Interview with Oleg Shchegolev, CEO and Founder of SemRush and SEOQuake

You are in search engine marketing for a pretty long period of time. Please, describe in what way has it changed since you got involved into it. Also, do you have any suggestions regarding what changes may occur in the nearest and distant future?

Well, I would start by telling there was no search engine marketing 12 years ago as such. There existed possibility to create a free hosted web page with necessary text density, to include keywords into title and keywords tags, etc., to add the page into AltaVista search engine with the help of submission form and the next day your web page could stand first in the SERP for the above mentioned search query. You could even get into the top search results for the «free porn» in this way. Everything has changed since then. I would hardly tell something new if to talk about prospects. The greatest changes in search engines will be about mobile search and search results personalization. And search engine marketing will get adjusted to those changes.

We haven’t intended to act like a private organization. We have got a lot of friends among different online SEO tools services, bloggers, and speakers. But all our friends are from western segment. Probably that is the reason why it may loot like we are closed for Russia and Ukraine. But in general we communicate a lot with Russian-speaking audience, except we do not participate in lots of conferences.

You have recently made design changes to your website. What has hit you upon this idea? Has the conversion rate increased after that?

We have been planning to make redesign since long ago. We had several ideas regarding how the site may look like but due to different reasons they didn’t work for us. And it is too early to talk about conversion. The changes to the site were rolled out in August, which was the holiday season. That is why certain time should pass before we can assess the statistics. But I would like to notice that we have already received a lot of thanks from grateful users. In general we are satisfied with new design.

What you work at presently? It is no secret that you constantly update and provide best SEO tools. What newly-designed tools may be expected in the nearest time?

Last September we launched the Facebook analytics and that was a quite significant update in the service we offer. We’ve been preparing for that for a long period of time and been working hard at it, but the daily data volume was too big. Although it is difficult to announce something, I think there will be made wide range of changes in the service in the nearest time, both significant and minor. Unfortunately it happens sometimes that certain ideas are not implemented and provided to our users. In most cases this happens because some tools turn out to be not as good and quality as we wanted them to be, or some services turn out to be quite interesting but way to hard to use and so are kept for internal use only. But I am sure our users will be pleasantly surprised in the nearest time by new top SEO tools.

Do you have any global plans concerning SEMrush products?

Certainly there are some plans. Our main striving at this stage is further development of services not only for SEO specialists but also for people that are interested in promoting their websites using their own resources. We have strong desire to move away from the stereotype that SEMrush service is developed particularly for SEO specialists.

http://www.promodo.com/blog/interview-with-oleg-shchegolev-ceo-and-founder-of-semrush-and-seoquake

State the following sentences as true or false:

1. Search engine marketing existed already 12 years ago.

2. Search engine marketing will get adjusted to mobile search and search results personalization.

3. SemRush and SEOQuake didn’t want to act like a private organization.

16.2. Keywords

 

A keyword is any word or short phrase that describes a website topic or page. - The more a keyword is used by searchers and websites the more attraction power it has.

Keyword Tool - DOES IT HELP?
If you want your website to attract searchers, you need to use strong keywords in your website titles and website text. These brief words should realistically identify and describe your site.

Keyword Tool is the world standard of webmaster research to test search words in use and to find new keyword suggestions.

The best method of identifying potential keyword targets is to look at the phrases that are already generating organic traffic to a website. This gives insight into the possibility to increase that traffic via optimization. Using Google Analytics, advertisers can review the keywords that are driving traffic organically to a website. Of course, having a Web analytics platform in today’s digital marketing world is essential for many reasons and this is just one. There are many good analytics platforms, some of which have very high price tags. The standard version of Google Analytics is, in my opinion, just as useful as any other platform, with the only difference being it is free of cost.

The keywords driving organic traffic can be seen in Google Analytics using the Organic Search Traffic report. This can be found by navigating the following sequence within the right sidebar: Traffic Sources>Sources>Search>Organic.\

There are some other important metrics to look at when determining target keywords for an SEO campaign. This analytics report also gives insight into engagement factors, such as bounce rate and average visit duration at the keyword level. By focusing on keywords with low bounce rates and a good amount of time spent on the site, the campaign will be focused not only on the keywords most likely to drive traffic, but also to drive visitors that are likely to perform an action on the site.

Rank Checker

Finally, when starting a new SEO campaign, especially with a small budget, it is helpful to identify and target the low-hanging fruit. A good strategy is to target keywords that a website already ranks for but are not yet in a position capable of garnering strong results. Oftentimes, a website will rank low on page 1 or on page 2 for a strategic keyword without any optimization effort. By implementing an optimization plan for those keywords, the website can often quickly move up the ranks into a position that will garner strong results.

There are many paid tools to track keyword rankings but there is an excellent free tool that allows users to check the rankings of up to 100 keywords on the fly. Rank Checker is a Firefox extension that can be downloaded after signing up for a free SEOBook account. Once downloaded, Rank Checker is available via an icon located at the bottom right of the Firefox browser.

The usefulness of Rank Checker for keyword targeting comes in conjunction with other tools for keyword discovery such as the Adwords Keyword Tool or Google Analytics. After using those tools to identify lists of potential keyword targets, it’s easy to find some low hanging fruit using Rank Checker. Simply add your domain and keyword list (up to 100 keywords at a time) and usually within about a minute you will have the rankings. Look for high-value keywords that the site is already ranking low on page 1 or on page 2 or 3 to see what low-hanging fruit is available. The fact that the site is already ranking on one of the top pages shows there is already some authority for that keyword that can be built upon. These are typically quick-win keywords.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-free-seo-tools-for-identifying-target-keywords/61552/

 

Learning materials: http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/

 

Answer the following questions:

 

1. What’s the best method of identifying potential keyword targets?

2. What does Google Analytics give to advertisers?

3. How can you see the keywords driving organic traffic in Google Analytics?

4. Do you have to pay for Rank Checker?

 

EXERCISES TO UNIT 16