Big Data is not yet another buzzword on the SEO scene.
Namely, the amount of online data we create each day is massive.
For example, do you know how many searches users conduct daily?
5.5 billion of them.
We also send 223 million emails, post 69 million photos, make 272 million Skype calls, and view 5.9 billion videos.
When translated into bytes, that’s 2.5 quintillion bytes created every single day.
Given these figures, it’s not surprising at all that the world’s data is expected to hit 163 zettabytes by 2025.
So, what does this mean for SEO specialists?
The answer is simple. In this Zettabyte era, we’re living in, building an SEO strategy on guesswork is not possible anymore.
Data science helps you get some invaluable insights into your online performance, identify the strategies that work, and make data-backed decisions in the future.
So, let’s see how Big Data can help you strategize your optimization campaigns wisely.
Online Content Becomes More Quantifiable
The idea behind content marketing is to use your creativity to present certain data in a more engaging and natural way. In other words, the content you create is a piece of data Google can access, crawl, index, and deliver to the right users.
Now, search engines are getting smarter and, today, they don’t observe only keywords when ranking your pages. Instead, they look at multiple factors lie the relevance and user-friendliness of your content, as well as whether it meets the searcher intent. Aside from processing each piece of content into quantifiable data, Google observes it from the semantic point of view in order to provide users with relevant and meaningful search results.
As digital marketers, we need to keep pace with Google’s fast-changing learning curve. By observing your content as quantifiable information and measuring it, you will get greater insights into its performance. Above all, you will be able to make adjustments to your content and keyword optimization strategy and align them with the searcher intent.
The Cross-Channel Data Analysis
Different aspects of SEO cannot be observed in isolation. For example, if not compared to user engagement and conversion KPIs, traffic can be a vanity metric. Your organic rankings also depend on a plentitude of factors, from the technical issues on your site to your backlink portfolio.
Precisely because of that, your goal is to look at the bigger image and find the link between different elements of SEO. You can also take help regarding this on outreach solutions.
This involves investing in multiple SEO analytics tools and pulling your data from them. And, this is exactly where cross-channel data analytics steps in. Instead of tracking their performance metrics on each tool individually, marketers can invest in intuitive reporting software that puts these tools under one umbrella.
By centralizing your data, you can observe them from one, comprehensive reporting dashboard. Analytics reporting is an effective way to gain insights into your entire SEO campaign performance, from the channels that work best for you to the detailed analysis of customer browsing paths.
A Simplified Process of Data Collection
One of the major problems SEO specialists face is handling lots of manual work. Let’s take an example of link building. As backlink portfolios remain one of Google’s greatest ranking signals, building high-quality inbound link remains our priority.
Still, to build a link on an authoritative website, marketers need to conduct solid research.
You first need to do thorough research, make a list of bloggers that are worth reaching out and, finally, look up their email addresses. When done manually, these activities eat up lots of your time, preventing you from focusing on the creative aspects of the link building process such as choosing the right content marketing and link building strategy. This SEO agency from Melbourne advises choosing the right link building tactics is of utmost importance, as bad tactics can trigger a penalty which can impact your rankings.
Luckily, with automated link building tools, you can make this process simpler. Namely, they can do link prospecting for you, filter out all low-quality or irrelevant results, and even scrape Google search results automatically.
Another important aspect of link building is coming up with a topic relevant to a blogger and their audience. Sure, this can also be done with the right set of tools.
For example, Google Trends lets you determine the popularity of a certain topic by setting the preferred location, time range, categories, and search type. You can even compare two keywords or find the hottest topics and queries relevant to your search phrase.
BuzzSumo is another awesome content creation tool. All you need to do is enter a keyword and it will provide you with the list of relevant topics that perform best on Google right now. It lets you observe how people on different platforms engage with each piece of content, sees who shared it and track backlinks.
Social Media Data Becomes a Key Search Factor
As the number of social media users keeps growing, these platforms have become true gold mines of big data insights. Facebook has more than 1.32 billion users, Instagram boasts 1 billion users, while Twitter has over 321 million active users.
Searchers now use these platforms to conduct searches, find answers to certain questions and discuss brand experiences. So, it’s time to understand that organic search goes far beyond Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Basically any platform with search functionalities, from social networks to Q&A sites, serves as a fully functional search engine. This is exactly what Tim Soulo emphasized recently.
For digital marketers, this means optimizing these channels for greater visibility, as well as using them to improve their SEO efforts. When used strategically, these channels can serve as a true treasure trove of long-tail keywords, as well as provide impressive insights into customer behaviours, preferences, and frustrations.
Over to You
Big data provides more precise insights into our SEO campaigns. It helps us stay on top of the latest trends, identify what works or doesn’t work, and make informed SEO decision in the future. Most importantly, by integrating it with your creative talents, you will be able to produce content that resonates with your targets audiences and builds stronger relationships with them.
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