or are unaware of the mistakes they are making.

Because search engines like Google do not share their rules or how they identify and rank companies, SEO is essentially a mystery. Ultimately making SEO mistakes common.

Last week we took a poll on our social networks to see what others believed the biggest SEO mistakes are. We asked, “What do you think are the biggest SEO mistakes that are made over and over again?”

Many replied, and here are some of the answers we liked:

• Keywords regarding gut instincts
• Web catalogue inscription, Link sharing with websites with non-relevant content & social bookmarks
• Unprofessional keyword-research
• Link spam on monkey keyword

• Missing 404 Site
• Multiple H1 in use
• Keyword stuffing/spamming
• Uninteresting title tags and meta descriptions, which do not draw interest to check the website

• Duplicate Content
• Missing “freshness” (steady website news)

Do you agree? Are these top SEO fails? Let us know in the comments.

The post Keywords regarding gut instincts, a top SEO fail? appeared first on Searchmetrics SEO Blog.

Today, we are officially announcing our new partner program. With more than 150 companies already a part of our global partner network, we wanted to provide our partners with greater benefits to meet their needs. We have restructured our program to provide clear and defined levels and benefits – including up to a 30% discount on software.

Our partner program is divided into three new levels: “service”, “premium” and “elite”. The “service partner” is an entry-level partnership with no commitment and provides companies with basic benefits. Companies seeking a mutual relationship will find our midlevel partnership, “premium”, favorable. And for a deeper integrated partnership, “elite partners” will have the opportunity to influence the future of Searchmetrics and take part in exclusive networking events.

We have also enhanced the partner login on our site to provide greater insights and information. Here, partners can find how-to-guides, exchange insights, and a partner certification. The certification is a logo, “Searchmetrics Trusted Partner”. And of course, you will still be able to find the calculator there. To login, simply use the same access as before, often called calculator login.

In addition to the improvements in the partner login, we have also enriched our previous field “Sales Territories” and renamed it to “Find Partner”. In the “Find Partner” section, there is a search function to help clients find the right companies and we are now allowing (depending on the partner level) for companies to display additional information to promote their business.

By joining the partner program, companies will benefit from the expertise of Searchmetrics and other partners in the network.

Become a Searchmetrics Partner today!

The post Introducing our new partner program appeared first on Searchmetrics SEO Blog.

Market share equals true visibility

How SEO impacts traffic and conversion

This is by far one of the greatest features we have ever built into a new release. At the end of the day we understand that its not about the market share, but about the sales that come from search engine optimization.  Sales are key! And getting them by traffic equates to conversions. Many factors play a role in getting to the calculation of a conversion and the position in the search results is only one value of many. We now give you the ability to monitor more values in the Search Metrics Suite.

Traffic Forecasts

Conversion Value Forecast

Conversion integration

Backlink Page crawling and recrawl

Next Level Search Analytics

The post Next Generation Search Analysis Software appeared first on Searchmetrics SEO Blog.

Yesterday night, May 22^nd, Google finished rolling out the second generation of its Penguin updates. Looking back at the first release of the algorithm in April 2012, the focus was primarily around webspam. Since then, there have been only iterations; with the bases being more like “data refreshes” as seen in the most recent update in October 2012. Now with Google Penguin update 2.0, the update is specific to the search algorithm of Google – and this time the impact will only affect around 2.3% of English queries, a decrease in comparison to the first generation of webspam (3.1%).

The update not only affects the U.S. or English-speaking countries, but is fully rolled out globally for other languages as noted yesterday in Matt Cutts blog:

“The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.”

This is surprisingly early. Especially because Cutts, who is the Head of the Google webspam team announced another attack on link farms, Over-Optimization, “Black Hat” and keyword stuffing in a recent video scheduled to release over the coming summer. It seems that Penguin 2.0 will just be the beginning as made known in the video announcement:

“We’re relatively close to deploying the next generation of Penguin, [...] Internally we call it ‘Penguin 2.0’, …and again, Penguin is a webspam change that’s dedicated to try to find black hat webspam, and try to target and address that.”

It’s only been ten days since the announcement on May 13^th of what to expect in the coming months and they have already rolled out 2.0 – ending the life of several pages with bad links. Cutts has stressed that the impact of the second-generation webspam update will have a much deeper and greater influence this time around. 

“So this one is a little more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0, and we expect it to go a little bit deeper in have a little bit more of an impact.”

After the first update we did a deep dive analysis into the impact Penguin 1.0 had in a posting called “Bad SEO” Update. In a similar fashion, we have analyzed our data for an in-depth look at understanding the impact of Penguin 2.0.

Who are the top losers from the Penguin 2.0 update? Our analysis uncovered whose SEO Visibility was seriously impacted, with sites like cheapoair.com, dish.com and the salvationarmy.com:

Conclusion

It’s not the update I was expecting. I thought that this Googles Penguin update would have had a bigger impact similar to Panda 1. But that didn’t happen. My first analysis shows that many thin sites, sites with thin links and especially untrusted links face the problem. In addition, some small business sites were hit because they haven’t taken SEO serious enough. Google itself confirmed that the impact wouldn’t be as high as many thought – maybe this is just the calm before the storm and the big update is really coming in the future. We will see. I will continue to keep you updated with our results.

If you’re interested in seeing if you were hit? Check your domain using our Searchmetrics Essentials Research Tool!

The post Google’s Penguin Update 2.0: Loser analysis appeared first on Searchmetrics SEO Blog.

The post Best SEO software? We’ve been nominated! appeared first on Searchmetrics SEO Blog.

In the article series on “Big Data in SEO” I guide you through the seven topics that are important for enterprise SEO. This is the last part of the series and I will be dealing with the “Management of Big Data” ‒ featuring Reports and Dashboards.

One of the biggest risks in the Big Data business is referred to as “information overload”: Too much data can cause just as much confusion as no data at all: Getting too caught up in the details and losing sight of the big picture will inevitably result in failure. Only a well-engineered reporting system can ensure that each person only knows what they really need to know.

Data protection is the key requirement…

Of course, data protection is another sensitive topic whenever Big Data is concerned. This is because each time huge data collections emerge, there is also a temptation to exploit this data for all sorts of purposes. Even as little as a website operator’s collection of keywords or benchmarks can provide a great deal of information on their strategy.

It is for this reason that we apply the principle of data minimization and at this point, the circle of this series closes. In the first part I wrote about the assignment of rights in the team: Everybody should get all data, without exception, that they need for their work. But not a single byte more than that.

Of course, this also applies to reporting. Here, the system can be fine-tuned even more: All employees without access to the Searchmetrics Suite are simply kept up to date via regular PDF reports. And these reports always include just the data needed by the employees.

Flexible and adjustable: Searchmetrics Dashboards

…Big Data Management is the perfect solution

Yet data minimization is only one important basic principle. Other factors also play a crucial role in the development of a functional reporting system:

You can find the detailed settings for each report in the Dashboard.

• Push for regularly dispatched data and remote employees: A PDF report that is sent automatically via e-mail can develop its full potential in two scenarios. The first one is, of course, when you are dealing with regularly spaced activities, where the report fulfills the function of a green light. For instance, if the top keywords are received in the editorial team’s inbox on Monday, the editors can be finished with preparing an editorial schedule by Tuesday. Other important recipients for Push data are “remote” project participants. These are employees who are not involved with SEO on a daily or weekly basis. Your attractively designed reports can help to keep them posted on the latest state of affairs, for example, on a monthly basis.

• Pull for daily work: One potential drawback of the “Push” method is, of course, the risk of a full inbox, and, after several weeks, complete unawareness of the recipient that they have received any e-mails. That’s why my advice to all who are regularly working together in a team anyway is: Pull instead of Push. Expediently grouped, custom dashboards provide readily available guidance to hard working team members. One of the advantages of the Searchmetrics Dashboards is, of course, the fact that they are always accessible under the same URL. This means that, when properly designated as a bookmark, they can be reached instantaneously at the click of a button.
• Usability and speed also play a role: Those of you who still remember the log file analysis reports from several years ago will know what I mean by this. Detailed tables stretching over several pages, which take several minutes to load, which are accessed once or twice – and only as an absolute last resort after that. This is why we enable you to make your dashboard designs as attractive and flexible as possible – to ensure that they are actually read by visitors.
• Individuality for the right eye level: While employees in your technical department would require very detailed lists of errors and notes, management employees only really need the summary and the historical development trends. The same holds true across all other knowledge areas. And this is why it is well worth compiling an appropriate dashboard for each target group (even if it only consists of a single person). Considering that this only needs to be done once, the effort is usually worthwhile.
• Commitment to the same KPIs: If the team relies on a database such as Searchmetrics, the validity of the values is beyond doubt. However, it is, of course, possible that people disagree on WHICH values are most relevant and worth pursuing to achieve the objectives. Do you wish to aim for general visibility? Or maybe leave that and go for project visibility, which is based on your pre-defined keyword set? This should be discussed and agreed at the beginning and then reported accordingly.

With these rules in place, Big Data will no longer lead to confusion in your company, but rather to a net gain in knowledge for everyone.

API or the great art of mixing data

The Searchmetrics Suite also delivers the relevant data from Adobe SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics and eTracker. But even though we do everything possible with that: The Searchmetrics data should, of course, also be represented in close association with information from other tools. Even a linked table showing rankings, traffic and the margin of individual products can be incredibly valuable to merchants.

Well sorted and documented: the Searchmetrics API

This is where the Searchmetrics API comes into place. Using this interface, Suite customers can take their data and use it anywhere they wish to view their reports. With the easy-to-understand and comprehensively documented API you can swiftly integrate large and small datasets in your own applications. Really simple.

Plan ahead before reporting

Despite all the enthusiasm for huge amounts of data and comprehensive information: Big Data only really works well if every member of the team really knows everything that they have to know – and that they can process. Therefore, it is essential to plan your reporting very accurately and intelligently – regardless of the fact that it is only mentioned in the last part of the Big Data series.  

On our website you can get the complete Big data-series as complete eBook. Download now!

1. Promoting productivity: managing international teams and agencies. Large quantities of data require a very fine allocation of rights. For reasons of data protection on the one hand, but also for quality reasons: If everyone can do whatever he or she wants to, you end up not really knowing what’s inside the big data pot. The Suite allows you to perform these tasks in a simple and user-friendly way thanks to the allocation of rights.
2. Quick overview: managing different campaigns in a structured way. Large companies always pursue multiple goals at one time. These goals can be pursued individually using the features of the Searchmetrics Suite, such as tagging and multi-tagging. But the Suite also lets you adapt and automate every report and every chart.
3. Observing competition: learning from your competitors. Competition is sometimes the biggest surprise in online marketing. Our offline competitors are potentially only marginal online competitors, whereas our offline partners are actually our toughest competitors. We provide just the right environment in numerous data pools.
4. Pick the cherries: tapping into hidden potential. It’s not always worthwhile to work on the keywords with the largest number of searches. Competition, universal search and existing ranks also play an important part.
5. Improving performance: technical optimization. Sometimes even the best SEO gets muddled up when dealing with a large page. We crawl every page and report error pages and optimization potential for keywords.
6. Return on investment: paying attention to the conversion. Ultimately, it’s about the money. Is a PPC campaign worth it or would the budget be better allocated to SEO optimization. What’s more worthwhile? We supply figures to help you make this decision.
7. Optimizing processes: saving time and money. One employee on the team needs a daily report, another one a monthly summary. Our reports are highly flexible, relevant and can be generated with just a few clicks.

The post Big Data in SEO (7): Optimizing processes: saving time and money. appeared first on Searchmetrics SEO Blog.

In the “Big Data in SEO” article series, I guide you through the seven topics that are important for enterprise SEOs. The present article looks at how the ROI for online marketing projects can be measured using the Searchmetrics Suite.

In the end it’s always a question of money. Return on investment (ROI) is the currency used to measure the effectiveness of marketing activities, especially on the Internet. Although at first glance this may not always seem easy, a closer look shows that it is only a matter of collecting the right data, evaluating it and then deciding.

Search Engine Advertising vs. Search Engine Optimization

The two large online marketing tool boxes could hardly be more different from this perspective:

Search Engine Advertising (SEA):

• Quickly leads to tangible success (in terms of users and thus conversions).
• Very easy to measure.
• Largely follows understandable criteria.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

• A lot of somewhat uncertain influencing factors are involved, from OnPage (e.g. targeting, website structure, website performance) to OffPage (e.g. domain popularity, quality of links, diversity).
• Can be planned over the long term.
• Produces lasting results.

In a nutshell you could say that while SEA is comparable to classic performance marketing (and individual users are thus purchased), SEO is like investing over an extended period of time. Different measures are thus appropriate for different goals:

1. For spontaneous or quick campaigns the only right “Google optimization” strategy may be to run AdWords ads.
2. Even when there is very high conversion or strong competition in a given market niche, SEA is sometimes the method of choice.
3. However, the more economical solution for “normal topics” in the long term is usually organic search engine optimization. The reason is that once a good ranking has been achieved, the cost of maintaining it is relatively low.

The ideal approach is to combine SEO and SEA in a growth spiral: while the organic optimization ranking is getting up to speed, SEA campaigns can already generate sales. Once organic rankings have improved, the AdWord budget can be used to carve out a new market niche. Extremely competitive topics – for which an organic approach can hardly be expected to yield a good position – will always require running an ongoing PPC campaign in any case.

Easy to calculate: the ROI for SEA

The ROI calculation in the AdWords area is relatively easy. The arithmetic involved is simple: as long as users cost less than their conversion into customers, advertising can be scaled without hesitation.

An example: According to our data, the keyword “alarm clock” costs € 0.74. If my website page has a conversion rate of 10 percent and I can make € 7 per alarm clock sold, I will make € 70 for every 100 visitors and pay Google € 74 for it. This is not a scalable business model. However, if I can achieve the same conversion and the same yield with users who come across the keyword “best alarm clock”, I pay € 54 for 100 visitors and make a profit of € 16. The deal is worth it!

Complex: the ROI for SEO

This is far more complicated with organic optimization. Calculating costs alone is already difficult – since good SEO measures also support conversion through, for example, improvement in performance or internal linking or because real users land on site via the established links. However, that is a luxury problem that we get a handle on. Now the question of the returns has to be clarified: for SEO measures do not ensure sales immediately, but rather always after a certain period of time. Whoever makes it to first place on Google with his money keyword will probably stay there for a while.

So: How much is a top position for a keyword worth?

A question that will be answered in the Searchmetrics Suite on the basis of the PPC data:

Whoever wants to get to first place with the search term “Android tablet” should have an advertising budget of € 91,840. He will then be in first place with 82,000 searches and have to pay € 1.12 per click. These are approximate values of course – but values that are close and specific enough for further calculation.

However, we can do even better: we calculate, of course, not only the value of a top ranking in first place, but can even deduce the potential traffic for a slightly lower placing. And that is why all SEO rankings for a domain can be converted into money:

The sum of all the individual values for each keyword (Traffic Index * CPC) results in € 3 million/month for this domain.

And the ROI of an SEO campaign? This must be calculated over a period of several months. Were it possible, for example, to increase the SEO value of the above domain from € 3 million/month to € 3.1 million/month for a given SEO project, you could fix the period for reinvestment at 6 months and would have 0.6 million Euros of increased advertising volume. This would, of course, still have to be set off against the conversion (as in the case above, about 10%). A return of € 60,000 would thus be left over. If this value is higher than the estimated costs, the measure should definitely be implemented, since you are then in the “green ROI range”.

Realizing the potential

However, before rushing to open up a new topic in the shop on the basis of this calculation, it is important first to tap the potentials. After all, almost every page has great rankings – which, however, are still just out of the user’s line of sight. We offer a comprehensive report in the traffic area for this purpose:

SEO traffic is the calculated amount of users who land on the site via organic measures. There is, of course, much more potential. It is being assumed here that you would be in first place for every keyword. The two other large figures above indicate this in the Internet currency “sales”. Further on in the report all the assigned keywords are shown with detailed information on how much traffic and sales could be possible for each keyword. Of course tapping the full potential is nearly impossible. However, if there is a very large spread between “actual” and “potential” it is worth fishing in this pond.

Tip: These are all calculated estimates of course. If you want or need more exact information, you can connect your Web analytics tool (e.g. SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics or eTracker) with the Searchmetrics Suite and receive the precise, unadulterated numbers with respect to traffic.

Stick to it and track results

Whether you invest in PPC campaigns, SEO measures, or both, you should, of course, not forget to track the results. And what could handle that better than our SEO tracking? Here’s an example: PPC traffic is greatly reduced and at the same time more than compensated by a social traffic campaign:

Two “fast” online marketing measures were thus combined here, but that is meant to serve as a good example of the fact that the ROI for SEO and PPC measures can be calculated very precisely – and should be!

Next week we will show you more about: Optimizing processes: saving time and money.

Series: How top companies handle big data in SEO

On our website you can get the complete Big data-series as complete eBook. Download now!

1. Promoting productivity: managing international teams and agencies. Large quantities of data require a very fine allocation of rights. For reasons of data protection on the one hand, but also for quality reasons: If everyone can do whatever he or she wants to, you end up not really knowing what’s inside the big data pot. The Suite allows you to perform these tasks in a simple and user-friendly way thanks to the allocation of rights.
2. Quick overview: managing different campaigns in a structured way. Large companies always pursue multiple goals at one time. These goals can be pursued individually using the features of the Searchmetrics Suite, such as tagging and multi-tagging. But the Suite also lets you adapt and automate every report and every chart.
3. Observing competition: learning from your competitors. Competition is sometimes the biggest surprise in online marketing. Our offline competitors are potentially only marginal online competitors, whereas our offline partners are actually our toughest competitors. We provide just the right environment in numerous data pools.
4. Pick the cherries: tapping into hidden potential. It’s not always worthwhile to work on the keywords with the largest number of searches. Competition, universal search and existing ranks also play an important part.
5. Improving performance: technical optimization. Sometimes even the best SEO gets muddled up when dealing with a large page. We crawl every page and report error pages and optimization potential for keywords.
6. Return on investment: paying attention to the conversion. Ultimately, it’s about the money. Is a PPC campaign worth it or would the budget be better allocated to SEO optimization. What’s more worthwhile? We supply figures to help you make this decision.
7. Optimizing processes: saving time and money. One employee on the team needs a daily report, another one a monthly summary. Our reports are highly flexible, relevant and can be generated with just a few clicks.

So you see: There’s a lot to be done. Big data isn’t just marketing hype or a simple glance into a crystal ball filled with data. Big data is a necessary and effective way of working that is simply part of enterprise SEO and has to be learned. We help you with it. Stay tuned!

The post Big Data in SEO (6): Return on investment: paying attention to the conversion. appeared first on Searchmetrics SEO Blog.

In the “Big Data in SEO” series I examine the seven topics that are important for enterprise SEOs. This article looks at technical on-page optimization and targeting.

Since late 2011 the technical performance of a website has been a true ranking factor. And that doesn’t just mean speed. What matters is generating as few errors as possible. The Searchmetrics crawler with Big Data helps uncover the technical problems within large websites.

Essentially, a website’s technology only exists to prevent it from getting in the way of the Google robot which should be able to read and evaluate any URL as quickly as possible. That, however, is not so simple, particularly when it comes to large websites. There are two areas that quickly become confusing during on-page optimization:

• Site Optimization: (Almost) all websites have technical issues. They are linked to sites that no longer exist, canonical tags point to incorrect targets or the HTML document structure is unclear. These ‒ and many others ‒ are examined by our site optimization process. Our crawler examines up to 100,000 sub-pages for potential errors, warnings and messages.

• Keyword Targeting: In order for document “XY” to rank well for a given keyword, it has to show the Google robot what it is about. This includes the keyword for which it has greatest relevance and whether the internal linking also focuses on this keyword. Our crawler analyzes this for every keyword as well as the site that is to be ranked for it.

Site Optimization

Even the New York Times technical team makes mistakes. In fact, quite a few. This can be seen in the Searchmetrics site optimization:

Technical overview: all errors, warnings and messages at a glance.

Here the total of all errors, warnings and messages can be clearly seen – things a developer should be taking care of. The graph also shows the history of these messages over time. Thus it is possible to clearly understand how the project has developed.

This data forms the basis of our crawler, which operates in every project domain that is entered and takes note of everything worth noting. To do this we check some 50 factors that play a part in the on-page optimization of a site. This includes dead links and other server errors. Other checks are, of course, whether the document metadata (title tag, description, robots meta tag, etc.) are properly completed and whether the document structure can be read with the headline formatting. There are, of course, many other factors that are important for SEO. For example, we inform the webmaster when there are too many outbound links on a page or when the URL is too long.

We check all these errors once a week and show them in the overview. And we do it with a prioritization for the optimization potential (right hand column in the table) and with the history so you can see the changes since the previous week.

The detail page for the individual errors or messages contains not only an explanation and the history but also the necessary detail data:

Details on each topic: including URL lists, tips and tricks.

If we find duplicated description tags, for example, we explain why that could be a problem and how to deal with it in the above space. And incidentally, duplicated title tags are a potential indication that content has been published more than once, which means that the page is in danger of holding duplicate content.

Here the history for the New York Times shows that in early February the number of duplicated description tags dramatically increased. It would be vital to discover the cause so that the problem could be addressed at its root.

There is a list of all doubled title tags with detail information below. Here the error in the home page can be seen; it is vital that this issue be resolved, as this page has 5,069 inbound (internal) links and is of extremely high relevance. The level of the page is also naturally a signal for the urgency of eliminating the error.

Hint: Continuous error removal

It is probably impossible to maintain a website completely free of errors. Keeping their number down is, however, important not only for SEO purposes, but also beneficial for visitors to the site. I would therefore recommend that technician capacity be reserved for dealing with these messages on a weekly basis.

Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization takes up a different perspective. Here our crawler checks whether a URL really is optimally matched to the keyword by which it is found. To do this we monitor all URLs that already rank in the Google index for one of the keywords deposited there. Then we evaluate whether or not they are well matched:

Targeting dashboard: Do the URLs match their keywords?

Here the New York Times’ balance looks pretty good: There are 63 URLs in top condition, for which (almost) nothing can be further improved. And there are 27 URLs in a good condition, that is, with some potential for improvement. Below this we again find the history and a table with all saved keywords. In this table, search volume and positioning are used to make a clear definition between “important” and “not important.”

Taking a look at the details of an analysis of this kind allows you to quickly find relevant information.

Details for every keyword-URL combination.

The image above shows the keyword, the URL, the current position and the search volume. Under these we see all data relating to errors and warnings aggregated into a keyword score. In this example, incidentally, the solution is quite simple. The reason why the URL is not optimized is due to the way it is written: While Google users will search for this airline under “Delta Airlines,” the company actually calls itself “Delta Air Lines”.

This, however, is an exception. Keyword optimization usually reveals large potentials for optimization simply by writing the keyword into the headline or into the main text, depending on where it is missing. Another point, however, is the use of the keyword in internal links to this page. The Searchmetrics crawler checks this as well. Does the internal linking of this URL help its ranking? This can never be seen with the naked eye and without a crawler.

By the way, if the desired landing page does not (yet) have the highest ranking, this can also be easily defined for the crawler. The keyword optimization process will then indicate what has still to happen in order for this URL to rank for the keyword.

Hint: Rising keywords and declining keywords

Here again, the detail work is never done. I would therefore recommend – especially for rising keywords (i.e. search terms in positions 10 to 20) and the terms that have fallen over the course of the week – that you look more closely at what could still help with keyword targeting once per week.

The on-page trick: Detail work, well weighted

On-page SEO is detail work. It is therefore important not to make it unnecessarily complicated and become preoccupied with unnecessary details. This is why we distinguish the important tasks from the unimportant by means of indices, search volumes, relevance data and other sorting aids. This is the only way of ensuring with a large website that not only things are done right, but that the right things are done.

Next week we will show you more about: Return on investment: paying attention to the conversion.

Series: How top companies handle big data in SEO

On our website you can get the complete Big data-series as complete eBook. Download now!

1. Promoting productivity: managing international teams and agencies. Large quantities of data require a very fine allocation of rights. For reasons of data protection on the one hand, but also for quality reasons: If everyone can do whatever he or she wants to, you end up not really knowing what’s inside the big data pot. The Suite allows you to perform these tasks in a simple and user-friendly way thanks to the allocation of rights.
2. Quick overview: managing different campaigns in a structured way. Large companies always pursue multiple goals at one time. These goals can be pursued individually using the features of the Searchmetrics Suite, such as tagging and multi-tagging. But the Suite also lets you adapt and automate every report and every chart.
3. Observing competition: learning from your competitors. Competition is sometimes the biggest surprise in online marketing. Our offline competitors are potentially only marginal online competitors, whereas our offline partners are actually our toughest competitors. We provide just the right environment in numerous data pools.
4. Pick the cherries: tapping into hidden potential. It’s not always worthwhile to work on the keywords with the largest number of searches. Competition, universal search and existing ranks also play an important part.
5. Improving performance: technical optimization. Sometimes even the best SEO gets muddled up when dealing with a large page. We crawl every page and report error pages and optimization potential for keywords.
6. Return on investment: paying attention to the conversion. Ultimately, it’s about the money. Is a PPC campaign worth it or would the budget be better allocated to SEO optimization. What’s more worthwhile? We supply figures to help you make this decision.
7. Optimizing processes: saving time and money. One employee on the team needs a daily report, another one a monthly summary. Our reports are highly flexible, relevant and can be generated with just a few clicks.

So you see: There’s a lot to be done. Big data isn’t just marketing hype or a simple glance into a crystal ball filled with data. Big data is a necessary and effective way of working that is simply part of enterprise SEO and has to be learned. We help you with it. Stay tuned!

The post Big Data in SEO (5): Improving performance: technical optimization. appeared first on Searchmetrics SEO Blog.

In this series of articles entitled “Big Data in SEO”, I cover the seven topics that are important for enterprise SEO. This section will focus on keywords, or to put it better, the low-hanging cherries.

The biggest problem for large websites is not just to be ranked for the right keywords. Rather, the problem is in identifying these keywords in the midst of numerous others and focusing all the efforts on them.

Even a small online store can be found in Google search results with several hundred keywords – for a news portal, this can be as many as a million! For this reason, it doesn’t make sense to continue to increase this number or even to try to come in the top position with all of these keywords. Instead, the focus should be on identifying the right keywords and working from there.

1^st step: the right keywords

For what do you want to be ranked? In other words, what are the keywords with which you can energize your sales? The first rule is: don’t just pay attention to what you want to sell to people. Instead, focus on the things for which the users search. But surely you already know this rule.

The second rule is: use big data!

The standard keyword research in the Searchmetrics Suite gives you more than you’ve been accustomed to.

Open keyword research, enter keyword. Done!

In this table you will find ample data for the keyword selection:

• The search volume shows the way to the “strong” keywords. These are however not necessarily the best search terms but more on that later. In any case keywords without relevant search volume are usually not especially attractive.
• The CPC shows how much those keywords are “worth”. In fact how much it is worth in Google AdWords. On the one hand this means that if you want to (or must) buy traffic by SEA instead of SEO then this price would be payable per user. The total is shown in the column “Advertising Budget”. On the other hand this price also shows the value of the actual placement. If you receive about 5,000 visitors per month for a keyword with a CPC of $1, then this traffic is worth $5,000!
• The universal search integration shows you even more handling options. Marked with small icons, you can quickly find all keywords with a news integration, or those with images, videos, maps, or a shopping snippet. If you see an image or video it may be worthwhile to rank yourself with one of these. The news integration is a sign that a current topic is involved here – freshness can really be helpful. And the shopping integration is a very clear indicator that Google is of the opinion that the keyword deals with a “product”. Usually only shops and buying guides have this opportunity.
• The search volume spreading shows the progress of the interest in the keyword over the next twelve months. This also determines if optimization of the keyword should be started right away or sometime in the future.

Of course, this data is also available via API or CSV download. Even a direct connection to merchandise management is also possible. Why is that a good thing? Very simply put, only you can say how much business you can actually make with which keyword. However, if you multiply the Searchmetrics data for this search term by YOUR margin and/or YOUR conversion, the result leads directly to the economic success that is to be expected. And you should always aim for that.

2^nd step: adjust the workflow

It pays to add the “desired keywords” to the Searchmetrics Suite so you can work on them in the future. This brings us to the various regular workflows that can improve our ranking every week. One of these workflows is based strictly on the current potential of the search term.

Our detailed filter is used here in the ranking analysis of the stored keywords: In this example, I have searched for all keywords with which this page (New York Times) is ranked “on the threshold” between 11 and 20 AND has increased in comparison with the previous week.

The filters for the ranking analysis are extremely flexible.

Why this filter? Because with these keywords, nytimes.com is showing upward movement but not (yet) in a visible area. Only a small boost is needed and then we are in the visible area for selected and especially attractive keywords. Got it?

Of course there is still a range of other strategies for finding the most attractive search terms for optimization. Your creativity knows no bounds, thanks to the quickly adjustable filter.

3^rd step: define feasibility

You are asking yourself what could be such a boost? Here’s the answer: this is found in the Searchmetrics Suite. And not just this one, either. Let’s take a look at keyword optimization:

A selection for keyword optimization.

Here I have also switched on a filter for the sake of simplicity. External brands can be found here for which the New York Times ranks but still has great traffic potential. And this is also shown in the column to the right. The keyword score is not green for all pages. There is improvement potential for keyword targeting as well. This can be within the keyword usage on the page or in the internal linking. More on this in another article in this series. Just one thing: for a large site, it is no longer difficult to be ranked for a keyword if you have found it once.

Extra tip: outrank the direct competition

A strategy that is sometimes sensible for finding the right keywords is a direct comparison with the closest competitors. A competitor’s domain can be entered right in the overview in the research area. The “common” keywords, or the search terms with which both domains can be found, are in the competitive comparison. The good thing is that this table can be sorted by columns (and also exported so that an evaluation can be done in Excel or with your own tool).

A line-for-line direct comparison can be made between two competitors.

A line-for-line direct comparison can be made between two competitors.

Keywords are quickly found with which the competitor receives a lot of traffic – but not our site. If this is also an attractive search term for us, it is worth it to work on these pages. Or perhaps this brings us to entire topic area that we did not focus on sufficiently. However, this table is always worth a look.

Keyword research: Efficient and not just effective

Got it? Big data SEO is not just about effectiveness, meaning making things fast and accurate. It is first and foremost about efficiency, meaning doing the right things. Only then can the economic use of our resources follow. An extensive keyword analysis with a view toward the lowest-hanging fruit is part of this in any case.

Next week we will show you more about: Improving performance: technical optimization.

Series: How top companies handle big data in SEO

On our website you can get the complete Big data-series as complete eBook. Download now!

1. Promoting productivity: managing international teams and agencies. Large quantities of data require a very fine allocation of rights. For reasons of data protection on the one hand, but also for quality reasons: If everyone can do whatever he or she wants to, you end up not really knowing what’s inside the big data pot. The Suite allows you to perform these tasks in a simple and user-friendly way thanks to the allocation of rights.
2. Quick overview: managing different campaigns in a structured way. Large companies always pursue multiple goals at one time. These goals can be pursued individually using the features of the Searchmetrics Suite, such as tagging and multi-tagging. But the Suite also lets you adapt and automate every report and every chart.
3. Observing competition: learning from your competitors. Competition is sometimes the biggest surprise in online marketing. Our offline competitors are potentially only marginal online competitors, whereas our offline partners are actually our toughest competitors. We provide just the right environment in numerous data pools.
4. Pick the cherries: tapping into hidden potential. It’s not always worthwhile to work on the keywords with the largest number of searches. Competition, universal search and existing ranks also play an important part.
5. Improving performance: technical optimization. Sometimes even the best SEO gets muddled up when dealing with a large page. We crawl every page and report error pages and optimization potential for keywords.
6. Return on investment: paying attention to the conversion. Ultimately, it’s about the money. Is a PPC campaign worth it or would the budget be better allocated to SEO optimization. What’s more worthwhile? We supply figures to help you make this decision.
7. Optimizing processes: saving time and money. One employee on the team needs a daily report, another one a monthly summary. Our reports are highly flexible, relevant and can be generated with just a few clicks.

So you see: There’s a lot to be done. Big data isn’t just marketing hype or a simple glance into a crystal ball filled with data. Big data is a necessary and effective way of working that is simply part of enterprise SEO and has to be learned. We help you with it. Stay tuned!

The post Big Data in SEO (4): Pick the keyword-cherries appeared first on Searchmetrics SEO Blog.

Searchmetrics Essentials = Research only

From now the Searchmetrics Essentials are a Research only product. The three different modules which cost each $99 before are combined in one Research product now. That means that in this product you’ll find SEO, PPC, Links and Social analysis altogether. It is easier to understand and easier to use. Worldwide there is no other software that gives you this easy and comprehensive entry in the SEO world. We also thought about a good pricing for a very long time. The price is important because it must be a no-brainer that has no touch of cheapness. We deliver an awesome value and we want everybody in the world to get easy access to Searchmetrics data. If you start working and if you need individual and Enterprise like features than you have to switch to our Suite.

You get the new Essentials for $69 a month and it includes all modules. This is crazy and it is no special offer that will change in the future. You can order the Essentials in our online shop only.

The difference between the “old” and the new Essentials are the choice of 3 out of 18 countries for SEO and PPC Research and the access to the current data. If you need all countries or historical data for the past years with every information also around Panda, Penguin etc. you’ll have to switch to the Suite. The good thing is that many Marketers start with their national market and current data. This is perfect for every kind of analysis. And you also get all backlinks and social links. If you then need individual projects, access for more team members, more data = Suite.

Searchmetrics Suite = Individual local, national and international projects + all Research options

The differentiation of the Suite to the Essentials is important to us. The Suite is our flag ship with many awesome national and international well-known brands. It is the perfect software for SEO and/or Social projects. But also for the Suite we differentiate our target groups. For example it makes no sense to sell a national only customer software which is capable of monitoring data in 124 countries in the world or selling an API which will never be used. Since December we thought about a reasonable product lineup and pricing. You’ll find what we think fits every need on our new designed homepage.

The Suite packages differentiate in number of users, projects, keyword queries, number of countries, analytics and conversion integrations, historical data, number of API keys, personal workshops etc.

In no case we wanted to have an all-in-one device suitable for every purpose. This makes no sense and this is not Searchmetrics. For us it is important what customers really need  brought together with our ideas. Feature-Fuc***g is out. Today it is more important to take out the complexity and to solve problems as easy as possible. Successful companies like Evernote, Basecamp, Whats App, Dropbox or even Google do things easy. It’s about doing the things right and doing the right things. We believe that we absolutely do that with our two product lines. You can start with the Suite Starter with 3 projects for a reasonable price of $399 / month and upgrade to Enterprise level with hundreds of projects, user accounts, API and third party data integration with the Suite Ultimate.

We’re an innovator in our industry since 2007. We are an ideal for many companies. I’m sure that you’ll like this new approach with Research only and project based SEO software. Your feedback is absolutely welcome.

Your Marcus

The post Searchmetrics Essentials = Research | Suite = Individual Projects + Research appeared first on Searchmetrics SEO Blog.