New, Simpler SEO Reports

I have a confession:

Some of us here at Skyway Web Design and Marketing are data addicts.

We love to collect data, analyze data, discuss data and trends… It’s easy to believe more data is better.

But that’s not always the case.  Sometimes more data is overwhelming.  Sometimes more data causes the really important data to get lost in a sea of less important data.  Sometimes less is better.

SEO Report Data Overload

One area in which we realize we went overboard with data is in the search engine ranking reports we generate, review, and send to our Safety Harbor and Trinity SEO clients.  Search ranking reports show a website’s current search rankings for the keywords we are targeting in various search engines.

We wanted to be as comprehensive as possible, so our SEO reports have included search rankings for as many variations of an organization’s targeted keywords as we could think of.  For example, for website design in Trinity, Florida, our reports would include:

• Website design in Trinity
• Website design in Trinity, FL
• Website design in Trinity, Florida
• Trinity website design
• Trinity, FL website design
• Trinity, Florida website design

Now, that may not sound too bad yet but…

• We double that by checking all the same keywords but with “web” instead of “website”
• We triple that because we target not just one city but 2 additional adjacent cities.
• We quadruple that because for each each keyword there are several additional variations like instead of “design” “designer,” “developer,” “development,” etc

That means 6 x 2 x 3 x 4 keywords. Throw in some other factors and we’ve been checking more than 330 keywords each client.

We’ve been checking those keywords in 7 search engines – Google, Google Mobile, Bing, Bing Mobile, Yahoo, Yahoo Mobile, and ask.

So, now we’re talking about 2300+ data points.  And we’re not done yet.

In addition to checking keywords in general search engines, we also check keywords in the local/maps search engines – Google Maps, Google Mobile Maps, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps and Yelp – for the city the church is located in and 2 adjacent cities. 15 local search engines in all x 24 keywords = another 360 data points.

That’s a grand total of more than 2600 data points every month for each client.

For data addicts, that might sound cool. For everyone else that is probably completely overwhelming. With 2600 data points, how does anyone know which are really important?

New Simplified SEO Reports

Keywords in our new general search ranking reports will be reduced significantly to just those being targeted, usually between 20 and 50 keywords. Search engines will be reduced from 7 to 3 – Google, Google Mobile and Bing.  Very few people use the Ask and Yahoo search engines anymore. And most of Yahoo’s search results come from Google and Bing anyway.

Our new local (maps) search ranking reports will also be reduced to just those being targeted, usually between 10 and 20 local keywords x 3 local search engines (Google Mobile Maps, Bing Maps, Yelp) x 3 cities.

Combined, those two reports still contain 150-250 data points, which you could probably still make a case is more than necessary, but it’s less than 1/10 the data points of the old reports.

The Benefits of Simplified SEO Reports

We think this will help the business and nonprofits we serve in many ways:

• Clients are less likely to be overwhelmed by the data
• Clients can focus on the most important 10% of the data and not get distracted or confused by 90% that was less important and no longer included.
• Clients are more likely to read the reports because they’re much shorter and simpler

The new reports also take our SEO team a lot less time to generate and analyze, which frees us up to spend more time optimizing our clients’ websites, increasing the number of people visiting their websites, and helping them grow and achieve their goals.

If you would like to see more people visiting your website and buying your products and services, check out our Safety Harbor SEO services, and fill out a consultation request form to schedule a free, no-obligation call to discuss how SEO can help you reach your goals.

Got any questions or comments?  Post ‘em in a comment.