Today I’m writing a post about a ‘hidden feature’ of the Searchmetrics Suite. That sounds a little funny because the market analysis is actually about as hidden as everything else. But honestly now – who has used it to research anything in the last few weeks? Ah ha… nobody raises their hand. It is therefore high time to make yourself familiar with the strongest feature of the Suite.
Firstly, we must briefly define ‘market’ and ‘market segment’. What do these terms mean? A market like the banking sector or the aluminum industry? A weekly market? No, the Suite orients itself quite simply according to what it knows from its operator’s market – entered keywords define a domain’s SEO market. And whoever has followed my advice from previous weeks and put love into the definition of monitored keywords is already finished with the prep-work for market monitoring and needs now only reap their rewards. And you can find it all – regarding a domain at least – under ‘Market Analysis / Domain Performance’
Select a domain, confirm everything, wait a little and then off we go. The ‘wait a little’ can incidentally also be a little bit more. The reason for this is that the Suite has to search out and calculate all the data for the following tables in real time. With a few hundred keywords, this can take a little while. But the waiting is well worth your while.
At a glance – Ranking Dynamic
This powerful collections of tables begins with the so-called ‘Ranking Dynamic’. In this section, keywords assigned to a domain are assessed according to their movability. To this end, the Suite analyzes how much search results have changed for a search term, and applies this to the different results pages (positions 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 and within the first 100.) Why should this interest me? Quite simply – if there is a lot of movement in the SERPS, the way to the top will be much quicker. Otherwise it is interesting to see which keywords (according to categorizations like long tail, brand, money etc.) yield relatively static first page but rather more dynamic second page results.
Further with Domain Ranking
Continuing on this topic, a short anecdote from an agency pitch in which we took part. We presented the potential client (a shopping service vendor) with their true competitors on the basis of the keywords that they had given us. The CEO and marketing people’s faces fell as they realized that they had understood the situation up until now completely differently and didn’t stand a chance against the competition with their current strategy. The problem wasn’t other shopping services as believed, but the shops themselves. This lead to a complete reboot of their SEO strategy. This is the image that was responsible:
With a quick look we can see where the monitored domain (the green dot) finds itself in relation to the ‘Positions between 100 and 1’ and ‘Number of monitored keywords’ axes. The best position would be top-right and the red dot marks the strongest domain in the market (most often Wikipedia or Amazon according to the keyword category). Of course, with a mouseover the Suite also reveals which domains are behind which blue bubbles.
Behind it, by the way, is hidden an (exportable) table, in which the values are also extensively detailed and sortable for reading according to SERP subpages.
What more does one need? The Domain Dynamic!
This lets me know quickly, of anyone who might become a problem for me in my market. Here you can find domains with fewer or ‘bad’ placings for my keywords a few weeks ago but that are now at the point where they can substantially improve them.
And then – Keywords Advertiser
This is a table with all the advertisers for my keywords. And I have been told that they are interesting. As my horizon relating to all things SEA and AdWords is somewhat limited, I won’t venture an assessment. So take look for yourself:
Also for affiliates, domains and researchers – Keyword Performance
Finishing with one more tidbit, just to get the mouths of operators for pure affiliate page and/or domain watering – Keyword Performance. Here we can meticulously investigate the progress of all domains positioned for a keyword within a chosen time frame.
In a second table you will find the domains with the biggest movements within this time frame. This naturally sharpens our focus for the chances and parameters around an exciting keyword. Incidentally, it’s also exciting when you can check all the knowledge and experience gained from SEO conferences here using an example keyword. This can lead to some surprises. For example, concerning the development of keyword domains or brand domains (yes – for me there is a difference) in the previous months.
But this is something that you can all see for yourselves – you don’t need me to tell you.
P.S.: Who’s actually writing this stuff? My name is Eric Kubitz and I am one of the co-founders of CONTENTmanufaktur GmbH Anyone trying to reach me can do so via e-mail (ek@contentmanufaktur.net) or on Twitter. ‘Til next time!