How do you compare results using different tools?
-
We are looking at SEO as ways of promoting our online flip page travel magazine but its really difficult to distinguish the good from the bad and the downright ugly in terms of agencies to use. For example we are proposing to use an SEO agency who have come up with a long list of interesting keywords. The problem is that the degree of competitiveness which is listed alongside each keyword varies dramatically from the results I achieved by keying in the same keywords into the moz keyword tool. The agency says their results are achieved by using Google tools.
Any advice on what to do would be really welcome.
The website is www.eurotravelmag.com and the flip page magazine can be reached here:
Thanks
David
-
Hello David,
There are several great answers here, and I'd like to add one more option. The inbound marketing companies on the Moz Recommended List have all be vetted by Moz.com and should be reputable.
If I were going to hire an agency one of the least of my concerns would be which tools they used. Do your research to find out what kind of reputation they have in the industry and trust that they know what they're doing.
Good luck!
-
Find an SEO agency can be terrifying. This link to the best SEO companies of 2013 still has Blue Glass listed as number 4,and they collapsed months ago. http://www.bestseocompanies.com/top-50-seo-company-rankings/
I have two suggestions for how to go about hiring a respectable SEO agency.
1. Spends some time educating yourself. Go buy an SEO for Dummies book, look up whatever SEO 101 material you can, browse this forum to glean whatever buzz words you can, and (depending on how much time you spend on it) you should know enough to at least evaluate the ugly ones.
2. I'd consider hiring someone's inhouse SEO to help you pick an agency. It's probable one of your business contacts or partners with your magazine is using one. If you can get that person or someone like that, then you can have an unbiased person to assist you in the decision for whatever fee you'd agree to pay for the help. I'm sure it'd be less than hiring an employment agency.
Food for thought...I hope it helps.
Ruben
-
Sean gives some good points.
What I would also suggest is look for not just fancy keyword sales stuff, but what are they going to do with you under the hood, what's currently wrong with any of the on-page elements, how are they going to fix those, what impact are those changes likely to have on organic ranking.
Having a list of keywords and saying here are some keywords, here are the monthly search volumes, if you get to top 3 for x,y and z you will be getting 'this' amount of traffic is not enough. There is so much more, what strategy do they have for content development and more importantly how do they approach link development - what is their overall philosophy in these areas. Can they show you any evidence of overall growth of sites.
Easy to be seduced by keywords, but far more difficult to start over or come back from an algorithmic or manual penalty.
-
Have you had a look at this blog post?
<a>http://moz.com/ugc/the-beginners-guide-to-keyword-research-using-free-tools</a>
Also I would suggest you mine your adwords account for keywords which actually convert and bring you revenue.If you don't have an adwords account then it will be worth creating one if only just for the purpose of keyword research. You may find that keywords of medium competiveness and relatively easy to rank for are higher converting than keywords of high competitiveness as by their very nature lots of companies are competing for a slice of that pie.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
MOZ KD is not showing results
Hey, moz kd is not showing correct result. i searched the keyword best for apartment one time the kd was 44 and again i searched and the kd was 24. which one is the correct kd?
Keyword Research | | Ijiubu7680 -
Google Knowledge Graph Tool
Hello All Mozzers (that makes us sound like fans of The Smiths), Is there a tool that shows if a keyword triggers a knowledge graph panel/box/result. I have a quite a few (100's) of informational searches I need to check and don't really want to do in manually. It would be good if the tool returned the knowledge graph answer and the URL. Thanks in advance and have a good weekend 🙂
Keyword Research | | highwayfive0 -
How would you optimise a site for close variations of a keyword, such as [data capture + application/app/software/technology/tool/solution]
Hey all, We're a data capture app looking to optimise our site: akkroo.com. There are lots of industry-specific & use-case-based content pages we can create, but how should we optimise our site to capture traffic for keywords that could (almost) be classified as synonyms? Particularly, I'm thinking keywords such as: data capture app data capture application data capture software data capture tool data capture tools data capture technology etc. My industry-specific pages will all have completely unique content, but I'm struggling to work out how I should architecture pages that target keywords that are almost identical, such as the list above. The content on these pages would technically be 'unique', but each page would be very similar to one another. And how would we link to these pages internally? I can't really see it adding to the user experience, but I can't see how I can target all of these keywords without having individual pages for each... Thanks in advance for any help that can be shared; appreciate it! Brian
Keyword Research | | brandrsn0 -
What are SEO's using for Keyword Research?
Hey folks, I just wanted to find out what everyone is using for keyword research now that the Google Keyword Tool has been retired. I know there is a form of it in Adwords, but something a little more usable than this. Cheers,
Keyword Research | | Andy.Drinkwater
Andy0 -
New Keyword Planning Tool
In the past we have used google analytics keyword tool to evaluate a keyword for our campaign. Recently though with the changes to the keyword tool becoming the keyword planning tool we've seen an extreme fluctuation in the metrics provided for avg monthly searches. Specifically the keyword "best fries" used to be reported at 33100 avg global monthly searches, now with the new tool its at less than 200 overall for the month. Additional information has the google trends for the keyword to only be increasing and is roughly near peak search interest. So I guess to simplify the question, should I trust this metric? Is there an alternative source I can use for keyword research? Why would a drop like this happen? Why isn't the google trends data similar to that of the keyword data? Surely 100 representing peak interest doesn't translate to 200 searches a month.
Keyword Research | | JamesBSEO0 -
Does "Using a dash in keyword name" affect SEO?
I sell machinery branded Co-matic. Most people search Comatic so I was wondering if I should change my keywords from Co-matic to Comatic. Would the change have a significant impact on SEO? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | kysizzle60 -
Google keyword tool [exact match]
Hey there, I'm trying to work out what my next big course to run will be. I want to know if my technique is a good gauge of popularity. I'm using Google's keyword tool specifically for New Zealand. I'm typing in a course topic e.g Photoshop Courses and looking at the exact match results to see if there might be a market for that course. Broad match seems to offer up a lot more numbers but seem a bit vague. Am i right to think 'After Effects Training' wouldn't be a popular course as it returns a (<10) local monthly result while 'Photoshop Courses' might be ok as it has a (46)? **I'd appreciate any insight. ** Dan
Keyword Research | | danielfromnz
- the Adobe Trainer0 -
Article rewrite tools: do they really do the job to meet google's requirements?
Dear all, I need to produce around 100 articles. I came across several tools which replace some of the words with synonyms. 1- How many words does it need to replace out of 100 words? 2- Which tools do you recommend? 3- Human re writers seems to use the same tools. Which human re writer company do you suggest? 4- Is there any content writing company you suggest? Thanks in advance
Keyword Research | | sarenausa0