First of all, thanks to everyone who played along with our little April Fool's prank a couple of weeks back. I apologize if we made our fake Future Rank tool seem a little too real. As penance, I thought I would offer a sneak peek at an actual upcoming feature that is still in the advanced planning stages.
So, What Is It?
The SERP Analysis report is a deep and detailed report that shows the top ten ranking URLs for a particular keyword, retrieves a breadth of potential ranking signals, and presents them in a format that is easy to analyze at a glance. The tool is meant to help SEOs better compare and analyze the factors that may lie behind why particular sites rank in the top ten for certain keywords.
The selection of metrics and format for this report is largely based on the SERPs analysis worksheets that we shared as part of Rand's December post 6 New Tools Every SEO Should Check Out.
Which Metrics Do We Plan to Include?
At the moment, the plan for V1 is to include the following metrics:
- URL Link Metrics
- Page Authority
- mozRank
- mozTrust
- mozTrust / mozRank (Low scores can help identify spammy sites)
- Total Links
- Internal Links
- External Links
- Followed Links
- Nofollowed Links
- Linking Root domains
- On-Page Optimization
- On-Page Analysis Grade (Grade returned after running and on-page keyword analysis report)
- Broad Keyword Usage In Title
- Broad Keyword Usage in Document
- Keyword Used in URL
- LDA Score (future)
- Domain Name Keyword Match
- Exact Match Keyword In Domain
- Broad Match Keyword In Domain
- URL Anchor Text Metrics
- Links with Exact Anchor Text Match
- % of Links with Exact Anchor Text Match
- Linking Root Domains with Exact Anchor Text Match
- % of Linking Root Domains with Exact Anchor Text Match
- Links with Partial Anchor Text Match
- % of Links with Partial Anchor Text Match
- Linking Root Domains with Partial Anchor Text Match
- %Linking Root Domains with Partial Anchor Text Match
- Root Domain-Wide Metrics
- Domain Authority
- Domain mozRank
- Domain mozTrust
- Domain mozTrust / Domain mozRank
- External Links to the Domain
- Linking Root Domains Linking to this Domain
- Social Signals
- Tweets
- FaceBook Shares
- Blog Links (Future)
What Will It Look Like?
Well, this isn't exactly what the full user interface will look like, but this is the format we plan to use within the report. I've included a tiny version of the full report at the top (with a link to the complete spreadsheet), and broken it down below. (Note: the data is old, and a bit munged, but accurate enough to offer a flavor for what we plan to build.)
Warning: you may have to pull out your reading glasses to see this onscreen. (I recommend hitting ctrl-+ in your browser window a couple of times.)
First here is the full metrics sheet:
(Ok, I don't actually expect you to be able to read this, you can download the full spreadsheet here.)
Here is a slightly larger breakdown with a few observations added:
While the metrics for a single section often won't answer the question "why is that ranking first?", looking holistically at all of them will do that most of the time. For example, I was looking at the ninth-ranking result, noting that it seemed to dominate most of the link metrics, and wondered why it ranked below its competitors. Looking further to on-page metrics, it was easy to see that this page has not optimized for the keyword, which is probably why it falls where it does (and why it might improve if the site owner decided to focus on the keyword on-page).
Showing Summary Results
Since it will likely take some time to generate a full report, we plan to also show a summary of data as a quick view. The version we have planned at the moment includes the following elements:
- Page Authority
- Total Links
- Linking Root Domains
- Domain Authority
- Percent of Linking Root Domains with Exact Match Anchor Text
It would look something like this:
This does not include all of the metrics that I would want to include, like on-page score or social metrics, but these should all be retrievable real-time and provide some high-level value before the full report is run.
Why Build a Tool To Generate These Reports?
I've heard from many SEOs that one of their more time-consuming tasks is generating complex spreadsheets to analyze why certain sites are ranking well for specific SERPs and to discover opportunities to improve a target site's ranking. For many, this has proven to be a tedious process of data gathering from multiple sources followed by lots of data entry. Our goal is to take the manual work out of creating these reports and provide that data in an easily consumable way.
Why Are Certain Metrics Missing from This Report?
I imagine that while you were looking through these tables, you noted some important metrics that are absent. Some of these metrics are not ours to provide, like Page Rank. Others are just not ready or available for mass consumption yet, such as LDA score.
Where Will These Reports Live?
We plan to offer this report, both as part of the Keyword Difficulty tool and as a replacement for the basic SERP analysis on the Ranking History Reports in your campaigns.
What Can I Do To Make This Feature Better?
Glad you asked! I'm certain that there are many other great metrics that we could or should include. So if you see something that is totally missing, wonder why in the world we included a certain data point, or think that representing anchor metrics in purple is ridiculous, let us know. We'd love to hear your thoughts!
Looks like Marketing Samurai on steroids. Taking a page from their book, I would suggest the ability to compare an additional domain (your own possibly) that is not inside the top 10 results.
That could be really awesome :)... practically as when we compare our site with other on OSE (and in the Web App) for the linking profiles.
Great idea! That would be a critical feature for the web app. I'll be sure to include that on our feature list.
My 2cents... as it seems from the preliminary datas from the ranking survey that links from unique C-Block domains are more important than unique domain names themselves... why don't you put also that metric in the summary?
Look forward for this tool, it's really needed, especially for indipendent consultant like me for whom time is literally gold.
Ciao
Great point! I'll look to add this in.
LOVE IT!!!!
It was also said that unique b-blocks are good to look at, sometimes more than c-blocks at #linklove, any chance of this as well?
Yay, C-block metrics!
Also, how about general link profile, like.... total # of links from Forums, Blogs, Bookmarking sites, etc . May be even # of citations or mentions of a brand/domain without an actual link would be useful - as thats a good brand reach indicator and possibly a ranking factor as well.
very cool. any way to highlight Universal results and somehow label/rate them in a pertinent manner? (such as if video results maybe some additional stats like #of views/comments, etc)
This is a really neat idea - technically slightly challenging but potentially very useful. Especially for local results.
I agree - very cool idea. This is one that I can't promise for an initial version, but hopefully we will be able to add this in the future.
I'm pretty excited about this i have used a tweeked version of Ben's spread sheet and it is about 4 hours worth of work! Will this be downloadableinto excel?
We definitely plan to have an Excel, or at least a .csv export.
Great, saves me having to do this manually. :-)
Another thing we find useful is to visualise a backlink profile in terms of quality, or 'authority' by looking at the number of root domains across a scale (whether that's pagerank, DA or ACRank etc).
Is there anyway you can show number of unique linking root domains against DA?
Would help to see where in the link graph you may have more or less links in comparison to competitors from certain DA ranges (if that makes sense).
I think I see what you are saying here. Even though a score like Domain Authority takes the number of linking root domains into account as a factor, I could see how it would be interesting to see which domains with a DA scores in the 70s rely on LRDs for their high score.
I'm not sure this is something we would add by default, but something for us to consider.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Yep, totally understand DA takes this into account - But as you say, some sites might have greater quantity from lower quality to reach the same DA as a site with lower quantity higher quality etc.
We actually find this one of the most effective ways to see a manipulated link graph.
If a site has a huge spike of sub DA10's its often down to directory/low quality articles. Or if a site has LOTS of very high DA sites it might show they have built links from DA (or pagerank X) and above etc.
It's not always about the highest DA, this can help point you in the direction of where in the link graph you might be missing links IMO.
Cheers.
Thanks for the deeper explanation - this makes a lot of sense. This sort of link profile for each site would be really cool. I don't see this happening for V1, but could definitely see us looking at this for a subsequent release.
Please consider adding 3 additional rows at the bottom of the Summary Report:
Would help to get snapshot of the efforts it would take to break into the Top 3, Top 5 or the lower positions on the first page ( i.e: position 6 to 10 )
Thumbs up for this tool because currently we do this manually so this tool would certainly be a huge time saver. Can't wait enough !
I would LOVE this. I spent so much time to do this manually!
Something I was wondering when reading this: you could use all the data gathered for the benefit of us all.
What I mean is, if you keep collecting all our results in a huge database, you could research the correlation between a certain statistic and the rank in Google. If enough data is collected, this might give you pretty exact numbers as to how important each statistic is to Google. I for one would love to see those results.
What is your take on this?
Love this!!
You should probably add a button that immediately leads you to Google Spam Reporting as the data you are providing will be proof positive for sites trying to game the system.
It would be nice if you could do some sort of regression model that boils things down into principle components and makes it easy to determine next actions.
Thank you everyone for your fantastic feedback! Below I've summarized the suggestions that I took away from your comments. If you happen to see this and think I missed something, please let me know!
None of us can wait Adam!
After looking at data all day I cringe when I think of this report. I know how valuable that data visualization, but I am still waiting for something that makes it so that we don't have to look at it "hollistically" to get inferences. I know that this is the holly grail of SEO, but what I would really like to see more of in the SEOmoz tools is a confidence rating for the data that is shown.
What I mean by this is that mozranks appear to be dramatically skewed for website that use specific linking tactics. I.E. do follow blog commenting or link exchange tends to give massive increases in moz rankings. If you guys could give confidence intervals of the quality of the link profile based on some metrics it would help a lot.
I don't need more tools, I need more accurate tools! It still drives me nuts when I see a perfectly optimized page with lots of anchor text from lots of unique domains and a high moz rank that gets outranked by site with a miniscule profile. I am mainly ranting cause I have been looking at data all day. I can't wait to use the tool your developing. I would like to see additional work on improving the reliability of the data as opposed to ways it can be presented.
Sounds like an awsome and very time saving tool, when can we expect this?
Thanks! We're looking to have a version of this out in May.
Ah... another May Update ;)
This is brilliant. Great use of the heatmap concept, too. Can't wait to see this in production.
great feature! would agree with gfiorelli1
adding C-Block Ip domains is swaeeet
Wow, this looks incredible. In fact it may put some of us out of a job!
Au contraire - this seo tool might allow us to work more efficiently, save time and focus on the overall picture. It shows you your opportunities, but you still have to implement them cleverly.
Yes, awesome! Can't wait
Can't wait for this - it's very similar to what I'm doing by hand now and will save me hours of time.
Thanks.
Very cool. Can't wait for the future rank tool to become real, too ;)
It would be useful to have the ability to select sites for comparison, or to add results to the top 10 list from domains under your purview.
The link to the SERPs analysis worksheets seems to be dead.
Hi,
Any chance this document has been updated in 2013 ?
The spreadsheet hasn't been updated, however this feature shipped a while back. You can learn how to run reports here: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-best-kept-secret-in-the-seomoz-toolset
what about adding another metric..."the total amount of anchor-text specific backlinks for that keyword"
I cannot wait for this release! Any chance there will be mutiple output options (csv or pdf)? This way you could have one for analysis and one for presenting.
Definitley makes sense. We will have a csv export for sure, but the pdf may lag...
For future Google optimization +1 recommendation page could be vital signal to justify a page quality..so add this point for future calculation ...
Agreed - this will be a great one to add when API access to +1 is available.
How do you plan to tackle geo-location or international SERP's?
Love it and can't wait!
I wonder how much impact this readily generated data will have on the industry as a whole. Granted, anyone could create something similar if they had 10+ hrs to spare, but to get this detailed of a report without the heavy workload will greatly improve efficiency and likely increase the amount of actual optimization that can be done (vs. analytic/research work).
If this hasn't converted you to an SEOmoz PRO customer, then I don't know what will.
The value in this in terms of starting up your initial strategy is priceless.
Somewhat related.... How about the ability to do find Competitors via a searchable database of Anchor Text? Both Exact and Broad Match.
And then score those competitors by # of Pages Ranked for Broad Match Keywords, DA, Moz Trust, and Moz Rank ?
This looks like a beautiful tool, I wasn't sold till I realized the potential of the heatmaps to save time. We can always still do this in excel for detailed analysis, but it'll be nice to have a solid preliminary available with a few clicks.
Hey I think two things missing from this tool which I'd like to see as an SEO are:
(1) Analyse broad match keyword usage in anchor texts (often exact match looks unnatural to Google and therefore if overused is devalued)
(2) An overall score/percentage that takes into account all the factors you're looking at and assigns an overall metric to it (obviously the pitfall of this is that, it would stop people looking at the data and instead running quick and dirty report without looking at the data, but on the plus side can save a lot of time and give a give overview!) Keep up the good work guys ;) J.
OMGsh, I'm so excited! ^_^ Thanks again, you guys.
It's live, just requested my first report. Looking forward to seeing the results :)
We just pushed it out last night. There are still a lot of updates in the works (including some better messaging when a report is run), so look for more data, improved UI, and some more features soon!
For the moment we are limiting reports to 50 per month per PRO customer. As we better understand how folks use the tool, we may be able to increse this.
If anyone has the chance to check it out, we'd love to hear what you think.
So damn excited.
I want
I used to be told 'I wants don't get', but that's so untrue in this instance :D
The squeaky wheel gets the grease :)
I don't know who told you that, but they were wrong. If you want something you have to put that want out there to get it.
Amazing, very simple, yet full.
I am currently trying to use the link profile spreadsheet but I only get 3 results even though I have a pro membership ? Anyone encountered the same issue ?
Maybe I can help. Are you using one of the downloadable spreadsheets or the actual SERP analysis tool/report?
Thi
This is very exciting, especially since Micro Niche Finder seems to be suffering from one too many problems for it to still be considered a reliable business tool.
Look forward to the release!
AAAHHHH! I was searching for something else and this article looks awesome!!! I wish I could put it in a queue or something!!! My freaking browser bookmarks bar is alwready a mess! :)
Any word on a relase date? We're at the end of May as noted in the blog post...I have a big client project due Tues that this would save me loads of time on ; )
I'm afraid this is taking a little longer than hoped to complete. I apologize for the overpromise here. We are working hard to have this done as soon as possible in June. In the interim, the new Firefox toolbar update has an feature which allows a .csv export from any search engine result page including a good amount of Linkscape data.
Looks great chaps, and anything that saves time putting spreadsheets together is a great help.
How about the inclusion of an average link quality score or metric. Maybe from linking page values / domain values just to get a clearer picture of quality vs quantity.
Looks amazing though, can't wait to have a tinker.
Marcus
First, thank you for consitently making my job easier! This will be an extremely valuable tool and will shave a lot of time off of research and data entry.
I would like... no... LOVE, to have it so you can monitor the serp result overtime for changes in ranking, linking C-Blocks, velocity at which links are being built, etc. I know this would be resource intensive, but it would be freakin awesome!
Thanks,Kevin
Thanks Kevin! We will add linking C-blocks for sure. Changes over time and link-building velocity are awesome ideas, but will take a little more time. :)
Looks great. We pull a lot of this data manually from various tools, especially the SEOMoz tools, so being able to do it quicker will be a time saver.
Wow. It's almost like I should check with you guys first before I begin work on a new tool here. Mine gave me the quick snapshot similary to your summary data tab, but I may just scrap it all together and use this new analysis report. Always impressed with how nimble you guys are. I constantly find myself building things on my own just to get the job done. Working in large companies, sometimes it takes forever to get anything done. Here's another vote for a great tool that saves us time.
That looks like some serious data you've put together.
Looks like a very interesting tool, I am sure market samurai will need to lift their game now ;)
My main concern will be how many reports will we be able to pull?? Becuase when you are doing crazy research on keywords in niches you need to pull a huge amount of keywords...
Yours is a valid concern. We will certainly have to limit reports per day as we scale up the feature, and once we can gauge usage increase the limit over time.
When you're in research mode, how many reports would you expect to be running?
WOW I can not wait for this. This will save so much time. Downloadable CSV please!
I agree with others that this would be a great tool for us consultants. Actually i think it can be a powerful tool becuase I using OSE doesn't appear to give that much information.
Maybe these old goodies can help you:
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-inside-look-at-competitors-backlinks-with-open-site-explorer by Fabio Ricotta
and
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-profiling-with-open-site-explorer by Dr Pete
Awesome feature! that is exactly what I was waiting for, its going to save me soooo much time! I volunteer for Beta testing!
Yes, it could be a usefull tool for independant consultant ... and others!!
A nice data visualisation in summary results can make a tool like this just perfect!
++
can you please enable that for SERPs for all competitors but also how just your domain represents it's self in the SERPs for that keyword... but certainly be able to have a slider to move between date periods to see how various elements change....
Great suggestions! I think showing competitors makes a ton of sense. A date range slider would be really cool, but may not be feasible for a V1. Thanks!
Sweet baby jesus I'm so excited for this. Will Renolds showed him doing this by hand at NOLA and I loved it but all that muching about in excel can get tedious. This will rock!
Wow, this looks amazing. Very exciting.
Agree it would be great to be able to compare another specified result outside the top 10 (handy for showing to clients).
You say the reports will be downloadable in csv. How about a (client-friendly) PDF option too?
Sorry, but I cannot resist it... none told you that you look like the secret twin of Seth Godin?
er, thanks very much, I've heard a lot worse
Thanks! A .csv is our first priority so people can customize reports with metrics we might not include. That being said, we will look also at adding a pdf report, though this will probably fall out of scope for a first release.
I'm going to have to agree with everyone here. Fantastic tool that will be a huge time saver. Can't wait for it to be live.
It woked for me.... honestly. Well it actually worked better than predicted. I was stoked...
hehe. Well maybe it wasnt the tool that jumped me up 5 spots but either way, a week after the prank I'm smiling.
Really great, the adding of c-block will be great.
It will save a lot of time for SEO with this tool!
This tool looks awesome, can't wait for it to be released in May! Hopefully be able to save some time with it.
I know that this will probably be a tough technical nut to crack. but how cool would it be if it offers suggestions like you just did.Example: this site's really weak when it comes to on-page optimization when compared to the other top 10 results.It would be the data put in words so some of the thought process (not everything) is done for you. It would be a great feature for SEO rookies.
The Pro membership just keeps getting better.
Hey, have you ever thought looking at whois data?
Let say someone has 10 different C-Block linking to it but all those domains has the same whois data, does it have any different correlation?
Cool idea. Probably not a v1 feature, but something to think about.
Sweet awesomeness! I've been using a spreadsheet just like this for a few months and you're right, it is VERY time consuming. It would be phenomenal to be able to have all of these metrics calculated!
Will we be able to export the spreadsheet to a CSV so that we can generate graphs and charts as we need them?
Most definitely. :)
Ok, yeah, this is just like our internal tool set. Shit.
BINGO! Another proof that the pro membership is worth its costs!! Looking forward to that tool!
Its gonna be a HUGE time saver.....When is it being released?
Above, they said version 1 was expected in May - I'm well looking forward to it, could be a real time-saver. :-)
You promise this isn't some post April Fool's joke?
I already do this, but it looks like you make it a lot prettier than I do. I pour the data into a spreadsheet. I have some thoughts about what other variables that may help move the dial up or down, but then again, it's my own "secret sauce." It's why I can charge all those extra dimes more than my competitors. ;)
Seriously, I'll share my thoughts in more detail when I get a moment here, but glad someone is finally building something like this.
However, I would like to see you guys build more link building management tools that are being somewhat dominated by the likes of Raven and SEMrush. I wouldn't question my $99/mo investment at times if you had something like that.
Just my 2 cents...
Thanks! I look forward to any other feedback you have and appreciate the feedback on the link building management tools. Something for us to think more about.
Wow. Really looking forward to this. If you're looking for a beta tester I'd love to try it out.
Me too! :)
Yet another home run for this platform. Keep it up we can take it.
Fantastic resource, thanks for posting!
I am giving Oscar award to final summary. I am working on such websites from scratch level. All SEO stuffs are included over there...But, few websites is not giving me facility to make changes as per SEO requirement. But, I have no worry about it. I jump in to some best practice to gather exact keyword anchor links & developing links from good page rank website. I just check page rank of website. Because, Google have done too many work on this tool & I trust on it. :) I always focus to gather links from good page rank websites. It works!! & give me result....That's it...
Can you guys add a feature to find out which sites are possibly buying links in your SERP analysis report or if link buyer label is too rude then just highlight them as sites with un-natural/very un-natural link profiles.
If the back link profile is natural, then the maximum no. of root domains will contain the domain/brand/product name or its variations as the anchor text. If maximum number of root domains contains industry keywords then something is wrong. So say If you find a business site named 'ABC limited', majority of people will naturally refer/link out to it as 'ABC limited' and not as 'cheap car insurance'. It should not be difficult for you guys to detect such artificial back link profiles as you can already do anchor text distribution analysis of a domain through open site explorer.So instead of figuring out how to beat a domain which has acquired 1000 backlinks with exact match anchor text from the home page of 700+ unique c-block domains, i would be busy hitting the 'report spam' button or if not hitting the button i can at least convince clients that this is something not possible without buying links.
Definitely an interesting suggestion. I don't see us going past our direction in the nearterm of presenting the data and information to help parse out what it might mean. So we will certainly show the exact match and partial match anchor text, as well as the percentage match, but I don't think we are going to make that direct judgement call as to whether we think a link profile is suspect - doing so programmatically could be very error-prone. If this is what you are investigating, however, we certainly hope to make that investigation easier.