A New Look at Rank as Measure for SEO Success

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• SEO
• January 11, 2010

My friend from Oregan, Debra Paynting, has given me the honour of writing her first guest blog on TargetStone.  Hopefully this insight will be the first of many.  So if you want to understand the analysis of SEO and measuring rank then read this blog….

If you have spent any time at all optimizing a site for organic search you know how exciting it is to get that #1 rank for a primary keyword.  Unfortunately (from an optimizer’s perspective) the sophistication of the organic search industry is such that today what you see is likely not what your neighbor sees.  What’s the point of measuring rank if you can’t depend on the accuracy of the data to help you make decisions with any confidence, for anyone other than your own search?

Excepting this, knowing there isn’t enough time in the world to geek out on all the possible data I do still find a use in measuring for rank. Ranking, if you look at it as you would analytic trend, certainly provides excellent data for competitive analysis.  With trends it isn’t the exact number that matters. We can lose ourselves if we beginning to obsess with the individual numbers.  I still collect ranking data and then use the data to visualize with color, so I can look for patterns. So I thought I would blog about how ranking assists me in competitive analysis.

Here I’ve taken 50 cross industry terms (deep analysis went into deciding these terms, an entirely separate conversation) and collected the top 10 sites ranked for each keyword. Each site was given a unique color.  I’m visual so in playing around with visualizing data I started to look at the patterns of color as representative industry coverage. The patterns help me narrow in on my top 10 or so competitors based on their coverage within my keyword sample.

 Here burnt orange is clearly a strong player in the industry, lots of first/second place coverage well balanced throughout this grouping of industry keywords. This site also has a strong showing in the 4-6 ranking space with a smattering coming in at 7-10.  Very grounded coverage, this is definitely a competitor worth additional research time. 

I pull out other colors out that pop, such as here with the gold, blue and aqua. Looking at gold I see an interesting split in keyword coverage, holding strong but not across the 50 keywords. Where they are strong they are very strong and where they are weak they are absent. I realize quickly that I will find useful insights if I dig in more with this competitor. The same for blue and aqua, I see strong and compelling industry coverage and I want to dig in a figure out what makes them so strong. 

The white spaces offer up their own insight.   White spaces are the collection of sites with 2 or less pages indexed in my sample. I dig in to see if there is any consistency or patterns within the white zone. Upon closer inspection I did find these sites offer excellent openings, a low-hanging fruit type opportunity for entry into this industry. There is a definite weakness in the white space compared to the stronger dominating sites identified by their color groupings.

Another way I look at my competitor’s content is by the ‘type’ of content ranking in my sample. Within different industries you’ll see consistency in the content, perhaps as in this case where I have the red for ‘answer’ pages like at answers.yahoo, etc. The pink pages are all homepages for sites I would consider my main competition, the blue are small bits of content and the gold are larger bits like guides, how-to, fact sheets, etc. When I compare my charts with each other it is interesting to note that the small bits of content pages are scattered in a similar pattern to my white zones. Looks like another area I should take a closer look at.

Miles was kind enough to invite me for a visit, thanks Miles. Just thought I would share one method I use to visualize ranking data to help provide me with new insights.  I shared some of what I gained through these exercises but of course this is one glimpse into the many ways I look at data to give me insight for my strategies.    Of course it is possible to collect too much data and as an analyst I often have to warn my clients away from spreading themselves too thin with too much data. What I like about this exercise is you can do it with only a spreadsheet, without expensive software. I’ll be writing regularly at ipaynting.com so after visiting Miles please pop on over and see me.  Cheers.

Measurement Page Rank SEO