‘SERPS’ Posts

Online Archive, Not Just a Search Rank Checker

Friday, January 9th, 2009

Ok, after my previous post and looking at things a bit more. I’ve decided to make the search rank checking tool even more of a knowledge base to help track proceedings over time.

The aim now is to include archiving of:

  • Rankings in search results
  • Number of pages indexed in the different search engines
  • Google Page Rank
  • Back link numbers from Google and Yahoo!

Might also look at lower quality metrics such as alexa ranking.

Is there anything you’d recommend archiving?

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Posted in analytics, search, seo, Web | 3 Comments »

Search Rank Checker

Friday, December 19th, 2008

After looking round for a web based search rank checker solution that will keep an archive of rankings. I decided it’ll probably be easier to develop rank checking software to reside on my server.

I’m after your input, what sort of features would you like to see in a web based search rank checking solution?

Proposed Features:

  • Account > Client > Keyword structure
  • Cron setup to run rank checking at selected intervals
  • Graph rankings over time
  • Download CSV export

Once sorted will look to open it up to the public, but in this blog post i’m hoping to get a few ideas around what if any additional functionality I should look to build in. Things like:

  • Search engine selection. Google, Yahoo, live, local variants (Google.co.nz), local variants restricted (Google.co.nz New Zealand only)
  • Competitors rankings along side the selected keywords
  • Number of search results returned
  • Rank checking frequency. Monthly, Fortnightly, Weekly or Daily

Your input is valuable for this project.  So please let me know what you’d like to see and try and work it in.

Also if you’re interested in taking it out for a trial run. Drop a comment and I will update you on when it’s stable enough for a trial.

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Posted in search, Web | 4 Comments »

Second Page Search Result Traffic Tracking in Google Analytics

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Yesterday I came across this great post: Tracking Referrals from Second Page of Google in Google Analytics

Setup is basic:

  • Add a filter to identify if the referal contains page number information
    Setup details
    Filter Type: Custom Filter >Advanced
    Field A –> Extract A: Referral > (?|&)(start)=([^&]*)
    Output To-> Constructor: User Defined > $A3
    Field A Required: Yes
    Field B Required: No
    Override Output Field: Yes
    Case Sensitive: No
  • Create an advanced segment that selects the user defined information set by the filter above
    Dimension > Visitor > User Defined > Starts with > 10

From an SEO point of view, this information can be used to identify potential keywords that need a little boost to get to the first page of results and if acted on correctly could result in significant increases in traffic.

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Posted in analytics, search, seo, Web | 1 Comment »