One-word SEO — a vastly simplified approach to using data to optimize your site

Patrick Kelly — Harper College

With Search Console, Google gives us all the data we need to do SEO — so why is it so hard? The problem is, there are too many similar-sounding phrases that are just variations of the same small group of words. Sorting through GSC data to get meaningful insights can be a real headache. And how do you know if any optimizations you made really worked?

Notes:

• Looking at raw output from search console:
  • Common practice of just adding the desired words to the page has downsides:
    • Difficult to choose the correct target
    • Easy to overlook words and phrases
    • A single word may appear in multiple phrases
    • Effects can be hard to track over time
    • Phrases that people search for change over time
    • From an editorial perspective: it gets awkward to fit the phrases in
• Big query
  • Can change data into individual words and individual impressions
    • Much clearer to view at-a-glance
    • Can see missed opportunities (page 2 rankings, etc)
    • Much easier to track over time
  • How:
    • Establish a daily data export from Search console
    • Pull into Looker with a custom query
  • Cool stuff:
    • Month to month comparison (to see what people are looking for based on season)
    • JS bookmark to highlight the important search terms on a page
      • Also shows words people are searching for that are not a page (including misspellings)
      • Note: That would be a great plugin for out wordpress editors!
    • Another bookmark that exposes metadata
  • How to: https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/a74b49ce-02a3-46cc-999d-84c357b6e8f0/page/pBEBE?s=qxIpqO4pQTM
    • Cost? Yes, but there is a $300 free trial credit (for 2 months)
      • Over 6 months, they used less than $1
    • Note: I am still a bit lost on why you can’t just import the Search data directly into looker: https://support.google.com/looker-studio/answer/7314895?hl=en#zippy=%2Cin-this-article
      • Perhaps, massaging it into the single word is the major need – though, I thought that some of this could be done in looker (will have to look)