Founded in 2013 as a keyword research tool, SerpStat has evolved and grown to become one of the biggest names in SEO and PPC analysis. With a database containing more than 100 million keywords, 180 million PPC Ads, and 200 million search suggestions, it’s closely rivaling any top competitor in the industry and already boasts over 30,000 clients globally.
If you’re currently considering the online tool, here’s a brief review to help you gain a better understanding of the product.
SerpStat Provides Six Key functionalities:
Website analysis allows you to perform two main tasks: domain analysis and URL analysis. In both cases, you can perform side-by-side comparisons with competitor businesses to find out why your SEO strategy might be lagging behind. The tool gives you key data about your website and its performance to help you understand your situation.
Here, you'll find common keywords you and your competitors rank for. You’ll also discover multiple new keyword opportunities that you might not be currently using. It’s a great tool to discover related keyword phrases to target and use on your website.
The backlink analysis feature is for analyzing your link profile as well as comparing your profile to your competitors’. The backlink dashboard shows referring domains, total indexed pages, referring pages, anchors, and top performing pages, to name just a few.
With this feature, you can, among other things, track your position on search engine result pages, check your ranking history for a particular keyword, and compare your ranking against selected competitors for a given keyword.
SerpStat’s site audit feature lets you comprehensively analyze you and your competitors’ sites’ overall SEO performance and generate detailed reports on; meta tags, headings, links, loading speed, redirects, server parameters, and pretty much every other factor that can affect a site’s performance.
With PPC analysis, you can discover your competitor's specific keywords and even see which keywords each of your competitors use for their pay-per-click ad campaigns. You can also uncover a competitor’s strategy (budget and bids) and use this information to better compete with them.
Users can choose a free-for-life plan where you get 30 searches and 100 page audits completely free of charge. Use this free plan to test out the platform before you begin paying.
Paid plans start at $19/month and are divided into two broad categories; personal and business. Each category is further divided into four plans; Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D. As you’d expect, Plan A in the personal category is the cheapest option, priced at just $19/month. Plan B is priced at $69/month, Plan C at $149/month, and Plan D at $229/month.
In the business category, Plan A is priced at $449/month, Plan B at $999/month, Plan C at $1,499/month, and Plan D at $2,500/month. Some of the perks of choosing higher priced plans include access to phone support, the ability to track a higher number of keywords, audit a higher number of pages, and track more projects.
It would be unfair to end this review without mentioning the company’s fantastic customer support system. As soon as you sign up, you get access to the SerpStat Academy. Here, you can learn everything about the product through elaborate User Guides, FAQs, and Video Tutorials. In addition to the academy, all users have access to live chat and email support. Furthermore, everyone except those on Plan A, in the Personal category enjoy 24/7 phone support.
With similar SEO and PPC analysis providers now charging $100+ even for basic plans, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try SerpStat. You’ll enjoy all the services you need without burning a hole in your pocket. Additionally, you’ll have a valuable tool for your online marketing analysis and planning.
Mike Gingerich is President of Digital Hill Multimedia, a Goshen web design and marketing agency. He is also a co-founder of TabSite.com and Waftio.com, leading software tools for contests and lead capture. As well as a book author, Game Plan for Social Media Lead Generation. Find out more at www.MikeGingerich.com/book.
Being found by a local internet user doing a search for a local business need requires local SEO marketing tactics. It's a unique arena that requires unique SEO marketing efforts.
Is your business performing well in local search?
What is local search and local SEO marketing? How can you improve your local search results?
We dive in, explain, and outline 6 tactics to help you get started in the second half!
Ready to go?
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The proliferation of mobile devices has made people more dependent on the internet for local searches. According to Google, more than 76% of people who perform local searches on their phones end up visiting a physical store within 24 hours.
If your business has a local presence, it’s important you apply local SEO best practices to do well on local searches. Here are some tips to implement for your local SEO Marketing enhancements:
People use keywords to look for what they need online, and therefore so must you on your website! That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) exists in the first place. Your content needs to be optimized with relevant keywords so it can rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs). Because of this, we do keyword research.
The same principle works for local SEO. To rank high on local SERPs, your content needs to be optimized with relevant keywords for the location you want to target. My recent podcast was on this very topic giving you a number of tools for keyword research. As well, Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner is a good tool to use to look for high-volume keywords within a given niche and location.
Example: “Eye Doctor Lancaster PA” is a localized search term that is common for users to enter in a search engine.
After identifying the keywords to use for your local SEO, the next step is creating location-specific content. For a smarter strategy, don’t just insert the keywords in an otherwise generic article. Instead, customize it according to the location.
For example, let’s say you’re running an HVAC company, and you want to write about ways to save energy during the winter for a location. The best approach you can take is to write the suggestions to fit the kind of winter that location gets. An example might be, "8 Ways to Save Energy during Lancaster PA Winters." After all, winters in Miami are different from winters in Lancaster!
Guest posting has always been a proven way to improve SEO.
But since you’re focusing on a location, publish content on local websites. The backlinks you get will improve your business’ standing on local SERPs. At the same time, if you produce high-quality content, you’ll quickly establish yourself as a local expert, which will give a boost to your brand. Of course, finding sites that will accept guest posts can be challenging. A good rule is to search for them using keywords like write for us + location or guest post + location.
Consider writing for the local chamber of commerce, a business partner or complementary business, or even the local newspaper. If you get a link on other quality local sites linking to yours, it's a win-win.
You can use social media to reach local audiences, especially now that most of them offer geotagging. This means you can assign a location to a post so that only people in that location can see it. The great thing about geotagging is you can share the same post multiple times, with each instance geotagged to one location. Even better, you can customize the accompanying text for each post, so one post can say “Heya, Lancaster” while the other can say “Howdy Lititz!”
As well, if using Instagram for your business, be sure to use the location feature for your posts. Since there is a location search your business can come up when this is used. As well, use local hashtags on Instagram to help your business be listed in relevant, popular, local hashtags. In my area tags like #lancaster #lancasterpa #lancastercity and #lanccity are relevant.
When you join a local activity – whether as a participant or a sponsor – you can get a backlink to your site from the organization facilitating the said event. This improves your local SEO, especially if the organization’s site has a higher authority than your own.
Also, taking part in local activities gives you writing material for content that appeals to the people in the location you want to target. You’re giving back to the community when you take an active role, and that earns trust and respect among its members.
Google is the dominant search engine. With nearly 70% market share of searches each month, it’s the place to focus on and one tool they give businesses is “Google My Business.” This is a listing that is free to setup and use, and which helps your business appear in search and map searches on Google. It’s a listing that can display your address, hours of operation, photos, your phone number, and a link to your website.
Be sure to take advantage of this free tool by going here: https://www.google.com/business/
These tips, when taken together, can definitely help you local SEO marketing. But remember, whether you’re going for global or local SEO, quality content is still the most important element of content marketing.
There's no shortcut for that.
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I’m an Indiana Hoosier native where basketball is the top sport. Every team heads to the locker room at halftime to evaluate the first half and create an updated plan for the second half. That plan includes adjustments based on reviewing what worked and what didn't. The “halftime” is a key review point where the game stops, the team pulls away to huddle in the locker room away from the fans, and they come out prepared and ready to succeed in the second half.
That’s what this podcast is all about, taking the time to pull away for a bit to evaluate, learn, and set some strategies for your business to succeed in the second half. Join me by subscribing and let me be your “business halftime” to help you find great success going forward!
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Keyword research tools for website SEO. What are they and what is it?
Why does it matter? And...how can you do it?
That’s the key topic in this week’s podcast episode. We dive into keyword research in a practical way to try and give you the tools and tactics needed to help you up your game with your website SEO.
Who does this apply to? Beginners are going to get the most value and yet others even with more advanced skill can benefit from learning about the tools used and research behind it.
Ready to dive in?
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Keyword research for website SEO can be defined as researching the terms people type into search engines when looking for resources similar to your site. Once you know what these keywords are, you can incorporate them into your website content. Do this consistently, and your site will rank for the keywords and keyword phrases on search engine result pages.
But if you're using the wrong keywords, no matter how much you stuff your content you'll still not reach your intended audience. This is why it's necessary to do keyword research. All your subsequent efforts are useless if your keywords aren't targeted enough.
General terms are more popular, which makes them more competitive and expensive. Let's say you have a law firm in Newport, RI specializing in divorce, and you want its site rank better in the search engine results.
Type in zero-turn lawnmowers on Google and you'll get about 1 million results. To get on the first page for that term will take considerable time, money, and effort. And even if you have the resources to get on the first page, how much good will it do? People looking for divorce lawyers in cities other than Newport will leave your site as soon as they realize it's not what they need. And your site will have a higher bounce rate.
But type in zero-turn lawnmowers in harrisburg pa and you'll get around 85,000 search results. With fewer competitors, you can focus on that specific term and related terms, and get good ranking results in shorter time. There's less competition and you are also honing in on people specifically interested in your products in your sales area.
In SEO, these specific terms are called long tail keywords. These are targeted to people who are about to make a purchase, or who know more exactly what they want. When someone uses a very specific term, they're no longer just looking around. There's a huge chance they already know what they want and are ready to buy or are motivated to learn more.
Luckily, you don't have to guess which long tail keywords perform well. There are several tools I suggest and I want to dive into each a bit more here:
On Buzzsumo, you can enter any topic, and the tool will analyze what content performs best for that. It displays links to content containing the keyword you supplied, then lists statistics on its Facebook engagement, and also LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ shares.
For Übersuggest, you can type in a term and choose categories (web, images, etc.) and country. It then gives you an extensive list of longtail keyword based on the term you supplied.
Ahrefs is an all-in-one software as a service (SaaS) tool that provides data and tracks your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. While not free it is a robust tool that includes a powerful keyword research tool in addition to other capabilities I’ve mentioned in a earlier website SEO grader podcast.
One tool that will allow you to generate hundreds of long-tail keywords from a single term is KeywordTool.io. It’s free and unlike Google’s own Keyword Planner tool where you could wind up spending a lot of time pursuing results, it only requires a single click to give you a myriad of ideas.
If you're looking for articles ideas based on the keywords you gathered from the tools above, there's Blog About, a blog title generator. Input any keyword, and the tool will display some suggested titles and email you the rest. This is a valuable way to get SEO-optimized blog titles relevant to your long tail keyword phrases.
As noted in the podcast, once you have the keyword phrases and optimized titles, you write your blog post and Yoast SEO in WordPress sites helps you analyze your content, images, and overall post for how well it is optimized for the long tail keyword phrase you are targeting. You simple add in the phrase and it runs through a whole series of items to evaluate your post and help you fine-tune it to be optimized for that phrase.
Another valuable resource is Small SEO Tools and their Keyword Position Checker here: https://smallseotools.com/keyword-position/
Wincher is an inexpensive rank-tracking tool with the possibility to track your rankings as far as 5 years back. It also helps with the optimization of your website by tracking the keywords and phrases. It can also do so for your competition. While it’s a pretty small tool, it offers great value for the price, as it costs a mere €10 a month.
Keyword Position Checker is a tool used to detect the position of a website or URL in the search engine (particularly, Google) for a given keyword as per competing with other websites for the same keyword.
In the end, a key comes down to understanding your ideal customer. Put yourself in your targeted audience's shoes. If you were in their place, what keywords would you use to find what you're looking for? That's a very good place to start. Alternatively, you may also use this free keyword rank checker tool from SureOak.
ACTION ITEMS:
Please let your Twitter followers know about this podcast.
Simply click here now to post a tweet >>.
If you enjoyed this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast, please “go over to iTunes, leave a rating, write a review and subscribe!
Thank you so much for your support!
I’m an Indiana Hoosier native where basketball is the top sport. Every team heads to the locker room at halftime to evaluate the first half and create an updated plan for the second half. That plan includes adjustments based on reviewing what worked and what didn't. The “halftime” is a key review point where the game stops, the team pulls away to huddle in the locker room away from the fans, and they come out prepared and ready to succeed in the second half.
That’s what this podcast is all about, taking the time to pull away for a bit to evaluate, learn, and set some strategies for your business to succeed in the second half. Join me by subscribing and let me be your “business halftime” to help you find great success going forward!
Subscribe: Halftime Mike on iTunes | Android users via RSS | Listen on Stitcher.
Grab my helpful checklist that includes strategy for social media lead generation. Click image!
