Something every SEO and web analyst likes to hear: Here’s more data!
Google rolled out new features within webmaster tools
today, specifically adding a boatload of data to the search queries report.
Now, you can see the various rankings of a given keyword, how many impressions it received, as well as how many clicks it received. ie.. when the keyword was shown at position 3, it received 100 impressions and 30 clicks, whereas when it was shown at position 4, it received 80 impressions and 20 clicks. Oh, and you also wee which page ranked for which keyword.
I can’t help but rattle off about a hundred interesting tests to run based on this new data:
- Prioritize SEO efforts – Analyze click-through rates by search query position (!) and prioritize keywords to focus on, based on the value of increasing a position or two. First, figure out the value of a visit to your site from the search query based on (goal conversion rate) x (goal value) (here’s a good explanation of valuing traffic). Then, look at the difference in click-through rate between where currently rank, your target rank (say a couple notches above where you are now). Figure out the monetary value of increasing your rank by one or two slots by multiplying the difference in clickthrough rate by the monetary value of a visit.
- Analyze click-through rate by search query and meta description (meta descriptions typically show below the headline of the listing as a brief snippet about the site. Think of this as an organic “ad” for SEO); do testing on these to increase CTR, just like you would on pay-per-click to boost traffic for keywords given a constant rank.
- Search for keywords using the new search bar, referencing your newly-discovered keyword categories, and see position by category.
- Look at which pages rank for which search phrases. Are those the most relevant pages to be sending traffic to? If not, tweak your title tags in an effort to send that traffic to a more relevant page.
- Look for outliers – where is your CTR off the charts? Is there anything you can do to increase in rank for these high-value phrases?
Time will tell whether this new data will be available via the Webmaster Tools API.
I think this is very valuable data; is this a game-changer?
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