Optimization Targets
I am happy to announce on a new feature, called Optimization Targets, we just added to sheerseo. I believe this is a very important feature which combines the main features we have in sheerseo. It reflects the entire SEO process, of picking up the right keywords, then optimizing both on page and off page SEO, and finally iteration of tracking and adjusting the SEO for those selected keywords. Even better, you’ll be able to correlate the efforts done for this keyword to results that were achieved.
Choosing the Keywords
Some people use sheerseo to track hundreds of keywords, which is great, but eventually, you can only focus your main work on a limited number of keywords. This is what this step is all about.
So, first thing is to go to the new screen, called “Optimization Targets”. Which is right under the rankings screen, and look at the suggestions at the bottom right part of the screen. Here is how it looks like for our website:
As you can see, the suggestions in this case show you information that helps you decide on what keywords you should focus on. Here, the information includes keywords and your site’s rank for them in Google results. Also, you can see the number of times this Google page was viewed. So, for example, if you rank 15, this is page 2 in google results, and the impressions number in this case mean the number of times the second page was viewed by users for this keyword. The “localization” is here, because it is an integral part of the keyword. Each keyword ranks differently in different countries.
This information will show up for Advanced and Professional users that integrated Google Search Console (formarly Google Webmaster Tools) into sheerseo. Users who integrated Google Analytics will see less information, and more basic users will see just the keywords they picked up in the rankings screen and their rankings.
Each keyword you choose here is called Optimization Target, and this is limited, depending on your account level (limits are 2 per standard and light, 10 per advanced account and 20 per pro account ), so choose wisely which keywords you want to focus on.
Few ideas on what should be focused:
1. Keywords that are most vital to the business in terms of value.
2. Keywords that have been neglected so far. If you see a suggestion that you never targeted so far and it has potential, than this might be an easy win.
3. Keywords that are on the top of the Google page. For example a keyword that you rank 11th, might have a great benefit if it advances to first page.
On Page SEO
OK, now you have chosen your optimization targets, and you see some information for them, like here:
As you can see, each optimization target shows a score for On Page Optimization. This score reflects how well this page is optimized for that keyword. If you’ll press the link on the score, you’ll be able to see details of how the score was calculated. You can then work to optimize this page, and check again by pressing the refresh button next to the score. In the above image, it looks like “seo software tool” has a low on page optimization score of 50, so it is a good candidate for optimization.
Off Page SEO
As you all know, off page SEO, is mostly about getting good backlinks. Here we measure and track the citation flow and trust flow of your page. Those are numbers between 0 and 100 of how well your page is perceived by Google, according to the backlinks to it. Are they coming from strong sources (citation flow), and are they coming from reliable sources (trust flow). See example here:
Another measure you can see here is the number of backlinks. This shows the amount of backlinks per this speciffic URL, not your entire site. Those figures will update weekly, so you can see the progress.
If you want to use sheerseo to do something useful in order to add more backlinks, you can try the “blog reviews” feature. If you look at the right most column of the optimization targets table, you’ll see an icon with a “B” on it. Pressing it will lead you to the a blog review, with the details of the optimization target already populated. It is a good way of getting good backlinks . Just recently I used it for our website and easily got 2 great bloggers to talk about our product, so don’t miss this one.
Let’s Examine the Results
So we did all we could, and we want to see progress. This takes time. Google scans pages depending on their value, so some pages might be scanned daily, and some are scanned every 4 months. So, it might take months for the changes you did to be noticed by Google. SEO needs patience.
The Optimization Targets let you track your progress per each of the optimization targets. Let’s see how.
As you can see above, we got the rank, the impressions, and finally, the ultimate goal of the visits to our website here. Those of you with basic packages will only see the rankings. Would be great to correlate that to the process you done with the on page and off page optimization, wouldn’t it. In the future, I plan to allow adding some kind of log per optimization target, so you can write the actions you did per each date.
Hope you enjoy this feature, it took us more than half a year to develop it.
Leave a Comment
I just came across Sheerseo while reviewing different programs for SEO. I love the fact that you can view the trust and citation flow for multiple pages is list format. I’m still looking around but what I am seeing so far is impressive.