seo benchmark

www.echampions.co.uk

SEO Benchmarking

This evening…

:: What do you look for when benchmarking your SEO efforts?

:: What are the (free) tools available to help you?

:: How could you improve your ranking as a result of benchmarking your SEO?

:: Action points for eBusiness Champions


SEO Benchmarking – two types of factors…

:: Distinguish between factors that are search term specific and factors that apply across the site unrelated to search phrases

For example

“Anchor text of inbound links” is very key word specific, while the age of the site / domain isn’t at all related to the individual search phrases but very important overall.


SEO Benchmarking – assessment

:: Know and justify your key phrase choices?

:: How many sites are chasing the same phrase(s) as you?

:: How well optimised are those other sites? i.e. Why are they ranking better than you for those phrases?


An example for this evening… “dental software”

vs


How many sites are chasing the same phrase as you?

Establish where you are andwhere you want to be…


How many sites are chasing the same phrase as you?

GoogleWebmaster Toolswww.google.com/webmaster


What are the search volumes and competition?

Google external keyword tool

Shows you a rough estimate on the competition for different phrases…

Not a very clear image of the situation, let’s drill down a bit more…


Tools to establish the competition for the phrase

allintitle:dental software

Will return only pages that contain the words “dental” and “software” anywhere in the title



allintitle:dental software



allinurl: dental softwareWill return only documents that contain the words “dental” and “software” in the URL, such as - www.dental.com/solutions/software.html



allinurl: dental software


Benchmarking – what to look for?

:: How many pages are in Google main index

:: Age of site

:: Directory listings

:: Inbound links

:: On-page - title, h1, h2, internal links

:: Keyword rich URLs and page names


How many of your pages are in Google’s main index?

site:www.tabdental.co.uk/ site:www.tabdental.co.uk/*

105 pages 24 pages


Domain age - http://whois.domaintools.com/


Inbound links (via Yahoo site explorer)

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/


Directory listings (eg. DMOZ, Yahoo etc)

Benchmark table for “dental software”

www.tabdental.co.uk www.dentaldesktop.co.uk

Domain age 08-Nov-2004 03-Nov-2001

DMOZ listing Yes No

Alexa Trend/rank #4,278,310 N/A

IP location UK Germany

Inbound links 48 13

Pages in main index 25 of 102 12 of 58

title, meta, h1, p … title: Dental Software - TAB Dental Practice Management Software

h1 :Dental Software to Organize, Control and Simplify your Practice

p: TAB Dental is a powerful yet easy to use practice management software suite designed to simplify the running of a busy dental practice.

title: Dental Desktop Practice Management Software

h1: Dental Desktop Practice Management Software (after main content)

p: Dental Desktop V4 is state-of-the-art Practice Management Software for Dentists.

Internal links Secondary navigation repeated on most pages. Bottom navigation. Sitemap. In text links.

Better than before, consistent navigation. Site map. Probably still scope for improvement.

Page names Don’t think they are SEO really. Dental-software-feature.php

Dental_software.html

Notes Clean code, logical sequence content The code will hinder SEO


Another quick example

vs

Benchmark table for “gift ideas”

www.notonthehighstreet.com www.giftwrappedandgorgeous.co.uk

Domain age 11-Oct-2005 22-Jun-2009

DMOZ/Yahoo listings 2 Yahoo listings None

Alexa Trend/rank #36,882 #1,085,980

IP location UK UK

Inbound links 8080 127

Pages in main index 5,370 of 12,600 130 of 586

title, meta, h1, p … title: Gift Ideas, Unique Gifts and Personalised Gifts - notonthehighstreet.com

h1: Gift ideas you'll love

p: For the most original and personal gift ideas for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and events in the year, our pages are full of thoughtful gifts to inspire you. For something unique, choose a…

title: Gift Ideas for a Gift Less Ordinary - Gift Wrapped & Gorgeous.co.uk

h1: Are You Looking For A Gift Less Ordinary?

p: Our website showcases the very latest handmade gift ideas created with love by talented British Designers Choose from…

Internal links Key word heavy navigation Single navigation with keywords

Page names Good clean page namesjewellery/wedding-engagement-rings

Good page names, some noisecategory-handmade jewellery-type-wedding_jewellery.htm

Notes Clever positioning to get text at the top of home page code

Good clean design – some tweaks could help


How to improve your own position?

1. Be realistic about what you can achieve against large established sites

2. Do your keyword research and target specific phrases

3. List in the industry relevant directories that your competitors do

4. Be on top of your stats (use Google Analytics and Webmaster tools)

5. Create a schedule for measuring the effectiveness of changes


SEO Benchmarking – How to improve your own position?

Action points

1. Run your own site and a competing site through http://whois.domaintools.com/

2. Look at the competition for each of your chosen phrases – it the chase realistic?

3. Could you get any of the inbound links that the competition is getting?

4. Compare your title, h1, meta and first paragraph with the competitors – are they as strong and keyword rich?

5. Check how many of your pages are in the main index of Google


Next events

:: Not to be missed!:: Excellent speaker!:: Last event before the summer holiday

Leicester 29th of JuneNottingham 1st of July

seo benchmark

Education

words dental

evening dental software

busy dental practice

page title

p title

dental desktop v4

practice p

text links