02 Dec SEO Reports
Hi there, folks. Paul Barrs signing in for a quick client training video.
We’re going to look at the search engine optimization reports, the SEO reports that my system generates each month. And I forward them to clients to give you an understanding of what it means, what you can learn from it and how to apply that to your website. Now, I’m just going use one of my clients here, work I’ve actually completed in the past and now they’re just getting the monthly reports to keep an eye on things.
Of course, yes, SEO is an ongoing thing but once the work is completed all that’s required then is to have new, fresh, regular updated content added to your site and syndicated through social media. Of course, to also monitor your analytics and SEO reports, such as this one, to look for changes-things and gaps that you can improve on if necessary. So scrolling down, this is one of my local business clients. Great business, great service. If you’ve got problems with leaks and so on and you happen to be in this area give these guys a call at Leak Tech.
Moving down, however, first things first. We look at this section of the report, which is just basically the summary. I like to have the summary. Small local business from this, they generate what they need and I also give them a summary of their of competitors. So here we have just summary on traffic and so on. Up, down, by organic, by social, by direct. Actually, I’m not plugged into their social so I’m not reporting on that just here.
Also, domain authority. This is a combination of so many different factors, not just their domain name, but how long it’s been around, the quality of the pages, a whole bunch of different things. And what I look for here is, I guess, the ups and downs over a period of time. Not just for one week. Not just for one month. But here we have competitor number one, domain authority 16. This client currently a 12. Leaks Spotters, number 22. This client currently a number 12, and here we go.
These do not move very often. If you see a big drop in your own and the following month it’s going down again, you better call me. We find out why. But if it’s one up or one down in any given month, that’s okay. That happens. That could be based on what you’re doing but also many, many other factors as well.
Scrolling down just a little bit further in this particular section. The number of external links that they have coming back to their website and to their competitor’s. Now external links refer to other websites linking back to you. If you find that your keyword rankings for your primary keywords and others that you’re working in your strategy, if you’ve done everything on the page that can be done and you’re still not getting what you want in terms of your SEO rankings, then we need to look at external linking but not first. We must do all the other on-page first. Look at your keyword research. Look at your page content. Look at your internal link structures.
This, however, could be the difference between success and failure if all other things are equal. The number of keywords currently ranking, positions 1 to 210, this client. We’ve got them up to 23 of the 27 key words that we’re tracking in comparison to their competitors just here. So these guys seem to be on a bit of a move up. Again, I’m not too fussed by anything major because they’ll always be moving up or moving down one, two, even three to five within any given week. But if we find a trend where the rankings are dropping out. We’ve got 23 out of 27 here at the moment. If that dropped down to 18, if that then dropped down to 15, then I’d want to be getting back into it and doing some more work. Remember this client is testing maintenance at the moment.
I also have the top keywords as they are ranking. I’m monitoring Google Australia for these ones. Position number one, one, two, three, four here and number two for this one just here. These are the primary key words. This is what the whole website was built around. So again, you want to monitor this.
We’ve got page one and rank one two and three rankings. If they lost everything out of that one, two or three I’d be looking at what their competition did as well as what they may have done. And that’s what this summary just here is for. Let’s me know the changes up and down. There will always be changes up and down, like I just said. But the important ones, we’ve got 11 of our tracked keywords ranking in position one, two or three. We’ve got another 12 ranking between four and 10 somewhere else on the first page.
Now this is not just our keywords and maybe the main page but it can be other pages as well. We’ve got a couple more here on the second page, third page and out somewhere else. Got a few here that weren’t really ever targeted so they’re not going to go anywhere. But as we scroll down to the tracked keywords overview, this section of the report, then we can have a close look at not just what keyword is ranking but also what page.
Now in most cases it will be the homepage. You can see here, particularly for a tightly niched website like this. This little indicator here reflects that there are also some local search things appearing and there is the client not in that list but they’re doing their best.
Hey, it’s better if you can be number one, number two above the local search. But if you can’t, you can also look for opportunities in the local search as well.
Scrolling down, we can see that there are some others. Other pages appearing in the index and . . . we just don’t even have content for these pages yet. I guess they’ll get around to it when they’re ready. They’re kind of happy at the moment. Wouldn’t you agree that’s a good place to be? So scrolling down, keywords tracked compared to your competition. Now these are the competitors that the client gave to me. We may change this one at some point because they’re just not ranking at the moment. Not even sure if their website is still there.
That’s the kind of thing I’d go and have a look at if these reports were now coming to me. I’d also be watching. “Hmm, look at this competitor starting an upward trend. Keep an eye on that one.” Of course if they overtook you, which is just here, then you’d come back to me and say, “Paul, we need to work some more content. We need to do a few more things.”
Notice that this competitor is starting to track down a little bit. They’re sort of more on the second page. Mm. But that could also change. Worthwhile watching. So this report is invaluable for looking at not just what you are doing but what your competitors are doing.
The next section of the report to look at is the pages to optimize. Now, this is an interesting one and easily misread. In this particular report, we get here. We’ve got this page is currently grading at B. There are opportunities of A. Obviously very good. B, C, D or F-fail. But for “Leak detection Brisbane,” well, its primary keyword target was “leak detection Sunshine Coast.” See, they’re ranking number four for Brisbane and I guess if they wanted to really target that, it could say here in the meta-title, “leak detection Brisbane and Sunshine Coast” and that would make a change on it’s own and perhaps change a few other things. But they’re based Sunshine Coast.
So even though it says it’s a grade B, nothing needs to be changed with that. We don’t want to change that because it still talks about what they do. Similar things here. Notice all of these Fs, these fails. Now, they’re not fails and I choose not to list all 45 pages. They don’t even actually have 45 pages but they have 45 opportunities of a grade F. Here’s the thing. You could have in many cases, if I scroll up here . . . Look at this. We’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten different grading opportunities there just for the homepage. They’re not all going to be a grade A. Most of them are going to be a grade C, D, E or F because you can have multiple grading opportunities for the one page.
So if you’re getting these reports from me and you’d like to have a look at all the page grades, let me know. I can just generate that for you. It only takes a moment of time. Small cost just to send that out. But you could be getting an F for six different keyword phrases for one page because that one page is actually up here and it’s an A and we’re not targeting those keyword phrases. So it’s easily misread. Not worthwhile being concerned about it. This particular website, I think, only has about a dozen pages. Not even that, half a dozen pages and then some blog posts. None of those blog posts have been optimized. The blog posts support the main pages from an SEO point-of-view.
Scrolling down, pages with high priority issues. Nothing. These were all fixed. If any of these start to come up in your reports and you’re receiving these from me, you should get in touch so we can have a look at them. Pages with medium, missing meta-description tag.
Now, their WordPress theme irritates me considerably because it adds in the opportunity for a title and description on images, which of course we don’t do. So there are pages where the images are on the page and nothing else. We have one where the title element is too long. I’m not sure what that is, but if something were to happen at the site and someone else were to work on it and that changed then we could look. But basically, these numbers here, if you’re receiving these reports from me and you’re not quite sure what they’re about, then we can generate a report just on this for you.
Of course, if I’ve been doing your SEO work then I’ve set it up correctly. Nothing just there. So scrolling down. Last one. I mentioned right at the top link metrics. Let me just scroll back. We’ll have a quick look. Up here, external links. I said that this is the area that we look at when everything else has been done and obviously all other things are equal. Good on page work, etc., etc. How do you compare to your competition?
Now, at the moment they’re doing well on killing their competition but we have some link metrics here. Number of external total links. Linking root domains and so on. These obviously are a lot probably coming from directories, listings and various things. But if your rankings are not where you want, you want to come here and look at this report and look and see who’s winning.
Now, let’s just have a quick look at a very interesting fact. If I come up here to the competitor, Australian Leak Detection, not in the top 50 for any of these keywords. Could be because they’re targeting other competitive key words. But Australian Leak Detection, their website gets the highest rank from these reports and the highest trust from these reports. Been around for a long time, and there are a whole bunch of other factors. But those things on their own, not getting them good rankings. Can you see that? We showed it earlier. It’s a combination of everything.
There are just four things. You need to be targeting the right key words for your audience. Two, you have to have the right on-page content for your audience. Forget about SEO. Target things for the audience. That’s important. Three, you need to have a good internal link structure. Again, for your audience so they can find their way around. They should be, whenever they arrive on your website, no more than one click from a conversion page, a page that asks them to make a decision. Yes, I will contact you. No, I won’t. Yes, I will buy this product. No, I won’t. Yes, I will subscribe to download that report or, no, I won’t. That’s a conversion point. They need to arrive on your website and be no more than one click away from a conversion point. That’s the internal linking system.
And then number four is the external links. Yes, we need to have some external links but they need to be in appropriate places, what? For a user point-of-view. It’s all about the UX, the user experience.
So for my clients who are watching this video, they are the points where you need to look at as you scroll through. Now, it takes longer for me to explain in this video. You can do this in just five minutes. Open one report from last month. Have a look at the report from this month. Are there some big, big changes from a negative point-of-view? Big changes? Let me know. Small changes? Don’t be too concerned. Watch and see what happens next month. Let’s track over a period of time. One, two, three months not just one, two, three days.
Have a great one. I’ll talk to you again soon.
