Ranking Checker - SERPS - What do you use?

[AussieDave]

Rank tracking is a must for anyone who is serious about SEO. If you don't track your data, you're just guessing, which is not a very good way to do business.

Your entitled to your opinion BUT plenty of people here, probably making far more cash than you, don't bother with checking serps anymore. Besides GWMT combined with analytics provide that infomation. Personally I'd rather spend my time on other stuff.

 

[Vladi]

Rank tracking is a must for anyone who is serious about SEO. If you don't track your data, you're just guessing, which is not a very good way to do business.

You have an interesting difference in focus from me. I am not "serious about SEO". I am serious about making a great website that people want to bookmark and revisit. Perhaps that is why I rarely ever check ranks at all. I used to do it daily and found it a waste of time and a constant game of tail chasing where no-one has any definitive answers.

 

[TheGooner]

Rank tracking is a must for anyone who is serious about SEO. If you don't track your data, you're just guessing, which is not a very good way to do business.

SEO is a small component of the business. Of course you want to have effective tags and make sure that your are sending the right signals to SEs, but obsessing about rankings and tracking changes is possibly crossing the line and wasting time. Once you have basic SEO in place, then trying to artificially manage rankings has very little REAL value.

Having unique content, creating a reason to visit, and managing the user experience onsite are probably better areas to concentrate for most websites, because those are things that raise the bottom line revenue.

And in the end, it's revenue and profits that are the most common measurements for business.

 

[lalalaenhund]

Maybe some of you missed the point a bit. Of course if you have other traffic generation methods as your focus, then you don't benefit much from obsessing over your rankings. That's why I said "IF you're serious about SEO".

But if SEO is a major part of your strategy, then you shouldn't rely on the guessing game. To Vladi and everyone else who doesn't do SEO much, it may seem like there are no definitive answers - well, if you don't do proper analysis and use the proper tools, how would you know? The thing about SEO is that there's a lot of misconceptions and even deliberate misleading around the web.
People just like to repeat stuff without personal experience, and that's how these misconceptions are created. But if you actually do proper testing and tracking, using the proper tools, it gets much easier.

You don't need to have the most advanced rank watcher out there, but using nothing would be the equivalent of a monkey with a typewriter. Again, if SEO is what you're focusing on.

I come from an SEO background before I started promoting gambling, but I'm not here to tell you which strategy is the best. There are other ways to make money online than just SEO, as a lot of you guys on this forum have proven. SEO is probably one of the hardest, but also one of the most rewarding when you master it. It's not unreasonable to expect to make mid-6 to low 7-figures per year combining the gambling niche with good SEO knowledge. Although I have no idea how much most of you make, that's a good amount of money for me.

 

[Vladi]

Hey no problem, I wasn't having a go at you, just commenting on the different focus. There are many different ways to skin a cat - some people go for 100s of thin content websites, others focus on one or two high quality sites, some do forums, some don't etc. Same with SEO. Thats all I meant. To me SEO is all about optimising your own site so the search engines can easily and regularly spider and index your pages, and understand what is on them. Its a set and forget type of thing that we revise once a year or so to make sure you are keeping up with best practice. But most people these days think SEO means nothing more than getting links to your site.

well, if you don't do proper analysis and use the proper tools, how would you know? The thing about SEO is that there's a lot of misconceptions and even deliberate misleading around the web.
People just like to repeat stuff without personal experience, and that's how these misconceptions are created.

This is more or less what I am saying. Even with all the tools, link checkers, rank monitors, 3rd party services that scrape your own sites and re-sell you your own data etc, you don't really know what is going on. No-one does, not even Google, as there are likely thousands of factors affecting the rankings that go into an algorithm that only their machines understand completely. So I just don't care anymore. My SEO work basically consists of disavowing all the automated negative forum profile and guestbook spam campaigns that people regularly launch against us. After doing this for a couple of years now the result is that the metrics (and money) are improving because we're spending more time making the sites better which keeps our visitors happy. And our rankings have not changed considerably in all that time.

 

[edgarf76]

Manual and Google webmaster tools

 

[AussieDave]

I come from an SEO background before I started promoting gambling

Just so your clear on who your trying to educate here.
My SEO company, held the contract for Vegas Palms (few years back) and consulted for many others.

I'm certainly no slouch when it comes to Gambling based SEO or mainstream, for the matter

Oh I'm 100% whitehat!

Is this you?
blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/members/138011-lalalaenhund.html

 

[slotplayer]

I think the amount of traffic you get to a particular page is a good indication that it may have decent rank.

 

[lalalaenhund]

Checking your ranks takes less time than it took me to write this post and gives far more accurate results to analyze your SEO campaigns than just checking your overall traffic or analytics, especially now that Google has blocked the referring keyword data. It's such a no-brainer for me that frankly I'm really surprised to see that almost no one else here does it.

With the help of a rank tracker, just to give you an example, you can do the following:

1. Create 3 sites targeting the exact same keywords, with similar on-site, theme, host, domain age, etc.
2. Use campaign A for site 1, B for site 2, and C for site 3.
3. Quickly determine which campaign performed the best

You can keep track of your competitors, see when there's an update in the algorithm, find the best web 2.0's. If you do client SEO, they always love seeing the green arrows that you can extract with the click of a button.

etc. etc. etc.

Just so your're clear on who your trying to educate here.
My SEO company, held the contract for Vegas Palms (few years back) and consulted for many others.

I'm certainly no slouch when it comes to Gambling based SEO or mainstream, for the matter

Oh I'm 100% whitehat!

Is this you?
blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/members/138011-lalalaenhund.html

For some reason you seem to think I'm directing my posts at you personally. Sorry for having a contradicting opinion.

But since you present yourself as an authority in the field, I'd love to hear how exactly you determine what exactly works and doesn't work when it comes to SEO?

Also, I'm sure you did a great job, but Vegas Palms doesn't even rank #1 for Vegas Palms?

And yes, the BHW profile is me. I do all kinds of ethical SEO, I don't see a point limiting myself to Google's guidelines which are corrupt top-to-bottom - but I guess that's another topic. Just because I have a BHW profile doesn't mean I'm a hacker or anything like that.

 

[Guard Dog]

Quite the conversation this spurned

 

[AussieDave]

I'm sure you did a great job, but Vegas Palms doesn't even rank #1 for Vegas Palms?

I did say a few years ago

 

[Vladi]

Checking your ranks takes less time than it took me to write this post and gives far more accurate results to analyze your SEO campaigns than just checking your overall traffic or analytics, especially now that Google has blocked the referring keyword data. It's such a no-brainer for me that frankly I'm really surprised to see that almost no one else here does it.

Ultimately irrelevant for me because I don't do "SEO campaigns". I have a site, I work on it, people like it and they come back for more. Ultimately my aim is to reduce the ratio of search to non search traffic, while growing the overall traffic. If I could get the same level of traffic and equivalent metrics to what I have now, but with google providing less than 20% of it I would be ecstatic.

With the help of a rank tracker, just to give you an example, you can do the following:

1. Create 3 sites targeting the exact same keywords, with similar on-site, theme, host, domain age, etc.
2. Use campaign A for site 1, B for site 2, and C for site 3.
3. Quickly determine which campaign performed the best

Again, different focus. Doing that you continually need to create new sites of almost no value to the visitor in a never ending game of chasing specific search engine traffic. Sites like that never last long as we know Google dislikes thin affiliate sites and advises its quality checkers to identify and eliminate them from the results. I can't work like that because I see it like being a mouse on a treadmill. If it works for you great, but I would rather build deep useful sites with long term value that real people appreciate and want to come back to. Different strokes..

Remember I'm not saying my way is better or worse, just trying to help you understand why I find rank tracking to be a complete waste of time (been there, done that, won't go back).

find the best web 2.0's.

I'm not sure I even know what that means? I know the phrase but I thought it went out like thin leather ties after people realised how meaningless it was! Are you talking about social sharing or something?

 

[Guard Dog]

Again, different focus. Doing that you continually need to create new sites of almost no value to the visitor in a never ending game of chasing specific search engine traffic. Sites like that never last long as we know Google dislikes thin affiliate sites and advises its quality checkers to identify and eliminate them from the results. I can't work like that because I see it like being a mouse on a treadmill. If it works for you great, but I would rather build deep useful sites with long term value that real people appreciate and want to come back to. Different strokes..

That statement has a TON of assumptions in it and is simply not true. I know what you are saying, but tons of affiliates chase specific keywords and have a site every bit as good/quality as your own. It's a complete farce to say otherwise. You are right, there are plenty of keyword-driven sites that are out there. Probably 99% of them don't know what they are doing The ones that do - do SEO via links and their content is high quality. Both can be done - no need to limit oneself to a singular point of view.

 

[Vladi]

I think my assumptions were fair based on the example given. When you get to the stage of creating 3 different sites aiming for the same keywords with the same subject and content (no doubt re-written so it is unique enough for the engines not to notice) and split testing them, I think its a fair assumption that the visitor is not your main concern and that the sites aren't there for the long haul. It is all about testing and exploiting the current state of the algorithm, which is temporary by nature. The fact that you're "targeting keywords" instead of people says it all.

The ultimate case in point is the tens of thousands of hacked sites - 1 page lists of casinos that are completely worthless but they rank well in many cases due to the cloaked pages full of nonsensical keyword rich spam that Google sees.

 

[Guard Dog]

I think my assumptions were fair based on the example given. When you get to the stage of creating 3 different sites aiming for the same keywords with the same subject and content (no doubt re-written so it is unique enough for the engines not to notice) and split testing them, I think its a fair assumption that the visitor is not your main concern and that the sites aren't there for the long haul. It is all about testing and exploiting the current state of the algorithm, which is temporary by nature. The fact that you're "targeting keywords" instead of people says it all.

Well.. you are not correct. And it is not a fair assumption at all, IMO. I target keywords and have sites with similar focus - but the content differs greatly for the same stuff. YOU can 'think' that the visitor isn't their main concert - but you have no knowledge of what that webmaster wants, so it is a completely invalid assumption. I write for my users , but what you said above would clearly state I do not (which is categorically incorrect).

The ultimate case in point is the tens of thousands of hacked sites - 1 page lists of casinos that are completely worthless but they rank well in many cases due to the cloaked pages full of nonsensical keyword rich spam that Google sees.

That is not a 'case in point'. That is an outlier. That content isn't even written, it is scraped and put together. A webmaster who creates content AND looks at keywords is completely different.

My methodology has been this - hate it if you want.. I put up a site, then I see what keywords I am ranking for. If there is any way to increase those rankings, I try to do that.


Anyway... I think you need to be a bit more open-minded about other methods besides your own. Not trying to sound mean, but you are ripping on a lot of people and - just because they differ from you - doesn't make them wrong in their ideals.

 

[Vladi]

Wow. Sensitive much? This is not about you. I am not an evangelist or a zealot nor am I trying to convince you or anyone else to do things the same way I do them. If I say "I prefer to drive a grey car because it doesn't show the dirt so much" that does not mean I think you should too. You can drive a yellow car or ride a bike or walk. Do whatever you want. Good luck to you.

lalalaenhund said:

It's such a no-brainer for me that frankly I'm really surprised to see that almost no one else here does it.

So I'm giving my reasons why and having a mature discussion with contrasting viewpoints. It is interesting. Although I could be, I'm not insulted that s/he has effectively called me brainless!

Well.. you are not correct. And it is not a fair assumption at all, IMO. I target keywords and have sites with similar focus - but the content differs greatly for the same stuff. YOU can 'think' that the visitor isn't their main concert - but you have no knowledge of what that webmaster wants, so it is a completely invalid assumption. I write for my users , but what you said above would clearly state I do not (which is categorically incorrect).

We'll have to agree to disagree on that then. As for "what the webmaster wants" come on that is too easy - in almost all cases it is money first, good advice or help for players way behind. I have seen enough to know that is undeniable. Disclaimer: that is not to be interpreted as a statement aimed at you or anyone else here.

That is not a 'case in point'. That is an outlier. That content isn't even written, it is scraped and put together. A webmaster who creates content AND looks at keywords is completely different.

On the contrary, the hacked sites are extremely relevant to this discussion because they are the ultimate end game of purely targeting keywords instead of people. And clearly it works. Once again - disclaimer: I am not talking about you and I am not likening you or anything you do to a criminal hacker.

Anyway... I think you need to be a bit more open-minded about other methods besides your own. Not trying to sound mean, but you are ripping on a lot of people and - just because they differ from you - doesn't make them wrong in their ideals.

Okaaay. I ripped on one fully deserving affiliate who thinks he should be paid before the players that he sends to a bunch of rogue casinos in another thread. I know that makes you look bad because they are a program endorsed here which they should not be, but we all make mistakes and sometimes things slip through the cracks. I don't think its a big deal.

Ignoring the irrelevant other thread, how can you interpret what I have said here as an attack on you or anyone else for that matter? You need to re-read everything I have said in this thread right here and comprehend it better. Take particular note of:

Hey no problem, I wasn't having a go at you, just commenting on the different focus.

If it works for you great, but I would rather build deep useful sites with long term value that real people appreciate and want to come back to. Different strokes..

Remember I'm not saying my way is better or worse, just trying to help you understand why I find rank tracking to be a complete waste of time (been there, done that, won't go back).

I have gone above and beyond to make it clear that I am merely explaining why I think rank tracking is a waste of time. That's it, and I should know because I did it myself for years. I took note of what you said in the other thread and I have tried hard to avoid any misinterpretations. The fact that you interpret it as an attack or are personally insulted, or think that I am trying to convince you to change what you do, is on you. I displayed a clear sense of open-mindedness, whereas you... well its a bit of a pot and kettle situation isn't it?

I think its best that I say no more in this thread as I don't want anyone else to feel insulted if I say something that they disagree with.

 

[lalalaenhund]

Ultimately irrelevant for me because I don't do "SEO campaigns". I have a site, I work on it, people like it and they come back for more. Ultimately my aim is to reduce the ratio of search to non search traffic, while growing the overall traffic. If I could get the same level of traffic and equivalent metrics to what I have now, but with google providing less than 20% of it I would be ecstatic.

I agree with you on that, see my 2nd post in this thread. The last one was aimed at people who actively focus SEO and do no tracking at all, not people like you who just focus on other traffic sources

When you get to the stage of creating 3 different sites aiming for the same keywords with the same subject and content (no doubt re-written so it is unique enough for the engines not to notice) and split testing them, I think its a fair assumption that the visitor is not your main concern and that the sites aren't there for the long haul. It is all about testing and exploiting the current state of the algorithm, which is temporary by nature. The fact that you're "targeting keywords" instead of people says it all.

Well, maybe - but these are case studies only. For case studies, I don't target high traffic keywords, just some random ones in the same niche. They are purely there to test the algo, so I know what really works, so I can better optimize my main websites. These sites barely get any real traffic, and if they do, then it's time to add better high quality content.

It's true that if you rank high you can just add whatever content on your site while not really focusing on the visitors, but that's a bit foolish in any case. With bad content, people will catch on very quickly, the site will convert worse, you'll have bad bounce rates, less returning visitors, risk manual action from Google... even if you remove ethics from the equation, having bad content on your sites is dumb.

 

[Frank]

I know one thing is for sure.. My competition doesn't check their serps.. if they did they would of noticed I had wiped them out from most of their ranks for the targeted keywords .. and we just keep growing, I personally think it's important for my site as its not as established as a 10 year old site.. What I am finding is not only New visitor traffic increasing but also return, which means somebody out there is losing visitors to me... I think not knowing I have just jumped into the scene and taken a lot of financial valuable traffic could have been avoidable to my competition, And with regards to content I push hundreds of articles every month hand written and very popular with my target traffic,

Rather than do one or the other.. I do both...

 

[Guard Dog]

I am not going to go back and forth. I'll just say 'fair enough'. We have different views. (to Vladi)

 

[slotplayer]

what is with the ego's?