But no, we’re working like crazy and we love it!

That’s because we ended last year with bold plans for 2012, and we wouldn’t want to waste any minute but start making it happen.

So, while my colleagues developers are heating up the keyboards writing code, I thought it would be great to make a “wordy” recap of all the code they’ve been writing for the past year.

Check this out, it’s pretty awesome:

Mid-spring make over

We started the year with a complete make-over for AWR that would concern both its user interface and functionality. Thus the cluttered AWR you used to know with lots of buttons and menus was turned into a simple and elegant 8.0 version with only few menus and icons.

We wanted to make each action easier to perform by re-organizing the features under more simpler main menus, we changed the colors for a better contrast so that you can better focus on your work and updated the graphics to give AWR a modern look.

Also report creation was redesigned in an easier process, a new scheduler service was implemented and results became more accurate than ever with the inclusion of Google Location Search Engine.

Summer glow

In 2011, AWR’s team had the best summer ever. The new interface has had an impressive take from our customers and their appreciation fueled us for even bigger dreams.

So we started to gather all the suggestions and requests that we received from our devoted customers, made some quick improvements and set everything for the next big change of AWR.

An SEO autumn

When all the leaves have fallen from the trees and all nature seems lifeless, AWR couldn’t be more alive.

In autumn of 2011 AWR was reborn into the shape of an extensive SEO software with all ranking, linking and analytics data under the same roof.

Since its 8.5 version, AWR gives you the opportunity to synchronize your Google Analytics account and import visitor stats, to retrieve important link data from SEOmoz’s Linkscape database and to join all this data with rankings into mixed SEO reports.

Winter wrap-up

With the ending of the year we wanted to make a release to remember. And thus, AWR 8.6 brought to you the new Complete SEO Report that allows you to create an HTML collection of rankings, analytics and links reports that your clients can access and browse as if they were in the application.

View SEO Report demo

On top of that we’ve added integration for Google Analytics Ecommerce data and corresponding printable reports for most of the analytics and links interactive reports so your clients could join you into experiencing AWR’s full capabilities.

Final thoughts

As I look over these notes, I get a good feeling about how much we have accomplished this past year. It was fun to plan, challenging to implement and extremely rewarding to see it in action.

Now let’s make this year even better! Write down your ideas and suggestions for how would you like AWR to be and let’s build together an amazing plan for 2012!

If you strike upon an idea don’t lose it! Write it down in our comment section below!

Photo credit: Jonathan Mcintosh

Likewise, software integrators in SEO agencies and large brands, that have their own SEO teams, tend to overthink even the smallest change into their giant system’s equilibrium.

This happens especially with companies using in-house developed solutions, spread across all departments. Often, even if they really like the functionalities of a new SEO software they just learned about,  the decision is to sacrifice the benefits that tool would bring only to avoid rethinking their entire workflow.

But, what if they could just grab those benefits directly into their customized systems?

Get Google Location and Universal Search results into your own dashboards

Imagine that!

With Advanced Web Ranking 8.7, you can export rankings and enjoy the benefits of powerful SEO features within the familiar work frame of your own interface.

And the best thing about this is that, since AWR is a desktop based application, you get all the data whenever you need it, without depending on the update frequency of an external web service.

Let me give you some quick insights of the ranking data you can import from AWR:

• Customized location narrowed down to city level

Gathering location based rankings is crucial in obtaining accurate reports for your websites’ positions in Google. However, the search engine’s IP detection system always influences the result lists. You can see this with a simple search in browser.

For example, if you search for Mambo from a USA location, and then repeat the search using a proxy server with an Italian IP address, the results are different. This can become problematic if you are monitoring rankings for customers that are based in other countries.

But, in Advanced Web Ranking, you can define your specific Google Locations according to the country, region or city you are targeting, and further retrieve rankings that are relevant for those locations.

• Universal search results detailed by type

Another thing that influences the SERPs is Google’s way of blending different types of results in the same page. If you take a closer look at the results from the previous search in browser, you can see several Mambo Video, Images and News results mingled with the ordinary Web results.

This is part of the Google Universal Search strategy, which totally changes the positions web pages are assigned in the result lists.

To easily track down the effectiveness of different content types on your website, you need reports with results detailed by Organic, Image, Video, News or Shopping type. This is achieved in AWR with the Google Universal search engines, that you can add to your projects.

Now, all there’s left to do is to let AWR gather all this precious information for you and then automatically import it into your database.

1, 2, 3…Mambo!

Is it really that simple?

Yes!  And the best part is you can set the whole process on auto-pilot with a few easy steps.

Let me show you how this works:

1. Create the Export Template

Once you’ve installed AWR and created a project with your websites and the targeted keywords and search engines, you need to create the Export template that the application will use to further generate the ranking data file.

To create the template, just go to  Data -> Export -> New Export. In the newly opened wizard, make sure you select the Website Rankings export type, and the CSV file format. Then just press the Create button and choose a name for your template.

By default, this export template will take into account the ranking data gathered during the last update, for all websites, keywords and search engines added in your project.

You can further customize your export template and choose the specific date range, websites, keywords and search engines for which you want to see the data. To do this, just open the Export template you created in Edit mode, and further make the changes you need in each section available. Learn how.

To see how your export file will look like, all you need to do is to press on the Preview button from the top – left side of the window.

2. Enter the command to be executed after the export

Once you are happy with the settings of your export, you need to enter the command that will be executed automatically after the export is generated.  This is where you create the actual bond between AWR and your in-house solution.

To enter the command, go to the “Output and Layout options” section of the Export template and check the “Execute command after report generation” check box. Then, just enter the command that ensures the content of the exported file will be imported into your database.

3. Set up a scheduled update task in AWR

The next step in making the AWR export process automatic is to create the scheduled task that runs the project updates and gathers rankings automatically for your websites.

This is done in AWR using the Scheduler wizard, where you can set the start date, start time and frequency of your updates, according to your own needs.

Here is a short video tutorial that shows you exactly how to set up the scheduled task.

In the last step, you will need to choose the Export template you’ve just created from the Selected Reports drop down list. This will tell the application to generate your export after each scheduled project update.

While your scheduled project updates are running, you need to make sure that the machine where AWR is installed is turned on. The application does not need to be running at that time though.

Test the whole system and enjoy the freedom of automatic updates

Before going Live with the export – import process, it is recommended to run a quick test and check how the connection between AWR and your system works. This is the part where you get to see the AWR export capability in action.

To do this, you can create a test scheduled task that is set to run only one time, in the next five minutes. In the Scheduler wizard, make sure you select the Export template that you plan to further use during the automatic export – import process.

You can monitor the update in the application, from the Update progress screen.

Here, you get to see an estimated progress of your task, and also the status of completion.

Once the task is finished, check your database for the newly gathered rankings.

Conclusion

This is it! Now you can sit back and enjoy a good cup of coffee, while AWR gathers valuable ranking data and sends it automatically to your own in-house system.

Take advantage of the free 30 days trial version  and see for yourself the benefits that AWR can drive for your SEO teams, without affecting your departments’ workflow. Everything will be stored on your own network, so the integrity of your data and the updates frequency will be entirely in your own hands.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article. I am looking forward to reading about your experiences shared in the comments section below.

As we gathered up the responses we were thrilled to find our hard work rewarded by the appreciation and nice words our clients had regarding AWR’s capabilities.

And so we’ve put together a list of fifteen top reasons our customers claimed to make AWR their favorite SEO tool:

1. Reports

Reports proved to be the top reason why people love AWR. It’s because we are aware of how important reports are for our users, that we strived to constantly improve and enrich them.

Currently there are over 20 different report types you can choose from in AWR, on which you can build your own customized template.

We are definitely not going to stop here so, please imagine the perfect report for you and tell us about it. We would love to make it happen for you.

2. Ease of use

We were quite happy to find “Ease of use” to be the second strength in this top. We put a lot of work and consideration into AWR’s recent redesign just to make it more simple and quicker to use, more accessible to beginners and prettier. It seems to have achieved our goal. #happy

3. Price

This next strength of AWR didn’t came as a surprise itself but it did pleased us to see that our customers are aware of the efforts we make to keep AWR an affordable product.

In the last few months Advanced Web Ranking has more than doubled its number of reports, added modules of both Analytics and Link building and implemented dozens of requested features from our customers without charging one penny more.

4. Features

We pride to have gathered under AWR’s roof all the tools one SEO might need to do whatever she needs and don’t lack the necessary.

Just like when you start cooking dinner and you must have all the ingredients in one place for a perfect meal, so is in SEO. In order to do a good job and to do it fast you need everything in one place.

5. Accuracy

A popular reason for which our users love AWR is its ability to gather accurate ranking results, tailored to any specific location they need, on thousands of world wide search engines. Now that search results are more personalized and location bound than ever, accuracy is a must for a professional SEO tool.

6. Support team

We’ve learned that the engagement and desire to help of our support team is highly appreciated among our customers and we couldn’t be happier about this. Thank you all for appreciating our efforts and devotion to help any living and breathing AWR user out there and clear out all their uncertainties.

7. Automation

We always knew this would persist in time as one of AWR’s most cherished features.

This feature takes a load off your mind. You don’t have to sit in front of your computer every time you want to update your projects or generate your reports. You can just set it up by schedule and AWR will do all the work by itself.

8. Google analytics

Since the 8.5 version, Advanced Web Ranking allows you to synchronize it with your Google Analytics account and keep track of your website’s traffic right from the AWR interface.

Back then, during implementation, we thought this would be an awesome feature to add to AWR and now, we are thrilled to find out that our customers agree with us.

9. Speed

Gathering rankings has always carried the burden of search engine imposed delays. If you want to use their data, you must play by their rules. And therefore, automating querying is by definition a time consuming task.

AWR is however adjustable and it seems to be one of the top reasons many of our customers appreciate it for. With the possibility to add as many proxy servers as you wish, the update time can be reduced from days to just a few hours.

10. Mac OS X

Lots of people love Mac and we love people. Therefore it was imperious to make AWR compatible with MAC OS X and it looks like we have thus managed to make people love us too.

11. Multiple projects

AWR was from the beginning intended to be an advanced, professional tool. Therefore it was mandatory for it to be able to handle large amounts of data for multiple websites.

Our desire was that AWR won’t put limitations to its users when it comes to their projects and now with their feedback we see that this advantage was highly appreciated.

12. History

Another feature our customers pointed to be among AWR’s top strengths is its ability to store and access historical data for all added websites. AWR allows going back and forth in time, comparing different or multiple dates and importing historical ranking data for newly added websites.

13. Customizable

AWR’s great customizability is also valued by our customers as it applies to a wide range of features. Both interactive and printable reports are customizable, you can create customized filters on your reports, you can adjust the search engines to query, the emails you send or the links you gather.

14. Export

For many of our users AWR is the optimal SEO tool due to its exporting capabilities. We have often received from our users requests of integrating AWR into their own internal systems or to support them for using the data AWR gathers internally. We are proud to be relied on for providing rankings and we commit to remain so in the future.

15. Reliable

We just love that our customers feel they can rely on AWR for their SEO task management and data gathering.

All these features that we have created along the way, were done thinking of AWR’s users, how to make their job easier and in the same time we tried to make AWR trustworthy.

Our work does not end here. We are continuously searching to improve AWR and for that we are open to new suggestions.  Use the comments section or just give us a quick tweet!

Photo credit: Oh Geez! Design

As not all people know the meaning of these metrics, I have decided to make this post an explanatory sheet of the seven most important metrics SEOs use.

I structured the information as best I could, so that you won’t waste time reading pretty stories but get right to the bottom of things. Here it goes:

Page Rank (PR)

Scale: 0 – 10 (integer numbers)

Formula: PR indicates a webpage’s popularity across the web. This means that it only takes into account how many links are pointing to a page, regardless of their quality or anchor text details.

Also, most important you must keep in mind that PR can only be calculated for a webpage and NOT for a website.

Calculated by: Google

Although Google updates PR calculus for webpages often and very often (we’re talking about hours) those values are not available to us. Google makes PR public through the PR Toolbar which is only updated once in a 3 to 9 months period.

The PR toolbar is available for free and you can find the instructions on how to enable it on this page.

Analysis: Although it’s the most popular SEO metric, PR is no longer a determining ranking factor, neither a relevant metric for SEO analysis. PR is only one of the 200 signals Google looks at when determining websites’ position in search results and a rough meter for a webpage’s inbound links.

You can efficiently use it to compare the link profile of different pages and to spot eventual penalties from Google, but you must keep in mind that a drop in your PR can be due to other reasons, than a penalty or removed links.

You PR fluctuates according to all the other pages on the internet because of the way PR is calculated. At first it is determined what it takes to be a PR 10 and from there all the other PRs are set. So, if the webpage with the most links across the internet has a PR 10 and increases even more its number of links, you might see a fall in your PR without having any changes in your link profile.

MozRank (mR)

Scale: 0 – 10 (two decimal numbers)

Formula: mR is meant to mimic Google’s PR. Therefore it only evaluates a page’s link profile taking into consideration the number of links.

There are though a few differences between mR and PR:

• sometimes, when a website is caught to be performing bad seo practices, it gets penalized by Google through a PR drop. This punishment won’t be reflected in mR and thus differences will appear.

• mR is calculated as a decimal value to better represent a page’s performance while PR has integer values.

Calculated by: SEOmoz

SEOmoz has its own index of the web (Linkscape) based on which it calculates a set of seo metrics: mozRank, mozTrust, Domain mozRank, Domain mozTrust, Page Authority and Domain Authority. SEOmoz refreshes its link database about once per month, when these metrics are also re-calculated and updated.

SEOmoz provides free access to mozRank, to PA and DA through its mozBar, while mozTrust, Domain mozRank and Domain mozTrust are available only to paying members of their community.

Analysis: Just like PR, mR is calculated logarithmically. This means that the distance between two consecutive mR points progressively increases. The number of built links that took you from a 2 mR to 3 mR, won’t be enough to take you from a 7 mR to 8 mR. The higher the mR, the tougher will be to make progress.

This is where the two decimal points of mR come in hand. You can get a more accurate image of your position and better monitor your progress.

MozTrust (mT)

Scale: 0 – 10 (two decimal numbers)

Formula: mT sums up for a webpage the trust of its referrers determining thus its own trustworthiness. It’s important to be mentioned that not all of your built links are able to pass through trust. Only authoritative websites (.edu, .gov, .edu and well established websites) are counted for determining mT.

Calculated by: SEOmoz

Analysis: Comparing to mR which counts links and improves along with their number, mT is a metric that focuses more on quality rather than quantity. The latter should give you a sense of your page’s long term built strength.

You can use it as a raw number or you can compare it to mR. The rate between mR and mT shows you the overall quality of your link profile and helps you understand what you  should do to improve your performance.

Domain level mozRank & mozTrust (DmR/DmT)

Scale: 0 – 10 (two decimal numbers)

Calculated by: SEOmoz

Formula: These are mR and mT calculated not for a webpage, but for the entire domain.

As many SEOs do, you must not mistake the domain wide metrics with the metrics of your Index page. Although it is the most powerful page of your website, the Index page does not reflect the performance of your entire domain.

Analysis: Domain wide metrics are extremely useful for evaluating your potential partners. For example, you should never judge a guest posting opportunity or a link building prospect by their page metrics. Instead, keep in mind that it’s far more effective to connect with low rank pages on strong and authoritative domains rather than seeking higher rank pages on less powerful domains.

Page Authority (PA)

Scale: 0 – 100 (integer numbers)

Calculated by: SEOmoz

SEOmoz uses a machine learning algorithm to determine correlations between link metrics and high rankings, aggregating them into the PA score.

Formula: PA is meant to aggregate all the other SEO metrics into one and to reflect how prone/promising a page is for high rankings, considering only its link profile.

Just like a fit person will probably perform any sport better that a non-active person, webpages with higher PA are more likely to achieve high rankings than pages with low PA.

Analysis: By comparing PA for the top 10 competitors on a specific search query, you will notice that PA is not fully correlated with rankings. This means that pages with lower PA may rank better than other more authoritative pages due to all the others factors Google is taking into consideration other than link metrics.

However, PA is still the best rough indicator of a page’s stand alone performance in terms of optimization.

Domain Authority (DA)

Scale: 0 – 100 (integer numbers)

Calculated by: SEOmoz

Formula: DA is PA calculated for the entire domain.

Analysis: Unlike PA which is only relevant for optimization purposes, DA is a great metric for competitive analysis and partner selection.

Even more…

As most of these metrics are calculated by SEOmoz, plenty of information and insights on the subject can be also found on their website. Please feel free to use the comments or Twitter, to add your contribution to this post. Any corrections or thoughts are appreciated.

Photo credit: Jack Amick

Wake up! Take the kids to school, go to work, do this, do that…There’s just so much to do, and time doesn’t  wait for you to keep up with everything that goes on.

With this rush, you, as an SEO consultant, need to gather your search engine rankings really fast in order to meet your customers’ demands and expectations, and still have some time for yourself. But, like you, there are a lot of SEOs out there who need their rankings just as fast for their own demanding customers.

So, you’d better use every second wisely!

But things are not so simple. Search engines are smart and have ways to fight back. They will slow you down if you’re not careful.

What can you do to get a win – win situation?

Play fair and follow the search engine guidelines

To avoid overloading their datacenters and bandwidth, search engines designed clever systems to protect themselves against automatic queries. This helps them provide continuous, high standard services to all searchers, which is their primary scope after all.

Let’s take an in-depth look at how this works:

When checking rankings for 100 keywords in Google, for example, if you use an automatic tool that sends them all in a few minutes, the search engine will “see” you are not a person. Clearly, this would be impossible for a human to do. Google’s protection system would detect your  IP address and ban it for up to 24 hours. This may result in discontinuous ranking updates and affect your SEO business in time.

What you need to do to avoid such situations is to embrace a search engine friendly behavior, taking into account random delays between queries. With Google, 15 seconds is the minimum delay to protect its datacenters against overloading.

So, if you take into account Google’s default searching settings (10 results per page), and a search depth of 5 pages, it means that the time needed to gather rankings for your 100 keywords, without the risk of being banned by Google, would be of about two hours (5 queries for each keyword X 15 seconds delay, multiplied by 100 keywords equals 7500 seconds).

Not very impressive, you might say. True, but this does not depend on the automatic querying tool itself, but to the protection mechanism of the search engines.

The solution is to find a way to send your queries from different IP addresses at the same time.

Send multiple queries through proxy servers

The good news is that with Advanced Web Ranking you have a way to go around this: you can use proxy servers to send your queries to search engines from different IP addresses at the same time.

This means that, with one proxy server and the direct connection from the computer where the application is installed, you can divide the 2 hours to update 100 keywords by two. If you have 10 proxy servers and a direct connection, you get to send queries from 11 different IP addresses, so you can further divide the 2 hours by 11.

This would mean that you can update your rankings for 100 keywords in  less than 10 minutes. I think things are starting to look much brighter

How to manage proxy servers with Advanced Web Ranking 8.7

There are two methods that you can use to manage your proxies in the application:

1. With a global setting, that covers all your AWR projects
2. By assigning proxies per project

You can add the proxies in AWR from the Settings menu -> Performance -> Proxy Settings. Here, you get to add and remove the proxies, or to edit their details.

This is also the place where you assign different types of actions to your proxy servers, telling the application how to use them. To do this, you have two options you can select from:

• Ranking. Proxy servers that have this check box selected are used by the application in order to query search engines and retrieve ranking data.

• Others. This option marks the proxy server or direct connection that is used to retrieve analytics, links and ranking information.

Alternatively, you can override these settings for each of your projects. This helps you when you have proxy servers in different countries, for customers based in different locations.

You can find this setting in the Project menu -> Settings -> Proxy Servers.

Again, you have three options to choose from:

• Use Application Proxy settings. This is the default option, that tells AWR to use the global settings when updating your project, as described above.
• Use only direct connection. This option tells the application to use only the direct connection when updating this particular project. This helps you when you want to update only a particular project through a direct connection, and using proxy servers for the other projects.
• Use only the selected proxy servers. This is probably the one you want, because it allows you to choose the exact proxies from the list you have added in the general settings.

The nice thing about all these options is that they give you the freedom you need in order to retrieve your ranking data according to the size of the projects you manage.

Also, assigning your foreign customers projects proxies from their countries helps you get the relevant rankings for those locations.

Takeaways

Speeding your keyword position tracking is crucial to keep up with the growing number of new customers interested to improve their websites positions. Automatically querying the search engines it no longer an option, it is a need.

But there are several factors that you need to take into account when using automatic queries:

• Search engine’ s protection system imposes random delays between queries.
• If your tool doesn’t comply with these delays, you risk getting your IP address banned for up to 24 hours.
• The way to go around this, and still get fast ranking results, is with multiple proxy servers.
• With AWR, you can track your keyword positions simultaneously by assigning proxy servers per each customer project in the application.
• Proxies from different countries also help you see the results relevant for those locations

So, why risk being banned, when you can get fast rank tracking without breaching the search engines’ rules?

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article. I am looking forward to reading your comments in the section below.

Photo credit: airessantos

As an SEO consultant or agency, building strong connections with your clients is based on treating them like strategic partners, and showing that you are truly interested in their business. The experience you offer when they interact with you is essential. After all, your reputation, as an SEO, will only be as good as the customer experience you provide.

With the release of the new 8.6 version, Advanced Web Ranking brings a new weapon in your seo software arsenal, that helps you take a hands-on approach with your customers. This is achieved with a complete, interactive SEO report that your clients can easily browse on their computers or by connecting directly to your website.

Long, fussy printable reports are history

Imagine the surprise! Seeing this month’s report changing views as per real time selections? I bet your clients will find this totally unexpected

To give you a taste of the ultimate SEO report, here is a demo you can play with. Yes, that’s right! Just click on the button below and the report tabs and panels will respond to your actions.

View SEO Report demo

Analyzing details through discovery and experimentation, and not by being told, increases the value of the information by far.

The complete SEO report provides your clients with a complete overview of their analytics, ranking and linking data, and the ability to control each view. Browsing through different sections, they have the chance to see and compare:

1. Their website’s position for the targeted keywords and the visibility they have across search engines;
2. The number of visitors, the traffic sources and the revenue per keyword defined in Google Analytics;
3. Complete link building profiles and key metrics for their domains and their competition.

It’s like navigating through a web-based seo software. Actually, the only difference between the Advanced Web Ranking SEO report and a real web-based software is that here, users don’t get to add new keywords or search engines to their projects. Only you can do this, in the application.

How to create the Complete SEO Report in AWR

Now that you’ve seen what the SEO report can do, let me show you how you can create one of these goodies and impress your customers.

First, you need to set up a report template in Advanced Web Ranking, that includes the websites, keywords and search engines, as well as the preferences of the actual report file which you will further send to your customers.

To do this, click on the [Reports] left menu and select the [New report] option. In the newly opened wizard, simply select the [SEO Report] from the first drop down box, and then just click on the [Create] button.

Easy, right?

By default, the report template will contain all the websites, keywords and search engines available in your AWR project. If you are happy with this, then you’re done with the “creating” part. But, if you want to further refine the report and select only certain keywords or search engines, you can do this in the [Output and layout options] – [Report inputs] section of the template.

Here, in the Dashboard metrics section, you can also select the ranking, analytics and links metric that you want to show in the chart of the SEO report Dashboard.

To see how the report will look like, click on the top [Preview] button.

The complete SEO reports that you will generate and send to your customers from this template will be in HTML format and contain the analytics, ranking and link metrics related to the options and preferences you selected.

How to set the Complete SEO Report on auto pilot

Automatic generation of the SEO reports can be achieved through a scheduled task set in Advanced Web Ranking. Further, there are two methods that you can use to make the SEO report available automatically to your customers:

1. Upload them on your FTP site, so your customers can connect on a user/password basis and access the reports.

2. Send the reports to your customers by email, so they can see the files locally in their browser.

To obtain this, you just need to make the related adjustments in the Complete SEO Report template that you have created. You can set your emailing and FTP upload preferences in the [Send report by email] and [Upload report to FTP server] sections.

This way, when the SEO report is generated automatically from the application, through the scheduled task you defined, it will also be sent to the recipients you have chosen.

To see the Complete SEO report in action, you can take advantage of the Advanced Web Ranking 30 days free trial.

Conclusion

The SEO services market feels crowded more and more these days. With a competition so high, telling your customers you increased their rankings by 4 positions in the last two weeks is definitely not enough. To keep them happy, you need to always find new ways to improve your service.

Integrating a hands-on approach in your strategy will offer your customers an amazing interactive experience, that will make you different from your competition.  It’s like telling them to roll up their sleeves and get involved in the search engine optimization process for their own business.

I am looking forward to reading your stories on the hands-on experience you shared with your clients, in the section below.

Looks familiar?

These reports are the mirror of your efforts. The only difference is that your customers will not ask “who’s the fairest of them all”, but rather:

1. Where do I rank in the search engines for this keyword?
2. How many links do I have with this anchor text?
3. How many visitors are coming to my website searching for this keyword?

Each question should find its answer in the details of the reports you prepare. To make them as “readable” as possible, here’s what you should consider:

Combine ranking, linking and analytics data in a consistent way

Remember, your customers do not have your SEO expertise. Things that seem so obvious to you may not make much sense to them. You need to make sure the ranking, linking and analytics details are displayed in such a way that marketers can easily extract the information they need to build future strategies.

One report with all three metrics should do this job better than three separate reports.

For your customers, these keywords define real life elements, like brand names, product names, concepts, etc. With a hybrid report that details ranking, linking and analytics metrics for each keyword, they have the chance to understand how well their business is positioned on the online markets for each of those terms.

Add a professional look

Comprehensive column names and legends explaining what the values stand for always help in making the reports more comprehensive for the readers.

Make sure the reports you send to your customers don’t have columns or graphic symbols that they cannot understand. Otherwise, the information you want to show them loses its value.

Don’t forget about the header and footer. Placing your logo and name on the SEO reports will give a personal touch, adding a brand value to them.

How to create hybrid reports with AWR 8.5

Now that you know how your SEO reports should look like, here’s how you can actually create them in Advanced Web Ranking.

The new AWR 8.5 version has integrated Google analytics and SEOmoz links data, giving users the possibility to combine all three types of metrics in the same report.

There are two ways to put together this data in a tabular report:

1. The Website Ranking interactive report
2. The Website Ranking printable report template

The Website Ranking interactive report

You can draw your own interactive hybrid report in AWR 8.5 from Rankings -> Website Rankings -> Date comparison view. Here are the steps you need to take:

• Select the columns you want to be displayed

This can be done from the “Select Columns” button on the left side of the table header.

For example, let’s say you want to show your customer how high he ranks now for a particular keyword, how many visitors came during the last month to his website, using this keyword, and how many links he has with this term in anchor text.  In this case, you need to select the “Position”, “Change”, “Monthly Visits” and “Keyword in anchors” columns from the drop down list, as shown below:

Values displayed in these columns are related to the keyword selected (which in this example is “latest news”).

• Select the keywords, websites and search engines you need

With AWR, you can choose the exact websites, keywords and search engines that you want to include in your SEO reports. The selection in the interactive report is done from the input panel.

Keep in mind that the Website Ranking interactive report displays data only for one keyword and one search engine at a time.

• Sort and order values in your report

Ordering values ​​in a SEO report is very important, as it provides you with a flow that makes the data easier to follow. Plus, it gives you the chance to bring out front the best results you have achieved.

To do this, click on the column head by which you want to sort your data. The small arrow icon on the column head focused will indicate the ascending or descending order of the values.

• Save and email the hybrid report

The interactive Website Ranking report can be generated using the Quick report feature. Just press on the Quick report button and select the file format you want.

The report will be opened in the default viewer and will also be saved in the default location stored in Settings -> Printable and Interactive reports -> Common Reports Settings.

If you want to send it to your customers directly by email, just click on the Send button next to the file format you have chosen and select the email addresses of the recipients.

The Website Ranking printable report template

With the printable hybrid report in AWR, not only you can choose the columns and keywords you want, but you can also generate and email it automatically to your customers, after each new data update. All the necessary settings can be done from Reports -> Website Rankings.

• Select the columns you need

The Website Ranking printable report template has the same columns selection mechanism, as the one used in the interactive report. You can open the Select columns drop down from Output and Layout options -> Report layout grid of the report.

• Select the keywords, websites and search engines you want to display

You can choose the keywords, websites and search engines you need in your printable report from Output and layout options  -> Report inputs. This grid is similar to the one you have in the interactive report. The difference is that, here, you can select multiple keywords and search engines. Thus, you can see the ranking, linking and analytics metrics for all keywords and search engines at the same time.

• Sort and order your data

Sorting is done the same way as in the interactive Website Rankings report. Just go to the Report output grid and click on the relevant column head.

For example, let’s say you want values to be sorted by the number of visitors driven last month by each keyword. To do this, values need to be sorted by the Monthly Visits column, as shown below:

• Add custom header and footer

You can create a white labeled report by using a customized header and footer. Once it is set up, you can easily added it from the Reports settings ->  Header and footer section.

This feature is available only for the printable reports.

• Generate and email the SEO report automatically

When all columns and inputs have been selected, it’s time to see how the printable report will look like.

With the Website Ranking printable report template, you have the possibility to preview the report before you actually generate it. To do this, just click on the Preview button, below the report name.

If you are happy with the result, all there’s left to do is to generate the report. To do this, you can just press the Generate button (next to Preview). Easy, right?

To generate the report automatically, every time new ranking, linking or analytics data was gathered, make sure you check the “Generate report after each update” check box form the Save to local file section – Deploy dialog.

The report file will be saved to the location defined in the Save to local file section of the report template.

To further send the report to your customers by email or via FTP, you need to check the Send report by email and/or Upload report to FTP check boxes from the related sections, and choose the recipients accordingly. The best part here is that, unlike the interactive report, the printable template gives you the possibility to edit the email text body and add variables like the date, the report name or the project name. Also, only reports generated from the printable templates have the option to be uploaded on FTP.

Bottom line

Integrating ranking, linking and analytics data in the same frame offers a better analysis based on keywords. The hybrid reports you prepare can now provide customers with a clearer guidance and a more pleasant experience reading them.

You can also learn more about creating AWR reports from the Advanced Tutorial found in the user guide.

I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to creating a great SEO report. Each of you probably have your own tricks to impress your customers. I am really looking forward to read some of your tips in the comments below.

Photo credit: miguelavg

Surely these metrics are somehow connected, but it’ s hard to tell from all the reports and graphs spread on your desk.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to see your analytics, links and ranking data in the same place?

Well, there is no need to wait for Christmas. Your wish has come true with Advanced Web Ranking version 8.5.

You can now combine analytics, links and rankings into awesome hybrid reports, which show the metrics in both a comparison table and a chart with the evolution of your websites in time.

Imagine that you are trying to optimize your website for the keyword “sport news”. With the new version, you will be able to see, in the same report, all the metrics that matter for your optimization efforts:

1. The position of your website for the term “sport news” in the search engines
2. The number of external links with the anchor text “sport news” that point to your website
3. The number of visitors who reached your website by searching for “sport news”

This gives you the unique opportunity to analyze your SEO campaign efficiency by understanding how all these factors affect your optimization efforts.

Now that I have your attention, let me tell you a bit more about the reports themselves:

Overview – Evolution in Time Report

There is a new chart that allows you to select multiple analytics, links and visibility metrics and see their evolution in time. You can see this new chart in Rankings -> Overview -> Evolution in Time.

We implemented three views in this report:

• The Global view allows you to see the selected metrics for all search engines and keywords
• The Search Engines view shows the selected metrics only for the selected search engine
• The Keywords view shows the selected metrics only for the selected keyword.

Placing all these metrics in a comprehensive chart, with the possibility to see values related to specific selections, provides you with a clearer picture on your website’s trend over time.

Speaking of trends… we added trends to this chart to help you see the evolution of your analytics metrics regardless of the ups and downs that may be misleading. This is something we always wanted to see in Google Analytics and now you have it in Advanced Web Ranking.

Websites Ranking – Date Comparison Printable Report

Search engine ranking, total links and weekly visits are all at hand now in this report, that you can see in Rankings -> Website Ranking and generate it as a printable report:

This helps you see all three types of metrics for all websites added in your projects, detailed per each keyword and search engine selected.

You can select the columns you want to include in your report from the Select columns button, on the left side of the tabular report.

All these changes make the Advanced Web Ranking interactive and printable reports more customizable than ever. You get to play with rows, columns and views and draw your perfect reports just the way you need them.

Now that you have seen how to combine analytics and links data in your reports, let’s take a look at how you can retrieve this data in the application.

Synchronize your Google Analytics data with Advanced Web Ranking

Integrating website analytics in the application helps you see key details about your traffic and conversion rates.

The main advantage is that you can analyze the efficiency of each keyword in relation to its ranking and the number of visitors that it brings to your websites. This way, you can determine on which keywords you need to focus more in your optimization efforts.

To see analytics data in Advanced Web Ranking, all you need to do is synchronize your Google Analytics accounts with the application. On each new update, AWR will retrieve new analytics data for your websites that match the Google Analytics profiles added in the application.

The details about your visitors, conversion/abandon rates and referrers will be shown in comprehensive interactive reports, up to the previous full day. This way, you can avoid the integration of incomplete data in your reports, from the partial numbers Google Analytics shows for the current date.

Link data from SEOmoz

The next step in creating awesome hybrid reports is to get valuable link information for your website or for your competitor’s websites.

Advanced Web Ranking can gather external links, anchor texts and link metrics directly from the SEOmoz Linkscape database. This gives you the opportunity to see who links back to you and analyze your link building profile through well know metrics as: Domain Authority, Page Authority, mozRank and mozTrust.

Unlike the analytics data, which can be retrieved only for your own websites, link information is independent, so you can see both your own and your competitors’ link profiles.

This way, you get to peek at your competitors’ top links and you can find valuable details about their link building strategy.

You can see more details about your links in the reports that are part of the Links section of the application.

How much will this cost?

To gather the link information, you don’t need an SEOmoz account. Advanced Web Ranking will get the links for you using a link credits mechanism. For each data retrieved, the application will consume the associated number of credits.

To help you start evaluating your link profile, each new Advanced Web Ranking license comes with 2,000 free link credits.

Managing the links update process is done via the dialog above, that you can access from [Project] -> [Websites] -> [SEOmoz Links]. Here, you get to choose how many links and anchor texts you want to gather for the domains and subdomains you select.

New links, anchor text distribution and domain metrics will be retrieved during your AWR project updates, whenever the Linkscape database is refreshed. This usually happens once a month.

When you have consumed the free credits, you can easily acquire new credits, that will be added instantly to your Advanced Web Ranking license key.

Downloading and compatibility with previous AWR versions

You can download the latest version of Advanced Web Ranking from here.

Due to the newly added Analytics and Links features, major changes to the database were required. This means that after installing Advanced Web Ranking 8.5, your database will no longer be compatible with version 7.5 and below.

Conclusion

Things change fast in the SEO world. Search engines develop new algorithms, analysts invent new metrics, making it almost impossible to track them all in a coherent way. Yet, you somehow must manage to do it and stay on top.

Advanced Web Ranking does not rank your websites on the best positions in the search engines, it does not increase your website traffic and it does not bring you new backlinks. Your hard work and dedication do all these things.

What Advanced Web Ranking does is support you in evaluating your optimization efforts, so you will know at any time what you have already achieved, and what you still need to work on. And we’ll continue to improve the application to make you more efficient in what you do.

Just let us know if you have any suggestions on how we can make things easier for you.

If, let` s say, you are based in San Francisco and you just found a potential customer with a local business in France, le Champs-Élysées will have to wait. All it takes is a few emails and some phone calls, and the new search engine marketing campaign is ready to start.

Sounds easy? Sure it does, but there`s a catch!

Search engines usually show different results for the same keyword, based on different locations.

For example, the Google results you will see from your San Francisco office will not be similar to those your customer will see from Paris. So, when she receives your first ranking report, it may not make much sense to her:

Luckily, there are two solutions to this problem:

1. Change your location in browser using Google Location
2. Create a customized Google Location search engine in Advanced Web Ranking

Change your location in browser using Google Location

Google personalizes results based on location awareness, establishing this way the relevance of the results it returns to the searchers.

So, when someone with an IP address in Paris searches for “XML editor”, Google will automatically show a list of results in Google.fr, with the location set to Paris.

To see the same rankings from a San Francisco IP address, you need to make some adjustments in your search criteria:

• Perform the search in the specific Google domain

Google’s automatic IP address detection will always send searchers to their respective country and local search by default.

For example, when you go to google.com and run a search from your USA IP address, you are presented with a set of results from Google.com, relevant for your location.

But, when our French friend here goes to google.com, she is automatically redirected to Google.fr.

To see the same results she does, you need to type google.fr in your browser.

• Narrow location to city level

Selecting the relevant Google local domain gets only half the job done. The other half is to narrow the location from country to city level.

A simple search on Google.fr from IP addresses located in different cities will reveal different results returned by the search engine.

To track your customer`s rankings correctly, you need to further narrow the locations down to a city. Just change the location from the left side of the results list in browser, and new results will be automatically displayed.

Easy as pie… if you only have one French customer

But, if you are an establish SEO agency, with tens or hundreds of customers from all over the world, managing Google location manually for each of them may not be very efficient.

Create a customized Google Location search engine in Advanced Web Ranking

Here’s where our SEO software comes to rescue. There are three easy steps you need to take to manage multiple Google locations within Advanced Web Ranking:

• Define the Google location

To define your Google Location in AWR, go to Project – Search engines – Add Search Engines and select the Add Google Location Search Engine option from the drop down list. Here, choose the Google domain, the location and the language you are interested in.

And since everything started in Paris…

• Add the new Google location to your AWR project

Once you`ve chosen the domain, location and language, click on the Next button and select the new AWR search engine created. Then click on Finish to add it to your project.

You can define as many Google location search engines as you need within the same project. This is helpful when you have customers who target different countries and cities in the same search engine marketing campaign.

• Run a new project update

To see rankings for the newly added search engines, you need to run a new update. Just click on the green arrow icon on the left side of the application window, and your work is done. AWR will gather the fresh ranking data for you, while you can sit back and enjoy le Champs-Élysées on a nice travel blog

When the update process is completed, you should see your customers` websites on the same positions as searchers querying Google from Paris do.

And the best part about this is that you only have to do this once as opposed to changing the Google location manually in browser every time you search. Further project updates will retrieve the rankings for all Google location search engines you have already defined in the application.

All there`s left to do now is to send your customers some awesome SEO ranking reports and impress them with your skills.

Conclusion

Approaching customers globally has a great impact on businesses in online markets. Your office address should no longer be a criterion for customers choosing you as their SEO service provider.

Yet, to give them reports with accurate search engines results they can rely on, you need to emulate their clients browsing behavior and address their specific locations.

This is exactly what you can accomplish by using Google Location – the easiest way to look through your customers` eyes and share their searching experiences.

I`m sure each of you have your own techniques to manage locations, maybe also using other Google services like Places or Maps. So scroll down the page just a little bit and share your thoughts in the comments section below.

I don’t know about you but I do this every day.

But, how important are the reviews of your friends when you are looking to buy something?

Very important, right?

Well, things weren’t always like that. When computers and mobile devices weren’t so widely spread, people relied on printed commercials and on the salesperson’s advice to make a purchase decision.

Now, things have changed. Consumers have changed.

But have marketers changed too?

Are you satisfying your customer’s need to compare, evaluate and rate the products they seek to buy?

Let me tell you why you should and how you can do this efficiently.

The Zero Moment Of Truth

Recently, Google has released an interesting e-book talking about this new, required change in a marketer’s strategy, as a consequence of behavioral novelties.

That moment when consumers are trying to choose between similar products, by gathering different information online, is identified as a new phase of the purchase process and is called The Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT).

Here is the story in short:

Before the era of WWW, when purchases were made mainly at the recommendation and advice of the sales person, there were three stages in consumer’s behavior:

1. The Stimulus – The moment when consumers acknowledge the need for a certain product. It could happen after seeing a TV or a written commercial, after hearing about that product from a friend or just after experiencing certain life changes that awaken that need.

2. The First Moment of Truth (FMOT) – Also called “The Shelf Moment”, this is the moment when the consumer reaches the store, sits in front of the shelf and chooses between brands.

3. The Second Moment of Truth (SMOT) – Happens after the purchase, while the consumer uses the product. At this moment, the consumer is either satisfied or displeased and she will further recommend the product or not.

Now that communication between people is much easier and word of mouth is so powerful, the decision making process has changed. People stopped relying solely on the advice of the sales man and started documenting on their own.

They wouldn’t research anymore just for expensive purchases such as a car or a place to live. They could afford now the time to research even for things as meaningless as a $5 bottle of shampoo.

Why?

Because it takes less time to run a quick search online and find the best product to buy, rather than spend time looking at an entire shelf of products and not knowing for sure which would be the best choice.

ZMOT in a marketer’s eyes

So, what does this change mean for a marketer?

The Zero Moment of Truth is the moment when consumers switch from undecided to decided. This makes it crucial for winning over the prospective customer.

Therefore, you must reinvent your entire strategy and design it in such way that it meets the needs of your customers at their Zero Moment Of Truth.

In other words, it means that:

• It’s essential to be present in their ZMOT! If you miss when this moment occurs, you lose the prospective customer.
• You must tell your side of the story. Leave no room for competition to create a false image of your brand in their attempt to improve their own.
• Consumers need to have access to detailed and clarifying information related to your brand and product. If there is a lack of information available for your products and services, your prospective customers might choose other brands just for the fact that they don’t want to risk having bad surprises from a product they don’t know much about.
• You must be transparent and gain consumer’s trust. Trust plays a major part in consumer’s decision making process.
• You should be available to provide answers. If your prospective customers have unanswered questions, they must be able to discuss them with someone and find the information they need.

ZMOT winning techniques

Ok. So, to be the winner in the Zero Moment Of Truth battle, you must find the places where ZMOT occurs and speak the words your customers want to hear.

Here are several things that you, as a marketer, can do to win the ZMOT:

• Show Up in Search Results

Google Search – is one of the most common techniques people use for learning about the things they care. So this means that you must optimize your website to show for the searches people perform when they are at their ZMOT.

Think of all the words people would most probably include in their searches at this moment (such as best, cheap, free, top, prices, opinions, reviews, ratings, offers, promotions, discounts, coupons) and brainstorm relevant keywords for your own webpages to optimize.

You can also use Google’s own auto fill function to see exactly how people are searching for your brand & category and “steal” these keyword suggestions.

• Create Videos

It’s far more easy to watch a video than to read a piece of writing, and people are growing accustomed to get the things they need FAST. Therefore, having videos to explain your product features are making the consumer’s research easier and bring you closer to the desired ZMOT win.

• Engage In Discussions

People like to ask questions and to seek other people’s opinion. Therefore you must go where all the others are going. You must be present on forums, on reviewing sites, on Q&A sites, on social platforms.

Make sure you don’t miss any community that talks about your brand or product. It doesn’t matter if good or bad things are said about your brand, is important to be there and tell your side of the story.

• Allow & Encourage Customer Experience Sharing

To win the ZMOT of your prospective customers it is important to be transparent in your relationship with your existing customers. Having unedited feedback from your clients on your website and forums means that you have no dirt hidden under your carpets and people can trust your word.

This will only grow your prospective customer’s confidence in your brand and ease your path toward winning their ZMOT.

• Adapt Your Channels

Mobile devices are becoming a regular tool in the hands of consumers. And mobile ZMOT searches as well. Therefore you need to make sure you are also available on this type of devices and your message is able to satisfy the need of a consumer on the run.

• Be Ready for Dynamic Changes

The things that could push a consumer into the ZMOT are sometimes transient or unpredictable, and to explain this I’ll use Jim Lecinski’s own example.

Lady Gaga’s video “Telephone”, in which Beyonce showed up wearing an amazing makeup based on a yellow eye shadow, generated a flood of online searches for terms like “Beyonce yellow eye shadow” or “Beyonce honey bee yellow makeup”.

If you were a makeup producer or seller, you would have wanted to show up for these searches, right? But to do that, you must be fast and agile.

So, be always prepared to react to this kind of stimuli and welcome consumers in their spontaneous ZMOT queries.

A Marketer’s Thought

We are now seeing and living some fascinating transformations that compel us to change the way we think as marketers and rewrite the rulebook as we go.

What do you do to win the Zero Moment Of Truth?

I’d be very interested to hear your winning techniques.

Please comment below or tweet so others can share their opinion.