Wednesday 19 December 2012

The Good, The Bad & The Indifferent: Reviewing SEO results in 2012

Using the finish of the season here, I needed to examine my team’s 2012 performance to share with our method for 2013 and hang ourselves some targets. As we’ve been preaching to clients so good submissions are honest content, I figured why don't you publish-mortem our performance in public places and allow the data function as a vehicle to explain how we’ll be approaching Search engine optimization in 2013?

So after some trepidation (I don’t remember a company going public with the much data before this) here’s our 2012 ranking data: the great, unhealthy and also the indifferent!

Ranking for 1655 key phrases across 14 clients in 3 different languages (PL, P, United kingdom) on day one of the year / engagement, versus. ranking on a week ago of November.

Data covers you use 376 days (not every clients happen to be around since Jan first, as well as for most we migrated platforms part-way with the year)

Monthly amount of searches (exact) across all key phrases was 7,738,237 monthly

The Great

Across all key phrases, client average rank choose to go up 12.9 positions since the beginning of the entire year / engagement.

Our client’s visibility had risen in additional instances (against 33% of key phrases our clients saw an optimistic rank change) than decreased (we simply saw an adverse rank change against 9% of key phrases)

Our clients made an appearance within the best three positions on SERPs more frequently. Across all clients, on week 1 of the engagement we rated within the best three positions against 247 key phrases, at latest count our clients rank within the best three against 352 terms, an increase of 42%.

The amount of key phrases that our clients don't rank has fallen significantly: From 1028 key phrases lower to 789, an autumn of 23%.

Pretty good, especially considering that many in our clients are usually large corporate brands. Sometimes just obtaining a project going ahead and optimized content to the website is really a major challenge, to see such positive figures proves in my experience our practice is pointed in the right direction.

We're driven through the following 2 claims:

To position #1 for any keyword, you have to should be most importantly other relevant sites you have to own the very best bit of relevant content on the internet.

Search engine optimization occurs when you create great encounters for customers AND search engines like google …and our tactics reflect these facts.

We've pressed clients to maneuver beyond fundamental optimisation and make content that contributes value to individuals in-marketplace for their items / services

We've built 100s of associations with website proprietors this year, using the output being top quality, relevant links for the clients.

We attempt to base content on which has demonstrated to become effective for other brands and websites, as opposed to just getting a default “build a website landing page concerning the keyword” approach. Given these results, we are adhering with this particular broad approach within the the coming year.

Unhealthy

For 9% of our key phrases (152 terms), ranking fell. The entire audience of these terms was over 862,350 exact match searches monthly.

For 21 terms (1.3% of key phrases) we'd dropped from the best players results altogether.

Losing visibility for pretty much 10% of monitored key phrases is indeed a major concern. This decline wasn’t focused on a particular client or keyword area, and none in our clients were penalised this past year by Google, and so i am satisfied our efforts to convince other website proprietors to connect to our client’s content aren't to blame.

In my experience, this can be a situation of key phrases sliding with the cracks because our keyword lists are extremely lengthy. In 2013 we will concentrate on creating keyword lists that just contain terms we feel tie into our content plans which will really effect on client performance. You can observe my posts on the new, more proper way of market and keyword research here.

The Indifferent

Around 12% in our terms rank in the same location now because they did once the particular engagements started: the huge most of they are brand terms or generic key phrases where we've always rated #1.In my experience the actual story is available in the amount of key phrases which haven’t rated throughout 2012. From the 1655 key phrases we've been monitoring, our clients remain unranked for 757. That’s 46% in our total key phrases. Significant problem. In line with the concept that “you will rank #1 if you have the very best bit of relevant content around the web” we rapidly established 2 facts about nearly all key phrases which had not rated all year long:

Key phrases were impractical for the client given their current web assets. E.g. one client requested us to trace “save time” because there have been some very specific timesaving tips related to a vital product online. The truth is there's not a way a specialized bit of content would should rank #1 for any very general term.

Key phrases were relevant for that client although not present online. E.g. one client desired to rank well for “cheap cars” but declined to make use of the term “cheap” online. Another common flaw was getting “review” key phrases within our keyword lists but no review-based content around the actual website.

To enhance performance, they are two problems our agency needs to tackle in 2013. I believe that among the Search engine optimization industry we're not alone.You want to retain the concept that Search engine optimization is all about creating content that will earn its very own distribution instead of Search engine optimization being someone link building to garbage pages. We should also fare better at setting client anticipation around the key phrases it might reasonably be prepared to rank well for. Consequently, we feel Search engine optimization in 2013 will probably be concerning the following:

Base focus on content initiatives, not squeeze pages. A content initiative is really a project which is all about the expansion and publication of the resource. The main factor is this fact resource adds a lot of value to individuals inside your target audience. E.g. for any financial services client you may develop a free PDF e-book which provides coverage for every factor of establishing an internet business, with helpful tips and proposals for every step from the process. By using this resource being an anchor, you are able to create a full distribution plan prior to publication, then execute upon launch. Whenever a great bit of content along with a distribution plan get together, you've got a content initiative.

Base engagements on shorter, more focussed lists of key phrases. To be able to rank #1 we almost require an individual content technique for each keyword, and thus getting 200 key phrases per engagement is simply impractical major corporate clients will not deal with that lots of new initiatives. Less key phrases = simpler to prioritise where to start less possibility of inaction.

Regarding the 2nd point we've already completely refurbished our market and keyword research process, so we are moving towards a place where there exists a full process in position for planning and performing content initiatives. Although searching at our entire dataset for ranking was a little distressing, and there have been unquestionably some harsh facts to defend myself against board, I’m glad we made it happen since it has strengthened our core concepts, and assisted us find out the most urgent areas for attention in 2013. Being an Search engine optimization team we are able to believe that you're not going to enhance ranking for every term, but we’re determined that we’ll see more action and results the coming year. It would be great to listen to what everyone do to update and adapt the coming year - help you within the comments!

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