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
-
How do you create landing pages with different domains?
I am wondering how do I create landing pages with differing domains? We recently acquired some other domains that will hopefully help with our SEO, Key Word targeting. I understand how to create the landing page but I don't know how to link it to our other domain. I was thinking about a rel canonical but will that defeat the purpose of the landing page, in terms of ranking? I guess the issue that I am facing is when we start up these new domains they will not have the Domain Authority or the Page Authority of our main site. I would like to try and get them ranked organically as well as PPC. Thanks.
Keyword Research | | LovingatYourBest0 -
Why do my keyword ranking differ from the results on Google ?
I've been working on a specific campaign for a couple of days, and been noticing that my keyword ranking is much different on my campaign than in reality. I tried my keyword on Google (with the same settings I have on my campaign) and my keyword ranks at #5 instead of not in 50, as indicated on my campaign. Can someone give me a hint on this issue ? Thank you !
Keyword Research | | marketingmedia.ca0 -
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 -
Accuracy of search volume for keyword planner v old keyword tool?
Hi there, I'm (logged into Google Adwords) and researching search volume for keywords but I'm seeing weird results. I know that the term "outage notification" had between 1000 and 5000 monthly global searches when I last looked (I know this because I add a search volume tag to the keywords I track ranking of via Moz). Yet, now when I check global search volume via keyword planner I'm seeing only 70 global searches per month (AND low competition which I know is not true). Is this perhaps because only the exact match is reported or is something else going on? Very frustrated as I have now lost faith in the keyword research process via Google keyword planner....not sure where to go from here!! Thanks very much
Keyword Research | | SnapComms1 -
Difference in Keywords and Anchor Text ?
Sorry i am noob here: I thought both are same but when i see GSA tutorials i found that both are different. If suppose my keywords is black german shoes than what is my anchor text will be. Also anchor text isdifferent like generice keywords click here, find more etc. Please give explanation.
Keyword Research | | chandubaba0 -
Finding new keyword research tools
Does anyone have any recommendations for tools to help speed up the initial keyword reporting process? I'm looking for tips to streamline the current system of manually researching competition reports. Thanks.
Keyword Research | | Doug_Hay0 -
Tool for Local Keyword Research by US State
I want to find out keyword research about a specific US State but Google's tool only gives me data by Country. Is there something else I can use?
Keyword Research | | theLotter1