SiteProNews

SEO Metrics to SEO Action: 7 Ingenious Ways to Use SEO Reports – A SEO-News Exclusive Article

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 10:00 PM PDT

spn_exclusive Did you believe SEO reports were just for SEO companies? Ok, this is just as true as the fact that dough is only used to make doughnuts. Those who provide SEO services can’t do without SEO reports, because they have to demonstrate their progress to clients. However, there are many more ways in which SEOs, webmasters or site owners can use SEO reports. In this article, I’d like to discuss those ways.

Please note that all the recommendations provided here are based on the SEO reports generated by SEO PowerSuite SEO PowerSuite – our homemade SEO software bundle. However, they would be just as true for the SEO reports produced by any other reputable SEO tool.

1.Take Your Site’s Measurements

Every SEO campaign begins with taking your site’s measurements. What does it mean? It means, that your website’s content, structure and backlinks should be analyzed, target keywords identified and your SEO campaign goals set. However, many webmasters and site owners who optimize their websites themselves skip this step or simply don’t know that they have to take it.

So, how exactly can an SEO report help you at this point?

To record your website’s initial metrics you, can either:

A. Use an Excel spreadsheet and enter the data manually
B. Push a button and have all the necessary metrics recorded for you.

Thus, using SEO reports at this point is a matter of convenience. SEO tools like SEO PowerSuite provide you with the following types of SEO reports:

Keyword Research Report
The report helps you easily pick profitable keywords for your SEO campaign by displaying each key term’s search volume, competition and traffic.

Website Audit Report
It shows in what condition your website’s content and structure are, so that you can measure them PRIOR to beginning with your SEO.

Website Backlinks Report
It shows how many backlinks are pointing to your website and what quality they are.

Competition Analysis Report
To run a competition analysis report, you have to first identify your competitors. It’s best to make a separate list of top competitors for EACH of your main keywords in EACH of the search engines you are targeting.

Then, run a website audit report and a website backlinks report for each competing site. You can use the data you receive for 2 purposes:

(1) to get insight into your competitors’ on-page and off-page SEO strategies and
(2) to monitor THEIR progress over time.

2. Get an X-ray of Your Site’s Structure
An SEO report also comes in handy when you need to see your website’s entire structure in a snap. An SEO audit report provides you with what is similar to an X-ray of your site’s architecture. It lists all your webpages and subpages.

It also helps you identify problems that exist on each page, such as broken links, coding errors, server response glitches, etc. It’s important to identify them, because these structural issues degrade your site’s positions in the SERPs.

SEO audit reports should be run on a regular basis, since you never know when your site’s structure may get crippled.

3. Build a Rankings Progress Graph
Checking your site’s rankings manually isn’t a big deal, unless you target 100s of keywords or 100s of search engines. However, when it comes to monitoring your site’s PROGRESS over time, things become more complicated, since it’s hard to draw a progress graph and keep it updated by hand.

Here is when an SEO report can help. Most SEO rankings reports produce visual progress graphs that allow you to easily track your rankings progress. The advantage is that, no matter how many keywords or search engines you have to track, it takes only minutes to generate the graph.

4. Align Rankings, Traffic and Bounce Rates Data
A successful SEO campaign is not only defined by high search engine rankings, but also by high ROI, which is your ultimate goal. So, while you definitely need to keep track of your rankings, it’s equally important to see how they are related to the Web traffic you’re getting as well your bounce rates.

A solid website traffic report allows you to see that. It provides each keyword’s Rankings, Traffic and Bounce Rate info side by side, which lets you see whether high rankings for a particular keyword really pay off and whether your keywords bring just the right kind of visitors.

Please note that such SEO-plus-analytics reports are only produced by ‘SEO tools that are integrated with Google Analytics’ (http://www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/).

5.Get New Keyword Ideas
By looking at some SEO reports, you can get quite unique insights regarding keywords.

For example, a traffic report may become a revelation in a way that it shows you, in plain view, what keywords are not getting you traffic, even though you are ranking highly for them. It also lets you see which of the keywords that you are ranking on page 3 for are actually bringing you visitors, so that you can just go ahead and boost up your positions for those search terms.

Also, a backlink analysis report lets you harvest competitor’s anchor texts, which is another valuable piece of backlink- and keyword-related intelligence.

6. Watch Competitors’ Every Move
SEO reports run on competing sites allow you to see their entire SEO landscape at once.

A competition rankings report enables you to monitor your top competitor’s RANKINGS ups and downs at all times.

A page optimization audit report provides insight into the way your top competitors use Keywords in their page titles, meta descriptions, site copy, anchor texts, bold text, italics, etc.

A backlinks analysis report lets you see how off-page SEO is done on a competing site in a snap. You can easily see where the competitor is getting their links from, whether they use blog/forum commenting for link building, what PR backlinks they basically have, and much more.

7. Dig Into New Backlink Opportunities
Speaking of backlinks, SEO reports offer the easiest way to discover “juicy” backlink sources by analyzing backlinks on competing websites.

Let’s say, you simply grab a competitor’s URL and enter it in Google’s search box like this: “link: competingsite.com”

You will be shown some portion of backlinks on the website you just entered. However, certain expertise and experience are required to determine which of those backlinks bring the website the most link juice.

You can even use a backlink checker tool and get a plethora of backlink metrics, but even then you will have to spend time analyzing those metrics and picking out the best backlink sources.

At the same time, a clear-cut backlink analysis report highlights and lets you see the most profitable backlink sources in plain view. Just grab them and go.

As you see, SEO reports can be used in a variety of ways, besides being used to report to clients. They help tremendously to record the initial state of your website before you start the optimization work. They also allow you to track yours and competitor’s SEO progress, help you get keyword ideas and discover new backlinks sources.

Alesya is a blogger and a marketing manager at Link-Assistant.com, the company behind SEO PowerSuite toolkit. Link-Assistant.Com is a group of SEO experts with extensive SEO experience. Based on their expertise, the company’s SEO tools were developed, setting the SEO industry’s benchmark for technology-powered link building and Web promotion.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SEO Metrics to SEO Action: 7 Ingenious Ways to Use SEO Reports – A SEO-News Exclusive Article