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- twitter.com/theukseo
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About the Author
Neil Walker is the founder of SEO at Just Search Ltd who rank on the 1st page of Google UK for "SEO". He has over 7 years experience and dealt with over 2500 clients SEO over the years. He has only started to proactively blog in the past 4 months by running "SEO Mad" - He hopes you find it interesting. 
Hi Neil, nice post, your last CTR post also inspired me to look at a similar approach, using brand, intent and research style keyphrases, and got similar results to where we overlap i.e. brand search CTR.
I’d be interested if your own data give similar results if you segment your general search phrases in a similar manner, I sadly didn’t have much location specific data to work with.
Hi Mark, I’ll go through the data, may take me a bit of time, but I’ll give you an update when I’m done looking at Brand, Intent and research style keywords, cheers Neil
This a a great post with wonderful insights. Thanks you!
Hi Neil, great post ! Thanks you for the job. I would like to translate it in french (with a link to this page) for the French’s SEOs. Are you ok ? thanks again.
Hi Neil, great post ! Thanks you for the job. I would like to translate it in french (with a link to this page) for the French’s SEOs. Are you ok ? thanks again. (oups wrong email in the last comment, sorry)
Hi Patrick, thanks for the feedback feel free to translate, cheers neil
Good points. Bookmarking to check back for follow-ups later.
very nice post dude! great website… will be back soon!
hello, thank you for this amazing information. Therefore, I would like to ask for your permission to add some of this information in my blog. Of course, I will provide a link to your , as a source of my mentioned information.
Hi Neil,
Nice analysis and well presented. I recently did some similar analysis on paid search keywords or different lengths (1-18 words), and found that searches of 4 words or more had up to 200% higher conversion rate.
http://www.alanmitchell.com.au/techniques/benefits-of-long-tail-keywords/
Not only that, but since competition for these long-tail keywords were significantly lower than their short-tail counterparts, click prices and therefore cost per action were significantly lower.
Cheers,
Alan
great technical analysis of the longtail’s conversion, i can’t do the same from my little niche network, but basically i have seen this happen too, at a smaller scale. The long tail does convert well. Would like to see such a report for various search engines and which search engine traffic converts the best,
Good idea about segmenting by Search engine, I’ll use the same control test and update you with the answers, cheers Neil
A very keen way of graphing these results. Definitely one I will be using going forward.
@Eric C
Thanks for posting the Query Length formula for Open Office users
I was getting errors until I spotted your comment that Open Office utilizes semicolons to separate parameters instead of commas.
What a great article. I’m not really an Excel whiz and I’d been looking for that query length formula. Thanks.
This is a classic example of a school boy error from one of the apparent “leading” seo companies. Not the first that High Position have made either.
Maybe High Position will think a little more next time they try stepping out their comfort zone!
Very helpful post. I saw a stat recently that said about 70% of searchers skipped the paid adverts but there was no cite. It can be a very powerful stat to use when approaching a certain segment of new business. Having some support data that I can link to is great!
Thanks for tool. I also recommend Google SERP Checker by EasySeoTracking.com. It’s free and easy.
That is some good stuff Neil. As always! Kudos!
This is very cool indeed. Many thanks for sharing this. One thing I would add though is that this data is from the last year. And the conclusion is that the long tail theory still holds. What I’d say is how much will Caffeine influence things here? It’s pretty clear that the index has got much smaller to enable Google to do much of what it can do in real time. So will the long tail and its attraction drop off? It might still convert very well, as this post shows, but will there be anything like the same volume of it?
Regardless of the tool, I think it all comes down to relativity, much like keyword research tools do. None of them are 100% accurate, but you based your analysis on how the numbers relate to each other (in proximity) vs. taking them as actual. We’ve found that Majestic’s tool is much better at finding some of the lower-end links, while all the other tools are quite filtered. In the end, unless the engines actually provide “real” counts and lists of the links they’ve identified, all of the tools are just “estimates” and “best guesses”.
Hi Cory, thanks for the response the article was more to show people that historical data in Majestic SEO isn't really away of measuring a sites link history, this question was often posed by clients to us, also if a client came from an old SEO company they would often be worried that links have been dropped which were previously built for them. I just wanted to clarify this and so that's why I got the statement from Dixon. I do think Majestic SEO has the advantage over other tools as it get historic data of a lot more links than many other tools, of course they are best estimates and to me as there are so many other factors to ranking a site I just wanted to clarify information for SEO's to use when clients ask questions.
Hi Mark, the data is from a full previous year of Google Analytic's information, now I have the test data- in about 3 Months time I will segment the info again to see if these test client have seen an effect from the caffeine update, I'll post it as another blog then, Good call!
The tool shows a strange result for my site can u explain why?
Hi Judith, it doesn't actually show anything strange it is simply your website is brand new, as you have now started building links the first graph majestic SEO shows is a monthly view and it simply says the Majestic SEO spider started picking up links in April and then May. As stated in the article the Monthly view is how many NEW back links have been found each month or how many NEW referring domain are found each month. The reason you have a lot of backlinks found and fewer referring domains will probably indicate that you have a few site wide links or backlinks on more than none page of the same domain. Give it a few more months to see if it still looks strange.
Other fact: Scotland & Wales are nowhere to be seen!
Hi Rhys, Scotland are there twice but no wales, it’s no wonder you moved to Manchester
You’re quite right, forgive my ineptness, still suffering from last night
Loving how there are 16 ranks for Search Engine Optimisation and only 6 or 7 in the other phrases. Wonder why that could be?
Joking aside though, there is a lot of talent outside London and talent that wins some of the very best contracts. It’s a pity though that many of the best contracts are in the south.
Hi Tim, the data shows information about”Search engine Optimisation” with both an “S” and a “Z” so that’s why there appears to be more results, also I removed things like Wiki and Google. But yes I agree a lot of the largest contract are in London, probably why all the Northern SEO’s keep opening offices up down there
Haha nice one! Didn’t think you would actually do it. Quick rewrite in order
Hi Ben, thought it would be a bit of Friday fun, please do the rewrite the post, just show me some link love
Haha – Neil – you do like your pivot tables dont you
Wouldn’t have thought there would be any argument – of course the North is far better
Great write up Neil. Further proof that London doesn’t have the stranglehold it once had.
Gonna have to get my place in Newcastle included for the next write up
Interesting and revealing post. Why is Leicester of all places such a competitive city for SEO companies?
I’d vote for High Position in Colchester having a block vote, due to their magnificence! (oh no …. I can’t …. I work for them!).
Slight typo in one of my emails: “In February we find 17 NEW links… the monthly chart shows 17 links in January, and the cumulative shows 37 links.”
Should read: “In February we find 17 NEW links… the monthly chart shows 17 links in February, and the cumulative shows 37 links.”
I am getting their results fine (2nd) including their site links when I enter search engine optimisation on http://www.google.co.uk
Hi Andy; it 13:17 and I now get the full result as you said, it might have been a bug in Google? I thought they were after some link bait again
Haha I think you need to relax a little bit more
By the way can I ask how much you get involved with the day to day of Just Search as we currently have a quote on the table from you guys and we are still undecided?
Hi Andy, I’ve been part of Just search since day dot, helped train the current SEO staff, I am top level and so I’m the last port of call for strategic advice, but what I will say the head of SEO is very, very good and the seniors are also highly skilled, I’ll have a look at the strategy JS are suggesting and ensure it’s the right plan for you.
Thanks for this Neil.
I have a call sheduled with one of your team later and hope to get something in place that meets as many of our needs as possible.
“however due to our link portfolio we were spidered again very quickly and we still showed some form of description.”
You mean making all your clients link to you from your footer?
Hi SEO Bad, to be fair client links are such a small part of our link portfolio and they are only irrelevant footer links, it works generally for referrals from clients ranking well. But most SEO companies do this, web design companies do this, it helps but if a client is unhappy to advertise JS then we simply remove the link.
from their footers!
I posted the above yesterday, and weirdly it looks like some glitch in Google (I’m still investigating) but if you do a search for “Search engine Optimization” (With a Z) you get the same affect with both:
1) http://www.bigmouthmedia.com
2) http://www.justsearching.co.uk
However typing in “SEO” doesn’t show the same glitch ?!?
Hello I’ve just check my website here. it’s a great tools
Does 50% count as a pass?
Very funny Alan, the pass rate on the advanced exam is 80%
Another great article Neil. I will be tweeting links to this ASAP!
Looking forward to seeing the data Google gives me with these filters in place.
It’s great to see more folks promoting ways to get more out of Google Analytics. I’m a big fan of Google Analytics Ranking Reports, though the page by page data is a bit blunt. Page 1 is … a big place!
I track keyword rank in Google Analytics by leveraging the rank parameter in AJAX results URLs.
Now, you only see approximately 20%-25% of the traffic, but it provides a good proxy for overall traffic by rank. This technique lets you see the difference between specific ranks and the ability to drill down to specific keywords.
No matter what you do, do something to start getting extra insight using Google Analytics.
Brilliant insights! Do you have any more Excel tips for Analytics?