Software SERPWoo - SERP Omnipresence - 20% Bonus

CCarter · May 1, 2020

Over 200 NEW Analysis Done In Under 24 Hours!

The new class of testers have generated over 200 analysis in less than 24 hours.

AND they've already jumped in with the optimization.

By The Way - The Beta Test is opened to FREE users as well. That's correct.

I've had dozens up dozens of conversations already with the testers and we've gotten great feedback which will help the end product.

So How Important Really Is On-Page SEO?

Even quick and minor adjustments can see sky rocketing results:

Quick wins can be yours too!

If you are interested in Beta Testing our On-Page Analysis Tool contact us within the In-App messaging system and we'll get you a bonus code that enables the tool within your account.

For some more info on the tool: SERPWoo's On-Page Analysis Tool

--

We are working on the reported bugs recently found, we'll be making an announcement soon.

To the top of the SERPs,
Carter & Jason

CCarter · May 5, 2020

The 1% Problem + Beta Testing Results

Hey WooNation!

We've had a ton of feedback on the beta test for the new On-Page SEO Analysis tool.

We've digested the feedback over the last several days and have already begun making updates. Some of the updates are already live.

And for A LOT of the beta testers, they've already seen results in less than 24 hours of implementation!

We still need more beta testers!

Lets get down to brass tasks:

The 1%, always a problem. This bug was unique since it only appeared when a brand new keyword was entered into SERPWoo. If a user then immediately went to Zora and attempted to pull an Analysis the bug would get stuck since Zora pulls from the SERP data which SERPWoo crawls. Brand new keywords can sometimes take up to 10 mins to get crawled, so an immediate pull hung the system.

That's been fixed and anyone that had a 1% bug problem should be able to go in and see their new analysis ready. The system now re-checks every 15 minutes to see if the keyword's SERP data is available yet.

The 80% bug = That's being worked on.

Improvements

1. Customize Columns: You can now hide and show certain columns which aren't necessary. Go into the "Config" tab and on the left-hand side you'll see new options. We hid some of the items that were causing the most confusion by default.

2. Floating Header: You can now stop the floating header from floating, again from the "Config" tab.

3. Better Filtering: The distinction of what is filtered is now color coordinated.

--

Results So Far...

"Well holy s*** Carter, you know that page I did the update on - that was doing $54k in organic traffic via Ahrefs.com? [..] It gained $30k in traffic ... jumping to $84k for the page and $107k for the site." - Beta Tester

If you are interested in Beta Testing our On-Page SEO Analysis tool contact us within the In-App messaging system and we'll get you a bonus code that enables the tool within your account.

To the top of the SERPs,
Carter & Jason

eliquid · May 6, 2020

Jason here.

Recently, a friend of mine needed help to rank a brand new website on Google for their B2B service.

Not one to shy away from a challenge, I decided it would also be a good series to put on SERPWoo as well. A series to help to show you what it takes to get a new domain and site prepped and setup for ranking in Google.

While I can't out their domain, keywords, or niche ( come on, that would be a death blow to them ).. I will be showing you all the processes and screenshots that it involves over the series.

Many things I show you will be simple and easy. Maybe even too simple for some of you advanced folks.

A few things will be advanced and probably shouldn't be outed. I'm debating if I should even show them to the general public.

However, the idea will be to show you the thinking process, decision making skills, and carefully considered choices made that takes a basic idea and turns it into a ranking website that generates money and traffic.

So How Much Time Does This Take?
Since this is a side project for me helping my friend, I am not working on it full-time every day. Many weeks I didn't work on the project at all. So results will be typical for someone who is doing this as a non-critical focus with very little time or money.

All in all, I have worked on this project for 6 months total so the first 4-6 posts in this series will be written rather quickly, while posts after that will come every month or so as we play out the series in real-time.

While this image can not explain certain promotions or tactics I used, I'm going to post it here as a reference so you can see the ups and downs from the beginning of this project.

Show Us Some Data!
While the above image shows data for ALL the keywords in our Google Search Console, there are really only 3 keywords we really want to rank for.

Here is how that data looks.

Keyword #1:

Keyword #2:

Keyword #3:

While many of you might laugh at this, I think it's not too bad considering:

This is a brand new domain that does not contain the keywords we want to rank for.
Part-time focus and work. Many weeks of no touch.
Competitors are very well known and established.
Almost zero links built to the website.
- Of the links that do exist, they all go to the homepage with brand anchors.
Only 7 pages of content.
- And this content is less than 1,000 words total ( all 7 pages ) for the whole website.

So with very little work, 2 of our top terms are sitting on the 2nd page of Google. Our 3rd top term is on the 4th page. We have a ton of long tail terms bouncing all around.

And we haven't really written any content yet or built any serious backlinks either.

It's all on a vanilla WordPress install ( no plugins ) with a really poor and un-optimized theme.

I finally installed the first plugin on May 4th ( 2 days ago ). It was Yoast.. so I helped my friend all this time without any SEO plugins.

So, is this a series you would like to see started and updated?

At this point, a little work in content and backlinks is more than enough to push our 3 top terms to page 1 results.

My friend isn't looking to overtake positions #1-3, he just wants to sit next to the big brands and build up his brand exposure and trickle away their users with a better value and experience for now before he tries to overtake them later.

This also helps to have reviewers and reporters find us, talk about us, and build links to us from their review sites ( natural backlinks ).

Let me know your thoughts by emailing us back if this is something that interests you and if I should do the series.

--

To the top of the SERPs,
Jason & Carter

eliquid · May 11, 2020

SERPWoo's Keyword Finder Wins Against 8 Popular Competitors

Hey WooNation,

Jason here.

Have you experienced our Keyword Finder tool yet?

I mean, really dived deep into it?

Years ago I had a lot of problems getting keyword information from various tools on the internet, including Google itself.

Keywords that I knew were related to terms I was searching weren't showing up in various tools, and I wanted to find one that would show the terms I was interested in and save me time doing SEO research.

But no tool could provide me the data I was looking for.

See, I was doing a lot of optimizations for the higher education niche and I knew certain terms were related to each other. Like Kinesiology being related to Exercise Science.

However, no SEO keyword tool would bring back Kinesiology terms when I researched Exercise Science keywords.

Not even Google would.

That very day, SERPWoo's Keyword Finder tool got built to handle such deep research.

But why is this important?

Well, wouldn't you like to get all the information you needed in one search?

All the related keywords, LSI, and terms similar to what you are looking for?

You know, to make your content topical and well rounded with terms people normally use in searching for content ranked on Google?

Our "Exercise Science Degree" keyword returned 1,443 keywords highly related to our original term.

Our Keyword Finder was able to pull terms such as:

kinesiologist degree
kinesiology bachelors degree
kinesiology degree online
and many more kinesiology terms.

Finally, a tool that can bring back more than just alternate and appended spellings of just my original term. Something that actually brings back keywords that are related and similar to my original input.

But wait, don't other tools do this now?

Not really. Let me show you what I mean.

Let's look at a few other competitors and where they fall short.

1. This competitor only returned 194 total terms, none of which contained our 3 sample Kinesiology terms above.

Even if we signed up for their PRO plan we might get 2x more of the 194 returned, still leaving us with less than 400 terms. That's 1,043 fewer terms than SERPWoo.

Those results leave us missing out on a lot of data we may need when we research niches, ranking terms, and content.

Score:

Terms Returned ( Compared to SERPWoo ): -1
Sample Related Terms Returned: -1

2. Another competitor ( below ) returned back 610 total keywords.

Of note, it seemed like it was still running when I finally had to cut it off. It was stuck at 610 keywords for 10 minutes so I finally stopped it manually.

It also did not contain our sample Kinesiology terms after 10 minutes of waiting and not budging from 610 terms.. which is still 833 less keywords than SERPWoo.

I ran it several more times just in case it errored out on my first try, but it never did more than 610 keywords on following runs later.

Their sister service only returned 393 terms...

That leaves a lot to be desired in terms of complete keyword research we may need when we research niches, ranking terms, and content.

Score:

Terms Returned ( Compared to SERPWoo ): -1
Sample Related Terms Returned: -1

3. Searching for more tools, we come across a well-regarded face to SEO. I remember when this guy had hair.

While the tool was fast, it only returned 676 results. Meaning we are missing a lot of possible data if we used this for our keyword research.

We also never found our sample Kinesiology terms which would be important if we wanted related data.

Score:

Terms Returned ( Compared to SERPWoo ): -1
Sample Related Terms Returned: -1

4. The below tool returned 158 terms on a shallow search and 0 on a deep search. Maybe the tool was broke when I tried, but even the shallow searched returned ZERO Kinesiology terms.

I had to stop it after 9 minutes. It just kept spinning the cog and I felt close to 10 minutes was enough time to run.

I did try a few more times and was able to get it to complete at 167 terms, but again none of them were Kinesiology terms

Even at 167 terms, that's a lot less than SERPWoo's 1,443 total terms.

I will admit I ran it as a shallow search. Maybe shallow means less results. I just could never get the deep search to work.

By default, I have to assume it's broken or returns less than SERPWoo based on the shallow results.

Score:

Terms Returned ( Compared to SERPWoo ): -1
Sample Related Terms Returned: -1

5. The below competitor only returned 56 results.

I will say the displayed results were limited, but they were limited to only showing 10 results without logging in and having an account.

So I firmly believe that they only had 56 results and the chances of those containing Kinesiology terms ( see ours above ) would be super low. It wouldn't let me see results 11 to 56/

Again, I didn't create an account to remove the limits. However at 56 compared to SERPWoo's 1,443, it is rather low and missing out on a lot of data.

Score:

Terms Returned ( Compared to SERPWoo ): -1
Sample Related Terms Returned: -1

6. This competitor limited to only showing me 25 total terms on a free run.

So I couldn't tell how many total terms it would have returned.

However, I did try their filter option and tried "Kinesiology" as a filter and it returned back that they had 0 results for that term.

If I pretend they would have had more than 1,443 terms, they didn't report back they have Kinesiology terms. In this test, I have to mark down it's a failure compared to SERPWoo.

Score:

Terms Returned ( Compared to SERPWoo ): -1
Sample Related Terms Returned: -1

Wow, a breath of fresh air finally!

7. This competitor returned back 1,000 results.

While a nice round number like that seems odd, more than likely they cut off the results they gave me. I was signed in, so I would assume if they had more than 1,000 they would have showed it to me.

Still, that's a lot closer to SERPWoo's 1,443 results even though it is 443 less terms.

And when I did a filter for "Kinesiology", I got 120 terms back in that returned result. HOWEVER, none of those "Kinesiology" results matched our sample terms from the beginning of this article.

Close on the number of results returned, but not showing the Kinesiology terms we should have gotten back.

Score:

Terms Returned ( Compared to SERPWoo ): -1
Sample Related Terms Returned: -1

8. About the only competitor that really came close was this one:

They returned 2,751 keywords which is 1,300+ more than SERPWoo returned.

Damn. We need to up our game.. MAYBE.

A lot of the results I had to question. I mean, is this really something I can use?

Not trying to complain, but these are kind of horrible to be used as keywords in anyone's research. And these were some of the first 50 results this tool returned.

So while they did return more keywords than SERPWoo, the results contain data that seems unusable.

They did have Kinesiology terms, BUT ONLY 1 of them contained our sample Kinesiology terms from above.

This competitor calls their keyword tool "industry-leading", but how can that be if they have terms with garbage characters and are missing important related terms?

While I do not have concrete data, I have to assume this is data from a clickstream provider. Possibly JumpShot who was selling user data from Avast Antivirus before closing down. Read here for more info on JumpShot. Again, I don't know so don't quote me on that one. The data just looks like clickstream.

Score:

Terms Returned ( Compared to SERPWoo ): 0.5 due to quality
Sample Related Terms Returned: -1

Looks like SERPWoo is coming in 2nd to none when it comes to keyword research.

I'm not sure why so many online "guru" reviews skip over SERPWoo and our tools year after year. It's almost like us perfecting keyword research years ago means nothing to many of them.

None of the larger well funded SaaS competitors can come close to our results, and many of the scrappy young start-ups don't seem to offer a UVP against us when it comes to one of the basics of SEO.. keyword research.

And while many of these tools offer fancy and exclusive metrics with their results, you gotta ask yourself what are you missing if they can't even get the right keywords back to you?

Shouldn't that be the first thing they get right?

Do they even SEO in the first place?

Having all the data upfront should be the highest priority. What good is knowing CPC and competition metrics, if you don't know all the keywords you could be ranking and researching?

You don't always know what these tools aren't showing you to do a 2nd or 3rd run for more terms.

Especially when a lot of these tools want to charge you $69, $99, $179, and even $249 a month for less results and incomplete data from their suite of tools.

SERPWoo can give more accurate results starting at just $49 a month. Our Keyword Finder tool gives you industry-leading results for a fraction of the cost of everyone else.

Check it out today if you haven't.

Be sure to let us know your thoughts on this subject!

--

To the top of the SERPs,
Jason & Carter

eliquid · May 13, 2020

Using Global Stats To Understand SEO Algo Changes

Hey WooNation!

Jason here.

Have you checked out our Global Stats feature in SERPWoo?

It can help provide a wealth of information about the current state of SEO.

I want to show you how you can use Global Stats to understand what is going on with Google so you can make the right decisions when it comes time to audit your site and research your competitors.

When you first load our Global Stats, you will encounter an image like this below:

You can look at our Global Stats per day for up to 1 year.

However, I like to view the last 28 days ( red arrow ). The drop down will allow you to select different ranges of days.

So why is that important?

Well, if I want to see updates, algo changes, or major events in going on with Google SERPs, I can build a timeline AND a baseline of the events.

Just by eyeballing the last 28 days above, I can see an average that most of the bars are below the 15 Y-axis line ( green arrow ). Any bars that hit 15 or above, are major changes I should look into potentially.

So if I know my website took a hit in rankings ( from using our SERP tracking services ) on April 23rd, 24th, or 25th.. I can see that a lot of SERPs shuffled and got hit on those same dates ( yellow arrow ).

I know now it's not my site personally, or a penalty that hit me on my specific keywords. It's a major shift in rankings and SERPs across all of Google.

Whew.. At least I know I don't need to break out ScreamingFrog and do a deep dive on my site now.

And what about times like May 5th, 6th and 7th ( blue arrows )?

We know these are Google Core updates per Google directly.

But many times Google does not confirm updates or admit to algo changes.

As we see here, there was no confirmation at the end of March.

Other similar tools also picked up changes on this date. Algoroo and MozCast picked them up, but Google did not confirm an update.

Using our Global Stats could have helped you notice changes outside of your control when SERPs are shuffling around. You could have jump right in and took the correct actions as needed.

Here are some examples where this might help you personally with a website you are trying to improve.

You have a website you want to improve. It's been on the second page of Google for months. You decide to run an Onsite Audit with our powerful Zora toolof your site compared to your competitors to determine what you need to improve. However, if it's March 31st, April 24th or May 6th.. it might be a bad time to run such an analysis as everything is in flux on those dates ( possible Google updates ).
- A better time to run such an analysis might be right after an update, so that you get accurate and current data that you can use.
A client's website tanks from the first page to the 3rd page. You are not sure what is wrong. Could it be a penalty, an algo update, or something else? You could check here first and notice that all the bars for the last few days are below 15 ( or your baseline ), so it must be something specific with your site and keyword since entire SERPs are not shifting.
You hired an SEO "guru" and they promised to move you up in rankings. However, you are unsure if they can actually do it. Your website jumps from the 3rd page to the 1at page and you assume their work helped. But you check here and realize there has been a major shuffling in the SERPs ( like on May 5th ) and that maybe their work wasn't what helped you rank after all.

These are just a few examples that can help show how having a baseline will help you with your specific keywords and website rankings.

This type of information can help direct you to making the right decisions on what to improve and what to change.

But our Global Stats doesn't stop there.

We add in breakdowns that other similar tools do not provide to help you further understand this data.

You can view breakdowns of what is happening in other countries and compare them to one another.

Maybe something is hitting SERPs in Brazil, but not Japan.

Maybe Globally things are shifting, but it hasn't hit Spain yet.

We even break down:

Local
Non-local
Mobile
Desktop
Monthly Search Volumes ( under 100 and up to 1M+ )

Notice how the recent Google Core update ( May 5th, 6th, 7th ) doesn't seem to have impacted keywords with search volumes over 1M+

But it did on keywords with search volumes of 50,000 and below...

Could it be that large brands are not getting impacted in this update? Maybe only longer tail keywords are getting hit? There is still some more digging we need to do, but at least we know where to dig now potentially.

And no other tool is giving you this type of insight.

And that's exactly why a tool like SERPWoo was invented, to give you insight into metrics no other SEO provided you for decades.

See, we do these calculations across our entire keyword universe.

Most other similar tools only do a small subset of their data. 10,000 keywords, or only keywords in a certain country.

Most also update the next day or once a day.

SERPWoo updates multiple times a day across every single keyword, which totals in the millions.

And then we break it down into different sections for you automatically so you can not only spot the update, but where that update is impacting.

I generally try to check out our Global Stats every day to spot hidden and un-named algo updates so I can be prepared if my websites drop or rankings change.

I also back this up with each keyword I am tracking within SERPWoo at the individual keyword Volatility level.

This is a keyword I am tracking in SERPWoo.

I can tell that while Global Stats is showing high shifting on May 7th ( today, as of this writing ), this specific keyword's SERPs have calmed down as of May 7th. Meaning I can probably expect this keyword to have settled some at least.

My client or boss will be happy to know that and see this now.

And if I want to see what the shake up was all about so I can learn from it all, I just need to look at the SERP Tracking for this same keyword and see what moved that might interest me.

Here is something I found really telling ..

Prevention.com moved up from the 2nd page of Google ( 13th ) to 5th after the Google Core Update.

I know exactly who to analyze now, for my specific keyword, to find out what Google is rewarding after this Core Update.

And if I am monitoring multiple keywords in the same niche at SERPWoo, I can do this same thing across all keywords and figure out what it takes to "rank in my niche" at this very moment.

It's a win-win for me and my clients/business.

So, are you ready to check out our Global Stats today? Log in and let us know what you think.

P.S.

We build tools to help you win at SEO. To make more revenue and to win more clients.

We want you to use SERPWoo to level up your digital marketing efforts.

That's why we build the best tools on the market for serious players.

--

To the top of the SERPs,
Jason & Carter

thisishatred · May 15, 2020

Just wanted to say big ups to this tool.

I've been using Mangotools for a long while for serpwatcher (tracking) and kwfinder (keyword research). I recently paid for semrush to do more of a deep dive for keywords. From time to time I also have to pay for POP (has become worse over time imo) and/or surfer (super limited for entry level plans) in the event that I need to do a bunch of on-page analysis at once.

Needless to say it gets rather inconvenient having to use like four tools and then having to pay an excess of $200/month to just have access to all those tools. If you opt for alternatives like Ahrefs the price then increases exponentially.

Then after all that, you then evaluate them and realize that SERPWoo has all their features and does them all better while being more affordable:

SERPWoo's tracker is really solid and provides a lot more meaningful data. Not to mention you pay a lot less on a per keyword basis (thanks for the 20% bonus).

The keyword research functionality is really solid. I'm noticing a lot more targets than other tools. Jason's recent blog post about the 8 other tools had me intrigued which is another reason I decided to jump ship. Turns out he was right, so hats off.

Although I will note, I'm not a huge fan of "sliders" being used to modify data ranges, i'd much rather have a way to input a specific range vs attempting to slide at that range, similar to how Semrush does it:

[please embed images rather than linking to temporary URLs]

Granted in the grand scheme of things, it's not like these minute differences would matter but being able to input to say 50 - 250 searches would be beneficial for folks who like to target KGR keywords.

ZORA is really really solid. I've used most of the tools out there for on-page: POP, Surfer, CORA, and Website Auditor for TF ; IDF. The number of factors/signals/and the number of URLs being used for analysis reminds me a lot of how CORA works but unlike CORA, ZORA actually provides actionable advice as to what to do and change. It's been a while since I've used CORA but 2 years ago it felt like I was Nicholas Cage in National Treasure trying to decipher what I actually needed to do.

Just a quick testimonial for ZORA: I was given Beta access by @CCarter yesterday and made most of the "very good" changes in Header Elements and also edited media elements that I had 0/14 factors for. I managed to move from 19th to 7th in 24 hours of indexing the page.

I've been making notes during use for factors/functions that would be nice to see. I'll be sure to send those over soon @eliquid and @CCarter.

Thanks again for Making SERPWoo a thing. Just based on the past like 36 hours of using it, i'll likely be a client for life.

eliquid · May 15, 2020

Thanks for the kind words @thisishatred.

We are always trying to make tools that do "it" better.

CCarter · May 15, 2020

thisishatred said:
Granted in the grand scheme of things, it's not like these minute differences would matter but being able to input to say 50 - 250 searches would be beneficial for folks who like to target KGR keywords.

The Keyword Finder's slider is being upgraded in the next iteration of the tool. It's on version 3.0. By 4 we'll be axing the slider and allowing inputs. We've gotten this same feedback a lot. so thank you for reiterating it.

thisishatred said:
Then after all that, you then evaluate them and realize that SERPWoo has all their features and does them all better while being more affordable:

thisishatred said:
Just a quick testimonial for ZORA: I was given Beta access by @CCarter yesterday and made most of the "very good" changes in Header Elements and also edited media elements that I had 0/14 factors for. I managed to move from 19th to 7th in 24 hours of indexing the page.

thisishatred said:
Thanks again for Making SERPWoo a thing. Just based on the past like 36 hours of using it, i'll likely be a client for life.

Thank @thisishatred - We appreciate your compliments!

CCarter · May 18, 2020

Easy Step By Step Guide For SEO Prospecting

It's always difficult to gain new customers, especially during "slightly" downward trending times like now. But we've got a unique way of fishing for clients, high-end clients, high-profit clients, the Glengarry Glen Ross type of clients that are begging you to help them.

In this guide we'll show you how to find the impact zone:

We'll also show you how to find the biggest losers:

We also talk about getting some quick wins using the beta On-Page SEO Analysis tool we launched:

Let's get started: Finding New SEO Clients After A Google Update

If you have not started beta testing Zora yet we are still looking for more test users! Message us with the In-App messenger for details!

To the top of the SERPs,
Carter & Jason

eliquid · May 19, 2020

Ranking A New Site From Scratch, Days 1-30

Hey WooNation!

Jason here.

Coming off our intro post here, I want to dive into what has taken place the first 30 days helping my friend with their site and what has been done.

Let us break down some general notes real quick...

The website is a service, based on a B2B need.
The domain is brand new and does not contain the keywords my friend wants to rank for.
Hosting was set up at a cloud VPS provider ( Linode, Digital Ocean, etc ) on the 2nd smallest plan they offer.
The site and runs on WordPress. No plugins were installed. Just a default vanilla WordPress install.
The theme was nothing special. A free 2-column theme that had no SEO or speed focus.
The server is running Apache which is slower than Nginx
Only 7 pages were built on the public-facing website. Of those 7 pages, there are less than 1,000 words of content TOTAL ( all 7 pages added up )
We didn't really even have the keywords we wanted to rank for picked out.
- We had an idea, but no solid agreement or list at this point.

So why do I bring all this up?

Because we were really shooting in the dark and throwing stuff against the wall.

We didn't have keywords picked out. We didn't have content. We didn't even have a super-duper fancy theme, CMS, or plugins.

We didn't have some aged domain with tons of links ( it was brand new ). The domain didn't even contain our keywords since we didn't even know them.

So what did we have?

We had a lot of research into what we thought would be all of his competitors. I say "thought" because it was really a list of 7 major competitors and not an exhaustive list of every single competitor.

And these competitors are really big, huge companies. Internationally known and sizable budgets.

From that research, we had notes like their prices, terms, policies, UX, functionality, what people liked and disliked about their product ( from reviews on Reddit and other sources ), and the major keywords the competitors ranked for ( 2-3 keywords per competitor ).

Notice I didn't have SEO research.

I didn't run on-site audits, get long tails, examine backlinks, or anything remotely close to SEO research.

The first 30 days.

Just about nothing SEO related happened in the first 30 days.

Sorry to disappoint you.

But is that really a bad thing?

I was able to get to the 2nd page of my top keywords in less than 6 months of starting this project. Considering the first 30 days I did nothing for SEO, I really did it in less than 5 months for 2 of my 3 keywords.

Let's look at what I posted below from my intro post:

Keyword #1:

Keyword #2:

Keyword #3:

So two of our major focus keywords on page 2 and one keyword on page 3. All data showing up to May 4th.

What about from May 4th until May 15, the day I wrote this article?

Keyword #1:

Keyword #2:

Keyword #3:

Two keywords moved up, and one dropped a little. One of the keywords is potentially about to rank on page 1.

Not bad for 5 months of part-time side work.

And all this happened on a new site/domain during the Google Core Update that started on May 5th.

OK, so what was done to the website for the first 30 days?

Let me break it down.

Bought domain, directed it to the VPS server
Installed WordPress and 2-column theme
Installed member login system and payment system ( think DAP, Member Mouse, Amember, Optimize Member, WishList, etc )
Developed 7 pages for the website ( home page content, F.A.Q page content, About Us page, Contact Us page, etc ). The total content for the site came to less than 1,000 words for the entire site.
Set up Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
Set up Google Adwords account ( not SEO related, but thought I would throw it in ).
Set up Mixpanel and HEAP Analytics. I was more curious than anything to find a reason to use these services. These probably slowed down my website more than anything.

And that was it.

No SEO editing ( schema ), no SEO plugins ( like Yoast ), no link building, and no optimized content.

Slow server and slow theme. Take a look at this for Page Speed Insights:

And here are a couple more from other tools:

While not great scores, they're also not terrible. I would say it's mediocre when it comes to overall speed. For sure things could be improved to help us potentially rank better.

I did have to spend some time messing around and testing things with WordPress and the member login system. But that isn't really SEO worthy. It's just technical issues getting the 2 parts to work together.

At this point, we had not narrowed down our keywords yet. So nothing was really designed for the Title tag, or H1's or anything else.

All of this work was done in the first 7 days. The other 23 days I did nothing at all.

Seriously.

My friend did some work of course. But it wasn't SEO worthy.

Work such as, coming up with the pricing plans he wanted and testing out the site. Setting up his merchant account and other business-related stuff like his LLC and phone number...

Again, nothing that would impact SEO or this series.

How the content is set up.

The seven pages of content on the site are included in a navigational section of the site ( think header or footer section ). All pages link to each other in only this way. There is no siloed content or trickery with URLs/structure.

None of the seven pages contain the main keywords in their link anchor for the above navigational links.

Each page has an H1, but no other heading tags. None of the H1s contain our 3 main keywords on any of the seven pages.

Only 2 images on the site. No PDFs or Infographics or videos.

Some use of ordered and unordered lists, but most of the content is just wrapped in P tags.

Very little use of STRONG or BOLD at this point.

No outbound links on any pages.

No meta tags and no schema info on any page of the site.

Conclusion

SEO doesn't have to be hard.

You don't have to stress out that you need a perfect plan upfront or that you need to "hurry up" and beat some time clock.

You also don't need to have everything ready before you start. We started out with essentially no SEO plan at all.

I worked on this part-time as a side project. Many times not touching the site for weeks at a time.

You also don't need a lot of money. The total budget for this project ( SEO budget ) for the first 30 days: $0

Next step

Stay tuned for days 31-60 where I get some initial backlinks pushing the product on directory sites and what didn't work.

To the top of the SERPs,
Jason & Carter

CCarter · May 22, 2020

SERPWoo Updates This Week

A lot has been happening in the background this week. Zora's getting an overhaul to increase the speed, and several improvements have gone live within other aspects of Quantum.

Most importantly Jason's been hard at work showcasing some of the newer features available to WooNation within SERPWoo's Quantum Interface. Some tidbits of this week...

Jason has a case study showing the world how he rankings a website from scratch. He's already published Day 0, and Day 1-31 of the series. If you missed it check them out:

Ranking A New Site From Scratch, Day 0

--

Ranking A New Website From Scratch, Day 1-31

--
Jason's also created a comparison of SERPWoo's Keyword Finder versus 8 known competitors and shows where the others simply fall short:

SERPWoo's Keyword Finder Vs 8 Competitors, Why We Still Win Against All

I believe it's called a "Triple Shame" - ehhh I mean 8x Shame.

--

Recently there has been tons of talk of Google's latest May Core Update, Jason goes into detail on how you can use our Global Stats to understand the nuances of what got impacted (hint: keywords with search volumes under 50k):

Using Our Global Stats To Understand SEO Algo Changes

--

Working off Google's May Core Update I realized there are tons of opportunities available to SEOs looking for clients that can catch domains slipping out of the top positions and help them. I give a rundown on how any SEO can prospect for new high profit clients with a few simple steps:

Finding New SEO Clients After A Google Update

Also our Beta Testing of Zora is still open. Just shoot us a message within the In-App messenger if you are interested.

To the top of the SERPs,
Carter & Jason

CCarter · May 26, 2020

Live Dashboard Coming Soon!

Soon you'll be able to give clients a view of their SEO project's progress!

Share a live link to this dashboard is easy!

eliquid · May 28, 2020

Ranking A New Site From Scratch, Days 31-60

Hey WooNation!

Jason here.

In case you missed it, here are the prior articles in this series of "Ranking A New Site From Scratch"

Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Day 0
Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Days 1-31

So what's new?
Up to this point = the website was thrown up, hardly any content written, service tested and tweaked, and we tested all our logins/pixels/merchant account settings.

To test if my friends MVP would even be something he should go forward with, we decided to submit it to some Product Hunt style websites and communities. You know, to see if anyone would give him feedback and test everything out.

So I hunted down a list of the most common startup and SaaS directories from many lists found online and narrowed down which URLs came up the most often.

Yeah, I know that's not a perfect strategy.

But I wanted to find what people were recommending over and over and just hit those for this test really quick and get some feedback.

The site also cracked the first page of Google for one of its main terms for 2 days recently as well.

And while it did drop back down, we are still on an upward trend overall in ranking for this term. Notice the below trendline ( red line ):

As of this writing, it is sitting at an average position of 13.

And what kind of competition are we going against in the SERPs?
They're brands that a lot of people have heard of. Sorry, if I post them here it would pretty much out his site.

Just going off the Moz DA score ( not saying I recommend this, but just as an example ), the SERP looks like this:

Domain 1 = 69 Moz DA
Domain 2 = 94 Moz DA
Domain 3 = 90 Moz DA
Domain 4 = 74 Moz DA
Domain 5 = 90 Moz DA
Domain 6 = 58 Moz DA
Domain 7 = 92 Moz DA
Domain 8 = 86 Moz DA
Domain 9 = 90 Moz DA
Domain 10 = 94 Moz DA

The DA for my friends site = 10 Moz DA

While I know a Moz DA score does not correlate with first page rankings, I wanted to give you some idea of what the website is up against.

Building Links AKA Submitting The Site
So after narrowing down a list of sites, I came up with several directories that looked legit and were recommended a lot.

I stayed away from Product Hunt though.

I wanted to keep PH for when the product was polished and tested. These similar sites would be our testing ground to kill all the bugs and get things ready for the main event.

Here is a sample list of sites we submitted to:

BetaList
HackerNews
BetaPage
10words
TechPluto
StartupLister
IndieHackers
etc

And if I had it all over again, I would just stick with HackerNews and BetaList if I were looking for traffic and signups.

Why?

Because just about every site we submitted to sent almost ZERO traffic. Except for HackerNews and BetaList.

And while the name of the game is not traffic ( we wanted signups ), you can't get signups if you have no traffic.

Every submission that let me "pay" to jump the queue and get priority treatment, I paid. I didn't want a free submission to mess this up and leave me wondering "what if".

ZERO might be an overstatement for the sites I didn't list, but I consider those sites that have sent in less than 40 visitors pretty much ZERO. Especially if no signups happened. The majority of these sites send 1-2 visitors tops.

BetaList and HackerNews were also the only sites that sent signups as well.

HackerNews alone sent over 4,000+ visitors. Most coming within the first 2 days of submission. There were multiple HackerNews website referrals you can not see in the image above, but it mostly is from ycombinator, hckrnews, and a few others.

I don't regret submitting to the other websites though. They did help me get some legit backlinks to the website overall because of syndication and reposts from 3rd party sites. I'm counting that at around 54 root domains linking back to me from the submissions looking at Google Analytics and various other tools.

All of the links from these websites went to the homepage with our brand name as the link anchor.

How about content and keywords?
Still a nothingburger.

I added no new content to the site and we still had no focus on our keywords yet. I also did not change any of the content on the site.

We knew the theme or idea we wanted to go after when it came to keywords, but we had not really narrowed down our focus in a way that we could go after certain keywords still.

Sorry to keep you in suspense if you are waiting on that. But I hope this shows you that sometimes you don't need to stress out and mega plan far in advance to rank for terms that matter to you.

What got learned?
My friend was able to find a few small bugs and clean them up. Nothing serious.

We were also able to stress test the site and prep for more traffic.

I did start looking more heavily into keywords at the end of this 30 day period, but again I didn't take action just yet. Think of it more as loose research and trying to list them in order of importance based on metrics from SERPWoo's Keyword Finder and popular mentions from our Brand Monitoring tool.

If you want to know what was going on in my mind during this initial keyword research phase, take a look at these 2 articles I wrote recently and why I was doing things this particular way:

Remember, I was working on this part-time to help my friend. In the first 30 days, I didn't touch the site for 3 weeks.

We started out with essentially no SEO plan at all.

My friend also didn't put up a lot of money for the directory submissions. Total budget for this project ( SEO budget ) for the second 30 days: $400-ish

And while I hate to say it, most of the work for this second 30 days was all in the first 7 days again.

Mostly managing the submissions on my end to each of the directory sites. I didn't touch this project for the next 3 weeks except for a few hours here and there late at night looking over keywords in SERPWoo's Keyword Finder and our Brand Monitoring tool as I put in some of his competitors to see what words people were using to interact with them.

Next step
Stay tuned for days 61-90 where I figure out the main keywords he should go for and how I set them up on the website.

--

To the top of the SERPs,
Jason & Carter

CCarter · Jun 2, 2020

New Feature: Client Dashboards

Carter here!

As part of our mission to round out our rank tracking features we've launched Client Dashboards!

Client Dashboards allow you to generate URLs (viewkey's in similar software) which you can send to your client, employer, or marketing team to showcase each project's progress.

No login required, just a simple link to send clients, example: https://www.serpwoo.com/d/p/DEMO-DASH/

White-Label Version:

There is a white-label version available on Silver and up plans which utilizes our clientstats.com domain:

https://www.clientstats.com/d/p/DEMO-DASH/

Anonymous Data:

You also have the option to hide data, making it anonymous if you're into that sort of thing.

Warning:

The keys are editable, so you could in theory create h--ps://www.serpwoo.com/d/q/WhateverYouWant/ (if it's available) - but just note random searchers might be able to guess simple terms - so use your brain.

You can also update the URLs at anytime from the interface. Check it out: Dashboards

We've got a wide selection of newer dashboards types coming out - next up is an ORM version!

Let us know what you think!

To the top of the SERPs,
Carter & Jason

eliquid · Jun 5, 2020

SERPWoo will have a new BETA very soon.

Can you guess what it is? I can give you a hint.

Paid members will get it for majestically for free, sorry I don't have any ahrefs you can follow to see more.

eliquid · Jun 9, 2020

Ranking A New Site From Scratch, Day 61-90

Hey, it's time for keyword selection!

In case you missed it, here are the prior articles in this series of "Ranking A New Site From Scratch"

Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Day 0
Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Days 1-31
Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Days 31-60

So what's new?
The site has been bouncing around and has hit the front page for a 2nd time.

The first time it hit the front page, was May 17th. Less than 5 months into building the site. Read our last post to see that proof -> https://www.serpwoo.com/blog/tutorials/ranking-new-site2/

Now it has hit the front page again for the same term on June 5th.

And while yes, it is the bottom of the front page.. it just goes to show that you don't have to stress out to try to rank your desired keywords. Especially if you have been following this tutorial.

With no SEO plan, no content, almost no backlinks, a slow user experience, and a brand new domain.. you too could hit the bottom of the first page of Google. Think what a little effort could do afterward.

Keyword Selection Time
So a lot of you have been pretty amazed I put no SEO effort into the site up to this point.

Many of you emailed me freaked out that I helped build a site and didn't do any SEO audits, keyword selection, Meta Tag editing, Schema, or plugins.

Well, why would I?

I was doing SEO while Google was still a research paper. I was manipulating the Yahoo Directory for rankings and also a DMOZ editor while some of you were shitting in diapers.

That's NOT to brag.

But it is to show you that maybe a few of us old hats know a thing or two, about a thing or two.

I don't follow Google's SEO blog for updates, their twitter puppets, or even read their "guidelines" book they give to search raters.

But I do know the history of search. Specifically Google search
I also know what the SERPs tell me daily

Click to expand...

On just those two things alone, I have been ranking websites under one year of age with barely any content or link building work as a side hustle.

And this isn't for easily gamed niches.

This keyword I keep showing you rankings for in each article has a Moz DA average of 84 for the front page. Sites that are old & well known brands with marketing teams pumping content out every day.

Sometimes you just gotta put down the RSS feed and guru courses. Sometimes you just gotta build and put in the hours of work and do things your way with no fear or stress that you are doing it wrong.

That's just what I do. And I did the same with keyword selection.

And when I did feel froggy enough to pick the keywords we needed to rank for, I spent less than 8 minutes picking them total.

No "golden keyword ratio" or "difficulty metrics" needed.

You either rank for shit or you don't. Capeesh?

Why would I bother myself ranking for low volume keywords with no competition? Sorry GKWR...

Why I would bother aiming low by even looking at what was difficult or not?

If I'm gonna rank, IM GONNA RANK. BABY.

So How Did I Pick My Keywords?
By this time I knew enough about the niche to know the major players. I knew what their websites said and what they were pushing.

I had been on Quora and read their answers, seen their Twitter accounts, visited their websites, and had a deep connection with their brand message. I knew the employees by looking them up on LinkedIn. Yeah, I did that.

All of this was passive.

I did it in spare time on the side. I let the information build up in my mind and sit there for days and weeks untouched.

So when it was time to pick the keywords, I had a passive collection of data stored in my subconscious that was marinating over and over while I slept at night.

Knowing the top keywords I needed to aim for became crystal clear.

Every competitor in this space played on a variation of one phrase. It was easy to spot after studying this niche passively what that phrase was.

And the phrase always contained 2 of the same words. In this 3 word phrase, 2 of them never changed.

An example would be similar to:

Inbound Marketing Agency
Inbound Marketing Freelancer
Inbound Marketing Company
etc

You realize when all your competitors are using the same phrases over and over, the money must be in the phrase along with the terms that don't change. In the example above, that would be the "Inbound Marketing" part.

So what "Inbound Marketing" phrase gets all the traffic?

That's where SERPWoo's Keyword Finder comes in. I shouldn't have to explain this part, but you can read this article to know more.

Once I determined which "inbound Marketing" phrases got the most traffic, I looked at my friends website to figure out which of those terms made the most sense for him and his website.

For example, if he is pushing a B2B SaaS.. "Inbound Marketing Agency" isn't going to do him much good if he does end up ranking well for it. People typing this term in are looking for an agency to consult with, not a SaaS. So this is where we skip down to the highest volume keywords that just match his intent.

So once I found the 3 highest volume phrases that matched his intent, I called it a month as far as keyword selection is concerned.

Where Did I Use The Keywords?
You're gonna scream at me, but I used all 3 phrases in the Meta Keywords and Meta Description of the homepage.

Then I used the highest volume one in the Title tag and H1 tag of the homepage.

I used the other two in the copy of the homepage once within the content. One of these phrases did land in a list element.

And that's it.

Yeah, only on the homepage. No other webpages of the website.

To be fair, I did make a YouTube of the product in action and used the highest volume phrase in the video title and embeded the video on the homepage as well.

Time Involved
One day. Less than a day really.

The longest part was making the video and editing it and I did that in less than 2 hours.

The rest of the month, I just watched rankings and traffic in Google Search Console and Google Analytics for the website.

So one day out of the month, I put in work. The rest of the month was just F5'ing stats and waiting for results.

Which BTW, never came in "Days 61-90". The results started to come in at "Days 91-120" which is our next post in this series.

Disappointed?

You really shouldn't be.

SEO isn't hard. The process is simple as long as you keep it natural.

It's only when you try to rush and chase money that things get complicated.

Add on lots of "gurus" that try to shout as loud as they can from ivory mountaintops about how they can get you to rank and what you should and shouldn't do, and you end up with lots of frustration and heart ache with your project.

Next steps
Stay tuned for days 91-120 when things start ranking in the SERPs.

eliquid · Jun 16, 2020

Ranking A New Site From Scratch, Day 91-120

Hey, it's time for keyword selection!

In case you missed it, here are the prior articles in this series of "Ranking A New Site From Scratch"

Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Day 0
Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Days 1-31
Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Days 31-60
Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Days 61-90

So what's new?
One of the 3 major terms I have been showing you in this series is still bouncing around at the bottom of the first page / top of the second page. Here is the latest ranking screenshot of it below.

Overall, it is still creeping up looking at the average position now vs the the last update ( Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Days 61-90 )

Rankings hit late in the month
Coming into the 4th month, the website started to rank a bit better once I got keyword selection out of the way ( from the prior month ).

I'll be honest, I was sweating it a little bit.

Even though I have done this thousands of times before, you always have a little voice in the back of your head telling you that you might not rank or get rankings for the terms you want to see bringing in traffic.

It took roughly a month and half from the time I picked the terms and added them to the site, until the rankings started to show up in Google Search Console.

I already had rankings for other terms coming into the site too previously, they just weren't the keywords I wanted to rank for... YET.

You know, terms that seem long tail and rank on page 9 of Google.

The terms you don't pay attention to and figure are worthless.

Because you know, "gurus" push you to use keyword tools and do all kinds of other analysis to find the perfect keywords instead of looking at your own data.

And then a change in plan hits
Everything was looking good until I examined the data.

When you don't have your own data, using keyword tools and fancy strategies are OK. I mean, what else are you supposed to do, right?

Even researching your competitors and mulling data in your head for weeks is fine.

When you have nothing else, anything is good.

But when you can finally get data of your own, put trust in your data and only your data.

So on the last day of the month I start looking at results in Google Search Console. Pulling not only the month itself, but the entire 4 months the site was online.

And guess what I found?

I found a phrase that matched my prior selection criteria ( read Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Days 61-90 ) where 2 of the words in the phrase matched my "Inbound Marketing" example, but the 3rd word in the phrase was a word that wasn't present in my prior research of looking over our competitors.

And it was driving more impressions in Google Search Console than my other 3 phrases combined, even though I was nowhere near the front page for this term.

So even though I:

Researched competitors landing pages
Stalked their LinkedIn pages
Monitored their social media postings
Memorized their PPC ads and branding message
etc

This term escaped getting noticed as a major term. It wasn't a focus of my competitors, even though it would be the perfect term for them to focus on.

And the volume numbers in every keyword tool showed it should be getting way less impressions.

So I looked at this new phrase and its variations and figured out that it would bring in more volume than my other planned keywords and promptly switched in this keyword as the one I should dedicate focus to.

Considering the other competitors were ranking for it, but not using it as a focus, made me feel like this could be a slam dunk.

Corrective action
At this point, I simply swapped out one of the 3 phrases for this new phrase.

Replacing it within the Title, H1, and in the content of the homepage.

Yeah, that was it.

Still no backlinks or new content written. Just a simple swap in of one phrase and reset of my expectations.

Just goes to show you all the "guru" information, ebook secrets, keyword tools, and years of experience is no match for hard core data.

Of course, you have to start somewhere if you have nothing, so using these tools and gut checks is a perfect way to START getting the data you need so you can course correctly quickly when the data shows you otherwise.

Also, I only replaced 1 of the 3 phrases.. so that experience and gut check got 2 out of 3 right, out of the gate.

Just make sure you're collecting data from the start so you can pivot when needed.

At the moment, I feel there is no better tool for this than Google Search Console.

Even with no backlinks, no great rankings, and less than 1k total words of content on the site, I was able to find enough data to help me pivot and change direction.

Next steps
Month 5 ( days 121-150 ) shows me getting a little technical and editing a few things as I focus on our new phrase and trying to get it ranked on the first page.

Find out what I add and what I change that helped push me to the first page in the next update.

CCarter · Jun 26, 2020

The ORM Client Dashboard Is Almost Here!

Learn more about: Client Dashboards

To the top of the SERPs,
Carter & Jason

eliquid · Jul 3, 2020

What It Takes To Rank In The Higher Education Niche 2020

Hey WooNation!

It has been slightly over a year since I last wrote about "What it takes to rank in Higher Education right now" or basically "SEO for Higher Education in 2019".

Many of you emailed me loving that article. An article that ended up at 8,300+ words and took me weeks to compile and write.

Since that time, we have had 4 Core Google updates, BERT, Maverick, a few un-named updates, and COVID-19 which changed a lot of search patterns.

Gee, I wonder if what it takes to rank in Higher Education will be different now, than it was back 15 months ago?

I looked at over 2900+ variables this year and how those could play into making a website rank the front page across many Higher Education keywords. Last year, I only examined about 700 variables. So this audit was much further into the rabbit hole.

And while I don't share the full list of keywords I used in these studies ( because the haters think I'm outing them ) I do share a sample. Anyone with Excel could template the samples and make their own huge list.

Keywords like:

Criminal Justice Degree Online
BA in Communication Studies
Masters of Business Administration Program
RN to BSN Online No Clinical
Universities with Exercise Science Degrees
Associates Degree in Elementary Education
Affordable Liberal Arts Colleges
and many many more.

This wasn't a small time SERP analysis.

Results ranged from unique degree programs to cookie-cutter standby's like an MBA. It ranged from private faith-based school to public universities and ivy-leagues. I even throw in community colleges as well to round it all out.

And while many "SEO Gurus" love to tell you what they think is ranking and what's working for them in a single keyword SERP, no one is bringing you deep analysis over hundreds of keywords in a specific niche and breaking down the results for you like SERPWoo has with this article and our prior ones from last year.

I did it all using Spearman correlation coefficient, SERPWoo's Zora, some internal tools I developed, Excel, and a few 3rd party API's.

Also, I am not just looking at 1 keyword here, another there, and 2 more later to write this as a mish-mash article. I combined all this data into 1 project to find out what takes for websites in the Higher Education industry as a whole to rank. As an aggregate of all the data at once.

Only variables that come up frequently across all keywords and have substantial statistical differences from page 1 to pages 2 through 10 made the grade.

Again, if you need more background.. you can check out the 2019 version here which I highly recommend you do to get more insight and background information.

Smart marketers will read both and learn a lot more and connect the dots of where the trend is going.

So what did we find for 2020?
Get your keyword squeezed into lots of content, in different ways.

Which isn't much different, as a high level overview, than last years finding.

But, the devil is in the details.

Let's explore what that actually means below.

Longer content is ranking best.
I decided that this year I would show you pages 1 - 3 in our Excel images. I did include the page 2-10 average and page 3-10 average this year. I know many of you don't really want to see results from page 4, page 5, and further so I kept those out individually. The data is still included in the Page 2/3-10 average, I just didn't include the results in the images.

As an example, here is how last year's images looked. They contained pages 4-10 and also held less variables per image:

I think the image layout this year gives you more of what you really want, in a clean presentation, and all at once with a bit more information.

Also changed, I included what the difference is from the page 1 to page 2 as a percentage so you can see the difference better.

Same as last year, lots of indicators pointed to the fact the pages with more words, sentences, paragraphs, and heading tags are beating out pages with less.

Notice in our Excel example above that page 1 results have more words than page 2, 3 ( as an average ), and all the pages after 3.

Sentences are up, paragraphs are up.

Even the Heading tags are all up.

Which makes sense, right? The more content you have, naturally the more sentences and paragraphs you have. Also more Heading tags as well.

None of these by themselves are magic bullets. You are not going to put up a ton of H4 tags and just rank. You need content to fill it out.

Supporting this, is the fact the websites on page 1 are larger in other regards too.

The size of the webpages, the size of their CSS, and the size of their JavaScript sections are even larger.

This is probably why a school like Front Range Community College ranks on the 5th page for "elementary education degree". They barely have any content on their page ( word count, H tags, overall page size, etc )

Besides the header and footer content, here is what their page looks like:

Last year, we called out CNU.edu for this same issue. They were ranked 42nd for their elementary education degree offering last year for the same exact reason. Here is how their page looked last year:

Yep, that's pretty much the whole page.

Did CNU.edu take our advice?

No.

I checked in on the page several times over the year and it never improved. At some point they decided to do the worst thing possible and redirect the page to their catalog and student handbook.

AND.. they still offer an elementary education degree. It's right here. It's not like they dropped the program and then redirected the page to the student handbook. They just straight dropped the page and redirected to the student handbook instead of the new degree page.

Listen up folks and Front Range Community College.. don't be like CNU. Take our advice and fill out the webpage and if you need to redirect it, redirect it to the new URL of the same offering.

Maybe have a content filled page much like WGU.edu who ranks on the first page for the same term and has a word count almost at 8,000?

If that is too much, waldenu.edu is ranking first page with a word count just shy of 2,500.

Now let's layer in our keywords.
Lots of random content alone won't rank you. You got to fit in those keywords too.

It's pretty crazy, but a lot of this reminds me of keyword stuffing from pre-2007 days. While I know a lot of you will disagree, a lot of you didn't do SEO back pre-2007 either. Not a dig, but basically more keywords = better rankings, and we are seeing that here too. It's just that, you got to fit it into more content now for this practice to work.

With more content comes the opportunity to fit in more keywords. The below image shows keywords in those tags.

Several of these variables could be merged too.

Most of your sentences, are probably in paragraph tags. Both of those are probably in article tags. All of those, are in the body tag.

I just wanted to break it down so we get a good picture of things, but don't be blinded by this data breakout. Don't try to optimize every tag as many of these will be within others to begin with.

Tags that contain more of your keywords, end up ranking page 1 more often than pages that have tags that contain less keywords.

And just like last year, I found data that shows fitting in your keywords on FORM tags helps you rank if you are in the Higher Education vertical. I highlighted Legend and Option tags since those are primarily used within FORMs to help show overall the importance of this FORM tag to Higher Ed pages.

And while the data shows using keywords helps, it doesn't mean you should only be using your keywords in those tags.

Example, you shouldn't have a H2 tag that is just your keyword only. Our data shows keywords making up the entire tag did not impact rankings. Be sure to include your keyword, but don't make it the only thing in the tag.

Term Frequency was something that caught my eye. The 7 we get for page 1 and page 2 averages, isn't an average because we had a lot of 3's and then a lot of 11's as scores that averaged to a 7, it's an average because almost every ranking on Page 1 and Page 2 was a 7 itself.

Interesting....

I'll leave that alone for now. I think my silence on this speaks more than me trying to explain what you need to do.

Back to keywords in tags, this could be a reason why witchita.edu is sitting on the 5th page for "online rn to bsn program". Their body tag keyword score is only 42, when the average of page 1 is 431. Even page 3 is at 210. The page 2-10 average is even higher at 65.

Even their word count is low, just barely over 400 words for their page, which means they are not able to squeeze in more keywords in more places.

Term frequency is sitting at 5 for Wichita State University too.

The lesson here is, wake up Wichita State University! Add in more content and add in more areas to push your keywords more frequently.

And while I get that maybe "online rn to bsn program" could not be the term they are going for, they aren't sitting on the first 3 pages for any variation of that term either when I researched similar related terms like "rn to bsn online" and such.

Supporting LSI terms can help
While not always a deal breaker, LSI terms can help you break away and help show Google that your page's content isn't gibberish. This can provide you the push you need to break into the first 3 pages of a SERP.

Getting these LSI terms into the general content of your site might be what lands you on the first page.

Trying to use them in H1 or Title tags? Maybe not so much as the Diff % isn't huge.

Just use them intelligently within your content as needed with a focus on H2 tags, H4, and within your general content sentences.

Want to know how to get more LSI type terms for your content?

Check out Google's AutoComplete dropdown suggestions
Grab some of the "Related Searches" at the bottom of Google results
Run a TF*IDF analysis
Try a run of https://cloud.google.com/natural-language/, Google's Natural Language API.

An old school way I use to do something back in 2008 was to run a "word cloud" on my competitors ranking webpages and see which terms came up frequently on their pages I wanted to outrank.

But I didn't do this on 1 or 2 competitors, I did it on the entire front page for the term I wanted to rank for, making notes which terms came up frequently in the word cloud for each page and seeing where the trends came up.

Now rinse and repeat for variations of your term you want to rank and build yourself up a nice database of terms.

As an example, I ran content from a "Online Rn To Bsn Program" page from the SERPs on TagCloud.com and got these results back:

If I wanted to write content on "Online Rn To Bsn Program", I would for sure want to include the term "Nursing" on that content. Also maybe terms like "accredited", "education", and "excellence".

Run this type of analysis on the top 10 ranking websites for a given keyword, plus variations of that keyword, and you will start finding similar terms that probably need to be in your content when you write it since Google is ranking those webpages that contain those terms too.

Again, this was MY old school way of doing similar type of research over 12 years ago. You may find better alternatives today.

When I built the first SEO plugin for WordPress 2.0 many years ago, I used this same type of analysis within the plugin. It helped hundreds of thousands of people back then. The process can help you today as well.

If you end up using this and find it helpful, let me know in the comments!

No backlink data this update?
Yes. None.

While SERPWoo's Zora can help you spot on-page issues with your site ( or your competitors ) like the above Excel images, we don't have ready ( yet ) a backlink data source of our own.

Prior reports used data from Ahrefs and Majestics, as well as a few other sources.

And while I could have used those to fill in data about backlinks in this article, I decided to instead spend some time coding up SERPWoo's own version of a Ahrefs/Majestic backlink database instead.

It's not ready yet, but will be soon for paid members of SERPWoo totally free ( no extra cost ).

Wanna see what it might look like?

The red arrows point to the URL level and Domain level backlink counts for each result we find for you in the SERPs.

Now, also imagine clicking on those and getting all the backlinks for that result as well..

Both the backlink counts and export data will be available in a few months while I get it finished for you.

Nice, right?

This article will not contain backlink data this round, but we promise to have a much better feature for you waiting in the wings. Plus, we all know more links = better results, right?

It's a small sacrifice now, for a much bigger gain later on ( especially for you paid subscribers that get in before we raise our prices ).

So while everything I have shown you so far tells you how to rank on the first page, what about what it takes to hit the Top 3 positions?

What it takes to hit Top 3 in Higher Ed.
Our previous article included what it takes to rank, on the first page, of the Higher Education niche. This time we wanted to also include what it took to rank in positions #1-#3.

And guess what, the same patterns show up.

Patterns like, more content.

The above image are rankings #1-#10 ( the front page ) and their averages for each position.

We even grouped it as positions #1-#3 against positions #4-#10 and the percentage of the difference that we found between both.

Interesting find, right?

What took 3900 words on average to crack the first page, is taking almost 4800 words to crack the Top 3 on average.

And when it comes to layering in our keywords, the same pattern emerges.

Cracking the Top 3 really is focusing on getting more of your keywords into your content.

One thing I do want to focus on is LI Tags.

If you look at this image and the previous one, you will see that the #1 ranking almost never has the "most" of any variable we tracked. The number of H3 tags, word count, keywords in Main tags, etc.

The #1 rank almost always has less than #2 and sometimes #3.

That is, until you get to LI tags with keywords. This is the first time we see the #1 result take over a higher number than #2 and #3.

What I learn from this is that there is a threshold to crack the FRONT PAGE and even climb up to the Top 3, but that doesn't mean you will hit #1 rankings trying to "match and exceed" your competitors. Unless you're talking LI tags in this case.

We see something similar with LSI terms.

The #1 result has less than #2 and #3 until we look at LSI terms in the H2 tag.

Listen, I'm not saying adding more keywords and LSI terms to H2 tags and LI tags is the magic bullet, but they are interesting findings when you considering for almost every other variable the #1 result has less than #2 and sometimes #3.

Again, think thresholds for cracking the Top 3 and the front page with your content. Look at it as average, not exceeding and trying to bypass based on content alone.

When it's time to crack #1, you're going to need to look at backlinks and other assets.

If you want to see an example of cracking the front page with just about no backlinks, take a look at my series on "Ranking a new website from scratch".

Which BTW, I haven't wrote about yet.. but the site I am working on in that series has climbed to the 5th spot on the FRONT page of it's main term with almost no backlinks or SEO plan.. and it's a term dominated by big brands with old domains.

Here is a screen shot of the ranking as of 6-26-2020

This domain is only 6 months old and has almost no backlinks, a very slow theme, no social signals really, and had no SEO plan until well into it's 4th month of being online.

And the term we are ranking front page on, it just about the largest term for it's niche in the B2B space.

Content alone can crack front pages for a lot of terms ( I didn't say all, keep it down everyone ). Once you have your content game down, you're gonna need backlinks and other assets to really move the needle when content can no longer do it for you in your SERPs.

Everyone's mileage is different. See how far you can go and then switch it up.

What do the day-to-day SERPs look like for Higher Ed?
The majority of the keywords we examined were pretty solid and steady. I was really surprised honestly. After years of monitoring the Higher Education space with SERPWoo, I was expecting pretty volatile results again.

Most have very stable rankings for not only the first page, but the second page as well.

Lets look at some examples that monitor a keyword and the top 40 for the last 60 days:

Keyword: Child Psychology Degree Online
Last 60 days SERPs view, showing top 14 rankings pretty stable.

Keyword: Exercise Science Degree
Last 60 days SERPs view, showing top 8 rankings pretty stable.

Keyword: Online RN to BSN Degree
Last 60 days SERPs view, showing top 13 rankings pretty stable.

Keyword: Online Elementary Education Degree
Last 60 days SERPs view, showing top 10 rankings pretty stable.

I could keep posting more, but what I am finding today versus last year's article is that more websites are sticking around on the front page and many times the 2nd page too.

What use to be lots of volatility on the first page ( typically volatile from rankings #4 and below ), now tends to be volatile from rankings #8 and below. And for some keywords, #14-#15 and below.

Could the recent CORE updates, BERT, or Maverick have anything to do with this less volatile nature of the SERPs? Only more research can tell.

What that means for you is, it's getting harder and harder to crack the the 1st and 2nd page of SERP results for a given keyword now.

Makes sense, right? The less sites move around ( volatility ), the harder it is for websites to move up in the rankings.

Maybe this will change and revert back to more volatile rankings as time passes, but for now enjoy the traffic if you are already ranking.

Whose ranking for all these terms?
Another surprise was uncovered here, but I actually called it last year in suggesting that schools would get overtook by aggregators, affiliates, and informational websites when it comes to rankings because they just were not taking advice from professionals like myself.

7 out of the top 10 rankings, on average, are from non-university domains.

Meaning, non-EDU domains and non-school domains.

Now, that doesn't mean a school doesn't own the website. But most of these websites that are ranking tend to be informational research websites. Their first landing experience is not focused on primarily driving a lead to a form, like most colleges and university webpages do.

As an example, let's look at Exercise Science Degree and what type of sites are dominating the front page:

This is what is going on for pretty much all of the Higher Education terms I have researched.

What's the takeaway from this little nugget?

That schools need to get on the ball with adding in more content to their websites. Content that is informational and not lead generational. Content that is optimized and helpful.

This is what Google is rewarding and placing on the front page of SERPs at this moment.

And since those SERPs aren't very volatile anymore, this is what's going to continue to rank for some time.

It also tells me someone in the enrollment or marketing department needs to start planning out 2nd and 3rd properties outside of the main school website to start ranking and funneling students into their applicant pool. A backup plan for when the .EDU site doesn't rank anymore and fails to bring in search traffic.

In my experience of helping over 50+ universities and colleges over the years, almost none of them put efforts outside of their .EDU websites and now it is coming to haunt them.

Why wouldn't you have a backup website? Backup website for SEO, backup website for PPC, etc...

Many of them are now stuck paying for leads from affiliates and aggregators.

Of all the terms we monitored and research, one school stood out from the rest, and that was SNHU.edu who ranked somewhere in the TOP 10 for many of our keywords.

If you wanted some idea of a university doing it right, these are the examples I would look at:

I'm not going to list all of their pages and out their terms except for the small sample above. These 2 pages should be enough to help you get the main idea of what they are doing right, and what you might be doing wrong ( as a university or college looking to compare ).

However, if you wanted to start finding more keywords and pages on your own I can help. Just replace the X portions with your desired keyword and change out for degree level as well ( Bachelor and Ba ):

Ba Degree In XXXXX
Ba Degree In XXXXX Online
Ba In XXXXX
Ba In XXXXX Degree
Ba In XXXXX Degree Online
Ba In XXXXX Online
Bachelor Degree In XXXXX
Bachelor Degree In XXXXX Online
Bachelor In XXXXX
Bachelor In XXXXX Degree
Bachelor In XXXXX Degree Online
Bachelor In XXXXX Online
Bachelor Of Arts Degree XXXXX
Bachelor Of Arts Degree XXXXX Online
Bachelor Of Arts Degree In XXXXX
Bachelor Of Arts Degree In XXXXX Online
Bachelor Of Arts XXXXX
Bachelor Of Arts XXXXX Degree
Bachelor Of Arts XXXXX Degree Online
Bachelor Of Arts XXXXX Online
Bachelor Of Arts In XXXXX
Bachelor Of Arts In XXXXX Degree
Bachelor Of Arts In XXXXX Degree Online
Bachelor Of Arts In XXXXX Online
Bachelors Degree In XXXXX
Bachelors Degree In XXXXX Online
Bachelors In XXXXX
Bachelors In XXXXX Degree
Bachelors In XXXXX Degree Online
Bachelors In XXXXX Online
Bachelors Of Arts Degree XXXXX
Bachelors Of Arts Degree XXXXX Online
Bachelors Of Arts Degree In XXXXX
Bachelors Of Arts Degree In XXXXX Online
Bachelors Of Arts XXXXX
Bachelors Of Arts XXXXX Degree
Bachelors Of Arts XXXXX Degree Online
Bachelors Of Arts XXXXX Online
Bachelors Of Arts In XXXXX
Bachelors Of Arts In XXXXX Degree
Bachelors Of Arts In XXXXX Degree Online
Bachelors Of Arts In XXXXX Online
Degree XXXXX
Degree XXXXX Online
Degree In XXXXX
Degree In XXXXX Online
Degrees XXXXX
Degrees XXXXX Online
Degrees In XXXXX
Degrees In XXXXX Online
XXXXX Ba
XXXXX Ba Degree
XXXXX Ba Degree Online
XXXXX Ba Online
XXXXX Bachelor
XXXXX Bachelor Degree
XXXXX Bachelor Degree Online
XXXXX Bachelor Of Arts
XXXXX Bachelor Of Arts Degree
XXXXX Bachelor Of Arts Degree Online
XXXXX Bachelor Of Arts Online
XXXXX Bachelor Online
XXXXX Bachelors
XXXXX Bachelors Degree
XXXXX Bachelors Degree Online
XXXXX Bachelors Online
XXXXX College
XXXXX College Online
XXXXX Colleges
XXXXX Colleges Online
XXXXX Degree
XXXXX Degree Online
XXXXX Degrees
XXXXX Degrees Online
XXXXX Program
XXXXX Program Online
XXXXX Programs
XXXXX Programs Online
XXXXX School
XXXXX School Online
XXXXX Schools
XXXXX Schools Online
XXXXX Universities
XXXXX Universities Online
XXXXX University
XXXXX University Online
Online Ba Degree In XXXXX
Online Ba In XXXXX
Online Ba In XXXXX Degree
Online Bachelor Degree In XXXXX
Online Bachelor In XXXXX
Online Bachelor In XXXXX Degree
Online Bachelor Of Arts Degree XXXXX
Online Bachelor Of Arts Degree In XXXXX
Online Bachelor Of Arts XXXXX
Online Bachelor Of Arts XXXXX Degree
Online Bachelor Of Arts In XXXXX
Online Bachelor Of Arts In XXXXX Degree
Online Bachelors Degree In XXXXX
Online Bachelors In XXXXX
Online Bachelors In XXXXX Degree
Online Bachelors Of Arts Degree XXXXX
Online Bachelors Of Arts Degree In XXXXX
Online Bachelors Of Arts XXXXX
Online Bachelors Of Arts XXXXX Degree
Online Bachelors Of Arts In XXXXX
Online Bachelors Of Arts In XXXXX Degree
Online Degree XXXXX
Online Degree In XXXXX
Online Degrees XXXXX
Online Degrees In XXXXX
Online XXXXX Ba
Online XXXXX Ba Degree
Online XXXXX Bachelor
Online XXXXX Bachelor Degree
Online XXXXX Bachelor Of Arts
Online XXXXX Bachelor Of Arts Degree
Online XXXXX Bachelors
Online XXXXX Bachelors Degree
Online XXXXX College
Online XXXXX Colleges
Online XXXXX Degree
Online XXXXX Degrees
Online XXXXX Program
Online XXXXX Programs
Online XXXXX School
Online XXXXX Schools
Online XXXXX Universities
Online XXXXX University

These keywords should get you started down the path to monitoring SERPs in SERPWoo and finding out true competitors and which keywords to tackle first.

Conclusion
This is our 2nd "What it takes to rank in the Higher Education niche" article and our 5th article in "What it takes to rank in X niche".

I wanted to share what it really takes to rank in different niches instead of having you listen to so called "digital marketing" experts who haven't ranked a website in their life.

Or those that just regurgitate what someone else said on a blog 3 years ago.

Most of them just say "more content" or "more backlinks" and you are just supposed to blindly follow them.

But how many of them are offering you breakdown analysis of each SERP page? Or each SERP on the front page?

How many of them are telling you exactly what works in your specific niche?

And here is a clue, not everything that works in one niche, works in another.

Exactly the reason SERPWoo was invented, to find out what exactly works for you and your specific keywords.

What was working last year ( such as keywords in the first or last 100 words and count of images ), isn't so much a ranking variable now.

And doing this frequently is the key to winning in the SERPs. Things will change in the next 90 or 180 days. Are you going to put in the work to find the new changes, or will your SEO team still be executing on old data that is no longer relevant?

This is why you need SERPWoo and SERPWoo's Zora.

CCarter · Jul 21, 2020

ORM Dashboards Are Here!

We've completed the ORM Client Dashboards and they're available within your Dashboard Interface.

I hate to beat up on Permit Patty, but let's take a gander. The main interface consist of a top 30 results bar chart:

In the above screenshot, for the Top 3 (page 1-3 of Google search results), we've tagged the "alison ettel" (Permit Patty) keyword, and you can see the sentiment of positive and negative press.

Afterwards there is a running tally of 30, 60, or 90 days of sentiment within this project:

After that section you see each keyword, and can expand them to showcase the SERP View (custom tags names appear here as well):

--

If you are doing ORM this is a complete game change for showcasing what's going on with your keywords/client's SERP results. Take a look at the ORM DEMO yourself: https://www.serpwoo.com/d/o/ORM-DEMO/

White-Label Version:

And yes there is a white-label version available at: https://www.clientstats.com/d/o/ORM-DEMO/

Let us know what you think!

To the top of the SERPs,
Carter & Jason

CCarter · 2020-08-10T15:17:55-0400

[ Update ] Domain Backlink Data Within SERP View

Hey Woonation,

Jason's been hard at work, but this time exploring the deep crevasses of the internet to surface one of our most requested features in years. Backlink data! It's back!

Within the SERP View you can now see the Domain Backlink count for results within the Top 100 for your keywords:

Data

Our backlink data is special since we only count quality links and filter out all the spammy/low quality junk content that's placating the internet. Domains, pages, and links that are not indexed, cannot index, or are seen as low quality are dropped.

It has taken months to crack, but we have been able to successfully determine links that Google counts towards it's algorithm based on our mad scientists tests conducted deep inside an off-site Serbian SERPWoo black site.

The database is currently populating so give it about 24-48 hours to complete for a majority of domains last seen within 28 days of the top results of Google.

Login and let us know what you think.

To the top of the SERPs, ( stop trying to steal our tagline SERPStat! )
Carter & Jason

Software SERPWoo - SERP Omnipresence - 20% Bonus

CCarter

King of America

CCarter

King of America

eliquid

eliquid

eliquid

thisishatred

eliquid

CCarter

King of America

CCarter

King of America

eliquid

CCarter

King of America

CCarter

King of America

eliquid

CCarter

King of America

eliquid

eliquid

eliquid

CCarter

King of America

eliquid

CCarter

King of America

CCarter

King of America