Predict the Online Sales and Traffic Gains from SEO with New Searchmetrics functionality
New software features allow digital marketers to track and measure the business value of SEO
New York, May 22nd, 2013 – New features within Searchmetrics’ search and social analytics software enable digital marketers to forecast the potential traffic gains from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies and to automatically estimate the resulting increase in sales. There is also a unique feature that lets marketers estimate the market share of search engine visibility their SEO activity is generating against key competitors.
The new functionality, which has been added to the company’s Searchmetrics Suite online software, gives SEO professionals and digital marketers meaningful quantitative data to support more informed SEO decision making and to analyze opportunities to maximize return on investment (ROI).
The Searchmetrics Suite is powered by a constantly updated database of search data collected from leading global search engines which helps users plan, manage and track their organic search marketing campaigns. It integrates with customers’ web analytics software including Google Analytics and Adobe Site Catalyst. The new features which have been added to software include:
· Forecasts
Searchmetrics Suite provides two types of forecast, the first of which is the Traffic Forecast. This allows digital marketers to analyze the current level of organic search traffic coming to their site from individual keywords or groups of keywords and to predict the increased web traffic which would result if they were to ranking in higher positions for those keywords. They can specify ranking targets (eg move 3 positions higher) for individual keywords or groups of keywords and analyze the potential traffic gains.
The Conversion Value Forecast goes a step further by automatically predicting the increase in sales revenue that would result from improved search rankings for target keywords.It combines the Traffic Forecast data on the predicted traffic gains from improved search rankings with data on the rate of sales (also known as the conversion rate) from site visitors and the average financial value of sales to predict potential sales revenue increases.
If digital marketers are targeting conversions other than online sales (eg downloads of a product catalogue, online form completions or newsletter sign ups) they can enter the monetary value assigned to those conversions and the Suite will provide forecasts for the increased value of those target conversions in response to search ranking improvements in the same way as predicted increases in sales revenue.
· SEO Market Share
With the SEO Market Share feature, Searchmetrics has created a unique way for digital marketers to estimate the percentage market share of search engine visibility they are generating for their target keywords and comparing it with the share achieved by competitors. They can set market share targets for their web site domain and benchmark against key competitors to track the progress of their SEO.
SEO Market Share uses Searchmetrics’ SEO Visibility score to measure search engine visibility.This score is based on how highly a web site is ranked for the target keyword set (which are entered by the user), taking account of a number of factors including the search volume of the keywords involved (more competitive keywords receive a higher score), whether ads are present on the search engine page and whether Universal Search results (news, images, shopping, images etc) are shown. Different scores are given for navigational keywords (in which searchers using search to ‘navigate’ to a specific site or page) than for informational keywords (in which searchers are looking for broad information on a topic which could be found across numerous sites).
· Conversion Integrations
Digital marketers may be targeting a range of online conversions on their web sites ranging from online sales, product catalog downloads to online registrations. Searchmetrics Suite integrates data about these conversion targets from customers’ web analytics tools with its own up-to-date search engine analytics data. These Conversion Integrations let users view and analyze the number of conversions resulting from specific keywords, together with search data such as where a web site ranks for those keywords and the search volumes for those keywords.
Conversion Integrations are the perfect initial step for analyzing which keywords are important and producing high numbers of conversions (as well as those that are not converting) and which keywords should be supported with greater SEO activity in order to improve rankings and drive greater conversions.
Features such as Forecasts, SEO Market Share and Conversion Integrations allow digital marketers to closely connect their SEO efforts to business outcomes and goals and help build the business case for investing in SEO according to Marcus Tober, CTO of Searchmetrics:
“These new features make it possible for marketers and SEO teams to set traffic, sales and market share targets for their SEO activity and model different strategies to achieve them. They can closely monitor SEO performance in terms of these goals and clearly show senior management the impact on the business in ways that they can easily understand. They are an example of how SEO is now ‘growing up’ and able to speak to the rest of the business in the language they understand.”
Tom Schuster, Searchmetrics’ CEO added: “Searchmetrics is committed to being the world’s most complete provider of SEO data and tools and the new features which help demonstrate the business impact of search marketing will truly raise the profile and importance of search within business.”
Other updates to the Searchmetrics Suite include a new facility which lets users add their own URLs to the backlink database. The software will crawl these within 24 hours and ensure the new links are then included within the updated backlinks analysis and reports.
About Searchmetrics
Searchmetrics is the pioneer and world’s leading provider of search and social analysis software for companies and online agencies. Searchmetrics has a unique server infrastructure and software solution – its Searchmetrics SuiteTM – which its clients and partners continually use to aggregate and analyze very large volumes of data on the rankings of websites, keywords in searches and competitor groups. Searchmetrics SuiteTM gives users unique insight into the visibility of websites on search engines in 124 different countries and on the largest social media portals. This information plays a decisive role, especially in inbound marketing, where having excellent visibility on search engines is essential for companies to reach potential customers on the Internet.
In addition to the Suite, with its Essentials product Searchmetrics offers a tool set for a quick start in search engine and social network optimization and real-time analysis in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as high-end SEO consulting services. The company has branches in Berlin, London, Paris and New York and operates its SaaS solution through a network of partners and its online shop. The fast-growing company, based in Berlin and currently employing more than 100 staff, is part-owned by the renowned venture capitalist companies Neuhaus Partners and Iris Capital. Many renowned clients, such as T-Online, eBay, Siemens, TUI and Kaspersky rely on Searchmetrics to ensure that they have excellent search engine rankings.
