? seobility BEGINNER S Guide First steps towards successful SEO 1 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
TABLE OF CONTENTS Welcome 3 Adding a new project 4 General project settings 5 Project verification (optional) 6 Crawler settings (optional) 6 Analyzing a website 8 Dashboard 8 Overview 10 Onpage 13 Backlinks 16 Rankings (Keywords) 20 Choosing country and city for monitoring 20 Adding search terms for monitoring 21 Ranking Monitoring Dashboard 23 Adding competitors 28 PDF reports about your project 30 Plans and Pricing 31 Imprint 32 2 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Welcome Dear Seobility User, Congratulations, you ve decided to achieve better search engine rankings and sustainable success in SEO! We at Seobility are happy to support you on your way to the top! The following pages are designed to present an overview of the most important features and analysis options of Seobility in order to make your first steps in SEO as easy as possible. If you still have any questions after reading this guide, please feel free to contact our team directly. You can find all our contact details at the end of this document. We wish you all the best for your successful search engine optimization with Seobility! 3 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Adding a new project To start your work with Seobility, you first have to create a new project. In order to do that, click on + Add project in your dashboard. Fig. 1: Project list 4 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Adding a new project > General Project Settings General project settings On the following page, you can select the basic settings of your project in the categories general project settings, project verification and crawler settings. To begin with, add the URL of the homepage of your website in the General project settings area. Below, you can select a name for your project according to your wishes. Fig. 2: Add a new project All other settings are already filled in but can be changed if needed. Start working on your project straight away after adding your URL or adjust your settings if you have specific requirements for the crawling process. As an example, you can decide if you want to crawl subdomains, such as shop.domain.com, blog.domain.com or forum.domain.de, too. This could be a use case if you maintain a blog as well as your website and want to optimize this also for search engines. 5 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Adding a new project > Project verification + Crawler settings Directly underneath, you can choose if your project should be crawled regularly. This has the advantage that you don t need to login each time you want the page to be crawled. The crawling happens automatically at set intervals. You can also choose to receive email notifications whenever an issue or a change is detected. Note: Continual crawling is only available for premium users. Project verification (optional) Seobility offers you the option to verify your project if needed. Especially larger websites can benefit from this because our crawlers can access your website simultaneously in several instances, which speeds up the crawling for the whole project substantially. Additionally, you can set individual robot.txt rules for your verified projects, which replace the standard robot.txt rules. Verification ensures that the website you want to crawl definitely belongs to you. Note: Project verification is only available for premium users. Crawler settings (optional) If you want to set some more specific guidelines for your crawling, you can to do it in the crawler settings area. Options there are to define the maximum amount of sub-pages to be crawled, the delay after each page request, the amount of crawlers and many more. The use of this area is optional, it is designed for more experienced search engine optimizers. 6 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Adding a new project > Add project and start crawling Once you have changed all the settings to your requirements, just click on Add project and start crawling to start crawling your project. Fig. 3: Add project and start crawling Note: All the settings in this step can also be changed at a later point in the project. 7 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website Dashboard Your dashboard is the center point of Seobility and allows you to navigate to all other areas. There you can find overviews of all your projects, information about your account and a list of tools for single page checks. Fig. 4: Seobility dashboard 8 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Dashboard The project list is an overview about the most important key figures of each of your projects. By clicking on any of your projects you are forwarded to the detailed crawling results of this website, which are split into the areas Overview, Onpage, Backlinks and Rankings. In the next few paragraphs we will talk about the features of each individual area in more detail. Fig. 5: Seobility Overview 9 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Overview Overview Fig. 6: Overview - Part 1 You can reach the project overview by selecting the required project in your Seobility dashboard. There you can see all the important data in the Project Overview in the top left corner. The current results of your onpage analysis, as well as these of the subcategories Tech. & Meta, Structure and Content are displayed in the area Optimization score. If you now click on Show results you are forwarded to the subcategory of your onpage analysis. In the top right corner, you can see buttons for important Project Options. There you have different options such as starting a new crawling of your project, deleting the project or creating a PDF report with all the analysis results of your entire project. Directly underneath, you can find a Project Checklist, which includes important analysis results for your entire website and is color-coded according to the traffic light system. This means, if your website already is optimized well to certain criteria it shows up in green. Aspects that need optimization are colored in orange or red. 10 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Overview It s always possible to adjust your project and crawler settings after you ve started a project by clicking on the navigation fields above the project overview in your dashboard. There you can also find settings for your keyword monitoring and for the verification of your project. The share feature allows you to create a private link, with which you can give other people access to your project. You can see the Historical optimization graph of your website below the Optimization score area in your dashboard. This timeline is split into the categories technical, structure and content and is showing the results of your optimization over time. A list of all Completed crawlings that were done for your projects to date is displayed at the bottom of the page. Fig. 7: Overview - Part 2 11 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Overview While a crawling is being processed, the areas Optimization Score and Historical optimization graph are replaced with a Live crawling overview, which shows the progress of your website crawling. The overview page looks like the following. Fig. 8: Live crawling overview 12 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Onpage Onpage The onpage area of Seobility is split into Tech. & Meta, Structure and Content and shows you detailed results of your website analysis. Each of these areas contains a Historical optimization graph, the Optimization Score and essential Crawling Details. Additionally you have an option to analyze specific URLs individually. You can find a list of Important errors and crawling details underneath. This shows the aspects that Seobility considers to be most important, which is why they are highlighted. These are sorted by priority and they are color coded, which means those at the top and those marked in red are the most important ones. When clicking on Show results on any of the issues, you are directed to a list of all the pages it applies to and you will receive tips on how to optimize them. Fig. 9: Onpage subcategory 13 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Onpage Below the list of errors, you can find several tables and diagrams for each of the analyzed factors. These only offer a rough overview but can be clicked on for more details. The Amount column shows how many pages are affected whilst the Change column shows how much has changed since the last crawling. Example: Among other things, the area Tech. & Meta shows the table Meta tags and page attributes, in which you can see the results of the analysis of your page titles and meta descriptions. Fig. 10: Example - Meta tags and page attributes 14 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Onpage > Details Select the row Problematic page titles to get a detailed analysis of your page titles that require optimization. Fig. 11: Meta tags and page attributes > Problematic page titles For essential information on each subject area, you can find the Optimization Tips in the top left corner. In this case, information on aspects you need to consider when optimizing your page titles is displayed there. There is a graphical representation of the Optimization Score of your page on the right. Underneath, Seobility offers a list of all problematic page titles on your website, including the URL of the page, the specific problems and the affected page title. You can filter this list according to your specific criteria and therefore customize it. In the last column, you can tick all your completed to-dos via check boxes, which allows you to keep an easy overview without having to start a new crawling. Finally, you have the option to download all the data as a CSV or PDF file. Note: In this example we have used the analysis of problematic page titles as an example of a detailed analysis. All other analyses are presented in your tool in the same format. 15 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Backlinks Backlinks Apart from good and useful content, backlinks are still one of the most important aspects of a website s search engine ranking. Especially in very competitive areas, the website with the most valuable backlinks usually is at the top. But backlinks are not only essential for your search ranking, but also an important tool for your online marketing as a referral source for targeted traffic to your website. The Seobility backlink module, which you can access via the backlinks tab, offers a detailed analysis of your backlinks including a competitor analysis and individualized tips for building backlinks. Fig. 12: Backlinks overview 16 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Backlinks You can find the graphical representation of how your backlinks have evolved over time in the area Referring domains in the top left corner. Here you can see the changes in the amount of backlinks to your website over a given time period. To the right, you ll find a summary of the most important information about your backlink profile. Underneath, all of your backlinks grouped by referring domain are listed in a table, with the most valuable links at the top positions. Any links that were gained or lost in the last seven days are displayed under the tab New links and Lost links. Another tab next to it shows the distribution of the link anchor texts of incoming links. You can also download any of the tables displayed as a CSV or PDF file. There is an overview of the backlinks of your competitors below your backlink table. In this section, next to the amount of referring domains, you can see the amount of backlinks your competitors have. Use the + Add competitor button to add more competitors to your table. Fig. 13: Backlinks - Competitors 17 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Backlinks > Competitors To see more details, click on the competitor you want to check. On the following page, a graph shows the referring domains to this competitor for a given period of time. Below, you can find a detailed Domain comparison and a list of all backlinks pointing to this competitor. Both of these lists give you an insight into your competitors search engine optimization and marketing activities and can provide you with possible profitable link sources that you can use for your own website. The domain comparison and the list of backlinks can also be downloaded as a CSV or PDF file. Fig. 14: Backlinks - Competitors - Details 18 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Backlinks > Link building tools In addition to the backlink analysis, Seobility s link building tool offers you the chance to build new and useful backlinks for your website. We lend you a helping hand when it comes to link building by identifying potential link sources based on your competitors links and well-ranking sites for your most important keywords (Link building tools). For example, you can use our tool to analyze on which websites more than one of the competitors you added to your list is linked, as this usually suggests that this is a list of recommended links about a certain subject. You should now check the linking websites and ask their hosts if they would add a link to your website as well. As these link building tactics are generated on an individual basis, you have to request the analysis by clicking Calculate opportunities. Fig. 15: Backlinks - Link building tools Note: The backlink area is only available for premium users. 19 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Rankings (Keywords) > Choosing country and city for monitoring Rankings (Keywords) To ensure sustainable success in search engines for your websites, you need to be constantly keeping an eye on the ranking (the Google SERPs) of your site for the most important keywords (search terms). That s why Seobility provides rankings to give you the option to analyze and keep track of the position of your keywords in Google. This feature not only helps to keep track of the rankings of your pages, but also gives you specific tips to further optimize the content of your website. Choosing country and city for monitoring When adding new keywords to monitor, you need to start by selecting a country (or search engine) where the ranking should be taken from. If you have a premium account, you can also select a city at this point. In this case, geo-coordinates are also transmitted to simulate a search enquiry of a user from this location. This is recommended if you have a local business and want to see the ranking of your website on a city level. Fig. 16: Add new search terms - Choose country and city for monitoring 20 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Rankings (Keywords) > Adding search terms for monitoring Adding search terms for monitoring The next step is to enter the keywords that you want to monitor by adding them to the text box Provide your own search terms in the top left. Always add one keyword per line. You can have a look at our Search term suggestions to the right to find new keywords. Just click Add search terms to add them to your list. In the bottom section of your page, you can find a table of your Selected search terms, which consists of the following columns: Country: Use this option to change the country in which you want to monitor the ranking of each of your keywords, if needed. City: You can set a local monitoring for each individual keyword in this column. Search volume: This number shows you how many people search for this term per month. This is the most important number in your keyword monitoring, as it shows how popular a keyword is. CPC (cost per click): In this column you can see how much you would need to pay per month if you wanted to run a paid search campaign with this keyword. Competition: This column shows to what extent your competitors are already using the keyword and how much they are spending on it in their search engine marketing. The more a keyword is used by competitors, the bigger the competition for it gets. 21 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Rankings (Keywords) > Adding seach terms for monitoring By clicking Save selected search terms you add the keywords to your ranking list. Fig. 17: Add new search terms 22 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Rankings (Keywords) > Ranking Monitoring Dashboard Ranking Monitoring Dashboard After adding the keywords for your monitoring, you are forwarded to the dashboard of your ranking area. The Seobility dashboard gives you all the important information about the ranking of your website at a glance. Fig. 18: Rankings overview In the upper right corner of the screen, you can set the time frame to be displayed in the graph (the last few days, weeks or months). It s also possible to switch between the visibility for desktop or mobile devices. (Note: The mobile/smartphone visibility analysis is only available for premium users.) 23 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Rankings (Keywords) > Ranking Monitoring Dashboard The top left area Visibility trend shows a visibility score based on the search terms you added and you are monitoring. This score tells you how easy it is to find your website is according your keywords. The graph displays how the score evolves over time and is switchable between Visibility and Ranking. Next to this, changes in your visibility compared to the previous day, week and month are shown in numbers in the area summary. This section also gives you the option to create and save a ranking report. The central element of your ranking dashboard is the list of your Monitored search terms. It provides an overview of all your added keywords. The keywords are shown in the Search terms column. Using the Filter you can change the order to region and in the column position (Pos.) you can see the current position of the specific keyword in the search results. To the right of this, the column Change shows the position changes of this keyword. The number of search queries per month for the keyword is displayed in the column S.V. (search volume). CPC shows you how much you would need to pay if you wanted to start search engine advertising with this keyword. The second to last column offers you the opportunity to set tags for your keywords, which allows you to group several keywords together. Using the x in the last column you can delete a keyword. It is possible to filter and sort this list using a variety of criteria in order to customize it to your individual needs and goals and also to export it as a CSV of PDF file. You can also add new keywords to monitor or get suggestions for new keywords at this point. 24 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Rankings (Keywords) > Details A click on any of the monitored search terms opens the Ranking changes for this keyword and shows you a variety of further information such as the Top 100 rankings for the keyword or a list of competitors ranking for it. Fig. 19: Keyword details 25 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Rankings (Keywords) > Competitors and Ranking optimization As in the backlinks section, it s possible to create a list of your competitors right underneath your keywords table. This allows you to compare your visibility with your competitors and to gain valuable insight. Seobility also gives you a variety of Ranking optimization tips for combining URL and search terms as a help to improve the ranking for your site and your monitored keywords in the future. Fig. 20: Keywords - Competitors and Ranking optimization 26 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Rankings (Keywords) > Search term suggestions Another helpful feature which has to be mentioned in this guide are the Search term suggestions. To use this, click on the blue Suggestions button in the search term list of your ranking dashboard. The table will show you potential search terms that you should monitor, as your competitors might rank highly for these. Just tick the search terms you find most interesting and select Add terms to add them to your keyword list. You can generate a report download of your list as a CSV or PDF file if needed. Fig. 21: Search term suggestions 27 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Rankings (Keywords) > Adding competitors Adding competitors In the bottom left of the rankings overview, you have the option to add competitors to analyze your ranking compared with theirs. To broaden your horizon by looking at your competitors is just as important for assessing your results as looking at your own ranking. If you haven t added any competitors yet, you will be asked to do so underneath the main menu on the page. Fig. 22: Keywords - Add competitors - Part 1 Fig. 23: Keywords - Add competitors - Part 2 28 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Analyzing a website > Rankings (Keywords) > Adding competitors In this section it s on you to either enter your competitors individually in the text box Enter custom competitors or to choose suggestions from the suggested competitors table. After clicking on the Add competitor button, you can see your competitors further down in the Selected competitors list. By clicking Add selected competitors, the domains are added to your competitor list. Fig. 24: Keywords - Add new competitors - Details Note: The keyword monitoring suggestions are only available for premium users. 29 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
PDF reports about your project As you probably noticed while reading this guide, Seobility offers the option to download and save the results of your analyses as a CSV or PDF file at various points. You can download a complete PDF report about your project in your project overview under project functions. At certain points in Seobility, it s also possible to download reports of specific single-aspect analyses, for example, the list of pages that are affected by the same issue can be exported in the Onpage area or you can download a backlink report in the Backlink area. To give you a better overview, here is a list of all the available reports and where you can find them. OVERVIEW SEOBILITY REPORTS Overview export Complete export Individual export Onpage subcategories (Tech. & Meta / Structure / Content) Detailed analysis export Backlinks export Backlinks competitors comparison export Backlinks competitors backlinks export Ranking report Monitored search terms export Ranking competitors comparison export SEO Check Keyword Check SEO Compare Overview Onpage Backlinks Rankings Tools 30 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Plans and Pricing Seobility supports you in achieving a better search engine ranking and sustainable success for your website and business. Choose the account type that best suits your needs and requirements. A current overview is available at https:///en/pricing/. You can t find the right one for you? We will happily create a bespoke offer for you. Contact us via telephone at +49 911-23756261 or via e-mail at info@seobility.net We wish you all the best for optimizing your website! Should you still have any questions, please don t hesitate to contact our support team. Your Seobility Team 31 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO
Imprint seobility GmbH Willy-Brandt-Platz 16 90402 Nürnberg Germany Represented by: Thomas Gareis, Managing Director Telephone: +49 911 23756261 Fax: +49 911 99287499 Email: info@seobility.net Legal All contents of this handbook are subject to copyright. Copying, changing or redistributing the content for other purposes is not permitted. You are allowed to use the manual in its current form for yourself or your clients. The integration in web pages e.g. blog articles is allowed, as long as you attribute the copyright owner and do not represent the handbook as your own work. seobility GmbH 2018 32 / 32 Seobility BEGINNER s Guide l First steps towards successful SEO