Jon Henshaw will be speaking on the “REPORT ALL THE THINGS!” panel at SearchFest 2014 which will take place on February 28th, 2014 in Portland, Oregon. For more information and to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I’ve been creating and marketing websites since 1995, but my formal education is in psychology. I’m currently a co-founder of Raven Internet Marketing Tools. While I wear several hats, my core focus is on Research and Development and product evangelism.
2) What is the state of “rank checking” in 2014?
There are two states of ranking checking going into 2014.
The first has to do with trying to keep up with Google’s ever changing search results if you’re scraping them. It’s a battle to adapt to the neverending types of search engine results pages (SERPs) they present. So far, companies like AuthorityLabs appear to be holding their own and continue to provide good results for their customers.
The second state, which is the one Raven lives in, is the retrieval and analysis of results directly from Google Webmaster Tools (using their recommended methodology). 2014 kicked off with Google announcing that they would be providing more detailed search queries, which was an instant win for our customers and anyone who uses GWT data.
The big question is, “What will the rest of the year look like?”
I think we will see a dramatic change in what SERPs look like. For example, SERPs will become even more custom tailored to the topic and intent of the user. This will occur across the board, instead of just for brand or name searches that generate massive shopping focused pages or Knowledge Graph results. Coupled with the ever increasing influence of personalized results, this will make it even more difficult to scrape and analyze SERPs for changes in position.
Also, my gut still tells me that Google will start to fight the larger companies that scrape their search engine results. That’s one of the reasons that Raven chose to stop using scraped data, which made us one of the only SEO software companies that is currently Google compliant. We want to be around for a long time, and we don’t want to lose access to their APIs, like Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools and AdWords, by violating their terms of service regarding scraping.
3) With “not provided” in full effect, how can SEO’s effectively report to their clients?
Keyword rankings are most helpful in terms of knowing how well your strategies are doing and campaigns are performing. However, specific ranks for specific keywords are not necessarily what you should be reporting to your clients.
On the most basic level, an SEO should be reporting performance metrics from organic traffic. For example, SEOs can report the percentage of change in search engine traffic and the site engagement that such traffic provided. Then, from there, they can focus on content performance, both from an engagement and event or goal completion perspective. They should report whether or not the content they published and promoted drove organic traffic, and whether or not that traffic stuck around the website and/or converted.
Also, SEO isn’t just about outreach and content creation. It’s very much about onsite optimization. SEOs should frequently monitor and audit their clients’ sites for technical SEO problems and opportunities. Raven’s customers often use our tools to run a Site Auditor report in conjunction with the type of SEO analytics reports I just mentioned. That one-two combination, especially compared and reported over time, really validates their work and makes them look very good to their clients.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.