Data Acquisition and Analysis_SEO Notes 5

I. Website Analysis

Analysis software can provide a lot of valuable data, such as:

• How many visitors did we have yesterday?

• Is the traffic trend growing or declining?

• What keywords did people use to find our website?

• Which pages on the website are the most popular?

• Which pages on the website have the highest conversion rates?

If the website currently doesn't have any measurement system (webmaster platforms, analytics tools, etc.; this site uses Baidu Analytics), it's recommended to set one up immediately, the sooner the better. Of course, there are also paid tools that can provide more data, but generally speaking, the data provided by free tools is sufficient.

II. Log File Tracking

Raw log files record the detailed visit history of all requests on the website server. We need to ensure we have access permissions to logs and methods to analyze them. Third-party hosting services generally provide free log analysis software (for example, traffic statistics provided by Wanwang hosting).

These tools can record search engine spider activity on the website, while JavaScript-based website analysis software cannot. Although spider crawling is usually different every day, we can still see long-term trends in search engine crawling patterns, and whether crawling activity is growing or declining (webmaster tools can also provide crawl frequency).

III. Webmaster Tools

For example, Bing Webmaster Tools, Baidu Webmaster Platform, etc. From an SEO perspective, these tools should be used as early as possible. They are the spokespeople for search engines, providing information including backlink data, internal link data, crawl errors, high-traffic search terms, and more.

Using these tools won't expose more information; it's beneficial and not harmful, because search engines already have this data. Using webmaster tools just grants permission to view this data.

IV. Search Analysis

Search analysis tools specifically monitor website interaction with search engines, providing long-tail keywords, content optimization suggestions, PPC advertising themes, and more.

(Such tools seem to have disappeared, merged into webmaster tools, and are generally paid features.)

V. Confirming Competitors

Understanding competitors should be an important component of SEO plans. First, you should find out who the real competitors are in search results, and carefully analyze competitors. If you discover spam websites (check their backlink quality; spam sites' backlinks mostly come from low-quality websites) in this list, you can report them using webmaster tools.

VI. Finding the Best Opponents

Find competitors whose techniques you can imitate (embrace and extend?), usually those websites that frequently occupy the upper half of the first page of search results when searching for keywords most relevant and popular with your target audience.

Then seriously analyze these opponents:

• Are all pages of the website (including product pages) fully indexed by search engines?

• Do product and category pages each have unique, keyword-rich titles?

• Do product and category pages have good PR values?

• Does the anchor text across the entire website, especially anchor text in navigation, contain keywords?

• Has the website been penalized? Over-SEO can be considered cheating.

• Have they created spam bridge pages (keyword-rich pages specifically prepared for search engines)?

• What keywords are they targeting?

• Who links to their homepage, as well as hot-selling product pages and category pages?

• What servers do they use? And what content management technologies?

• Check snapshots to see if there's hidden content (deceptive content prepared for spiders)?

• What impact has their SEO plan had on website traffic? (Need to long-term record major SEO metrics: indexed page count, PR value, backlink count)

• How does the website's current SEO state compare to several years ago (understand SEO techniques used midway and their effects)?

References

• "The Art of SEO"