Are the metrics in Moz's SERP analysis relevant in my area?
-
Our site (https://loco2.com/) specialises in train journey planning at ticket booking, so we want to improve our ranking when people search Google for a specific journey they want to make (eg "London to Barcelona by train"). We have a set of about 400 Guide pages (eg London to Barcelona) which we want people to find when they search for those journeys. I've been trying to find out why some of those pages do better than others in search, and what our competitors are doing better.
I was hoping that the SERP analysis and Keyword Reports tool could help me with this, so I ran analyses for a set of the keyword phrases we want to rank for, but I was surprised to find that most of the metrics in both the basic and full reports don't seem to relate to how high in the search result a page ranks. The screengrab attached shows the results for "Brussels to Paris train", which are fairly typical - many of the top-ranking pages have fairly low scores for most metrics, and the metrics don't seem to have much effect on how high they are in the search results. ( I assume N/A means the Page Authority is very low, or is it not calculated for some other reason?)
I looked into this a bit further by downloading full reports for 11 keyword searches, and comparing the average scores for each metric with the rank, but I still couldn't see any effects of the metrics on the ranks. If anything, pages with higher Page Authority and Domain Authority were further down in search rankings.
Does this mean that link metrics aren't very important for the kinds of pages we're looking at? This makes sense to me, because if I'm searching for tickets from London to Barcelona I want to find a very specific results page which is unlikely to have many links, but I keep reading that link metrics are one of the most important factors in SEO. Am I misunderstanding something?
-
It looks like Moz's SERP analysis Reports are almost entirely based on link analysis. Does that mean that this isn't very relevant in my area?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What's more valuable: new content or optimizing old content
We are a niche legacy print publication that's been around for close to 20 years. Recently, we combined several old sites in one new responsive site. We have over 7,000 articles -many of which are evergreen and can be repurposed when needed. Most of the old pieces although published, have not been optimized for SEO. However, as we create new pieces, we optimize them for search and social and they tend to get more organic traffic. Where we're torn is on how much we should balance our limited editorial resources between cleaning up and optimizing our extensive archive to improve our organic reach, vs. pumping out new original pieces each week. I realize that without a lot of data the answers will be varied - I guess I'm looking for a best practices approach for content publishers. If it helps at all, our main conversion goal is selling subscriptions to our print and digital publications. We know that organic traffic tends to be more engaged than our social referrals. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the magazine fulfilment business, it's tough to know which channels convert better. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | RicardoSalcedo0 -
Moz Pro vs. Moz Analytics
Beta version has been out for awhile. Curious to know what people think of Moz Analytics. Personally, I'm having a hard time making the switch from Pro to Moz Analytics because I'm so used to the navigation and layout of Pro. What does everyone else think of the new Moz Analytics? Advantages? Disadvantages?
Moz Pro | | EEE31 -
Competitor Adwords Keyword Analysis
Hi everyone, My company is exploring moving into a new industry, and I'm struggling a bit with where to start regarding adwords / keywords. I'm wondering if you have any recommendations regarding a tool for analyzing what others in the space are using for keywords in Adwords (preferably including some detail regarding CPC, volume, etc...). There appear to be several options (both free and paid). I'm just looking for what you'd consider a good product (whether paid or otherwise). Thanks in advance and greatly appreciate any insight you may have. Best, Jason
Moz Pro | | ba_seomoz1 -
Looking For URL Anchor Text Metrics Definitions
Running some keyword difficulty reports that are showing some interesting data around URL Anchor Text Metrics. But ti fully understand them, I need some definitions, which I cannot find anyone. So can someone point me to definitions of these terms: Exact Anchor Text Links % Links w/ Exact Anchor Text Linking Root Domains w/ Exact Anchor Text % Linking Root Domains w/ Exact Anchor Text Partial Anchor Text Links % Links w/ Partial Anchor Text Partial Anchor Text Root Doms. % Linking Root Domains w/ Partial Anchor Text Also, if say Exact Anchor Text Links is bolded purple, that means that URL has more Exact Anchor Text Links than any other URL in the report. Is that correct? Thanx David
Moz Pro | | BraveheartDesign0 -
Significance of SEOmoz`s keyword difficulty
Hello everybody, currently, I am working on a project that will be available in multiple languages. My problem concerns the difference of the German and English language in relation to the SEOmoz`s Keyword difficulty (KWD). I just finished my German keyword research and got a satisfying collection of keywords I can use according to the KWD, page/ domain authority, Backlinks and Onpage-check. Now, as I am doing my research for the English market I find it hard to find any appropriate keywords with a satisfying KWD. I imagined the ranking on the English market to be much harder but now I doubt to ever rank for any useful, effective keyword on my list, because most of them are over 70 (some important over 80). According to the research it seems to have something to do with the authority strength of the pages, trust, etc, because they do not have more backlinks. Since they are query independent it is very hard for me to get a feeling for those metrics (I am new at SEO). So here are my questions: Due to your experiences, is it even possible to derank such pages or should I simply save the effort? How significant is the SEOmoz`s KWD? Would you always do Onpage optimization (text, internal linking) in case you earn more trust, authority, etc in the future, just to have your site optimized on the best keyword possible, even though you know that you cannot rank for that keyword (Cue: User-experience)? Or would you switch to less significant words (e.g. flashcards -> index cards) where you have a chance to rank but which is not that effective with traffic? Or focus on longtail, if possible? Many thanks
Moz Pro | | cramlr0 -
Where do these URL's come from?! (Indexation issues)
We have an international webshop with languages in the URLs. Our URLs are now set up as follows: http://thermalunderwear.eu/eng/category/product Now, we know that there's some kind of strange redirect problem causing problems with our indexation, this is a technical issue that should be fixed soon. But whether this is the cause of some other strange problems, I do not know. I'd be happy with any help/advice/tips. 1. The SEOmoz site crawler starts at http://thermalunderwear.eu. This currently does not yet redirect to http://thermalunderwear.eu/eng like we want it to, but all the links on the page do include the default language code. So all links on the page are http://thermalunderwear.eu/eng/category etc. However, apart from those URLs, the site crawler finds many URLs in the form http://thermalunderwear.eu/category/product etc., so not including the language variable. Where it gets these I do not know, and since these URLs dont exist and the webshop simply shows the homepage, these URLs all have 50+ duplicate titles/content. Why oh why? 2. If I do a Google search for indexed URL's with English as language, I get many results formatted like this: Coldpruf Enthusiast mens thermal shirt - Thermal wear for men ...
Moz Pro | | DocdataCommerce
thermalunderwear.eu/eng/men/coldpruf-enthusiast-mens-thermal-shirt 170+ items – Fine-ribbed longsleeve thermal shirt men from Enthusiast ... {$SCRIPT_NAME} eng/men/coldpruf-enthusiast-mens-the {$ajax_url} http://thermalunderwear.eu/ajax What are those variables doing there? It looks like it's taking something from our Smarty debug console, which is hidden but still active in the source code, but also the ajax URL which is in a completely different location. What is Google trying to show here?0 -
Report: keyword difficulty verses SERPS ranking
Hi there, I've been using the PRO tools for a few months now, and find them great for revealing information for my clients, and planning our SEO approach. One report I've put together has been really helpful for a client, but I built it manually and it took ages. It lists, in a spreadsheet, keywords side-by-side with keyword difficulty, target URL, and SERPs result. Sorting by keyword difficulty or SERPS position has helped us to prioritise which pages to hit first. But it took a while to generate the report, and I'm wondering if anyone has a better approach, or if this kind of report can be generated automatically: http://www.cicada-online.com/app/images/documents/product-page-SEO-blank.pdf Thanks Mozzers!
Moz Pro | | nedwells0 -
Competitive Domain Analysis
In one of my campaigns, competitive domain analysis shows that the total links is always the same as ext. followed links. This can't be right as the site has both external links and internal links. What would be the possible issue here? Thanks for sharing your insight.
Moz Pro | | F-D0