SERP Analysis Table

PA – Moz Page Authority

This column shows you the Page Authority for the given URL. Page Authority is a metric from MOZ which is a representation of the overall ranking strength potential of that individual page.

DA – Moz Domain Authority

This is similar to Page Authority except for the overall domain. Domain Authority shows you how strong the domain’s ranking potential is. A strong domain can lift the individual pages to rank better for keywords even when the individual pages themselves might not be quite as strong. An example of this is how Amazon and Wikipedia rank many pages on the first page of Google that have few if any incoming backlinks. This is due to the strength of those domains lifting those pages up to rank well.

Doms – Domains

This column shows the number of unique linking domains to the given URL. The more unique linking domains usually indicate a stronger backlink profile and hence a stronger page.

DomsD – Domains to Domain

This gives you the number of unique linking domains to the entire domain the URL sits on. So if the URL is an Amazon URL, the DomsD is showing you the number of linking domains to the entire amazon.com domain.

Auth – Dofollow Links

Auth stands for authority passing links. To simplify, this means the amount of external dofollow backlinks pointing to the given URL.

Links – Backlinks

This is the total number of incoming external backlinks both dofollow and nofollow.

URL

This column shows you whether the exact keyword match was found in the actual URL seen in Google.

Rankings/Traffic Table

URL Keywords

The number of keywords we’ve found ranking for the particular URL.

URL Traffic

The estimated traffic coming from Google for that particular URL.

Domain Keywords

The amount of keywords we’ve found ranking for the entire domain the URL sits on.

Domain Traffic

The estimated traffic coming from Google for the entire domain the URL sits on.

Social

Facebook

The total amount of Facebook shares for the particular URL.

Pinterest

The total amount of Pinterest Pins for the particular URL.

We’ve removed the mRank and mDom columns as these metrics are no longer supported by MOZ and were basically just duplicates of PA and DA. We’ve also removed the Title and Desc columns now that Google is dynamically changing the Titles and Descriptions shown in the search results. These no longer give any indication as to the keyword difficulty. Currently, for the time being, we still show these columns in the Deep Analysis section if you still would like to see them.

Summed Stats / Links Score

Summed Stats

The summed stats table shows you the lowest and average stats for each metric in the SERPs Analysis table.

Links Score

Links Score uses only 1 metric (linking domains) to determine a score on a scale of 0-100. The higher the score the more difficult it may be to rank. This is meant to mimic another popular SEO tool’s keyword difficulty score. Our normal keyword difficulty score uses over a dozen metrics and is much more accurate. Keep in mind Links Score is using just 1 metric and takes nothing else into account when determining the score. Links Score may be useful as a secondary reference for how difficult a keyword might be to rank.

The post SERP Analysis Table appeared first on Keysearch.

Normally we had what we called a “real-time cache” of keyword scores (7-30 days depending). When doing a search we would only show these recently cached scores. The reasoning here, and something we prided ourselves on compared to other tools was that you always got real-time, up-to-date keyword scores. Most other keyword tools show keyword scores that have been cached for very long periods of time.

With this new feature update, you now have the best of both worlds! You see the real-time keyword scores as usual, and in addition, you also see more keyword scores immediately with our cached keyword scores database. Currently the feature is only available for Global (All Locations) and United States searches but we hope to bring it to every location option within the next few weeks/months.

Using Cached Scores

Freshly cached scores from our normal “real-time cache” will show with full color as usual. Cached scores not in the real-time cache due to age, will have a slightly dulled color. You can see an example of this below.

If you decide you want to update the data on a cached keyword score you can just click on it and it will update as usual. Giving you the same ability to update scores as before with the additional ease of showing more scores right from the get-go.

Benefits of Cached Scores

Since cached scores allow you to see more keyword scores during your searches you will be able to work faster and narrow down your keyword choices quicker.

Although keyword difficulty scores change over time, they usually don’t change that drastically. Cached scores will allow you to get a better idea of which keywords are already too hard to target, or on the other hand, show you keywords that might be easy and ripe for the picking. This allows you to not waste time and credits checking keywords that you wouldn’t bother with anyway.

Seeing more scores will also give you a better idea of the overall topic. If you load a keyword search and see a lot of red, you probably know the topic, in general, is fairly hard, and finding low competition keywords in that topic might be more difficult. The same works in reverse. Doing a keyword search and seeing very few red keywords will be a good indicator that this topic might have some keywords that will be easy to go after and rank for.

Bulk Check Credit Saver

In the preferences menu on the Settings/Upgrade page, you’ll see an option titled “Bulk Check Credit Saver”. This is enabled by default on all accounts.

What this does is skip over all cached scores when doing bulk keyword difficulty checks. This saves credits and makes it so you can check more keywords for difficulty or do more searches. If you don’t want this feature enabled and want to have all keywords including the cached scores updated, you can just uncheck this box.

Even with this unchecked it will still skip recently checked keyword scores in our real-time cache as it normally did before.

Cached Scores: Future Features

With the addition of the cached scores database, we now have access to more keyword scores to potentially incorporate into future features. For example, we have plans to use the cached score database within our Explorer and Organic Keywords section to show keyword difficulty scores there too. This is something we’ve begun working on and hope to have released in the next few months. The future is bright!

The post New Feature: Cached Keyword Difficulty Scores appeared first on Keysearch.

Why The Change?

When we first launched the Explorer tool a few years back we wanted to make the transition from other SEO tools as easy as possible for our users. This is why we used United States search volume for this database. It was what most users were already accustomed to and was just easier for comparison.

As time went on we were limited by this. Our keywords database is a global database and the United States search volume was just not accurate enough to predict traffic estimations for many websites. This change should give us better traffic estimations and more flexibility as to which keywords we can add to our ever-growing database.

Traffic Estimates

Although traffic estimates should now be more accurate we want to re-iterate, these are just estimates. You may find your site or other sites are higher or lower than the actual Google traffic coming in. Our estimates are based on ranking position using the search volumes we have available (mostly from Google) and the keywords in our database. These traffic estimates should be used more as a comparison from site to site and not as any definite idea of what the traffic might be.

Since Google doesn’t publicly release click-through rates for their search results, and their search volumes are not 100% accurate (although we try our best to make them more accurate as you can read about here: https://www.keysearch.co/blog/ungrouping-close-variants/), it makes traffic estimates very difficult. Not to mention that our database does not contain every single keyword imaginable.

A Better Future

Due to this change, we will be able to expand the size of our database more easily, and incorporate more keywords from non-English speaking languages as time goes on. This should only make things bigger and better when it comes to your keyword research and site analysis!

The post Explorer Now Uses Global Search Volumes appeared first on Keysearch.

Why the Change?

The Keyword Planner option in Keysearch has slowly been expanding on Keyword Planner suggestions for years and has really morphed into more of a “Related Keywords” search option. We haven’t relied solely on Keyword Planner when using this setting in a long time. To continue calling it “Keyword Planner” is just no longer accurate. Here are few more specific reasons why.

Not Returning Exact Keyword Data

As discussed in the article Ungrouping Close Variants Keyword Planner and Google, in general, are no longer showing accurate search volumes for the majority of keywords, nor are they returning data for many keywords. We here at Keysearch have been correcting this for some time now and ungrouping these close variants.

Not Showing Results

Keyword Planner has stopped showing suggestion results for many different queries they determine sensitive. We here at Keysearch have already been compensating for the lack of Keyword Planner results for years by supplementing these searches with our own database suggestions.

Showing Limited Results

Sometimes Keyword Planner was showing very limited results and we were able to deliver many more results by combining suggestions from our database.

Better Suggestions

By incorporating a hybrid approach of Keyword Planner suggestions and our own database, we are able to deliver better keyword suggestions for many searches.

Time to Update The Name

All in all the “Keyword Planner” option was already a hybrid for a long time now and the name just doesn’t reflect what is actually going on behind the scenes anymore.

Credit Changes

Basically what this means for credits is that we no longer will have 2 different credit systems “Super Searches” and “Regular Searches”. All credits will be the same and you won’t need to worry about running out of Super Searches. For current users, absolutely nothing is changing. You don’t lose any credits. Your Super Search credits will just be added to your regular credit count. Nothing will be different on your end. The only thing that will be different is you no longer need to care about 2 different credit systems :).

So Do We Still Get Keyword Planner Suggestions?

Yes, you do. Like I said nothing is really changing except we are now calling the suggestion option “Related Keywords”. We will be using Keyword Planner suggestions in the “Related Keywords” searches just like we have been.

Keysearch Database vs. Database

Before this change, the “Keyword Planner” option had smaller credit allotments (Super Searches). To compensate for this we were using keyword planner suggestions in addition to our Keysearch Database suggestions when the “Keysearch Database” option was selected. This way, users wouldn’t lose the benefits of Keyword Planner suggestions when their Super Searches were exhausted.

This lead to the old “Keyword Planner” option and “Keysearch Database” option having very similar outputs. This was advantageous when credit limits were smaller for the “Keyword Planner” option but now is no longer needed since you are no longer restrained to smaller credit limits with the new “Related Keywords” option.

Due to this, we changed the name of the “Keysearch Database” option to just “Database”. It now acts more similarly to a Phrase Match or Broad Match database search and will be more of a complement to the “Related Keywords” option. Giving results from our database that are more “match” keywords rather than related.

Summing Up

To sum up, for current users nothing is changing other than the titles in the drop-down menu. For new users, the credit system will be much easier to understand. We just wanted to make everyone aware in case they were curious about the change.

The post Update Search Suggestion Names and Simplified Credits appeared first on Keysearch.

The History of Close Variants

Starting back in 2016 Google began grouping similar keywords together. For example, if you check the search volume for the keywords SEO and search engine optimization, Google will return the same search volume for both. This is definitely not right.

Originally this close variant grouping wasn’t very broad. It was mostly for things like abbreviations, common misspellings, and plurals. These were also the type of searches that Google would many times automatically show you the correct results for anyway.

As you can see above I spelled dog training incorrectly. Google didn’t show me the results for “dog traning” spelled incorrectly. It showed me results for the correct spelling dog training.

This is why in the beginning close variants weren’t that big of a deal. Sure if I checked the Google search volume for “dog traning” and “dog training”, Google would return the same search volume for both (the correct spelling search volume), but they did the same for their search results so it wasn’t much of an issue.

As time went on though Google kept expanding their close variant groupings. More and more keywords were getting grouped into close variants. It wasn’t just obvious keywords that were similar. Google started grouping almost everything under the sun.

It has gotten so bad recently, that keywords with completely different intent are showing the same search volume. Not to mention that 2 grouped keywords, showing the same search volume could have completely different search results. What this means is that you could be spending endless time and money chasing keywords that have very little search volume without knowing it. An example of this is one we saw first hand.

Mis-leading Close Variants

We provide a link indexing service. What this does is help SEO’s and agencies get their links indexed by Google. We had noticed that we were on page 1 for the search term “Google Indexer”. When we checked Google it returned the search volume as 1900 (United States search volume) for that term. Not too shabby. But why weren’t we seeing nearly that much traffic?

The reason we weren’t seeing any traffic is that the term was grouped into a close variant. The search volume we were seeing was actually for the search term “google index”. This could have been a big problem if we had spent time and money securing that ranking.

Close Variants in Action

To show you this in detail here is a search we did in keyword planner for the search term “google indexer” at the time.

Google didn’t even return the word “google indexer”. It only shows volume for the keyword “google index”. These are close variants in action. These are two different keywords with 2 different search volumes, but Google will now only show 1 search volume for both of them.

Now months later Google is finally showing search volume for Google Indexer instead of Google Index. The problem is these things change all of the time and it’s impossible to know when Google will decide or won’t decide to group the close variants.

Let’s go back to that original example. The keywords “SEO” and “Search Engine Optimization”. Take a look at what happens when I try and get the search volume for the keyword “search engine optimization”.

Once again, the same thing! This is terrible for SEO. Google no longer shows accurate search volumes for a huge amount of keywords. Even when they do show the search volume we aren’t sure if it’s the search volume for that exact keyword or many keywords search volumes grouped together and shown as one.

Also sometimes they may under report search volumes for keywords with minimal ad spend or sensitive topics. We are basically flying blind when it comes to choosing certain keywords. Until now!

True Volume

After months of research and tweaking, we are finally able to get back the true search volume for many of these close variant keywords. That’s why we are calling this “True Volume”. It’s a true representation of the monthly searches for keywords that Google no longer provides accurate info on. How does it work?

We have taken our huge keyword database and search volumes, collected over the years (before Google started grouping close variants). We’ve combined this with search trends data and other 3rd party search data to give, what we feel is as accurate as ever search volume for these keywords.

Currently, our True Volume algorithm is working mostly for English language keywords searched with the “All Locations”, “United States” and “United Kingdom” location settings. Very soon we will expand it to more locations, then down the road, we hope to expand it to more languages other than English. Also, we are constantly adding to our database of close variant keywords, so more and more keywords will show the True Volume as time goes on.

Our True Volume algorithm figures out the actual search volume of a close variant keyword and then rounds it into the usual Google search volume “buckets”. Google has used the same buckets to represent search volume for years now. For example, Google doesn’t say the search volume of the keyword is 2787. It instead shows 2900 (that is a search volume bucket). We’ve decided to do the same. This is for a few reasons.

• These Google search volume buckets are what we are used to seeing and make for better comparisons to keywords that aren’t close variant keywords.
• All search volumes are always just estimates. We believe this is why Google “buckets” search volumes to begin with. There is no exact “definite” search volume. These buckets give you more of an overall range of a search volume rather than an exact volume that could be wrong due to normal fluctuations.
• All in all, we just think it looks weird showing search volumes like 467,837!

What this all means

To sum it up, what this means is you are getting much more accurate search volume information. Even more accurate than Google. You may notice some keywords don’t match Google’s search volume figures. This is because Google is showing inaccurate search volume for most keywords now (close variants) and we are making things more accurate for you.

We are not the first tool to take this step into ungrouping close variants. Most of the major players in the industry MOZ, Ahrefs, etc.. have done the same. We took our time to ensure that our algorithm was very accurate. This change may save you a lot of heartache when it comes to targeting the correct keywords!

The post Ungrouping Close Variants appeared first on Keysearch.

Content Assistant is not your typical on-page SEO optimization tool. Most of your usual tools (for example Yoast) are there to help you with things like optimizing meta descriptions, page titles, headings, etc… Content Assistant is different. The main goal of Content Assistant is to help you maximize the ranking and traffic potential of the target topic.

Rather than concentrating on the technical SEO aspects of our article, Content Assistant helps us break down what type of content Google is looking for within the top page results and allows us to get the most out of each article we create.

It is also not meant to replace the normal keyword research functions. Content Assistant should be loaded up after you’ve already figured out which keyword and topic you’ll be writing about.

Content Assistant In Action

Recently we decided to release our Brainstorm Tool for free. We created a landing page for it targeting the overall topic “niche ideas.” We put together a landing page that we thought was competitive for a first-page result. Our page hovered around the 4th and 5th page of Google for weeks.

On Sept. 4th we decided to use the page as a case study for Content Assistant. We optimized our landing page content as per the “Must Words” and “Recommended Keywords” suggested by Content Assistant. We increased the word count to be more competitive with the top page results. We also used the “Content Snippets” and “Questions” for quick research. After Google re-crawled the page our rankings immediately went up to 27th and then as of today have gone up to #14!

*Update*: This page has now ranked on the 1st page of Google for 4 years and counting.

We hadn’t created any other backlinks (the internal link seen above was created today after the rankings update to further try and help rankings).

Now we are not guaranteeing these sorts of results for everyone and there could be some other factors at play here as well. Without a doubt though Content Assistant helped. This is not the only page of ours where we’ve seen gains after using Content Assistant but for the sake of keeping things brief, we are only including this particular page as an example.

Getting Started With Content Assistant

If you’d prefer you can skip down to the bottom where we created a quick video overview that explains most of what is in this tutorial. 

When you first open Content Assistant you will see the usual Keysearch search bar. Here is where you will type in your main keyword phrase or topic idea.

After you’ve clicked “search” it will go out and load all of the relevant data including the keyword difficulty score. You’ll notice there is a text area to work on your article as well as the right-hand column that contains the following tabs:

• Main
• Keywords
• Research
• Questions
• SERPS

Main Tab

The main tab gives you an overview of the stats for you your article. It shows you the keyword difficulty, the Word Count, Recommended Keyword meters and Must Words.

Word Count Meter

This meter will calculate the number of words in your article and compare it to the average word count of the top 10 Google results. The goal is to try and get our article word count close to or above the first-page average word count.

Recommended Keywords

This meter calculates how many of the Recommended Keywords we’ve used in our article. A safe goal is to try and incorporate as many “Must Words” as possible and around 40% of the total Recommended Keywords. More is always better though!

You’ll notice as we type any Recommended Keywords will turn from orange to blue, signifying that they are now found in your article and the Recommended Keywords meter will calculate the percentage found as well.

Must Words

Must Words (known as LSI keywords) are the most used phrases and keywords within the first page results of Google. We highly recommend including these in your article.

This feature is basically giving you an overall breakdown of what Google is really looking for in the top results. By including as many of these words as possible you are ensuring that your article is covering the overall theme of the topic and in turn giving Google what it’s looking for in a first page result for this keyword phrase.

Keywords Tab

The keywords tab shows Related Keywords and Top URL Keywords.

Related Keywords

Related Keywords are Google’s most suggested topics shown in order of relevancy. These are the keywords and topics you see at the bottom of the Google results when doing a search.

This is taking an even closer look into Google’s algorithm by showing us the phrases Google closely relates to the main topic. Since they are associating these other phrases with the main topic it most likely means that by including these keywords and phrases in your article you are more thoroughly covering the overall idea of your topic, which can only help with rankings.

Top URL Keywords

These are the top traffic getting keywords for the 1st ranked Google result for the keyword searched. This is something we examined more in-depth in our website traffic analysis post but to sum up here, by having a peek into the keywords driving the most traffic for the top result, we are seeing what Google expects to see in a top result for this keyword. We are also seeing other potential traffic driving keywords and phrases that we can include in our article to really maximize all of the ranking potential for the article.

Both Related Keywords and Top URL Keywords may be hard to fit in the article “as is”. If you can great! If not though, what you are really aiming for is to include the overall topic and idea of these keywords in your article. Don’t sweat it if many of these keywords are not lighting up blue and increasing the Recommended Keywords Meter. We are using them more as a guide rather than the Must Words which we want as many blue as possible.

Research Tab

Content Snippets

The research tab contains what we call “Content Snippets”. These are relevant snippets taken from web pages found in our database. They can help you quickly research your topic by skimming the snippets or by viewing the web pages that contain the snippets easily right within the popup window.

You can also choose to only view snippets from the first page results using the “SERP Top Pages” option if you prefer.

You can also load Content Snippets for any of the Recommended Keywords by clicking on the keywords within the Main or Keywords tabs. This will load the Content Snippets panel in the article text box area. Once you are done viewing the Content Snippets you can just click “Back to article” to go back to the article text box.

Questions Tab

These are popular questions found on your topic. These are questions taken directly from Google, Quora, and other popular question sites. Some might be good sub-headings for your article. Including a few of them may help gain featured snippets & overall topic relevancy.

Adding questions and answers in your articles is a great way to grab a lot more long-tail traffic and Google loves ranking pages that answer questions directly.

SERPS Tab

Here is where you can see an overview of the first page Google results, their titles and word counts. You can view the pages in our page view popup or click the link to open them in a new tab. This just gives you a nice quick view of the top results as a reference.

Final Thoughts

Content Assistant is not meant to replace your normal blogging tools. For me I like to write my article as normal, then copy the text into Content Assistant and build from there. Some of you may prefer to start your articles within Content Assistant. Either way, we highly recommend running your articles through to ensure you are maximizing their full SEO potential!

Content Assistant Video Overview

This video gives a quick walk-through of the features discussed in this article. 

The post Content Assistant Tutorial appeared first on Keysearch.

One thing that we felt could take everything to another level was adding the ability to estimate the google traffic coming in for any ranking URL or website. To be able to see, even just a rough estimate of the traffic coming in for specific keywords could completely transform the keyword research process.

We’re going to take a look at what exactly these traffic estimates are and how we come up with them. We’re also going to show you how you can use these estimates to drive loads more traffic to each one of your blog posts and completely revamp how you think about keyword research.

Checking Website Traffic Estimates

You’ll notice in the explorer tool’s organic keyword box there is an overview of the searched website or URL’s estimated traffic. This will give you a rough idea of how many visitors per month are coming in from Google. Keep in mind this is a monthly average and just an estimate. To be honest an estimate is all you really need for our purposes. We’ll take about why this is later on.

We determine this by taking the ranking positions of the URLs found and combining that with search volume data to come up with an estimate for each keyword.

When you click on the “View Keywords” button you can then see the traffic broken down for each keyword. This is giving you a glimpse into how much potential traffic your competitors might be bringing in for each and every one of their ranking keywords.

For each keyword you now have at your disposal the position the site ranks for, the search volume, CPC, traffic estimate, and ranking URL found. The Keysearch Explorer is giving you a lot to work with but there’s more!

Website Rankings/Traffic Checker

Now head on over to the keyword research page. When you check the SEO difficulty for a keyword you’ll see the usual SERP analysis and breakdown of the first page results. In addition to that, you now have the option to see the total rankings and traffic for each URL that is ranking on the first page. We also show you the total rankings and traffic at the domain level as well!

Just click the Rankings/Traffic tab and it will load up all of these statistics for you. It doesn’t stop there. If you click on any of the stats it will load a similar popup to the one in Explorer. If you click on a number in the URL (or Domain) Rankings column it will show you the top 1000 keywords for that URL (or domain) sorted by ranking position. The same goes for clicking on the traffic stats, but instead, this will sort the results by traffic estimates.

Discovering Keywords Through Traffic Estimates

Ok great, that’s fine and dandy, but how does this help me? Are you ready to get your mind blown… Well, maybe I’ve taken that too far :). I do know though, that when we were building this feature and I began to realize what I’m about to show you, excitement washed over me as I started seeing the potential here. It has honestly forever changed my entire keyword research process.

The stats above are for the keyword term “dog behavior training”. Let’s click to show the traffic for the first ranking URL. This will sort that URL’s ranking keywords by traffic.

Here we can see all of the top keywords that are driving traffic for this particular URL. It is basically showing us the long-tail keyword potential we could have if we ranked a page for this keyword!

What does this mean? We now have the ability to see the true potential of ranking for a keyword. When we decide to target a keyword (“dog behavior training”) we are not just going to rank for that keyword. Google is going to rank us for similar variations and other long-tail phrases that our content touches upon.

By seeing what keywords are driving traffic for these top URL’s we are getting a window into not only what potential we may have but what Google WANTS us to give them in order to rank. Seeing as we have all this data at our fingertips how are we going to utilize it properly?

Driving More Traffic

The first place to start is by optimizing your content with these traffic-driving keywords. The top URLs are showing us a clear path to gaining more traffic for each keyword we are targeting. Let’s let them help us!

If I am creating a post on “dog behavior training” I am going to make sure to include references to dog problems, bad dog behavior, dog issues, etc.. I may even make them focal points of my content so that I can start reaping the long-tail rewards that these other URLs are getting. I would even recommend going back and re-touching up old content to see if there are some topics you can add in. Why not maximize each piece of content to its full traffic potential!

We are using the search results and these traffic estimates almost as a way to deconstruct Google’s algorithm. They are showing us what topics might be expected within our content to rank on page 1 while also giving us a glimpse into other topics they feel are similar.

Seeing The True Traffic Potential

Another way to utilize this data is by evaluating the true traffic potential of targeting a keyword. By examining the estimated traffic for these top results we can gauge whether a keyword might really be worth going after.

As we can see above, the top 2 URLs are driving a very good amount of traffic. I’d say that most of us would be pretty happy to have one blog post or piece of content driving that much traffic per month. I know I would!

As you go down the top 10 the traffic dwindles as would be expected since the URLs are not quite as powerful and wouldn’t be ranking for as many of the other related terms. All in all, though, this keyword has a great amount of traffic potential. If I was contemplating targeting it and thought I had a shot at the top 10 it would definitely be worth the time and effort in my opinion.

You may even notice keywords that don’t drive much search volume but are showing tons of traffic potential. Let’s take the keyword “how to toilet train a dog”. The search volume is only 260 but it seems that there still might be a fair amount of traffic potential around this topic.

It is enabling us to have even more insight into which keywords we target. For many of us, creating content takes time and money. We want to make sure there is some light at the end of the tunnel or a potential win down the line.

Finding Competitors Traffic

This is a big favorite of mine. Use our competitors to show us what we should target. We’ve discussed this technique in previous blog posts. With traffic estimates, we can take this to another level.

Rather than just identifying keywords that your competitors are ranking for, we can now get an idea of what keywords are actually driving traffic. This can lead to a slew of new keyword and topic ideas.

Let’s head back to the Keysearch Explorer tool and load up Cesar Millan’s website cesarsway.com. Then let’s view keywords sorted by traffic.

Cesar Millan is a big-time player in the dog training niche. I’m sure if I was more educated about the niche I could fine-tune my competitor research to a few websites that aren’t as huge as this one. Either way, though the example, is still the same.

I can see that there is a lot of traffic potential around topics like dogs with worms, infection in dog ears, what are the smartest dog breeds, etc… These topics can now become future blog posts and content ideas. I can also try and pick off smaller competitors. Grab the one or two main articles I find that are driving their traffic and create similar content of my own.

It’s also fun to search for domains in your niche that are much less powerful than yours. Find out what’s driving their traffic and create some content around those topics. If a less powerful domain can rank and drive traffic you most likely can too!

Final Thoughts

As I say with most features we release, the possibilities are endless. If you think outside of the box I’m sure you can come up with even more great ways to use this data to your advantage.

On our end, there is still plenty to improve on. Keep in mind these are just estimates. As I said earlier, for our needs estimates are really all we need. If our tool says your site gets 200 visitors from Google per month and you really get 2000 then most likely this holds true for other sites too. It’s all relative and you can extrapolate accordingly.

We will be tweaking the traffic estimates as time goes on to try and get things more accurate. One of the biggest causes of bad estimates is Google using close variants to calculate search volume. We will write a more involved post about this in the future but to give a quick sum up, Google has slowly been combining search volumes for many keywords. So their search volumes have become less and less accurate over the last 2 years. Sometimes not accurate at all.

If Google’s search volumes aren’t accurate, and that’s how we are determining traffic, then it’s going to cause issues. We have already started working on this problem and will be slowly rolling out more accurate search volumes for close variants which should help improve the estimations as well.

We hope you guys enjoy the new traffic estimation and analysis features. They should help give you an even further advantage over your competitors. Make sure to try and combine some of these new ideas next time you load up your Keysearch account. Happy keyword hunting!

The post Getting More Visitors Using Website Traffic Analysis appeared first on Keysearch.

In that post, we promised we’d be releasing more features that utilize this data. So… Today we’re happy to announce a new addition to the Explorer toolset family, but before we get to that we also wanted to announce a rank tracker update.

Competitor Gap Feature

For those of you who have taken the Explorer feature for a spin, you know that one of the best features is viewing the organic keyword rankings of any site or page.

Part of what is so great about this is you can check out your competitor’s rankings, view the keywords they are ranking for, and grab some new keywords to target that you aren’t already ranking for. With our new Competitor Gap feature, we make this easier than ever.

When you head over to the competitor gap tool https://www.keysearch.co/competitorgap you’ll notice it gives you two search bars.

On the left side, you can add up to 3 different sites or pages and show keywords that all of those targets rank for. On the right side, you then can add your website (or any website) and it will show only the keywords your site does not rank for. Basically, you are checking which keywords the sites on the left rank for that the site on the right doesn’t rank for. The power of this tool is just amazing!

Lets a run a quick example:

We are gearing up to release a new, affordable article writing service called Article Connect (shameless plug). The site was literally just launched a few weeks ago and most likely doesn’t really rank for much of anything yet. We’re planning on starting to target some keywords through a blog we’ll be building on the site and we are currently researching the best keywords and topics to start with.

The normal keyword research methods already helped us find some nice keywords to target but with the Competitor Gap tool, we can really pinpoint the keywords our competitors were already able to rank for and show some gems that we REALLY should be targeting.

Now you’ll notice the tool will show you which keywords these sites we entered on the left are all ranking for, the search volume, what position the sites are ranking for, and the URLs that are ranking for those keywords. It can also reveal some more about the difficulty of certain keywords.

For example, the keyword “article writers” would be an obvious choice to target. But I see one of my competitors, who has a domain much stronger than mine and has been around a lot longer still can’t crack the top 10. Right away I can now see that will be more of a long-term goal than anything I plan to get on the 1st page for anytime soon.

If you are looking at where you can find the Competitor Gap tool you can see it under the Competitive Analysis section in the top menu.

Or you can also find it when checking your competitors in the Explorer tool popup.

Conclusion

I’m sure you’ll find tons of different uses for the Competitor Gap feature. You can use it to steal competitor keywords, compare competitors, gauge your site versus your competitors. Really the uses become endless. In the coming weeks, we’ll try and put out a more in-depth look at all of the explorer features and go over different use cases for them.

As usual guys, there is more to come, and thanks for being a part of the Keysearch family!

The post Competitor Gap Overview appeared first on Keysearch.

What is the Keysearch Explorer?

To give you a quick sum up, the Keysearch explorer is your one-stop shop, giving you access to loads of SEO data on any domain you want, all in one place. Here are some things the Explorer will show you.

• Domain Strength Score
• Difficulty Score to Target
• Backlink Counts
• Referring Domain Counts
• Nofollow/Dofollow Ratios
• Organic Ranking Keywords
• Top Competitors
• Organic Keyword Distribution
• Top Referring Domains
• Top Anchors
• And more!

Explore More Data

In addition to getting an overview of all these stats and metrics, you can also dive further into our databases and get all the info on organic keywords, top pages, backlinks, top competitors, etc…

You can see a graph of your Backlink Growth over time and how your traffic has fluctuated. We’ve also included a domain strength metric and a “Score To Target” calculator which has been highly requested by many users. This shows you what keyword difficulty score range we feel your domain has the best chance of possibly getting to page 1!

There are so many great ways to use this data it’s impossible to name them all. We really encourage everyone to start taking the explorer for a spin as it will definitely help you in analyzing your own domain as well as competitors.

Below is a video introduction to the tool. There’s more to come in the future so stay tuned!

The post Introducing Keysearch Explorer appeared first on Keysearch.

This article will give you a brief overview of the keyword filter. We will also introduce our keyword search operators that you can use to filter more specifically and further nail down your keywords.

Keyword Filter Overview

The keyword filter allows you to enter certain parameters and only show keywords that fit those specific parameters. You can do this by keyword, negative keywords, number of words, search volume, CPC, and competition score. Let’s take a look at the keyword filter.

Keyword: This is where you can enter a keyword or phrase and it will hide all keywords that don’t contain that keyword or phrase.

Negative Words: This is the opposite of the “Keyword” parameter. Any keywords or phrases entered here will hide all keywords that “do” contain these words or phrases.

Number of words: This is where you can specify the number of words the keywords must contain to be shown. For example, it must contain 2 to 5 words. Any keywords with less than 2 words or more than 5 will be removed.

Volume: This is where you can specify the search volume the keywords must contain. For example between 1000 to 3000. All other keywords will be removed.

CPC: This is where you can specify the CPC the keywords must have. For example between 1.00 and 5.00. All keywords that have CPC below or above those numbers will be removed.

Score: This is where you can enter the competition scores you’d like to see. For example, only show keywords between 10 to 30 competition score.

For the parameters that contain “to”, you can leave the first number or last number blank and it will mean 0 or infinite. So for example, if I wanted to only show keywords with more than 3 words but no limit above that, then just put 3 in the first box and leave the 2nd box blank. The same goes for the opposite end. If I wanted to show all keywords with a keyword score of 35 or below I’d leave the first box blank in the Score parameter and put 35 in the second box.

Keyword Filter Operators

All of that is pretty straightforward and simple. This is where things get a bit more fun. You can use our search operators in the “Keyword” and “Negative words” boxes to further drill down the filtering.

The Plus (+) Operator

This operator means “AND”. So if we wanted to find all keywords that contained “dog” and “training” we enter this into the Keyword box:

dog+training

Now that is different than just putting “dog training”. If we put “dog training” with no plus sign it will only show keywords that have the phrase “dog training” So things like “dog training classes” will be shown but “dog clicker training” won’t be.

When we use the (+) sign it will instead find keywords that contain both keywords but they don’t have to be in that specific order. So for this example, it would find both “dog training classes” and “dog clicker training”.

The Comma (,) Operator

The next operator is the comma (,) operator signifying “OR”. Using a similar example if we typed:

dog,training

This means we want to show all keywords that contain either “dog” or “training”. Things like “dog training classes” will be shown but also “dog bones” and “training skills” would be shown as well since they contain either the word “dog” or “training”.

Drilling Down Further

If you really want to get fancy you can combine the operators and get very specific:

dog+training,best,reviews

Now here we will only show keywords that contain “dog” and “training” but also either “best” or “reviews”. This allows you to really get down and dirty with what you are looking for.

Powerful Stuff

As you can see the filter can be very powerful when used correctly. Allowing you to sift quickly through big keyword lists. You can use it to tailor which keywords will be shown and in turn only research the ones that are most relevant to you. Be sure to give the search operators a spin next time you are filtering!

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