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Optimizing For Search Engine URLs, Not Keywords

Keywords are becoming less relevant when tracking search engine query rankings. One marketing company believes URLs will become the way industry verify the influence of a content topic on a Web site page. So it reversed engineered the process. Here's the new twist on an old methodology.

Keywords have lost their usefulness during the past two years, said Jordan Koene, VP of professional services at Searchmetrics. "The binary piece of data no longer tells you how Google or users want to consume and understand that piece of content," he said. "It was always a bit of a falsehood, but it was where the industry started."

Understanding the influence of content posted to a page on a Web site requires marketers must think of the piece of content as the nucleus for all attached data signals such as social and linking, and how each compares with competitors, Koene said. Making it work, Searchmetrics began analyzing data from cost per click analysis and to better understand how organic search results rank.

Koene explained how keywords related to the cloud storage company Box might rank and the cost for each phrase. The keyword phrase, "Free online storage," based on its search engine query ranking position, has a potential index of 468 traffic index clicks that would cost Box about $3,196 if they bought paid search or another media. The average cost for that term would be $6.83, according to the analysis.  

Koene admits the formula doesn't work as well for massive Web sites like eBay, but it's a good way for midmarket businesses to analyze their existing or potential invests in search engine optimization to offset losses in paid search marketing.

So, Searchmetrics built a dashboard allowing marketers to see how words rank and the influence content has on URLs. It details the SEO value of the ranking if the marketing had to pay for it in search traffic.

The tool, Content Performance, lets marketers see how the content on any landing page indexed in Google searches performs in search and social media. It also compares the words with similar pages from direct competitors. 

Once Content Performance identifies the content with the biggest potential to generate return on investment, marketers can identify related search terms, discover topics and move directly to the Content Optimization tool within the Searchmetrics Suite, which gives them insights and recommendations on ways to improve that content to perform better in searches.

The tool matches up the insights against more than 600 million keywords stored in a database. The company's Research Cloud incorporates more than 250 billion updated global data objects, covering areas such as content, organic search, social, pay per click, links, mobile and local data. It includes historical data for seven years and crawls the Web regularly in more than 134 countries to update information. 

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