SEO Web Design Blog: Search engine optimization, web design, and webmaster tips

They kinda go hand-in-hand: your analytics and your SERP (search engine results page) … AND your SEO (look it up).

I share these programs with most all of my clients. And now, I’ll just show them this blog post.

I was going through my web design website files and discovered that I had made a web page on my Sheer SEO results., so I figured, “Yea – great blog post topic!” So without further ado, a report from my first AND MOST FAVORED website analytics tool, Sheer SEO 1^st Page Google ~ May 8, 2010 webdesignbysteve.com. This shows my results from May 8, 2010, and I also have a comparison with Dec 25, 2009.

My favorite SEO analytics tool: Sheer SEO. Their SERP tracking is bar-none!!

You can get a 3 month trial membership there, afterward, it’s $7/mo for 20 keywords. And they even email you when your SERP rating changes (once per week with the $7 account). I’ve been using Sheer SEO now, for about 2 years, and can’t find anything that suites me like they do, so I’ll gladly pay for their services.

I’ve previously mentioned Sheer SEO, on this post from May 18, 2008, SEO Scams and Misunderstandings. But didn’t go into detail about it. From their website:

Gather all of your SEO information in one place. SERPs, PageRank, Pages in main and supplemental index, back links, Twitter mentions, social bookmarking, on page analysis and more.

Track your positions in search engines over time and see what works and what doesn’t!

SERPs tracking (rank tracking) software for Google,Yahoo and Bing.

Backlinks analysis. Including link text, PR, meta tags, number of outbound links and nofollow.

And for the SEO professionals:

Show your clients how your work effected their rankings. Provide them with online and offline reports, and show them how well their rankings have progressed.

Seems like I’ve been using StatCounter forever. Can’t say how long, probably 8 years now.

Maybe it’s because it’s FREE, maybe it’s because I’m used to their interface, maybe it’s because you can get a heck of a lot of information from their tracking (compared to Webalizer), and maybe it’s because Google Analytics doesn’t show me all of my backlinks (and it’s a bit more complicated), yea – them’s my reasonz I likum!!

From their website:

What is STATCOUNTER?

A free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page or blog and you will be able to analyze and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time!

• Free, Fast, Responsive, Quick loading and Reliable Service. (Why is it free?)
• Invisible Tracking – no ads on your website.
• Accurate real-time website statistics with detailed visitor tracking and analysis.

I use StatCounter to

• find new keywords
• to see where my visitors come from
• where my visitors go to next
• and the obvious, see how many visitors I’m receiving.

They also send you a weekly report, if you opt for it.

Looking through my Recent Pageload Activity, I found several recent visits from Tele Norte Leste Partricipacoes SA, a telecommunication service provider in Brazil. Now that’s interesting, do they need web design work?!?! I doubt it – probably spying on me (OMG!).

ClickTale: website Heat Tracking analytics.

How would you like to see where your visitors scrolled, whether they hesitated, hovered, etc? What I see as very useful, is that you can see which fields in your forms, and which web links visitors don’t pay any attention to. Add an audio recorder, and this could be a great tool for in-house usability tests. They have limited free accounts (good enough – my choice), but the next package up is (WOAH!) $99 a month.

From their website:

Most traditional web analytics tell you where visitors come from and which pages they go to within your site. We tell you everything your visitors do inside those web pages using playable videos of customers’ entire browsing sessions as well as powerful visual heatmaps and behavioral reports.

Google Analytics: the most popular website analytics program.

Google Analytics (or plain old “GA”) allows you to dig down deep into your stats to see breakdowns of individual regions, states/provinces, cities and numerous other items to better identify your site visitors. The wealth of data available is admirably balanced by a well-executed user interface, but it can still be overwhelming. The package integrates with AdWords and has ecommerce-specific tools to track sales.

From their website:

Google Analytics is part of a suite of industry-leading advertising and analysis tools including AdWords and Website Optimizer.

Internal Site Search

Understand visitor intent, find out what your customers are really looking for and speed up time to conversion.

Benchmarking

Find out whether your site usage metrics underperform or outperform those of your industry. Opt-in benchmarking compares your key metrics against aggregate performance metrics while preserving the confidentiality of your data.

Integrated with AdWords and AdSense

Optimize your AdWords performance with post-click data on your keywords, search queries, match type and more. AdSense reports show publishers which site content generates the most revenue.

Google Page Rank SERP Checker: find where your website keywords rank, up to 100 pages deep.

Basic and simple, no sign-up required Google Page Rank SERP Checker.

Keyword Spy: a Web-based keyword tool to get you money-making keywords effortlessly.

I don’t use this one too often, but it’s a great place to go to get more keywords from your website that you might not know people are using. You can also get competitors’ keywords, group them into different adgroups, and plug them into AdWords campaigns effortlessly by modeling the ad variations of your competitors shown in Keyword Spy.

From their website:

Keyword Research

Build a profitable list of keywords using your competitors’ keywords and by accessing a massive database of related and similar terms and phrases.

Competitive Intelligence
Easily uncover the competition landscape by knowing your competitors’ PPC and Organic campaign strategies in seconds.

Market Reports
Get a detailed list of the top sites and keywords in the online industry. Check out who made it on top based on different search advertising criteria.

Well, that’s about all for now, it’s 2:30 am and I gotta rest sometime. I’ll be adding more later, but for now, these are the main analytic programs that I use, trust, and recommend.

Related posts:

1. Meta Descriptions Now Affect Your Google SERP Rankings – Again
2. Google Sets Record Straight on Page Speed as Ranking Factor
3. My Quick SEO for SERP Formula
4. FREE 1-Way Backlinks to Increase Your SERP
5. Google Sites