Traffic monitoring, how to use SEOZoom data
Today we put aside the classic topics about SEO and Google news to address a rather hot topic that concerns us closely, that is the difference between Analytics visits data and those estimated by SEOZoom. Let’s try to understand why these values do not always correspond, answering to what is a question often asked also to our live chat support assistants.
What the traffic value in SEOZoom means
All the difference lies in that word we added next to the name of the suite, estimated: as with other tools, SEOZoom too does not measure direct access to the site, but indeed elaborates an estimate on the accesses through the monitoring of the keywords ranking on Google, calculating the potential value of a site’s organic traffic accordingly.
Data on the potential value of visits
To be even more precise, SEOZoom does not read the visits but calculates the potential value of the organic traffic of a site, whether desktop or mobile, analyzing the keyword for which a domain is placed on Google. A concrete example: if a site is in first position on Google for the keyword “proof” that has a volume of 1000 visits per month, SEOZoom indicates that potentially the site will be able to make about 500 visits (whether they are from mobile or desktop is irrelevant for the calculation of values).
SEOZoom’s estimates are based on algorithmic functions that proportionally relate the position on Google and the potential traffic, with obvious predominance for the number one position. Yet, the reality of user behavior on the search engine could be different and not reward by clicking always and only the first result, for reasons related to the previous history experience of the person (who maybe knows and believes reliable sites that appear in positions subsequent to the first) or because titles and meta descriptions of other sites placed in SERP are more comprehensive and respond better to the initial search intent.
All SEO tools does not have direct access to the site
Based on this assumption, it is inevitable that these SEO tools underestimate the actual traffic of a site, because they work on a sample of keyword and do not have access to all the information as it happens with Google Analytics or the Google Search Console, which have direct access to the site.
SEOZoom’s strengths
Unlike competitor tools, the big advantage of SEOZoom is the size of the keyword sample, much larger than any other tool while still remaining a sample and, therefore, able to present a partial and theoretical view of the organic traffic piece of data of a site. There is then to remember another important detail: if the site to be monitored is inserted in the Projects of the user, Seozoom estimates and updates the metrics every 7 days, while for the other domains the elaborations do not have certain times and so frequent.
As for specific keyword crawling, however, times vary based on multiple factors, including the “size” of the keyword itself. This mirror helps us get an overview of the most common scan times:
- Keywords monitored in a Project: Every 24 hours, always for any search volume.
- Keyword with high traffic volume, but in no project: Every 7 days
- Keyword with medium traffic volume, but in no project: Every 15 days
- Low traffic volume keywords (e.g., volume 10): Every 21 days or so.
Differences between SEOZoom and Google Analytics on organic traffic
So, in summary Analytics values and those of estimation tools like SEOZoom are not comparable, and indeed we can say that it makes little sense to use the metrics of the suite to guess the organic traffic and compare it with that of Google tools.
Analytics, for example, monitors the totality of a website’s visitor statistics and analytically counts traffic reaching the site based on individual hits, offering actual site traffic measured one visit at a time. In contrast, SEO tools use a sample of keywords to show Google ranking trends, so as to inform whether the site is going up or down for those keywords (which Analytics cannot do).
Different data in traffic estimates of different tools
The same explanation also applies to cases in which we notice unequal traffic estimate data between SEOZoom and other similar tools: here, too, the database, the keywords surveyed, and the sample on which the estimate is made are different, which is why the information processed by one tool may not be similar to that of another tool.
It is “impossible” to determine who is right, in such situations, because – we were also saying before – keyword analysis tools are based on proprietary data samples, metrics and algorithms, and each one develops the tool according to its own methods and data with the goal of helping a website owner analyze the situation. The purpose of tools like SEOZoom is not to zero in on traffic, as the little number is useless, but to propose consistent and useful data to those who want to optimize their strategies and grow their online project.
What is Google Analytics
A parenthesis is needed to explain what is Google Analytics, the free Google Web analytics service that serves to check the statistics on visitors to a website. It is another important tool for webmasters, as well as those integrated into the Google Search Console, and is according to some studies the most used statistics service in the web.
Analytics features
Among the various functions, Analytics allows you to monitor visitors from all sources: organic traffic from search engines, websites or paid campaigns, Display Advertising, Pay per Click networks and email marketing, but also internal links to PDF documents. Using these data you can for example identify the most viewed pages by visitors to a site, the origin (referrer), the duration of the visit (the time of stay within the site) and their geographical location.
Already from this synthesis we should understand the great difference between the visit piece of data in Analytics and the volume of traffic estimated by Seozoom, which – we reiterate once again – performs a calculation of the visits that a site could get through positioning on Google.
SEOZoom is a tool to perform SEO
SEOZoom was born to be an SEO tool and to help search engine ranking strategies and is not to guess the traffic, which as we said can have different sources (direct, referral, social, advertising, Bing, Yahoo and so on). It therefore has a completely different purpose than that of Analytics, because it is an analysis tool that allows you to discover aspects of SEO work such as traffic trends from search engines, opportunities on keywords, the way competitors work.
How to interpret the traffic detected by SEOZoom
In short, when we talk about traffic on SEOZoom we must keep in mind that:
- SEOZoom “does not detect visits”, mobile or desktop, because such data are only monitored by Google Analytics and Search consoles.
- SEOZoom (and all other SEO tools competitor) sees site placements based on keywords.
Here are some tips to read the traffic data detected by SEOZoom: if the tool shows a graph falling it means that at least one keyword of the site is losing positions in the ranking on Google. If on the contrary in Analytics you see an uphill chart for the same site, it means that for sure the traffic is increasing, but such increase might not be related to important keyword, but maybe to long tail keywords , or perhaps you are not considering seasonality.
Tips to intervene on drops
Stopping only at the Analytics data and thinking that everything is fine because the numbers are growing could be a serious mistake: the Google tool does not allow you to monitor what is really going on on the keyword important to the business or to understand the dynamics that lead a site to make traffic from important keywords or long tails.
Understanding the value of graphs to improve performance
In fact, a site may be falling on a sample of key keywords, those monitored by SEOZoom, while in the Analytics charts you see a rise resulting from thousands of other small keywords. In such a situation you understand the value of SEOZoom charts and SEO tools, that start from the estimated traffic on the keyword that have better placements and signal that it is necessary to intervene with onpage and onsite optimizations to recover the lost positions even if the total visits of the site hold thanks to “other ways”.
Why SEOZoom is useful and reliable
All this becomes even more valuable if we think that when recovering top keyword rankings, the increase visible in Analytics also has a definitely greater scope.
Ultimately, then, if we need to know the real traffic of the site and pages, Google Analytics is the most effective and accurate way, but if, on the other hand, we want to evaluate metrics that help our site grow, SEOZoom is the optimal answer, also because it has the great advantage of counting on a larger sample of keywords than the competitors and on a lot of other valuable information for page optimization.
And thus, the data shown by SEOZoom serves to intervene and recover on the most important keywords and to improve a site’s performance overall: exactly what a reliable SEO tool should do.
